"He learnt what it was never to sleep, never to relax, to feel at any time of day or night the restless beating of his own heart, to know the extremes of solitude and self-pity, the sudden unreasoning desire for a woman, for drink, for exercise, for any drug to take away the tension of his life."While this isn’t my first John le Carré novel (The Russia House holds that distinction), it is in fact my first George Smiley book. Call for the Dead is also the first in the series of the George Smiley

Call for the Dead = The Deadly Affair, John le Carré Call for the Dead is John le Carrés' first novel, published in 1961. It introduces George Smiley, the most famous of le Carrés' recurring characters, in a story about East German spies inside Great Britain. It also introduces a fictional version of British Intelligence, called "The Circus" because of its location in Cambridge Circus, that is apparently based on MI6 and that recurs throughout le Carrés' spy novels. Call for the Dead was filmed

This first George Smiley novel—also the first for John le Carre—is not a spy novel really, but more like a murder mystery with spies in it.You see, Smiley is ordered to conduct a routine security check on Samuel Fennan, and, since he sees no serious concerns in Fennan's past—just a little harmless wartime flirtation with communism—he reassures Fennan and they part in friendly fashion. But soon Fennan is pronounced a suicide, and Fennan's wife Elsa claims that, after his interview with Smiley, he...

I am a huge fan of James Bond, movies and books, but had never entered the world of George Smiley written by John Le Carre. When a few friends in the group reading for pleasure here on goodreads decided to read the Smiley books in order, I decided to join them. I enjoy reading mysteries or thrillers in between denser reads as a palette cleanser, and, having just read two Pulitzer winners back to back, a short spy novel seemed like just what I needed to clear my head. What ensued is Le Carre’s in...

“Call For the Dead” is the first of 8 books in John Le Carre’s series featuring George Smiley. Published in 1961, it is smart, the writing brisk and contained, and the story engaging. Espionage and counter-espionage – who is a spy? – who is being set up? This is a classic, and written by an author who knew the ins and outs of national Intelligence and Security first-hand. This book is a very impressive and intelligent initial offering from an author whose stories have been revered for years, and...

This book is not only John le Carre's first novel, it is also the novel which introduces George Smiley, the British Secret Service Agent who would become famous as le Carre continued to produce more and more books in this series. We learn about his recruitment, his failed marriage, his schooling and his early work in Germany. This first novel isn't about espionage; it's a murder mystery and a darn good one at that. I loved meeting George Smiley at the very beginning of his career. It's a little

There has been a lot of blah-di-blah about who the literary successor for Jane Austin should be. Well, it's too late; it's John Le Carre. Just because he happens to write Cold-War thrillers doesn't mean that every word isn't infused with the same sense of humor, the same love of the ordinary, the same lovely tendency to linger with friends, whether they be seemingly-mundane characters or sentences themselves."When Lady Ann Sercomb married George Smiley towards the end of the war she described hi...

“It’s an odd illness you suffer from, Mr. Smiley,’ she continued, taking a cigarette from the box; ‘and I have seen many victims of it. The mind becomes separated from the body; it thinks without reality, rules a paper kingdom and devises without emotion the ruin of its paper victims. But sometimes the division between your world and ours is incomplete; the files grow heads and arms and legs, and that’s a terrible moment, isn’t it? The names have families as well as records, and human motives to...

This is the first George Smiley novel and introduces us to the characters which, as a reader, you will come to love. It is fair to say that Le Carre's spy novels are more Harry Palmer than 007; he aims for realism and not fantasy, which I find much more intriguing. Smiley is not attractive, or dashing. His ex wife, the beautiful Lady Ann Seacomb, caused surprise and gossip when they married - she nicknamed him 'Toad' and, unlike a Bond character, who always gets the girl, she leaves him for a Cu...

This thing read like a Agatha Christie novel minus the twists and turns. It was a pretty straightforward and short "who done it?" murder mystery. Nothing outstanding, but it made for a decent introduction to the George Smiley character.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011...Description: John le Carré classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him -- and his hero, British Secret Service Agent George Smiley, who is introduced in this, his first novel -- unprecedented worldwide acclaim.George Smiley had liked Samuel Fennan, and now Fennan was dead from an apparent suicide. But why? Fennan, a Foreign Office man, had be...

3.5 ☆After reading Agent Running in the Field, which was my first book by John le Carré, I decided to try his George Smiley series from the beginning. Call for the Dead was published in 1961, and I was transported back in time to London, circa late 1950s, complete with shillings, typewriters, and telephone exchanges. It was still a time of political and social adjustment as post-WWII Europe settled into Cold War tensions. Call for the Dead has the feel of some of Alfred Hitchcock's early espiona...

Introducing Smiley to the world, this is more of a detective story than a spy story, except that the characters are spies. There are two diversions from what I remember about le Carre's other novels, at the beginning and the end, amounting in each case to explanations of things (telling) that could have been much more effective if included in the narrative (showing). But who am I to criticize le Carre? In between, the story was excellent.

Some of the most elegant spy genre books I've ever read!

While it doesn’t reach the astounding depths of le Carré’s masterpiece The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, this novel, his first, nonetheless displays his gifts for giving us a subtle, mesmerizing, disturbing glimpse into the murky, cold-blooded world of espionage. And it introduces to the world the peculiar, brilliant, bespectacled spy George Smiley. I look forward to continuing to read his exploits, and I’m grateful that there are many more of them that le Carré wrote.

Well I wanted to read 'some le Carre' so I went to the beginning, the first George Smiley book. Glad I did. I've been looking for a replacement for good old Reggie Wexford, the police inspector from Ruth Rendell's wonderful series, and here he is, sort of. Both George and Reggie are kind of old, grumpy, overweight men - and geniuses at their profession. Reggie does police investigations; George does spies. They both go after the bad guys and they always get'em.In this book Smiley interviews a fa...

After having read some of Le Carre's more recent book, I decided to go back to the beginning and this is the first book that he wrote, and in which he introduced us to his leading character George Smiley. A nice, tight book that is well written and holds the attention it does a very good job of getting the reader into the initial Cold War espionage genre that Le Carre is a master of.Love the writing style and the characters - oh so very British! - and the way he leads us through the maze of the

"take your hands off me! Do you think I'm yours because I don't belong to them? Go away! Go away and kill Freitag and Dieter, keep the game alive, Mr Smiley. But don't think I'm on your side, d'you hear? Because I'm the wandering Jewess, the no-man's land, the battlefield for your toy soldiers. You can kick me and trample on me, see, but never, never touch me, never tell me you're sorry, d'you hear? Now get out! Go away and kill" The first novel by John le Carré is also the 1st novel with the ic...

This is Le Carré's first Smiley book and it is a pleasure to read. We find ourselves drawn to this small but brilliant older man, George Smiley, and sympathize with his struggles with bureaucracy in his branch of the UK Secret Service. His friend from Scotland Yard, Mendel, is a great character as well. The intrigue around East German spies is dated, but still grabs the reader's attention. As this is the first one, I know that the writing will improve as the author hits his groove in the famous

George Smiley is arguably one of the best known fictional British spies. He made his first appearance in Call for the Dead in 1961. The book also launched John le Carré’s career as a novelist. So if you’re new to le Carré and/or George Smiley, this is definitely the place to start.In many ways, Call for the Dead is a book of its time. It opens with a chapter setting out ‘A Brief History of George Smiley’, something a modern novelist might find difficult to get away with. But the ‘backstory’ of S...