Sometimes it’s not the cover, or the writer, or the character, or the reviews that make me pick a book off the shelf. Sometimes it’s the weather.
In the long nights of winter, when the wind howls and the rain pours, I’ll see George Smiley sitting on the shelf, meeting my gaze with an arched eyebrow as though to say, “You need a safe pair of hands tonight, it’s John le Carré for you, I think”
And he wouldn’t be wrong would he? John le Carré is about as safe a pair of hands as you can get, and George Smiley about as reliable a hero as we’ve ever read about – a mild mannered, plodding, and diligent spy. Miles away from the all-action James Bond. I can never quite forget le Carré’s first description of Smiley in Call for the Dead:
“When Lady Ann Sercomb married George Smiley towards the end of the war she described him to her astonished Mayfair friends as breathtakingly ordinary.”In his second novel, A Murder of Quality, le Carré adds a bit of meat to Smiley’s bones:
“The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance”By now, Smiley is long retired from his life as a spy at the Circus, working at a University in the West Country, when he receives a letter from an old friend who runs a magazine. She tells Smiley that one of her readers, Stella Rode, claims that her husband – a teacher at a public school – is going to kill her. Before Smiley even gets chance to put his boots on, Stella Rode is murdered…
With Smiley investigating, we meet all kinds of suspects – the husband, other teachers, and a homeless mad woman in a speedy ho-hum of a case.
As ever, the genius of a le Carré novel isn’t the intricate plotting, but the intricate planning of Smiley. He sets traps for suspects to fall into of the most humdrum kind – does suspect A know what score the victim got in an exam? Does suspect B know what’s in the briefcase?
Yep, a million miles away from the usual spy action, but le Carré spy books are all the better for it.
Highly recommended.
So what do you think? Have you read it? Did you like it? Would you recommend it?
Let me know in the comments!
After something similar? Then why not try Call for the Dead:
Review: Call for the Dead by John le Carré - John le Carre's first book introduces George Smiley - It's a decent thriller that is funnier than you'd think...
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