In fact, of course, Smiley is the finest secret agent in the world his pathetic demeanor conceals a brilliant mind and stout heart. Smiley is thus an anti-James Bond, an unheroic, frequently cuckolded secret agent who looks like a shy and miserable clerk in an old London bank. Now he is more carefully developed than ever before. Its hero is a character whom Le Carré has used in almost every book, sometimes as the hero, sometimes in a minor role. “ Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a full recovery, which in many ways consolidates Le Carré’s career. It marks a happy return to the spy genre for Le Carré his last book, The Naive and Sentimental Lover (1971), was a pretentious romantic story about a businessman, a writer and the woman they share-an inept psychosexual portrait of the bourgeois and the bohemian soul. The scale and complexity of this novel are much greater than in any of Le Carré’s previous books. Yet the plot is as tangled and suspenseful as any action fan could require, and the inductive skill of the diffident, intellectual hero should bring joy to the hearts of the purists. He even has a go at such ‘novelistic’ effects as interlocking themes of sexual and political betrayal. Unlike many writers Le Carré is at his best showing men hard at work he is fascinated by the office politics of the agency since the war. The social and physical details of English life and the day to day activities of the intelligence service at home and abroad are convincing. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is fluently written it is full of vivid character sketches of secret agents and bureaucrats from all levels of British society, and the dialogue catches their voices well. There are those who read crime and espionage books for the plot and those who read them for the atmosphere the former talk of ‘ingenious puzzles’ and take pride in ‘pure ratiocination’ the latter think themselves more literary, worry about style and characterization, and tend to praise their favorite writers as ‘real novelists.’ Le Carré’s books-like those of the six authors just mentioned-offer plenty for both kinds of readers. Cain, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald in America. It reconfirms the impression that Le Carré belongs to the select company of such spy and detective story writers as Arthur Conan Doyle and Graham Greene in England and Dashiell Hammett, James M. “John Le Carré new book-his seventh in thirteen years-is a thoroughly enjoyable English spy novel about the discovery of a double agent at the highest level of the British Intelligence bureaucracy.

The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.

John le carre 1979 spy novel