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1.A Most Wanted Man by: John le Carre October 07, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $28.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $16.80 You Save: $11.20 (40%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $9.99
John has written some wonderful books, but should throw in the towel. It's sad to see the author of so many great books putting out the books he has been doing lately. After his last book I vowed not to read any more of his. However, I was talked into trying this one.It might be a shade better than the last one, but nowhere up to his previous standards.

2.A Most Wanted Man by: John Le Carre September 23, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		Used Price: $41.72
John has written some wonderful books, but should throw in the towel. It's sad to see the author of so many great books putting out the books he has been doing lately. After his last book I vowed not to read any more of his. However, I was talked into trying this one.It might be a shade better than the last one, but nowhere up to his previous standards.

3.The Spy Who Came in From the Cold from: Walker & Company August 11, 2005
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $19.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $12.92 You Save: $6.08 (32%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $11.15
John Le Carre can put into a 223 page book what some authors today need 600 pages to tell. He is not just a master with the dialogue, but with the mood, setting and gives you a complete rundown of the politics in that small number of pages. There is no need for me to give you a rundown of the storyline; many have done that before me. What I'm here to say is that even after 45 years, this book is still relevant and although some might say it is dated, it gives us an accurate appraisal of the 1960's in Europe - something our current history books can't do. Loving a good spy novel, I began to read Le Carre, starting with "Our Game" because I bought it at a library book sale. It was just okay at best - very rambling and with no real focus, it seemed. What was I missing? So I read "Single and ... Read More

4.Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by: John le Carre October 01, 2002
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $15.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $4.99 You Save: $10.01 (67%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $4.49
I spent 35 years in the intelligence business. Unlike the hero of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I dealt with mostly technical issues. I had a couple of dealings with the British and I came away from both thinking that a Brit with his brain, a pencil, and pad of paper routinely made an American with all his technology look brutishly impoverished in comparison. Much the same as Einstein or Isaac Newton, similarly armed, makes your typical modern scientist awash in super computers and wonders of technology pale in comparison. I also thought to myself I better check my wallet and my brain to see what's missing after the Brit departs. This book is perhaps the most superb description of British intelligence ever written. It's hero, George Smiley, true to form of the British "Circus", a term used to mean the ... Read More

5.The Mission Song by: John Le Carre January 01, 2006
Average Rating: >>More Details		Used Price: $14.00
Mission Song works as a relatively light or thin Le Carre book, not even so much a spy story per se as something of a minor political thriller. The narrator and main character, Salvo, is a Congolese of mixed (father white priest, mother native Congo) heritage, and finds he fits into neither African nor British society well. He finds himself a professional interpreter of a variety of languages and dialects, working in London, occasionally for the government, and on the borders of high society through his social climber wife. He is not miserable, but he is not happy. A surprise gig comes up, interpreting for a conference between rival African warlords/power brokers, who may be putting together a plan that might just bring lasting peace and prosperity to just the corner of the Congo from which Salvo ... Read More

6.The Mission Song: A Novel by: John le Carre September 19, 2006
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $26.99 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $6.99 You Save: $20.00 (74%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $3.46
Mission Song works as a relatively light or thin Le Carre book, not even so much a spy story per se as something of a minor political thriller. The narrator and main character, Salvo, is a Congolese of mixed (father white priest, mother native Congo) heritage, and finds he fits into neither African nor British society well. He finds himself a professional interpreter of a variety of languages and dialects, working in London, occasionally for the government, and on the borders of high society through his social climber wife. He is not miserable, but he is not happy. A surprise gig comes up, interpreting for a conference between rival African warlords/power brokers, who may be putting together a plan that might just bring lasting peace and prosperity to just the corner of the Congo from which Salvo hails. He ... Read More

7.The Honourable Schoolboy by: John le Carre October 29, 2002
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $15.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $3.20
In the course of this book, Le Carre references Candide and Joseph Conrad. Neither reference is accidental. Jerry Westerby, the blowhard sportswriter from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, is in this book endowed with a soul, and like Candide, he wanders from city to city in the course of this book, and like Candide, who witnesses the British hang one of their own admirals "pour encourager les autre," Westerby is never quite at peace with the cynicism and wanton destruction that surround him. He is in some sense Alec Leamas resurrected as the figurative innocent. If Westerby is Candide, then the world that he inhabits is a Conradean abyss where the West takes what it wants, and, as the NVA, Khmer Rouge, and Pathet Lao close in on former allies, leaves behind everything else. It should come as no surprise that the crux ... Read More

8.Smiley's People by: John le Carre November 26, 2002
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $16.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $10.88 You Save: $5.12 (32%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $2.89
thiS book was given to me as a gift and was highly recommended i really hated it there is no surprise no action very predictable and the author style is annoying like when he says : " she's 31, or was she 21?" how the hell should now? you're the one telling the story i hoped that in the end there will be some action to compensate the 22 chapters of emptyness but unfortunatly even the end was disappointing i don't recommend this book

9.A Perfect Spy by: John le Carre December 31, 2002
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $16.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $10.88 You Save: $5.12 (32%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $0.66
I'm no literary critic, so I will leave the heavy stuff to others. But If you are thinking of buying this book, I would say, Don't. I love LeCarre, but this one is his attempt to do greatness, and it fails. I've read it twice, and have given it the respect he deserves. I found it to be self indulgent and way too long. Of course, there are some great passages and wonderful observations. And we do get a psychological profile of his father. And we have a great bit with an emigre, and their relationship. Fine. But all of this takes 700 pages to play out. Interesting, but not essential. Get "Constant Gardener"or "The Night Manager", both of which are brilliant, instead.

10.Call for the Dead by: John le Carre February 01, 2002
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $13.00 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $10.40 You Save: $2.60 (20%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $2.06
With all the hype about the Karla trilogy, which is much deserved, the early Smiley novels get overlooked. I don't think it's fair. Call for the Dead is an excellent read that I would recoomend as much as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

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