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Feb 26, 2019
This novel fills in the events between "Call for the Dead" and "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", and fleshes out some of the events of the latter novel. It ignores the intermediate events of "A Murder of Quality" (which involves Smiley, but is not a spy story). There are no new operational surprises in the historic events, but to avoid spoilers dilligent readers should read the two earlier novels and the Karla trilogy first. Assuming the current novel takes place at the the time it is written, the issue of the ages of the surviving protagonists is "poetic license". The enveloping contemporary story is quite good, although I have a feeling that Le Carre was never comfortable with modern technology in spying. In view of Brexit negotiations, Smiley's comments at the end of the novel are quite interesting.