The Karla Trilogy
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People
These books are not new, around fifty years old as I write, yet they feel unexpectedly fresh.
There’s no obvious reason they should. This is a world of paper files, payphones and darkrooms where photographs bloom slowly from negatives. Nothing about that should feel contemporary.
Yet something about these ghostly forces still resonates. Their work relies more on psychology and misdirection than on technology. The people behind it all are painfully, recognisably ordinary.
They read as civil servants in their stature, motivations and petty office squabbles. Perhaps the freshness lies in portraying an intelligence world run by thoroughly human people, rather than one-man armies or omnipotent masterminds.
Tinker Tailor remains a classic: taut, focused and well paced. It’s easy to sink into.
The Honourable Schoolboy suffers by comparison. The familiar ingredients are there, but scattered across a bewildering flurry of characters and rapid scene changes that left me constantly reaching for names. It builds towards something grand that never quite arrives, though the sense of incompletion may be the point.
Smiley’s People regains that focus and is more satisfying. It also lands the trilogy’s themes neatly in its final pages.
Great schemes and slow-burn machinations, patience and dazzling tradecraft, but to what end, and with what meaning as the world shifts around them?
At the centre stands Smiley, whose inner and professional life shines on every page he appears. A review captured him better than I can:
a bit shabby, academic, basically loyal, and sceptical of the enthusiasms of his political masters. The Guardian
A model of a public servant I find particularly compelling.
After "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" I read: The Honourable Schoolboy
Before "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" I read: Life and Fate
After "The Honourable Schoolboy" I read: Smiley's People
Before "The Honourable Schoolboy" I read: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
After "Smiley's People" I read: Empire of AI
Before "Smiley's People" I read: The Honourable Schoolboy