John le Carré
Recently reviewed
Call for the Dead
Reviewed on 22nd January 2023
This is John le Carré’s first Smiley novel, published in the early 1960s, and setting up a series that would continue for 56 years yet only contain 9 novels.
Silverview
Reviewed on 6th February 2022
John le Carré’s final novel feels like he remained very much on form. It’s short by modern standards, but feels like the perfect length for the story it is telling. To some extent, it feels like Carré’s stature allowed him to escape concepts like word counts imposed by publishers, and just to write the words that are necessary.
Agent Running in the Field
Reviewed on 9th February 2020
John le Carré’s latest spy novel shows all the hallmarks of a man who, despite being 88 years old, still has an deep understanding of everything modern, and how the lives of his characters will be both different, and the same, as they were when he started writing.
A Legacy of Spies
Reviewed on 10th October 2017
A surprise return to the world of Smiley and colleagues, some 27 years after the last novel and 56 since the series began. It's many years later, and one of the Circus’s operations has come under scrutiny from the modern-day powers-that-be. Specifically that depicted in the 1963 novel The Spy Who Came In From The Cold - and in some ways this serves as both prequel and sequel.
A Most Wanted Man
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Reviewed on 5th April 2015
Continuing my slightly unusual new habit of reading John Le Carré's novels in reverse publication order, I've come to this story about an immigrant arriving in Germany to claim an inheritance. It has recently been made into a film (which I haven't seen), which surprised me slightly as I didn't feel it was as compelling as some of the other le Carré books I've recently read.
A Delicate Truth
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Reviewed on 25th August 2014
It’s taken me a while to get round to reading A Delicate Truth - I’m still slightly intimidated by John le Carré, having the idea that as he’s such a well known author that his books will be too literary and hard to get into. This is of course not at all the case, and as with his previous novel I was hooked straight away.
Our Kind of Traitor
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Reviewed on 12th May 2013
This is the first John le Carré novel I have read since childhood, and it certainly exceeded my expectations based on vague memories of half-read books and from the 1980s or earlier, and the recent film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.