Smiley's People (George Smiley, #7)

Smiley's People is one of John le Carre's classic Cold War novels and George Smiley one of his most acclaimed characters. Into a shadowy, violent and intricate world steeped in moral ambivalence steps George Smiley, sometime acting Chief of the Circus, as the Secret Service is known. His brief is to bury crime, not solve it, as he fights his own private battle from London to Paris and to Hamburg for his last duel with his Russian opposite number, codnamed Karla. About The Author: David John Moore Cornwell writes bestselling espionage thrillers under the pseudonym John le Carre. The pseudonym was necessary when he began writing, in the early 1960s, because at that time le Carre held a diplomatic position with the British Foreign Office and was not allowed to publish under his own name. Originally inspired to write intrigue because of a 1950s scandal that revealed several highly-placed members of the British Foreign Office and Secret Service to be Soviet agents, or "moles," the plots of most of le Carre's books revolve around Cold War espionage. His own position with the Foreign Office, as well as his earlier service with the British Army Intelligence Corps, gave him an intimate knowledge of Britain's espionage bureaucracy and of Cold War politics. When his third book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became a worldwide bestseller in 1964, le Carre left the foreign service to write full time. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which was also adapted to film, featured spymaster George Smiley, who was introduced in le Carre's first book, Call for the Dead (published in the U.S. as The Deadly Affair) and also appears in A Murder of Quality; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People. Le Carre has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (1986), and the Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association (1988). In addition to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,