The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
1962
- fiction
- cold war
- intelligence officers
- intelligence service
- english spy stories
- spies
- george smiley (fictitious character)
- cold war (1945-1989) fast (ocolc)fst01754978
- spy stories
- smiley, george (fictitious character), fiction
The story
*The Spy Who Came in from the Cold* is a 1963 Cold War spy novel by the British author John le Carré. It depicts Alec Leamas, a British intelligence officer, being sent to East Germany as a faux defector to sow disinformation about a powerful East German intelligence officer. It serves as a sequel to le Carré's previous novels *Call for the Dead* and *A Murder of Quality,* which also featured the fictitious British intelligence organisation, "The Circus", and its agents George Smiley and Peter Guillam.
What it’s like
Bleak, grey and rain-soaked, with the cheerless bureaucratic drabness of early-1960s London and Berlin rendered in clipped, unshowy prose: wet pavements, dingy safe houses, cigarette smoke hanging over government offices, and the chill of a border crossing that never quite warms. The voice is dry, precise and quietly weary, more interested in procedure, glances and half-said things than in action set pieces, so the tension builds through interrogation rooms, shabby hotel corridors and long conversations that circle the truth. It suits a grey afternoon, a long train journey, or a late-night read when you want something cool-toned and absorbing rather than cosy. The mood is cold, melancholy and morally murky, with a sense of men worn down by a game they no longer believe in, and a slow, sad drift toward an ending that refuses easy comfort. Violence is sparse and sudden rather than graphic, there is some brief, unsentimental cruelty and a little menace, and the sexual content is minimal. It is for readers who enjoy the patient, grown-up espionage of le Carré's world and don't need heroics to stay gripped.
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