George Smiley

After an unremarkable interview, Circus agent George Smiley determines the subject of a standard security check-a civil servant in the Foreign Office named Samuel Fennan-poses no threat, nor presents any reason for suspicion of espionage. Hours later, Samuel Fennan is found dead by suicide. Suddenly finding himself under intense scrutiny, Smiley realizes the Circus intends to blame him for Fennan's death. Rather than remain idle, Smiley begins his own investigation into the nature of the man's demise. What he finds is a tangled web of secrets that connects not only to East German activity in Britain, but also his own past. The beginning of a body of work that The New York Times calls extraordinary in its breadth, consistency, generosity and wit, John le Carré's 1961 debut introduces one of the most esteemed and iconic spies in the literary canon: George Smiley.

Le Carre's first novel to feature the iconic character George Smiley, Call for the Dead follows the Circus agent as he interviews Samuel Fennan, an accused member of the Communist Party. Though Smiley finds no evidence against Fennan, the man is found dead the next day from an apparent suicide. Looking for answers, Smiley digs deeper into Fennan's past- and finds a deadly plot where nothing is as it seems.

Beautifully intelligent, satiric and witty - Daily Telegraph For Alisa Brimley, editor of the small magazine Christian Voice, receiving a letter from a longtime subscriber might otherwise be a perfectly normal occasion-except Stella Rode, the reader in question, writes that her husband is planning to kill her. Brimley calls upon an old wartime friend to help her investigate: retired Circus spy, George Smiley. Before Smiley can begin, Rode is found murdered, and Brimley asks Smiley to venture to the small town of Carne, home of the elite Carne School where Rode's husband is a public school junior master. Once there, he sets about peeling back the layers of pretense and artifice that cloak both town and institution, and discovers that there's more to Rode's murder than a simple crime of passion. John le Carré's second novel finds George Smiley in a classic whodunnit-style mystery. Trading the international intrigue of the Circus for the small village of Carne, A Murder of Quality is a deft examination of another uniquely British institution: the elite public school.

It's the early 1960s, and the newly built Berlin Wall looms large. British intelligence officer Alec Leamas, caught in its shadow, feels the chill all too keenly: the preceding years have seen nearly every member of his Berlin spy network either murdered or captured. To him, the prospect of a desk job feels more like solace than purgatory. When he's summoned to London by Control, it seems as though he's finally being called home. Control, however, still has other designs for Leamas: an assignment that's equal parts dangerous and audacious. Leamas will get the chance to come home, but only after he's gone deep undercover as a British turncoat in a bid to get revenge on Hans-Dieter Mundt, the counter-intelligence agent responsible for decimating his web of informants. One last time, Alec Leamas steps out into the chill of East Berlin. One of the most critically lauded and widely revered spy novels in literary history, “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” is a tour de force that established John le Carré as a master of the genre.

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse- a desk job- Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service- with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants. Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.

In years past, the Circus oversaw political matters while their counterpart, the Department, dealt with intelligence more military in nature. These days, however, the Circus' influence looms large, while the Department is relegated to the doldrums of bureaucracy and red tape. With the Cold War at a fever pitch, though, a potential assignment is only ever one defector-turned-informant away. Alerted to the possibility of missile activity from the Soviets on the West German border, the long stagnant Department leaps at the chance to restore some of their cache in the intelligence community. Director Leclerc hunts down former field agent Fred Leiser and sends him beyond the wall to East Germany, tying the Department's fate to his. The Looking Glass War follows the Circus' foil in the British intelligence community: the Department. With its nuanced portrayal of the nature of espionage, in all its contradictions, the fourth in John le Carré's “George Smiley” series is a compelling spy tale that brings the dangers of nostalgia front and center.

It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies? There's a mole in the Circus. Pulled out of (forced) retirement by his old protégé, Peter Guillam, George Smiley must determine who among the high command at the British Secret Intelligence Service is in fact a Soviet spy, one who's been climbing their way up the ranks for decades. The stakes are high: the mole is behind more than one failed operation and has lain waste to some of their best informant networks. With scant resources and few allies, Smiley must use every skill at his disposal to identify and destroy a traitor who threatens the very fabric of the Circus. “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”, following the events of “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold”, introduces Smiley's Soviet counterpart and nemesis, Karla, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence. One of John le Carré's most enduring works, the 2011 feature film adaptation (starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth) received three Oscar nominations and won two BAFTAs, including Outstanding British Film.

The mole has been purged from the Circus, and George Smiley, newly-made chief of the agency, has both rebuilding and revenge in his sights. To fully eradicate the threat, Smiley must trace back the treachery to its very roots. When his investigation leads him to Hong Kong, and what appears to be a dead end, Smiley enlists Jerry Westerby, an international sports journalist and "occasional" Circus asset. In the Far East, Westerby will have to untangle a web of corruption spread across a region with a reputation for testing loyalties and allegiances.

When General Vladimir, a Soviet defector, is brutally murdered in London's Hampstead Heath on his way to meet a junior Circus agent, George Smiley finds himself being pulled from retirement, again. As Vladimir's former case officer, Smiley has the privilege of cleaning up and burying the mess. But one last message from the general, sent just before he died, hints at a major operation led by spymaster Karla, Smiley's Soviet counterpart. Thrust back into the world of Cold War espionage in pursuit of his longtime nemesis, Smiley assembles a small team of trusted operatives to unearth the deceit and corruption that Karla has sown across Europe, from the shadowy streets of Paris and Hamburg to the corridors of power in London and Moscow. Over the course of the investigation, Smiley discovers a piece of intelligence that has long eluded him: Karla's weakness. The price of using it, however, tests the limits of even Smiley's ruthlessness. As the game of cat-and-mouse approaches its finale, and with the geopolitical landscape of Europe hanging in the balance, Smiley will be forced to confront the darkest corners of his own soul.

With his time in British intelligence drawing to a close, veteran spy "Ned" asks his colleague George Smiley to address his graduating class of trainee spies in Sarratt. Smiley's remarks on espionage in the wake of the Cold War serve as trigger and backdrop for a series of recollections and memories of Ned's many decades as a British spy. Both a reminiscence of times past and a meditation on the future, “The Secret Pilgrim,” published more than ten years after “Smiley's People” and little more than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is a mosaic that masterfully captures the complex and contradictory moral landscapes of Cold War intelligence.

The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks the truth - perhaps the last the students will ever hear. As they listen, Ned recalls his own painful triumphs and inglorious failures, in a career that took him from the Western Isles of Scotland to Hamburg and from Israel to Cambodia. He asks himself: Did it do any good? What did it do to me? And what will happen to us now? In this final Smiley novel, the great spy gives his own humane and unexpected answers.