The Book Report #74
Episode #73
Call for the Dead by John Le Carré
The Book
First published in 1961 by Gollancz. In 2012, Penguin Classics assumed the publishing rights to the book. My version of the book is a first edition paperback that was printed in 2023.
The book has 167 pages. Within the first page is a list of other books in the genre.
What Did I Think
George Smiley is a seasoned intelligence officer who has served the British Government for many years. One of his jobs was helping to find and train foreign agents as he spent time as a professor at a college in Germany.
This book is set around the start of the sixties. With tensions still visible from Russia and Germany, towards the rest of the world. Any kind of meeting with anybody from these two countries could be assumed they be spies or foreign agents exchanging classified information.
This was the case with this story, well, sort of.
A foreign agent who was working with British intelligence has been killed, and it is up to George Smiley to work out what happened. Well, it isn’t. As it was looking like he was thought to have been involved, I didn’t see it. He resigned when things got a bit tough. Did a runner for some reason to continue the case elsewhere. Because of this, he meets a detective who, on that very day, retired from the force and decides, whilst moving into his retirement home, to help with the investigation of the murdered foreign agent.
One of the biggest problems with this story is that the characters are dull, and there is no excitement coming from any of them. The whole thing is very British and very stiff upper lip, as was maybe the norm for the time, but even with that, you have made it a tad more thrilling for the thriller and mysterious. I ended up not caring; I wanted to be, but I just drifted through the story.
The Other Half
George Smiley was married, but the missus took it upon herself to ruin it by going off with another man. Even she knew this was dull. This was presumed to help with the state of mind of George, character building, maybe. This backstory was repeated a few times, but George had turned himself off, so he didn’t care anymore.
The wife eventually got fed up or was dumped by her lover, and tried to return. But George again didn’t care and ignored her letter. Not saying he is wrong but there was nothing from him.
If you have resigned or retired, why would you still have the same access to everything you had when employed? You wouldn’t have thought that would be the case, but this story seemed to have relied on the ex-colleagues to help them along.
I know this is normally done in TV shows and Movies, but in this context, it wouldn’t work. This is British intelligence. Do they not understand secrets?
It turns out George never resigned. His boss denied it. But he didn’t get told until near the end of the story.
The biggest piece of icing on the cake was at the end of the book. You have been through the whole story, read everything that happened, and been through the ups and downs of all of the characters. But that isn’t enough. George receives a report of everything that has happened in this case. And guess what? You get the privilege to read the whole story again in the last chapter of the book.
So, in theory, you don’t need to read this book apart from the last chapter to understand the book in total. What is the point?
The Audiobook/Audiodrama
Would I Recommend
This is one of those times I can’t recommend this book. There is no excitement in the story. How did George Smiley become so popular in it’s time? I will never know. Maybe the storytelling will get better in the other novels. But I will never know.
Never let me stop you from giving this book a try.
But please give this book a go.
Would you like to purchase your very own copy?
You could try these online stores: Amazon UK/USA. Waterstones. AbeBooks UK/USA, Barnes & Noble or eBay UK/USA.
Alternatively, you could try your local bookshop or even your local library.
