Gaston Library discussion

From the Associated Press: " John le Carre, the spy-turned-novelist whose elegant and intricate narratives defined the Cold War espionage thriller and brought acclaim to a genre critics had once ignored, has died. He was 89...In classics such as “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and “The Honourable Schoolboy,” Le Carre combined terse but lyrical prose with the kind of complexity expected in literary fiction. His books grappled with betrayal, moral compromise and the psychological toll of a secret life. In the quiet, watchful spymaster George Smiley, he created one of 20th-century fiction’s iconic characters — a decent man at the heart of a web of deceit."

Here are ten of this best novels, as ranked by Goodreads users:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
"A modern classic in which John le Carré expertly creates a total vision of a secret world, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy begins George Smiley's chess match of wills and wits with Karla, his Soviet counterpart." (Goodreads)


The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
"In this classic, John le Carre's third novel and the first to earn him international acclaim, he created a world unlike any previously experienced in suspense fiction. With unsurpassed knowledge culled from his years in British Intelligence, Le Carre brings to light the shadowy dealings of international espionage in the tale of a British agent who longs to end his career but undertakes one final, bone-chilling assignment." (Goodreads)


Smiley's People
"Rounding off his astonishing vision of a clandestine world, master storyteller le Carre perfects his art in Smiley's People." (Goodreads)


A Perfect Spy
"Immersing readers in two parallel dramas -- one about the making of a spy, the other chronicling his seemingly imminent demise -- le Carre offers one of his richest and most morally resonant novels." (Goodreads)


The Russia House
"John le Carre's bestselling classic is a timeless spy thriller about the Iron Curtain and the tense relationship between Great Britain and Russia." (Goodreads)


The Little Drummer Girl
"In this thrilling and thought-provoking novel of Middle Eastern intrigue, Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young English actress, is lured into "the theatre of the real" by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and delicate trap set to ensnare an elusive Palestinian terrorist." (Goodreads)


The Honourable Schoolboy
"In this classic masterwork, le Carré expands upon his extraordinary vision of a secret world as George Smiley goes on the attack." (Goodreads)


A Legacy of Spies
"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 scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications." (Goodreads)


The Secret Pilgrim
"Nothing is as it was. Old enemies embrace. The dark staging grounds of the Cold War--whose shadows barely obscure the endless games of espionage--are flooded with light. The rules are rewritten, the stakes changed and the future unfathomable. Ned has worked for the British Intelligence all of his life--a loyal, shrewd officer of the Cold War. Now approaching the end of his career, he revisits his own past. He invites us on a tour of three decades in the Circus, burrowing deep in the world of spies from every corner of the globe." (Goodreads)


The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
"From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels." (Goodreads)