Word: karla
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...onetime head of the Circus-the British Secret Service. But détente is now the order of the day, and the Circus is anxious to bury both the victim and his story. Ordinarily, the ultimate company man might agree. But behind homicide Smiley detects the ruthless spirit of Karla, his longtime adversary in Moscow. Publicly accepting the injunction of superiors, Smiley decides to do a little freelance investigation. On the scent from London to Germany he encounters a brilliant cast of characters from previous enterprises: Connie, the sapphic Soviet expert whom the Circus has dubbed Mother Russia; Oliver Lacon...
From the airless corridors of London to the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Smiley battles Karla as masters play chess by mail, visualizing the opponent, pondering alternatives, waiting agonizing days for the next move. And herein lie the novel's aggravating weaknesses. Readers have been here long, long ago. Smiley, the cerebral sleuth, may be as corpulent as Nero Wolfe, but in this adventure he is suddenly Sherlock Holmes redivivus. His obsessive enemy is a new version of Dr. Moriarty. The audience is Watson, condemned to wonder what the detective is up to when he examines those cigarettes...
...with Karla, he thought; with my black Grail...
...tall?-there can be no more elegant and reassuring self-help book than Karla Kuskin's Herbert Hated Being Small (Houghton Mifflin; $6.95). Herbert gauges his mini-stature by standing next to his parents, always a mistake. Depressed, he sets out on his own. So does Philomel, who feels humongous next to her little family. But when boy and girl meet in the woods, they discover that they are the same size. Everything is relative, observes this cascade of wise rhymes. Einstein would have been pleased...
...Karla Werninghaus Philadelphia...