the Karla trilogy by John leCarre. Well, honestly, I'm not quite finished yet on my second time around. This well known series of books about the Cold War era are some of the best spy thrillers ever written. In
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, leCarre's famous intelligence officer, George Smiley, is asked to conduct a secret investigation of friends and colleagues in order to discover the double agent lurking at the top of the British Secret Service. Promoted to the head job himself, Smiley assigns Jerry Westerby,
The Honorable Schoolboy, to sniff out the details of a suspicious bank account in Hong Kong. Jerry soon has his own agenda, and in this second volume, Smiley is less successful. Once again, however, in
Smiley's People, the enigmatic old man is called back into service when an old emigre agent is found shot to death. Smiley is faced with another opportunity to finally bring down his longtime adversary in Moscow, the powerful agent known as Karla. These three novels make for a great summer read, and might even lead you to more of leCarre's great writing. All three are available for loan at your library.
