Call for the Dead: A George Smiley Novel (1961 original; edició 2012)

It was more a detective than a spy novel to me. It kept me guessing until the very end.
As I understand, it is the first book of Smiley novels. He is a loner. So I was a bit confused where the other two men - Mendel and Peter Guillam - came from and how well he knew them before and why they got so involved in this case. ( )

I loved it! It was the right book at the right time. I could see this being one of my comfort books. Looking forward to the next one. ( )

I have wanted to read leCarre for a while and decided the time was now as the book sitting on the TBR had been there forever.

It was a slog for me. At only 168 pages, I should have breezed through it-but it felt like work for me to just read 3-4 pages a night. Granted this was his first book, written in 1961, and I did take that into consideration when deciding on a star rating (thus the 1/2 star to round up on Gr's).

I really liked our main character, George Smiley, a Foreign Service officer for "The Circus" (based on MI6). Smiley does a routine background check on another Foreign Service employee, who immediately afterwards commits suicide. From that point on it all became confusion for me. Remaining characters were dropped in without much pomp, and were very boring in the beginning. In fact, even Smiley was a bit of mystery until the middle of the book, where some background on him was finally put forth.

All in all, a mediocre read for me, the short page length is really all that kept me reading and not throwing it in the DNF pile. ( )

I have been reading too many thrillers and mysteries by more recent authors with much more action. It took time to get into the story but Le Carre did capture me. It was good and I will continue the Smiley series. ( )

I have a little secret for you. Despite loving both fiction and non-fiction books about the cold war and espionage, this is the first le Carre book I have read. I'm not sure what has taken me so long to get round to reading his work, perhaps I wanted to leave the best till last. This book introduces us to the character of George Smiley, an overweight and rather grey man who has some history working for the intelligence services. He interviews a civil servant about a letter his department has received outing him as a security threat. Smiley thinks that the interview went well and on departing tells the man that he has nothing to worry about. The next day Smiley is told that the man has killed himself and is asked if anything he did could have been the reason for his suicide. Smiley doesn't think this all feels right and decides to investigate further.

This book reads more like a crime thriller than a spy book but it was entertaining enough to keep me interested throughout. Despite being a short book (160 pages) I thought it was a solid introduction to the George Smiley series. ( )