Three Complete Novels: Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Used Hardcover) - John le Carré

From the very beginning of his writing career, John le Carré proved himself to be a master of the espionage novel. His ability to depict the working world of the spy came, in part, from his years of foreign service and intelligence experience. His was not the fantasy world of the witty, dashing super-agent; it was the grimy, unglamorous, morally ambiguous world of information-gathering, aided by doubledealing and treachery.

In his first two novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962), le Carré introduces and establishes his legendary secret agent, George Smiley. It is Smiley’s people and milieu that, in book after bestselling book, provided the soil out of which the modern espionage novel grew and flourished. However, it was his third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963), that put le Carré on the literary map. Temporarily leaving George Smiley aside, le Carré created the disillusioned agent Alec Leamas, and placed him squarely in the middle of Cold War Berlin. Questions of honor, trust, truth, and the meaning of “enemy” and “friend,” all come into deadly play in this complex tale of convenient lies, twisted loyalties, and personal betrayal.

The three novels included in this volume have introductions by the author and forewords by some of the most eminent names in suspense fiction: P. D. James, Otto Penzler, and Joseph Kanon.

0422KB