Book Review: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

So, there’s a rumour going around that there’s a mole in the Circus, but who is it? Only one way to find out…send in Smiley.
Smiley wasn’t ready for retirement anyway, but this is a tricky task. He’s spying on the spies. “Commander”, the old head of Circus is dead, and now the suspect could be anyone, from the new head of Circus, Alleline, to any one of his deputies.
This, my friends, is not an easy novel to follow. If you’re a little novice to spy literature like myself, perhaps this is a heavy start. I wanted to challenge myself to read spy novels, I’ve always groaned at the concept of James Bond etc, but recently my curiosity has grown and this is where I started. If you are new to this kind of literature I wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point; it’s heavy and detailed and I had to reread pages numerous times and flip back now and then (my poor spy novice brain got confused from time to time). However, confusion did not detract from the fact that this was yet again a brilliant read. Normally if I find a novel hard to get through I tend to put it aside for a while (either weeks or years), but this I couldn’t bring myself to part with. Now that for, for a spy book (a genre to which I have chosen to avoid in the past) is saying something. Carre is one of the most fantastic British writers I have encountered, everything about the novel was charming, in fact I read the entire novel with a very swarve British chap’s voice in my head (which came naturally, and as a woman who is easy to swoon, I can’t say I complained…). Overall a fantastic read, and I can now say…bring on the James Bond series! ★★★★★