11. How did Smiley proceed to narrow the list of suspects?

[Jen]

11. How did Smiley proceed to narrow the list of suspects?

[Jen]

painstaking amount of research along with setting up subtle traps along the way. SMiley poured through files, noted discrepancies and then used information learned when questioning others.

[John]

Jen wrote: "painstaking amount of research along with setting up subtle traps along the way. SMiley poured through files, noted discrepancies and then used information learned when questioning others."

Yes, unlike the typical thriller espionage novel, the hero doesn't figure it out in a flash of brilliance while seducing the bad guy's girlfriend at the baccarat table. It is just slow, painstaking grunt work, sifting through files, looking for nuggets of information.

When I worked at NSA (ages ago, when we mostly focused on commies) I used to tell people that intel analysis was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, but you don't have a picture of what the puzzle is supposed to look like, you don't know how many pieces there are but you do know that you're missing a bunch of them, sometimes pieces "fit" in the wrong place, and you sometimes have a boss over your shoulder either holding a hammer determined to make a piece "fit" where they "know" it should go, or demanding that you take part of the puzzle apart because it "can't" look like that.

[Patrick]

I also get the sense that he used a chronological methodology in researching the events and the people that were involved in this case. I asked myself at some point: "Why didn't he try to find Prideaux and haul him over the coals?" I realized later on that he had needed to collect several crucial pieces of information to make the job of interrogating Prideaux as successful as it ended up being.