Addictive Books

After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds 'Circus' head Maston is trying to blame him for the man's death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan's widow to find out what could have led him to such desperation. But on the very day that Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man.

In Le Carré's first masterpiece Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin, is responsible for keeping the double agents under his care undercover and alive. When the East Germans start killing them, Leamas is sent deep into Communist territory to find out why. "The finest spy story ever written" (Graham Green).

George Smiley, former senior official in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service is living unhappily in forced retirement - following the failure of an operation codenamed Testify in Czechoslovakia which ended in the capture and torture of agent Jim Prideaux. "Control", chief of the Service, had suspected that one of the five senior intelligence officers at the SIS was a Soviet mole, and had assigned them code names - derived from the English children's rhyme "Tinker, Tailor".

A Soviet defector has been assassinated on English soil, and George Smiley is called back to the 'Circus' to cover up the mess. But what he discovers sends him delving into the past, on a trail through Hamburg and Paris to Cold War Berlin - and a final showdown with his elusive nemesis, Karla. The last confrontation between the indefatigable spymaster and his great enemy, as their rivalry comes to a shattering end.