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"After a lifetime of living by his wits and his considerable memory, he had given himself full time to the profession of forgetting."

Over the past couple of months, George Smiley has earned the distinction of my favorite spy. Not because he is handsome, sexy, charismatic or daring but rather because he is all too human. He’s the real deal, and no one could write a genuine character like him as well as the master, John le Carré.

"Small, podgy, and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London’s meek who do not inherit the earth. His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress costly, ill-fitting, and extremely wet."

How on earth does a guy like this get saddled with the onerous task of uncovering a Russian-planted mole at the highest level of the British Secret Service? Because he is brilliant and honorable, that’s how! There are many layers to George Smiley, and I am thoroughly enjoying the unpeeling of each one as I delve more and more into these novels. Smiley teams up with Peter Guillam, a younger agent who is further removed from the upper echelon of the service, partly due to a botched operation and partly as a result of his prior association with Smiley. The guys at the top have been very deliberately remaking the organization to their own advantage. Anyone with a loyalty to the former chief, or those that hovered too close to the truth, have been quietly relocated to lesser positions or simply dismissed. The organization is being carefully refashioned to the mole’s purpose. I was further pleased to become further acquainted with the somewhat eccentric Mendel, a former police inspector whom was introduced to us in le Carré’s novel Call for the Dead.

Naturally, a huge theme in this novel is that of betrayal. George Smiley grapples with this not only in his professional life but also his private life. His sincere interior conflict further illuminates the real character of the man. I can’t help but feel sympathy for Smiley, and admire his courage to examine his own principles.

"It worried him that he felt so bankrupt; that whatever intellectual or philosophical precepts he clung to broke down entirely now that he was faced with the human situation."

One thing I have come to expect from le Carré is that I need to be a bit more savvy with my spy lingo. If there were a little glossary of the terms in the back of the book, I would be off and running with the story straight from the get-go. In reality, it takes me a little bit to settle in and really understand what is happening. It’s okay though, I get there eventually, and any earlier confusion is worth the payoff! I’m not very successful with my own personal psychological analysis of the characters, but I consider myself in good hands with the author who was once a secret service agent himself. I was once again fully invested with each character, and the plot took me down a twisty, furtive and thrilling path that I wouldn’t mind riding once more!

This book is the first in the Karla trilogy � Karla being the working-name counterpart to Smiley in the Russian Intelligence agency. If all goes as planned, I will be reading the second one next month. If you have any interest in reading an authentic espionage thriller, then I highly recommend this or any of le Carré’s books. They really do deliver. I can’t forget to mention the movie adaptation � expertly cast with Gary Oldman as Smiley and highly entertaining!

"Like an actor, he had a sense of approaching anti-climax before the curtain went up, a sense of great things dwindling to a small, mean end; as death itself seemed small and mean to him after the struggles of his life."