On the Coffee Table: John le Carré

Title: Call for the Dead
Author: John le Carré

via Amazon

Call for the Dead was John le Carré's first novel and the world's introduction to his best-known character, George Smiley.  Smiley is no James Bond.  He's late middle-aged, short, stout and cuckolded by his beautiful society wife.  As we join his story, his days of international espionage are long behind him and his lack of talent for agency politics has taken its toll on his career.  The higher ups still trot him out from time to time for some dirty work, though, and that's how he stumbles into a mystery story.

Smiley had just run what he considered a routine security check on Samuel Fennon when the man turned up dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  Smiley is initially baffled as Fennon had essentially come out clean.  Probing into the past - Fennon's, Fennon's wife's and also his own, Smiley discovers a story more complicated than he initially assumed.

My previous exposure to Smiley was only on screen: Alec Guinness in the BBC's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People and Gary Oldman in the feature film version of TTSS.  It's Guinness's face (without the Kenobi beard) I imagined throughout the book.  I like the character a great deal, though his development is a bit herky jerky, the background essentials laid out matter-of-factly in the first chapter.  Other details emerge more slowly as the story requires, the pattern I would have preferred from the beginning.

Overall, the story has a more earthy feel than Bond.  John le Carré draws from his own career in British intelligence for his work, bringing a strong sense of realism.  I thoroughly enjoyed the story despite figuring out the answer to the mystery before George did.  I am definitely up for more.