Call for the Dead

It was less an interview than an amiable conversation over a walk in the park. George Smiley had been sent to speak to a high-ranking civil servant after an anonymous tip-off that he was a security risk. It was a formality - and the two men liked each other. Why then, did it apparently drive the poor man to despair? And why was he found dead the next day, the victim of an unnecessary suicide?

Call for the Dead is John le Carré's first novel, and introduced one of fiction's most famous spies - George Smiley, who is both brilliant and unremarkable.

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A Murder of Quality

Stella Rode has written two letters to the Christian Voice's problem column: the first was a tip for preparing pastry; the second declares that her husband may be planning to kill her. And by the time George Smiley is handed the second letter, Stella is already dead. Travelling to the old, cloistered institution of Carne School, Smiley discovers that neither the very respectable people of the school nor the murder are as straightforward as they appear.

A Murder of Quality is an ingenious mystery - with all of le Carré's unmatched skill for deft plotting - and a wry, intelligent commentary on class warfare of a particularly bloody kind.

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The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Leamas is finished. Every agent he ran has been remorselessly hunted and killed. It is time to come home, to come in from the cold.

But in the moral ambiguities of the Cold War, nothing is ever as it seems - particularly when George Smiley is involved. With its thrillingly effective atmosphere and lean, brilliant prose, this novel changed the rules of the game, and rocketed le Carré to worldwide fame.

John le Carré's breakthrough novel is a suspenseful masterpiece, and a gripping, unromantic insight into the unforgiving ethics of espionage.

Winner of the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger of Daggers in 2005 for the best crime novel in fifty years.

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The Looking Glass War

The Department has faded since the war, effectively mothballed, without agents or resources. But now, with intelligence of a possible missile threat, it again has a mission. This is a chance to prove its influence to those at the Circus, like George Smiley, who think the Department's time has passed. The opportunity to reclaim former glory cannot be missed - even though it means putting men's lives in desperate risk, on foreign soil.

The Looking Glass War is a gripping story of the amorality of espionage - unflinching in its depiction of spying and the men involved, who are as much full of vanity and fear as of selflessness and courage.

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Circus has already suffered a bad defeat, and the result was two bullets in a man's back. But a bigger threat still exists. And the legendary George Smiley is recruited to root out a high-level mole of thirty years' standing - though to find him means spying on the spies.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is brilliant and ceaselessly compelling, pitting Smiley against his Cold War rival, Karla, in one of the greatest struggles in all fiction.

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Smiley's People

The murdered man had been an agent - once, long ago. But George Smiley's superiors at the Secret Service want to see the crime buried, not solved. Smiley will not leave it at that, not when it might lead him all the way to Karla, the elusive Soviet spymaster?

Smiley's People is a thrilling confrontation between one of the most famous spies in all fiction and his Cold War rival, Karla. Like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy, it is as tense and unforgettable as only le Carré's novels can be.

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