Word: toed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This has been a vintage year for spies, real and imagined. In that second realm of entertainment, terrorists stalked the bestseller list, and every month new operatives peered from the dust jackets of international thrillers. Most of the books, of course, were time killers, for those who like it dead...
There in a colorless London house lives George Smiley, Master Spy (ret.). Resolutely out of style, fat as the Michelin tire man, he has long been cuckolded by his wife and betrayed by close associates. It is tune the old cold warrior hung up his spites. Not Smiley. Once more...
In the great tradition, Smiley's People begins with minor violence. An obsolete agent has been shot. His terminal message is broadcast to Smiley, onetime head of the Circus-the British Secret Service. But détente is now the order of the day, and the Circus is anxious...
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...
In any other spy novel these might be fatal lapses. But Le Carre is not any other spy novelist. Throughout, he is aware not only of the moral squalor that can attend espionage - but also of Auden's ironic observation: "We are left alone with our day, and the...