The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963): A direct sequel to Call for the Dead with a newly-promoted Mundt now the main antagonist.Adapted as a TV movie in 1991 with Denholm Elliot as Smiley. Less a spy novel than a classic British murder mystery featuring retired spies. A Murder of Quality (1962): Smiley takes a brief retirement and ends up investigating a murder at a public school.

Adapted as The Deadly Affair (1966), with James Mason. Call for the Dead (1961): Introduces George Smiley and his agency, the Circus, along with future antagonist Hans-Dieter Mundt, an ex-Nazi now serving as a hitman for the Stasi.Le Carré died from pneumonia on 12 December 2020 at age 89. Has added several espionage Stock Phrases (and popularised existing ones), among both the public and, apparently, real spies. Although most of his works - and all of his best-regarded ones - are definitely Spy Fiction, he is one of the rare 'genre' authors to have seriously blurred the line between genre and Literary Fiction. Eight feature his most famous creation, George Smiley.

His novels are definitely of the Stale Beer flavour of Spy Fiction, being very dark in places. While he was in the service, he started writing novels and carried on once he'd left. He was a real-life member of MI-5 and the Secret Intelligence Service until he was blown by Kim Philby to the KGB. He is probably the English language's most respected Spy Fiction writer and certainly one of its best-known, with 14 of his 26 novels getting television or cinematic adaptations, some of them more than once. A part-time operative with cover as a philandering journalist, Westerby insinuates himself into a war-torn world where allegiances-and lives-are bought and sold.īrilliantly plotted and morally complex, The Honourable Schoolboy is the second installment of John le Carré's renowned Karla triology and a riveting portrayal of postcolonial espionage.David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 1931 - 12 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré, was an English author of thriller novels. When the trail goes cold at a Hong Kong gold seam, Smiley dispatches Gerald Westerby to shake the money tree.

Given the charge of the gravely compromised Circus, George Smiley embarks on a campaign to uncover what Moscow Centre most wants to hide. The mole has been eliminated, but the damage wrought has brought the British Secret Service to its knees. In the second part of John le Carré's Karla Trilogy, the battle of wits between spymaster George Smiley and his Russian adversary takes on an even more dangerous dimension.Īs the fall of Saigon looms, master spy George Smiley must outmaneuver his Soviet counterpart on a battlefield that neither can afford to lose.

Le carre smiley trilogy