Breakaway Books

Authored by John LeCarre; Published 1961; Thriller

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

I understand why John LeCarre’s George Smiley series is such a fixture among espionage thrillers. Call for the Dead has exactly the classic spycraft I expect to see from the Cold War era.

In Call for the Dead, intelligence officer George Smiley finds himself in the unenviable position of having interrogated a man because of accusations of disloyalty, who subsequently commits suicide supposedly because of the stress of the situation. George is utterly bewildered, as he had let victim know that his innocence was all but assured. But the more George digs into the purported suicide, the more confusing…and dangerous… it gets. George must find out exactly what’s going on before he too ends up dead.

This is my kind of escapism—covertly passed classified documents, obscure code names, and well-placed agents finding sneaky ways to communicate with their handlers. John Le Carre is a household name for his espionage thrillers, and you can see why in this novel. It’s compact and simple, but it has plenty of red herrings, unclear alliances, and shifty characters just looking to make a buck. If Cold War espionage is your bag, you will certainly enjoy this, especially if you’re looking to take a step back from the technology-powered surveillance state of the modern era. It’s a twisty tale that only ends up fully unraveled in the final chapter, and a satisfying ending it is. 

My only gripe about the novel is that the author invests a lot of time detailing Smiley’s backstory with no obvious payoff. Of course, knowing this is the first in a series, I assume it’s critical knowledge in later novels, but the frontloading of Smiley’s personal history strikes a bit of an odd note in the first chapter, and it feels disconnected from the rest of the story. Otherwise, though, the novel is pitch perfect, down to the disdain for government bureaucracy that we all seem to share even from a distance of half a century, and the surprising camaraderie among spies who are on opposing sides. 

Do you want to lose yourself in the (simpler) geopolitical madness of fifty years ago, rather than today’s? Call for the Dead is for you.