Call for the Dead

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Brought to you by Penguin.

THE FIRST GEORGE SMILEY NOVEL

After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the death, he begins his own investigation, meeting Fennan's widow to find out what led him to such desperation. On the very day Smiley is ordered off the enquiry he receives an urgent letter from the dead man. Do the East Germans - and their agents - know more about this man's death than the Circus previously imagined?

Le Carré's first book, Call for the Dead, introduced the tenacious and retiring spy George Smiley in a gripping tale of espionage and deceit.

'Intelligent, thrilling, surprising . . . makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard' Sunday Telegraph

'Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense' Observer

'The greatest spy novelist of all time' Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph

©le Carré Productions 1961 (P)Penguin Audio 2024

Critics Review

Intelligent, thrilling, surprising ... makes most cloak-and-dagger stuff taste of cardboard.
Sunday Telegraph
Brilliant. Realistic. Constant suspense.
Observer
The greatest spy novelist of all time ... astounding works of the imagination.
Daily Telegraph
Brilliant, popular, intelligent, thrilling, suspenseful, angry, original, masterful writing. Can't be topped.
Armando Iannucci
An extraordinary writer who brought literary lustre and lived insight to the spy yarn.
Ian Rankin
One of those writers who will be read a century from now.
Robert Harris
His Smiley novels are key to understanding the mid-20th century.
Margaret Atwood
What Joseph Conrad started, John le Carré enshrined and made modern. That is the real achievement of his great novels and why they will endure ... we should see him as our contemporary Dickens.
New Statesman

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