Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Old Fashioned Spy Thriller, 8 Nov 2006
This is a great change in pace against normal spy books. There are no wiz bangs and gorgeous women. It just revolves around old fashioned atmosphere and storytelling.
We follow the expolits of George Smiley, one of the Cold War's heroes, as he is tasked with finding a Soviet mole imbedded within MI6. He was ousted in a shake-up following the overthrow, and demise, of the previous "Control" of MI6 - another name for James Bond's M.
He is outside the current regime that the mole is part of and his search is therefore reliant on old fashioned techniques of infiltarion and intelligence gathering.
I hadn't read this in about 20 years but was swept back into Smiley's world. Le Carre has a reputation for outstanding work and this is one of his best.
I won't give the game away as I hate plot spoilers. If you want to read an authentic Cold War spy story then this is for you.
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"I still believe that the secret services are the only real expression of a nation's character.", 14 Dec 2006
Following in the tradition of Graham Greene, who wrote spy novels contemporaneous with his own, John LeCarre uses his experience in the foreign service and MI6 to add realism to his tales of espionage. Green, however, remained a friend of traitor Kim Philby and continued to send his novels to Philby after Philby defected to Russia. LeCarre, however, was betrayed by Philby to Russian agents, and his career was ended. This betrayal gives added realism to his novels, which show real disillusionment with the system and, sometimes, with its agents and officials.
Written in 1974, this novel draws on the real life LeCarre (real name David Cornwell) and many of his associates who were unmasked by Philby and the "Cambridge Five." Here LeCarre creates a vivid and morally sensitive story in which his hero, George Smiley, is called out of his enforced retirement to unmask a Soviet "mole" high in the British secret service, referred to as "the circus." Five men (as in the real betrayal) have been suspected. Drawing on his friendships with some of the agents who were dismissed when he was, Smiley investigates the security leaks which have led to humiliation for British intelligence and real danger for some of its agents. As he tries to identify the mole, he receives peripheral help from Sir Oliver Lacon of the British Foreign Office.
Written in formal and polished prose, the novel is full of Cold War complexities. Karla, the legendary head of Soviet intelligence, continues to control a small group of Soviet "defectors" and disillusioned Communists, whom the British mistakenly regard as double agents providing them with secret information. At the same time, British Control (who is never identified by name) is trying to uncover the Soviet mole (nicknamed "Gerald") within their own agency. Jim Prideaux, who appears in several Smiley novels, is working on this operation in Czechoslovakia, but he is betrayed and almost killed, his entire operation shut down, and many of his agents executed by the Russians.
Smiley's investigations are decidedly prosaic, not the exciting shoot-'em-ups of James Bond novels. Slogging through mountains of paperwork, interviewing reluctant former agents, and doing his own legwork, Smiley works at unmasking Gerald the hard way. The complexity of his character (and of the other characters here) make up for the relative lack of dramatic action and highlight LeCarre's skill at creating intriguing characters who see the "grays" in an otherwise black-and-white world. His dialogue is quick-paced, often witty, and revelatory of subtle character traits, adding to the depth of the portraits and to the intricacies of the world of spy/counterspy. n Mary Whipple
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Le Carre at his considerable best, 13 Feb 2008
Not only is this probably Le Carre's best work, but I'd rate it as one of the best novels of the 1970s. It perfectly captures the feeling of Britain's post-war decline and nostalgia for a greater time. It is a beautifully written, highly convincing story of the hunt for a high-ranking mole in the British Secret Service, with the effect of this on the memorable central characters (not least unlikely hero George Smiley) subtly portrayed. A gripping, immensely satisfying Cold-War thriller. And a great novel.
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