The passing of popular novelist John le Carré has led many people to write things about him and his works, which mostly dealt with spies working for the British intelligence services. If you've never read his work, then I say dive in as his books are very impressive, somehow turning his stories about people perusing files and going to meetings (plus occasionally flying off to do mysterious things in strange places) into dramas of high import that seemed to say something about the world we live in. A good starting point is The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, the book that made his name. From there I recommend progressing to the Karla trilogy (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People) and then reading whatever ones of his books you come across.
I have enjoyed all the books by le Carré I have read, though I have not read them all. And I have enjoyed some of them more than others. So here is my ranking of the nine novels I have read, from least to most liked.
9. Absolute Friends (2003)
This is about an English and a German guy who become friends in the 1960s and then find themselves being used by intelligence services in the decades that follow. It's OK but it became less interesting to me as it went along, with the ending a bit outlandish.
8. The Secret Pilgrim (1990)
This is really a collection of short stories masquerading as a novel in which an old retired spy reminisces about his career. This is probably one to read after the others as you'll get more mileage out of cameo appearances by some of le Carré's star characters that way.
7. The Honourable Schoolboy (1977)
This is the middle book in the Karla trilogy, with much of the action shifting to South East Asia. It might be the closest to a James Bond story of anything le Carré wrote, for all that it retains his grubby cynicism. One of the big problems with le Carré's writing is that he struggles to write convincing women characters, an issue that is not usually a problem in the male-dominated world his characters inhabit but one that is more salient in this book.
6. A Murder of Quality (1962)
George Smiley is le Carré's most famous recurring character. In this early book Smiley has been retired from spy work and finds himself drawn into investigating a murder mystery in a quiet English country town. Aside from the charms of following Smiley's investigations, the book is also a window into a past where it matters whether someone is Anglican or non-conformist.
5. Call for the Dead (1961)
Le Carré's first novel introduced George Smiley, whose routine vetting of a civil servant opens a dangerous can of worms. As well as introducing Smiley's bureaucratic approach to spy work and his nose for suspicious activity, le Carré also begins as he means to go on here by establishing the largely miserable nature of Smiley's marriage.
4. The Looking Glass War (1965)
Le Carré said this was the most realistic of his spy novels, which he said explained its relative lack of popularity. This is gritty tale of rivalry between British intelligence agencies and a disastrous attempt to infiltrate an agent into East Germany.
3. Smiley’s People (1979)
In this, the third of the Karla trilogy, Smiley stumbles onto a secret that allows him to strike back against Karla, the fearsome head of the Soviet intelligence services. Sometimes I think le Carré's writing career should have ended with this book - the closing scene both brings the Karla story to a close but also hearkens back to the conclusion of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. And the book highlights the dirty compromises required to successfully prosecute intelligence work.
2. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963)
Le Carré's first two novels attracted relatively little attention but this caused a sensation, with its tale of a washed-up former spy allowing himself to be used in a fiendishly complicated disinformation operation. Spy fiction is always set in the shadows, but this brings us into a morally compromised world where Western intelligence services find themselves using deeply problematic methods to combat their Eastern counterparts. Like some of le Carré's earlier book, this is also a window into a time somewhat different to our own, and modern readers may recoil from the casual homophobia of the early 1960s.
1. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974)
In the first of the Karla trilogy le Carré presents us with a Smiley who has been forced into early retirement, but who starts to suspect that Karla, the Soviet spymaster, is running an agent at the heart of the British intelligence service. The book follows his investigations, which range backwards over past intelligence operations and include a fateful but enigmatic meeting between Smiley and Karla himself, when the latter was a field agent. The book gains much of its power from parallels with the real-life penetration of the British intelligence services by Soviet spies, with Smiley investigating analogues of actual Soviet moles. It is very evocative of a country struggling to find its way after losing its empire, its elite gripped by malaise as they face the fact that their country is now just a camp follower of the United States.
Many of these have been adapted for the screen or radio; I particularly recommend the BBC adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy from the 1970s, with Alec Guinness as Smiley and Patrick Stewart appearing momentarily as Karla.
See also the fascinating obituary in the Guardian, which both runs through the story of his life and provides a useful guide to his works.
images:
John le Carré in 1965 (Guardian - John le Carré: a life in pictures)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, first UK edition (Wikipedia)
