books by John Le Carre

books by John Le Carre

books:

John Le Carre

John le Carre

Scribner, 2003

A Perfect Spy - a fractured soul
I listened to this as an audiobook read by John LeCarre. Mr Le Carre's narration added enormously to my understanding and enjoyment of this novel. Magnus Pym's story is told in a memoir format and involves multiple narrators in addition to Pym himself. I suspect I ...

A Most Wanted Man

John le Carre

Scribner, 2008

Being There in Germany
John le Carre has created in Issa his most enigmatic character yet, which is saying a lot for le Carre. Issa has more in common with Chauncey Gardiner in Being There than any character in any other spy novel you've ever read. He's a cypher in the beginning and remains ...

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

John le Carre

Scribner, 2002

The perfect spy novel
I spent 35 years in the intelligence business. Unlike the hero of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I dealt with mostly technical issues. I had a couple of dealings with the British and I came away from both thinking that a Brit with his brain, a pencil, and pad of paper ...

A Small Town in Germany

John le Carre

Scribner, 2002

A Cold War Spy Novel that Remains Starkly Relevant
When Leo Harting, a German employee of the British Embassy in Bonn (the titular small town in Germany), goes missing with confidential files, London sends Alan Turner to investigate. With anti-British sentiment at a fever pitch in Cold War West Germany, Harting's ...

Smiley's People

John le Carre

Scribner, 2002

Back to his best
Le Carre picks up the thread of Smiley's pursuit of Karla as it was at the end of Tinker, Tailer . . . , the first book in the series, with barely a reference to the second. And like the first, this is a return to the spare, taut writing that makes Le Carre's best ...

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

Walker & Company, 2005

The perfect novel for a 3 day weekend
Recommended by a Washington Post article, this book does not disappoint. It starts off with action in Berlin then spins a web of deceit and lies that keep the reader engrossed. We follow our main character through twists and turns and in different countries. The ...

Call for the Dead

John le Carre

Scribner, 2002

A great novel in its own right
With all the hype about the Karla trilogy, which is much deserved, the early Smiley novels get overlooked. I don't think it's fair. Call for the Dead is an excellent read that I would recoomend as much as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

The Constant Gardener: A Novel

John le Carre

Scribner, 2005

One of Le Carre's post-Smiley best
The negative reviews of this book usually contain words like "dull" or "slow-paced." Le Carre's trend has been away from protagonists who, in the context of their particular story, are extraordinarily suited to handle what challenges the plot offers, even if Le Carre ...

The Honourable Schoolboy

John le Carre

Scribner, 2002

Very well done!
I had never read a Le Carre novel before this one. I confess, I came to it with low expectations. I confess, as well, that it took me awhile to get into THS. This had to do, in no small part, with the challenges of Le Carre's style of storytelling -- a style that at ...

The Mission Song: A Novel

John le Carre

Little, Brown and Company, 2008

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Translator?
Another in the long line of cold war and post-cold war John LeCarre's thrillers, again with the optimistic proposal that ordinary, sometimes unremarkable people, can achieve the extraordinary. Here we meet a top translator, son of a wayward Irish missionary and a ...

Absolute Friends

John le Carre

Little, Brown and Company, 2005

A British Author At His Best
This is not another spy-story. Far from it. It is a lot more. It is inspired political fiction. John le Carré goes back to 1947, or even slightly before, and he is haunted by Hitler and nazism (though he did not know at the time of his writing this book that Gunther ...

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
John Le Carre

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2001

Smiley and his people are facing a remarkable challenge: a mole - a soviet double agent - who has burrowed his way in and up to the highest level of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of their vital operations and their best networks. The mole is one of their own kind. But which one? "His people are full-bodied, ...

The Looking Glass War

John le Carre

Scribner, 2002

Not your James Bond... literature
They looked up and the times had changed and in the cold war where the Soviets were twenty years ahead in spy craft.Bating Britain to bleed them, the Soviets had their effort to hold against them in the press. In James Bond British spies are near supermen, in Le ...

A Most Wanted Man: A Novel
John le Carre

Scribner, 2009

New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John le Carré's fiercely compelling and ...

The Little Drummer Girl: A Novel

John le Carre

Scribner, 2004

Is It Good vs. Evil, or Evil vs. Evil
Mr. Le Carre wrote this book about the Middle East in 1983, and it is as timely a novel now as it was then. Charlie, a modestly talented British actress goes to work for Israeli intelligence to try and locate a secretive Palestinian agent. Indoctrinated with a false ...