Call for the Dead

Murder of Quality John le Carr's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international esionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him -- and his hero, British secret Service Agent George Smiley -- unprecedented worldwide acclaim. George Smiley was simply doing a favor for Miss Ailsa Brimley, and old friend and editor of a small newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried reader: 'I'm not mad. And I know my husbad is trying to kill me.' But the letter had arrived too late: it's scribe, the wife of an assistant master at the distinguished Carne School, was already dead. So George Smiley went to Carne to listen, ask questions, and think. And to uncover, layer by layer, the complex network of skeletons and hatreds that comprised that little English institution. Call for the Dead It was less an interview than an amiable conversation over a walk in the park. George Smiley had been sent to speak to a high-ranking civil servant after an anonymous tip-off that he was a security risk. It was a formality -- and the two men liked each other. Why then, did it apparently drive the poor man to despair? And why was he found dead the next day, the victim of an unnecessary suicide? Call for the Dead launched John le Carr's unparalleled career as a novelist, and introduces one of fiction's most famous spies -- George Smiley, who is both brilliant and unremarkable.