Good, gritty, resolutely unglamorous espionage story. Anyone who enjoyed the British series Callan would love this. It was my first Le Carré - I'd be happy to read more in a similar vein.

Interesting how totally the political and cultural landscape has changed in the 50 years since this was written. This world is still recognisable to me, but to anyone a bit younger it would probably would seem as alien as the Victorian era. The detailed depictions of spy rings, and how they do their jobs, also seems like something from a bygone age - complicated but at the same time strikingly basic. Maybe things have not changed so much - but I think there was something unique about the paranoia instilled by having two such powerful and evenly-matched sides, living on top of each other as in Berlin, where everyone is suspect and you assume that you are constantly watched.

The plot itself is very well crafted. Le Carré carefully keeps you from knowing exactly what's going on, which is the exact situation that his compelling lead character, Alec Leamas, is in. It brings empathy with a difficult-to-like character, and leaves you wide open for the inevitable reverses and reveals.

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The classic spy novel. ( )

Dammit, I love/hate it when I guess the ending before the big reveal. Also, the lone female character was inexcusably vapid. ( )

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was a tardy entry in my reading list for classic espionage books. It was less witty than the Deighton novels of the same era--early 1960s Cold War--but it had more gravity and pathos. I can see how it acquired its iconic status, and I am curious about the screen adaptations. It read in a flash; the prose was practically transparent. The rather limited third-person voice was effective, and the pacing of the short chapters was lightning fast, even though the book features relatively little "action."

I certainly enjoyed it enough to want to read more le Carré, and I'll probably proceed forward to The Looking Glass War. While I am tempted to roll back to his debut novel Call for the Dead, I gather that it is a mystery with a retired spy for its protagonist, rather than spy fiction proper.

This is a masterpiece of the mystery genre, pure and simple. Few books have captured my attention as this work did - without even trying, at that.
Written by le Carré at the height of his literary prowess, it details the story of a British spy - whose last mission is to plant himself in Soviet-occupied East Germany, to get the Russian spy division head assassinated.
Although the plot looked trite and banal in the beginning, I slowly realized that reading this work was like peeling the layers off an onion - there's so much more to it than meets the eye at first glance. And boy oh boy, it didn't disappoint one bit.
Right when you think that you've got the plot all figured out, it turns out you didn't. The best part is, that action is sidelined in favor of dialogue, which I'm actually in favor of - two of the best scenes in the book were simply long dialogue chains.
TL;DR - deserves space on every reading shelf (or device) - this is the tour de force of an unparalleled writer, and it (deservedly) holds its place amongst the classics. Must read. ( )