Smiley goes out of area, away from Central Europe and to Hong Kong, then still in British administration. A British Intelligence operation against Communist China, built on the pre-communist English Christian missionary effort in China. Outstanding and tragic, as Jerry Westerby, in the shadow of the ending Vietnam war, pursues this matter and a crass English blonde adventuress who has become a key player. Westerby is not an innocent, causing the death of a bystander. Descriptively awesome, especially 1970s Hong Kong. The Chinese are portrayed as brutal, but less malign than the usual Russian enemy; perhaps portrayed with an element of enigmatic greatness as well as commercialism.