Recommendations from our site
“As a standalone, Tinker, Tailer is an absolutely top-grade detective story. It’s all about this process I talked about, the archaeology of truth. There has been a gasping crisis or a deep fracture in how the world ought to work, Smiley comes along, and little by little he brushes away the dust, the misdirection, the obfuscation and he holds up the truth and says: This is what happened, here it is. There’s an actual ‘I expect you’re all wondering why I called you here this evening’ reveal. It’s classic. People don’t always realise that, because the theatre of espionage is very strong. But in the end that crime-investigation-solution shape is what stops you from getting lost in the book, and it’s incredibly elegantly executed, in a completely different way to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It meanders, it conceals, it shows you one thing but tells you another. You don’t realise that you know things. It’s just an extraordinary piece of writing, something that has been incredibly successfully adapted.” Read more...
Nick Harkaway, Novelist
“Everyone has read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which I would say is unquestionably one of the greatest ever espionage novels, perhaps simply one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Tinker, Tailor is a whodunit, essentially. It’s not literally a country house murder mystery, with a lineup of characters including Colonel Mustard. But there are four of them and it’s about finding out which one is the mole (a word which, I think, le Carré invented)—the Soviet traitor in the ranks of British intelligence. It’s such a great plot and it mirrors life very closely. It’s essentially about the Cambridge spy ring and the real-life traitors who worked for Stalin after the war.” Read more...
Five Classic European Spy Novels
Patrick Worrall, Thriller and Crime Writer
“I find the darkness in le Carré particularly interesting because it’s quite melancholic. It evokes a sadness about Britain and the establishment at that time. There’s a sense of the world closing in. He really captures that in the book.” Read more...
Andy Beckett, Journalist
“Le Carré has the ability to add drama and colour. For classic espionage in a little town in Germany, you can’t do better than le Carré.” Read more...
Robert Baer, Intelligence Agents & Analyst
“This is an example of the meticulously supreme thriller. John le Carré really is the master of the form, and any list of thrillers has to include that book. It’s a very emboldening book for thriller writers, because it teaches you not to underestimate the understanding of your reader. They can be pushed and pushed. It is an incredibly intricate plot and yet, if you write it well enough, as he does, readers will stay with you.” Read more...
Sam Bourne, Journalist
