From AudioFile
The Cold War, perhaps dead in reality, lives on vibrantly in Michael Jayston's reading of a literary spy classic. This installment of the le Carré canon has George Smiley trying to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Service. Jayston's rich, full-bodied voice recreates the paranoia, urgency, and dread implicit in any Soviet threat. He reads with a steady pace and allows the story to unfold naturally, with all the twists and turns subtly revealed. Jayston, a British actor, gives each character a distinct voice, and his inflections uncover their motivations and foibles. He even pauses well. The result is an intelligent book read with respect for the reader's intelligence. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Review
The Wall Street Journal A stunning story of espionage....His people are full-bodied, believable individuals, the minor characters as vivid as the main cast.


Book Description
John le Carré's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge and have earned him -- and his hero, British Secret Service agent George Smiley -- unprecedented worldwide acclaim. A modern masterpiece in which le Carré expertly creates a total vision of a secret world, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy begins George Smiley's chess match of wills and wits with Karla, his Soviet counterpart. It is now beyond doubt that a mole, implanted decades ago by Moscow Centre, has burrowed his way into the highest echelons of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of its most vital operations and its best networks. It is clear that the double agent is one of its own kind. But which one? George Smiley is assigned to identify him. And once identified, the traitor must be destroyed.


From the Publisher
John Le Carre's internationally famous hero, British Secret Service Agent George Smiley, has a world-class problem. He has discovered a mole--a Soviet double agent who has managed to burrow his way up to the highest level of British Intelligence. Under the direction of Karla, Smiley's equivelent in the Soviet Union, the agent has already blown some of the most vital secret operations and most productive networks. Now-how can Smiley use a lifetime's worth of espionage skills to ferret out a spy who posseses them as well? "A stunning story of espionage."--The Wall Street Journal. "Le Carre is simply the world's greatest fictional spymaster."--Newsweek


About the Author
John Le Carré was born in 1931 and lives in Cornwall, England. His eighteen novels have been translated into thirty-seven languages and include The Little Drummer Girl, A Perfect Spy, The Russia House, Single & Single, and his most recent book, The Constant Gardener, all available from Pocket Books

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which first appeared in 1974, is arguably Le Carré￯﾿ﾽs masterpiece and is surely one of the great spy novels of the 20th century. Loosely inspired by the career of Kim Philby, a Russian double agent who worked his way into the upper reaches of the British Secret Service, Tinker, Tailor tells the story of donnish, unprepossessing master spy George Smiley and his quest to identify the "mole" -- the deep-penetration agent -- who has turned Britain's Intelligence Service (commonly known as the Circus) inside out.

Rumors of the mole￯﾿ﾽs existence had circulated through the corridors of power for years and contributed to the disgrace -- and ultimate demise -- of "Control," Smiley￯﾿ﾽs mentor and the nameless former leader of the Circus. As the primary narrative opens, Smiley is recalled from his restless, unhappy retirement when a renegade British agent unearths corroborative evidence that the mole -- Code Name Gerald, identity unknown -- really does exist, and has sabotaged countless British intelligence initiatives and betrayed innumerable agents. In the face of all this, a panicked Whitehall minister enlists Smiley￯﾿ﾽs aid, charging him to "go backwards, go forwards, do whatever is necessary...to clean the stables," and to put the elusive Gerald out of business.

Internal evidence suggests that Gerald -- who is run by Smiley￯﾿ﾽs opposite number in Moscow Centre, the legendary Karla -- is one of four highly placed Circus officials: Percy Alleline, the slick, ambitious politician who has inherited Control￯﾿ﾽs position as Chief of Intelligence Operations; Roy Bland, a former left-wing intellectual recruited into the Service by Smiley himself; Toby Esterhase, a hard-edged Hungarian émigré with ambitions of his own; and Bill Haydon, a dashing, romantic figure -- the Circus￯﾿ﾽs own Lawrence of Arabia -- who was formerly the lover of Lady Ann Smiley, George￯﾿ﾽs promiscuous wife.

For all its inherent drama -- and this really is an enthralling novel -- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a quiet, leisurely, almost bloodless book, a hugely elaborate paper chase whose central investigation proceeds by means of interviews, research, and reflection. When he isn￯﾿ﾽt poring over the drab, endless documentation of the Circus bureaucracy, Smiley -- sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of former colleague Peter Guillam -- solicits the memories of a large cast of secondary characters, many of whom strayed uncomfortably close to the secret of Gerald￯﾿ﾽs existence and were punished accordingly. Included among them are Connie Sachs, an eccentric Oxford don and the former resident expert on Soviet Intelligence; Sam Collins, a Circus veteran who finds himself in the wrong place on the wrong night; and Jerry Westerby, a journalist and Circus irregular who will go on to serve as the eponymous hero of le Carré￯﾿ﾽs subsequent novel The Honourable Schoolboy. These and more than a dozen other supporting players are brought to life through the Dickensian flair for characterization that is one of le Carré￯﾿ﾽs most distinctive qualities.

In the end, two crucial Circus operations provide Smiley with the evidence he needs to unmask a traitor. One is Operation Witchcraft, which was designed to accommodate the nameless Russian source known as Merlin, whose steady stream of high-grade intelligence may be too good to be true. The other is Operation Testify, Control￯﾿ﾽs desperate, last-ditch attempt to identify the mole. Testify ended in disaster more than a year before the story begins, with Control discredited, the Circus disgraced, and a blindly loyal British agent named Jim Prideaux shot, captured, and nearly killed. Slowly, with great deliberation, Smiley picks up the threads of these very different operations and follows them through the labyrinth to a startling, but inevitable, revelation.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy may be the most influential, widely imitated spy novel of modern times. For years after its publication, an endless procession of novels dealing with the unmasking of Soviet moles flooded the marketplace. Some of them -- Len Deighton￯﾿ﾽs Berlin Game, Bryan Forbes￯﾿ﾽs The Endless Game, John Gardner￯﾿ﾽs The Garden of Weapons -- were actually rather good, but none of them came close to equaling le Carré￯﾿ﾽs achievement, which set an exacting, perhaps impossible, standard.

Le Carré￯﾿ﾽs many virtues -- his faultless deployment of atmosphere and language; his ability to convey the inner workings of an arcane, insular profession; his profligate sense of character; his profound grasp of the moral ambiguities endemic to life in "the secret world" -- are fully evident here, and seem as fresh and compelling today as they seemed more than 25 years ago. If you￯﾿ﾽve never read this amazing book, I urge you to do so now. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a world-class entertainment and an important, enduring novel, one of the few legitimate classics to arise from its highly specialized field.

--Bill Sheehan

FROM THE PUBLISHER

John le Carré's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge and have earned him -- and his hero, British Secret Service agent George Smiley -- unprecedented worldwide acclaim.

A modern masterpiece in which le Carré expertly creates a total vision of a secret world, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy begins George Smiley's chess match of wills and wits with Karla, his Soviet counterpart.

It is now beyond doubt that a mole, implanted decades ago by Moscow Centre, has burrowed his way into the highest echelons of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of its most vital operations and its best networks. It is clear that the double agent is one of its own kind. But which one? George Smiley is assigned to identify him. And once identified, the traitor must be destroyed.

FROM THE CRITICS

Wall Street Journal

A stunning story of espionage.

Time Magazine

One of the best tales of the year.

Newsweek

Le Carre is simply the world's greatest fictional spymaster.

San Francisco Chronicle

A rattling good novel.

AudioFile