Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George
Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise 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 to be held to account by a generation with
no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its
justifications.
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its
own intense story, 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. 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.