Okay,
Lovely Readers, we're going to time-travel a bit today. I'm going to
take you back 10 years ago. Benedict Cumberbatch had just exploded and I
was ...just a little...obsessed. I watched everything I could
find with him. I found "Parade's End" (HBO) that way. I also found
"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." As has happened before, the film lead me
to the book, which eventually brought me, and you here. The very first
George Smiley novel: Call for the Dead.
Smiley is described as toad-like, wearing
expensive, yet ill-fitting clothing, and yet was lucky enough to marry
one of the most beautiful women in Britain, Anne. Angelic Anne. Anne who
doesn't live at home anymore.
Amid this, a man that Smiley met
with for mere moments days before turns up inexplicably murdered. The
death is twice as bewildering because the Circus (British Intelligence)
has no interest in this man.
When Smiley interviews the widow, a call comes in that she cannot satisfactorily explain. This sets our ball rolling.
Do
not come into this expecting James Bond. George Smiley is a totally
different type of spy. Many of the events of our story happen in
retrospect. Smiley tells us of his time at the Circus, when he was
assigned to Berlin, and a German Jewish student who avoided death in the
camps by being brilliant and making himself indispensable.
This
is less a gripping read, and more one that you find yourself reading
over and over again trying to find all of the clues. The bits of
backstory that you gloss over the first time jump out in sharp relief
the second because you understand their significance.
In fact,
I'm going out on a limb and say that this is one of those books that is
in fact meant to be re-read. And it kind of has this snowball going down
a hill thing going on, with the pacing. Plodding, but picking up speed
as you go, and then you're flying and wishing things would slow down
just a touch.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story and I think you will, too.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
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