jazzy_dave | Book 65 - John Le Carre "Call For The Dead"

John Le Carre "Call For The Dead" (Penguin Modern Classics)

I have just finished "Call for the Dead". It is an excellent story. It is the first book written by David Cornwell under the name of John Le Carré. He would have been an intelligence officer himself at the time of writing this novel.

The book introduces Mr. Smiley whom some of you will know is the main character in some of Le Carré's later novels, such as "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People". Smiley is portrayed superbly by Alec Guinness in the BBC's dramatizations of "Tinker, Tailor..." and "Smiley's People".

Published in 1961, Smiley is already world weary, and tarnished, bowed down by the pressures of the world of spies and counter-espionage manoeuvres, at a time before Kim Philby's public unmasking or the raising of the Berlin Wall.

Many of the traits that would become so evident in the later works, and in particular the three novels forming the 'Quest for Karla' trilogy (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'', 'The Honourable Schoolboy' and 'Smiley's People'), are already visible: the close attention to detail, the air of unrelenting melancholia and the sense that he is largely at the mercy of the whim of others (including his errant wife Ann). Also present is the irremediable shabbiness of the spy's art. Hitherto, perhaps with the exception of Graham Greene's books, spy novels (with Ian Fleming's Bond stories leading the pack) had fizzed with excitement, played out in glamorous locations, with the protagonists weighed down ultra hi-tech gadgets. This book changed the nature of the spy novel, and henceforth serious authors of spy fiction would site their stories in le Carré's world.

The novel opens with Smiley being summoned to see 'The Advisor',(the head of the Counter Intelligence Service) where he learns that Samuel Fennan, a senior civil servant at the Foreign and Commonwealth office, has killed himself as a consequence of allegations of treachery levelled against him. Devastating enough in itself, this drastic outcome looms even more significantly because Smiley had interviewed Fennan the previous day about those allegations, and had informally advised him that he was in the clear and that no further action would be taken. Smiley is dispatched down to Fennan's home in Surrey to interview his widow, and to try, as subtly as possible, to establish exactly what had happened.

Le Carré's books are always full of spy-craft and clever observations of human beings, their deceptions and their weaknesses. "Call for the Dead" is no exception.