Agent in eigener Sache. Sonderausgabe. Smiley's Leute.

by John le Carré

book data

1,163 ratings, 4.05 average rating, 66 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		34%
4		41%
3		20%
2		3%
1		0%

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published

February 1st 1998 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch (first published 1979)

details

Hardcover, 447 pages

isbn

3462027050 (isbn13: 9783462027051)

description

John le Carré's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and know…more

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Jun 22, 2009

Logan rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

bookshelves: 1001-list, fiction, mystery-thriller

Read in July, 2009

recommended to Logan by: Ted Graf

Note for completists: This is the third of the Smiley books, preceded by first Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and then by The Honourable Schoolboy. While it is possible to read these books out of order and still enjoy them, the later books are informed by the events that come before and definitely spoil salient plot points of those novels.

Life has not been overly kind to George Smiley. Devoted husband to a faithless wife, dedicated servant to a government that does not admit he exis...more Note for completists: This is the third of the Smiley books, preceded by first Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and then by The Honourable Schoolboy. While it is possible to read these books out of order and still enjoy them, the later books are informed by the events that come before and definitely spoil salient plot points of those novels.

Life has not been overly kind to George Smiley. Devoted husband to a faithless wife, dedicated servant to a government that does not admit he exists, archnemesis to his Soviet doppelganger, betrayed by his closest friend- Smiley has been through much in his years of service. Smiley's People finds the former spymaster once more cast out of the Circus of British intelligence, yet another sacrifice to the twisting winds of political favoritism. Prematurely aged and tired from a life lived in the shadows, Smiley doesn't quite know how to go about existing without subterfuge.

Yet when his old acquaintance Lacon shows up requesting Smiley's help investigating the murder of a friend and former asset, Smiley laboriously pulls himself from his over-stuffed easy chair, smoothes rumpled clothes over his mammoth stomach, puts on his horse blanket of a jacket, and tromps dutifully back into the world of intrigue that is his life. At stake is the opportunity to finally take down Karla, the Soviet spymaster who has bedevilled Smiley for decades in the great and secret chess game they have played against one another. Working unofficially, completely off the books and deniable, Smiley must piece together Karla's plan before more of his friends end up dead on a rainy night.

Fortunately, Smiley has built up all the resources he would need over a lifetime of intelligence work. In the spy game, all the fancy gadgets and gizmos in the world will never compare to a solid piece of human intel, and Smiley knows just who to ask to get the information he requires. Visiting retired Circus personnel, from the senile research assistant who helped compile nearly all of the known data on Karla to the disgraced lamplighter Toby Esterhase, who can still muster more than a few surveillance teams if there's the chance for personal glory and a return to the game, Smiley pieces together the bits of story he needs in order to weave a trap of his own and conclusively win in the battle of wills that he and Karla have fought for nearly their whole lives.

This is what le Carre excels at: the slow and methodical piecing together of events, some decades old, into a coherent conspiracy that has a very real effect on the present. Field work doesn't play too large of a part in Smiley's methodology. He already has most of the puzzle pieces in his hands, it just takes a careful review for Smiley to uncover the importance of each nugget of knowledge. Some readers deride this as moving too slowly, but to them I recommend the works of Robert Ludlum. Smiley is British, and if Monty Python taught us anything it's that the Brits love their dry subtlety. The reader is left even more in the dark than Smiley himself and half the fun of the book is trying to trace those connections between events and characters and (possibly) beat Smiley to his final showdown with Karla.

A fantastic end to this trilogy, Smiley stands out as one of my favorite spies ever (above Valerie Plame but below the Wen Ho Lee). Le Carre proves once again why he is the grandmaster of this genre with this carefully crafted, delicately paced thriller that delivers the perfect conclusion to a rivalry that is far more interesting than any battle between Bond and SPECTRE ever was.(less)

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Feb 04, 2009

Rob rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in February, 2009

More excellent work from Mr. le Carre. A thoughtful, fascinating page-turner about spies handcuffed by bureaucracy, specifically le Carre's prime spy, George Smiley, who in retirement is given the opportunity to take down his long-time nemesis, Karla (and if you haven't read the books, Karla is not a woman but a code name whose explanation I haven't read.)

I picked this up partly because I wanted something with a London setting because I'm writing a story set in London and I've never ...more More excellent work from Mr. le Carre. A thoughtful, fascinating page-turner about spies handcuffed by bureaucracy, specifically le Carre's prime spy, George Smiley, who in retirement is given the opportunity to take down his long-time nemesis, Karla (and if you haven't read the books, Karla is not a woman but a code name whose explanation I haven't read.)

I picked this up partly because I wanted something with a London setting because I'm writing a story set in London and I've never been there. Absolutely nothing in this novel helped me in that regard, as almost all the London scenes are indoors, but the way le Carre uses setting to enhance mood is a good lesson/reminder to any writer. I hate reading long-winded descriptions and le Carre, as a storyteller, is deft at dropping descriptive phrases into the midst of an action scene to further tighten my chest as I read of another good person's suffering.

And the people who suffer in this novel - le Carre makes it clear that they are good by their actions, and the bad guys are definitely evil but not without explanation (explanation that causes our hero to wonder if he would have reacted any better - to wonder whether he is any better than his horrible rival).

I am no doubt missing some of the character development that has taken place over the series of Smiley novels, as thus far I have read but two, yet there is character development within this novel that surprised me and, of course, furthered the story. Presumably this is not surprising to regular readers of le Carre, but there are scenes of such brilliance (Smiley's interview with his former co-worker Connie extends across about 20 pages of what is primarily narrative as told in dialogue, yet the story told is so riveting that I felt like only a moment had passed and I had somehow absorbed vast amounts of information, whereas an important scene with Smiley's ex-wife Ann takes only three pages but those pages are crucial to understanding Smiley, and not just in regard to his feelings toward Ann.)

The other le Carre novel I've read, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, was excellent. This one, which I believe is two novels later in the series, is better. Maybe I'll change my mind about that when I reread them, but first I have quite a few more le Carre novels to read for the first time.(less)

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3 comments

Dec 02, 2008

Antof9 rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

bookshelves: 2008-read

Read in January, 2008

This was my first Le Carré, and I enjoyed it. Having heard his name for at least my entire adult life, I always thought I should have read one of his books. Well now I finally have! I will say this, though -- it's not the kind of book to carry in your handbag and read for 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there. It's really a 2-hours-at-a-time book, and I feel I didn't quite do it justice by reading it in smaller chunks than that. It's a spy novel, and there's quite a bit of intrigue, not to ...more This was my first Le Carré, and I enjoyed it. Having heard his name for at least my entire adult life, I always thought I should have read one of his books. Well now I finally have! I will say this, though -- it's not the kind of book to carry in your handbag and read for 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there. It's really a 2-hours-at-a-time book, and I feel I didn't quite do it justice by reading it in smaller chunks than that. It's a spy novel, and there's quite a bit of intrigue, not to mention lots and lots of names to remember. Those kind of books need to be read in long sittings.

His writing is brilliant. I hadn't even passed the first page when I marked a spot I loved. It's the kind of description I wish I'd written, it's so good:

...a stocky woman of about fifty, carrying a shopping bag, emerged from the darkness of an old warehouse and set off, full of her usual energy and purpose, along the pavement to the bus-stop. ... The heat, fouled by exhaust fumes and unwashed by the slightest breeze, rose at her like the heat from a lift-shaft, but her Slavic features registered no complaint.  She was neither dressed nor built for exertion on a hot day, being in stature very short indeed, and fat, so that she had to roll a little in order to get along.  Her black dress, of ecclesiastical severity, possessed neither a waist nor any other relief except for the a dash of white lace at the neck and a large metal cross, well fingered but of no intrinsic value, at the bosom.

I also liked the dialogue in this. For example, Connie says, "So if that's what you're after, you can tell Saul Enderby to shove it up his smoke and pipe it." LOL!

And then, because I always like book-related connections, I was tickled when one of the characters mentioned reading Turgenev's Spring Torrents (called Torrents of Spring in the book). It's always fun for me to run across something like that!(less)

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Sep 21, 2007

Walter rated it:

(review of isbn 0330262726)

Read in January, 1989

I truly love this book. I read it years ago (I can't really remember when, but it was before the USSR collapsed). I listened to it on tape about a year or two back and loved it again.

Why? Smiley is a has-been, past his prime, a bit of an embarassment. His crusty doggedness made him seemingly obsolete. And it's his crusty doggedness that brings him back. It's the redemption of an old codger who refused to compromise.

Why? The book is populated by a bunch of odball Ea...more

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Feb 15, 2008

Gerald rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in September, 2007

The espionage establishment as mundane, humorless British corporate bureaucracy. Endless, boring meetings, unreadable secret-stamped files locked in nameless reading rooms, and middle-management infighting.

Chilling because it feels so real, so closely observed.

Third in the trilogy with Tinker, Tailor and The Honourable Schoolboy. The latter is an interlude. You could skip from one to three, then come back to it. If you do, you'll appreciate it more.

The BBC TV ...more

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Apr 05, 2009

Jen rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

bookshelves: fiction, historical-fiction, my-favorites, truthiness

recommends it for: Soviet history fans, mystery-lovers, Smiley lovers

The first thing I have to say is IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE FIRST TWO BOOKS IN THE TRILOGY, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT READING THIS BOOK!
Okay, sorry 'bout the all caps, but you cannot possibly read this book in isolation and enjoy it in the way that it was meant to be savored and enjoyed. This is the ultimate book in a trilogy, and all the pieces come together, characters deepen, brief glimpses of characters and places make sense, and the hard work that you've done to get to this point because o...more

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Oct 06, 2008

Snickerpants rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Sweet Merciful Crap this book is confusing. And I LOVE it.

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Jan 25, 2009

Gary rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in January, 2009

Had I read (or listened to) this during the height of the Cold War, I probably would have given it a 5 star. However, the passage of time makes the Soviet threat seem distant and not nearly as relevant. Nevertheless, this is a masterful book, and it kept me engrossed until the very end, and I would sometimes find myself parked in my driveway after a long commute, listening longer. I particularly liked the description and use of spy-craft completely devoid of most modern technology.

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Jun 18, 2009

David Barrie rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in January, 2004

Don't be fooled: although Le Carré's books are ostensibly about espionage, they are actually an extended meditation on what it is to be English once the empire has crumbled and Albion is no more than a grey and damp island. The Karla trilogy (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, followed by An Honorable Schoolboy, and then this one) provide not just the benchmark for what a spy novel should be, but a primer for Le Carré's extended meditation on what deception does to the soul.

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Feb 02, 2009

Paul Dinger rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in January, 1981

The last in the Karla trilogy, Smiley finally finds Karla's weakness and his final triumph doesn't really seem all that wonderful. LeCarre wrote about spys as though they were the worst human beings on Earth, this time he writes about those warriors who try to carry on even though the struggle has been lost but still find some victory. Except for Smiley who can only look back on the waste of his life and see one single pyrrhic victory. A great ending for the series.

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Feb 26, 2009

Neil rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in February, 2009

I had read all of Ian Fleming's 007 books many years before, but I was slow in picking up on John le Carre's Smiley series. To my pleasant surprise, I quickly found that Smiley was a down-to-earth, guy-next-door, humble kind of sleuth--one many of us can relate to. No fancy cars, no perfect facial features, no fancy gimmicks, just good old gumshoe cleverness. This was refreshinly different. I look forward to reading the others in the series.

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Jul 17, 2007

Meghan rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

bookshelves: brit-lit, british, own

Read in July, 2007

Reason 138 why never to read a book from a series out of order. I read this book without realizing this is the 3rd and final installment of his Karla triology. Had I known this I would never have picked it up. It referenced a lot of backstories that I would have known had I read the other ones. Plus, it totally ruined one story for me as it gave away the "traitor".

I enjoyed the 3/4 of the story. As always, La Carre knows how to string words into sentences to keep you in sus...more

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Aug 07, 2007

Andrewh rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

recommends it for: Le Carreists, spy genre fans

This is the last of the Karla trilogy and far better than the boring Honourable Schoolboy, but inferior to the excellent Tinker Tailor. It concerns Smiley's last hurrah as a spy, dragged out of retirement during the Detente era (which spelled death for the Circus) to finally track down Karla, his opposite number. The book is the story of Smiley's dogged pursuit of his quarry, and his own terminal redundancy in turn, and fortunately lacks the usual tedious Le Carré trope of a beautiful idealisti...more

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Apr 15, 2009

Daryl rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

A brilliant finale to a trilogy that is a true classic and, for me, defines the culture of espionage. By the way, Tinker, Tailor and Smiley's People are available on DVD, with Alec Guiness in a fascinating re-creation of the page-bound George Smiley. (I have read and re-read Tinker, Tailor and I have never grown tired of it.

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Jan 19, 2009

Buffy Snowe rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in December, 2008

My best friend Phil loves Carre and gave me this book...and I have to say I was hooked! It snowed over 10 inches the day I read this book in December '08 and I barely noticed the snow I was so engrossed in this Cold War Spy Novel. And he just gave me 3 more Carre novels I am much looking forward to read!

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May 06, 2009

Margaret rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in June, 2009

I am ashamed to admit I have only read one LeCarre book, The Perfect Spy. It was hard going for me, since I am easily frustrated by obscure, cryptic stories. (Me and my butterfly mind.) Strangely enough, I don't mind obscure and cryptic writing styles, like Paul Bowles, or William Burroughs, or Borges, or James Joyce, but clear writing and ambiguous plots make me crazy. So when my husband starting watching this series on DVD, (and only mocked me a little for asking so many questions) I decided t...more

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May 25, 2009

Robert rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

Read in January, 1983

Le Carre never fails to satisfy -- on many levels. An additional bonus is that he was once in the British Secret Service, and can thereby be more realistic than other spy novelists who simply make imaginative fantasy.

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Feb 16, 2008

Rich rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

What a richly complex and beautiful book this is.
I am a kind of crazy reader -- there are maybe 18 books that I adore so richly that I wait for them to drift just enough out of memory until I can pick them up again and be freshly ignited by their power. This is definitely one of them.
I know of no one else more than LeCarre capable of crafting such a rich palette of characters -- countless individuals brought into this powerful, tangled tale -- and not one of them close to cardboard,...more

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Feb 17, 2010

Jessica rated it:

(review of isbn 0743455800)

bookshelves: cold-war, spy

Read in March, 2010

A spy novel, but not a thriller - instead, it unfolds with measured care and deliberation as the threads gradually draw closer to each other. Smiley is a deeply satisfying character - le Carre maintains the requisite air of mystery for a spy while still giving substantive insight into Smiley's personality. Overall, superlatively done.

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Jan 13, 2009

Asa rated it:

(review of isbn 0330262726)

bookshelves: 1001-books

Read in October, 2008

I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would, especially since I haven't read any other books by le Carré. It managed to hook me from the start, with all these minor characters that didn't show up later but still gave you a good picture of what was going on. The way le Carré described the intelligence business made it seem real and the characters three-dimensional, with their own foibles and backgrounds. I also liked how the plot unfolded slowly, with everything leading up to the final ...more

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