Called by Time magazine, "the premier spy novelist of his time and perhaps of all time," John LeCarré has elevated the spy novel to its highest point. Call for the Dead is his first novel and the one in which we meet the world's most famous undercover operative, George Smiley. Yet here is LeCarré at his best, as he employs techniques of espionage as only he has been able to make them real for us-together with sustained action and a grandly-conceived and intricately-drawn plot.
The cast of characters includes a bright, twisted former hero of the German underground, a once-beautiful woman with a terrifying secret, a high-ranking pompous fool of a bureaucrat, and a suspect British civil servant. The protagonist, George Smiley, is bitter, weary-he has seen too much and done too much-yet he cannot refuse one last desperate call for his services.
