This is the book that started it all - Smiley, Mundt, and essentially established the standard for spy stories. Yet, it's a book that I hadn't read until I had a very healthy number of le Carré novels under my belt.
While perhaps not as intricate as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or as iconic as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, this novel has the great privilege of introducing the readers to George Smiley, and with this they get to know a spy who doesn't look like James Bond, doesn't talk like James Bond, and doesn't use the same kind of gadgets that James Bond uses. And perhaps because of that becomes - in my humble opinion - the spy we would all want to become: calm, collected and curious.
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