Spies Legacy: A Novel

1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, this novel interweaves past with present, allowing each to tell its own intense story. Peter Guillam, a staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, also known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him.

Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are now to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications. In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.

The author, John le Carré, has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. As Peter Guillam, the staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley, is summoned from his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany to London by his old Service, the reason becomes clear: his Cold War past has come back to claim him.

The intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are now to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications. In this story, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new, resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence.

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