Product Description

George Smiley had liked the man and now the man was dead. Suicide. But why? An anonymous letter had alleged that Foreign Office man Samuel Fennan had been a member of the Communist Party as a student before the war. Nothing very unusual for his generation. Smiley had made it clear that the investigation - little more than a routine security check - was over and that the file on Fennan could be closed. Next day, Fennan was dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn't go on. Why? Smiley was puzzled ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #313431 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
'Intelligent, thrilling, surprising ... makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard' -- Sunday Telegraph 'Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense. Excellent writing' -- THE OBSERVER

Sunday Telegraph
‘Intelligent, thrilling, surprising ... makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard'

About the Author
John le Carre was born in 1931 and was educated at the universities of Bern and Oxford. He has written seventeen highly-acclaimed novels. John le Carre lives in Cornwall.

Customer Reviews

Impressive debut.
The first of Le Carre's novels, this marks the fictional debut of George Smiley. This is a downbeat and perhaps slightly parochial tale played out in an early-sixties London really still recovering from World War 2. Smiley is at the nadir of his career; moved sideways into security clearing civil servants. Why does one of the men he interviews commit suicide? The investigation leads Smiley back through his own past as an agent and through the early Cold War.

A novel which has much to say about post-war Britain, about the frailty of human relationships in the Great Game of espionage, but its main interest is in the way it establishes the character of George Smiley.

A few inconsistencies with the later novels - in particular, Peter Guillam is presented as a near-contemporary of Smiley's, whereas he is later reinvented as a younger man.

On the whole, an excellent debut, setting the tone for the later novels.

Good introduction to Smiley
This is a fairly easy read, but a good one. It is an ideal introduction to both John le Carre and George Smiley. Although set in the cold war it is more of a detective novel than an espionage novel. Smiley sets out to discover why a routine and harmless security interview leads to suicide.

This is a good introduction to George Smiley
If you haven't read any of the Smiley books, this short book is a good place to start. Written and set at the height of the Cold War, George Smiley is seen by the Department as a 'has-been' and is restricted to routine work. In the course of this he does a routine interview of a senior civil servant. Even though he assures the man that he is perfectly satisfied, the man apparently commits suicide. The twists and turns of the plot are well-told and satisfying and the answer to the mystery are not telegraphed too early. Overall, a good read.