Since there are 9(!) books now with the latest addition of The Legacy of Spies in 2017, I won't review them all in detail but there are a few tidbits I'll throw out there. Generally, the series follows the adventures of George Smiley, a member of MI6 during the cold war (though he retires almost every book and gets sucked back in). My favorite was probably The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, about a secret operation into East Berlin where the reader discovers more layers to the plot as the agent does. I think it is a well done story about the compromises that big government agencies feel that they have to make under pressure.
The one that I differed from the most from the general opinion in a negative way was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which is definitely the most popular. I don't know what's wrong with me but I could never really get into it. 80% of the book is one of the following: people remembering things, people talking to other people about things they remember, or people talking to other people about remembered conversations with still other people. I get that it is supposed to be a more reflective spy novel than James Bond or a traditional thriller but... it just never hooked me. In the introduction, le Carre says that he struggled a long time to make it a linear narrative but eventually gave up, choosing the current form instead. I think he might have been better off continuing to struggle.
The one that differed the most from the general opinion in a positive way was The Looking Glass War. It was the immediate follow up to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (though there are very few repeated characters). It is about a rival agency to Smiley's trying to gather information without any help from other agencies (the FBI and the CIA in The Looming Tower come to mind). The author says that he wrote it as a more realistic view into secret agencies after the previous book had filled everyone with more "romantic" notions.
I made a little table to track some of the similarities between the books:
| Book | Is George retired at the beginning? | Is George a main viewpoint character? | Subseries |
| Call for the Dead | No | Yes | The Mundt Trilogy |
| A Murder of Quality | Yes |
Yes
|
None, it is also skippable for both plot and characters |
| The Spy Who Came in from the Cold | No |
No
| The Mundt Trilogy |
| The Looking Glass War | No |
No
|
None |
| Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy | Yes |
Yes
|
The Karla Trilogy |
| The Honorable Schoolboy | No |
No
|
The Karla Trilogy |
| Smiley's People | Yes |
Yes
|
The Karla Trilogy |
| The Secret Pilgrim | Yes |
No
|
None |
| A Legacy of Spies | Yes |
No
| The Mundt Trilogy |
As you can see, in the majority of the books, Smiley is retired from the service at the start of the story and also is not a main view point character. I have also broken with convention and declared that the the three books that most focus on the villain of Hans Dieter-Mundt are also their own trilogy. He probably has more page time in that trilogy than Karla does in his own trilogy.
If you are looking to get started, I would recommend at least the first two books in the Mundt trilogy as a jumping on point (the third one does spoil the big twist in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy so if you really love the work maybe stop and read that one before continuing on).
Programming note: As you can probably tell, I have moved away from reviewing every book I read here and are instead using it as a storage place for thoughts about literature that I can't find elsewhere and so am forced to produce. Happy reading!
