Rating: 
Summary: cat and mouse par excellence
Review: please read this book and enjoy yourself. If you want a challenge, a maze for the mind to wander thru READ THIS MASTERPIECE
Rating:
Summary: This must be the best spy novel ever
Review: The only thing that you need to know about this book is that you have know idea what the key to the story is unil the last three pages. Until then you will be riveted to the paper and not be able to put it down. I have read my copy countless times. I still find something new. In addition, the BBC's 1970's adaptation of the novel is one of the most aoustanding pieces of television drama I have ever seen. I wish PBS would show it!!
Rating:
Summary: A great spy story.
Review: This book is unquestionably Lecarre's best with Smiley's People a close second. For a genre book it is very literary in intent and in style. The proof of this for me was that I was not entirely satisfied with the book the first time I read it but was intrigued enough with the material to try it again a few years later. Knowing the basic plot, including the identity of the "mole" enabled me to really focus on and truly enjoy the themes of betrayal and British decline. Only a rare mystery/thriller would pass this test. On the purely technical level the book is also well done and the various steps employed by Smiley to solve the case are a great pleasure to follow. Read this book and Smiley's people. I agree with the prior reviewer that Honorable Schoolboy is best skipped.
Rating: 
Summary: Looking for the vidio
Review: This is my 3rd reaking of this book, an it still holds its own.... But, as I recall, either Masterpiece, or Mystery on PBS did a 3 or 4 part seris of this novel, starring Sir Alec Guiness, and I'm trying to find out where I can buy it... Any sugestions??
Rating:
Summary: I read it again every year
Review: This is the best-constructed novel I have ever read, or ever hope to read. "Smiley's People" is more fun -- it's less Smiley-centered, for although he is our hero, he's not exactly colorful -- but "Tinker, Tailor" is brilliant and should be required reading for anyone who wants to call himself a novelist.
Rating: 
Summary: Spy novel
Review: This is the perfect novel. When was the first time you suspected that most middle-aged men in senior government positions had secret agendas? What were the circumstances that led you to believe that civil servants, ministers, and spies can prioritize morality to suit their career objectives? We have all suspected that there are troubling conflicts-of-interest in our western governments and the intelligence communities that serve them. This is the best primer on why spies are what spies do: Namely, they are servants to a sad version of democracy whose ends justify the means. Every page is littered with regrets, lost love, memories that haunt the living, double-crossings, spies, and manipulative statesmen more concerned with acheiving their goals than how western democracy may be tarnished by such actions. LeCarre is more than a just a writer; he is a kataskopic-sociologist ("kataskopic"= meaning spycraft) He mines the darkest hearts of every western democracy reminding us that spycraft in its most evil of forms is not worth parading in front of enslaved people.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a novel about the "Circus," an invented nickname for MI6, in the 70s. A mole has dug his way into the Circus over forty years, blowing agents, destroying spy networks, and generally making a mess of things for Control and his 2nd in command George Smiley. Just when Control was getting close to discovering the traitor, a disastrous operation in Czechoslovakia causes a changing of the guard - Control soon dies, and Smiley is fired. Now, the new leadership, an inner circle of four men, seems to be putting the Circus back in business (and keeping themselves on top). But one of them is still the mole, and is as yet unidentified. Smiley must come out of retirement and begin a long quest through the past to uncover the mole - and his nemesis Karla's calculated operation, that has perhaps damaged the Circus irreperably. George Smiley is a recurring character in John LeCarre's works, beginning with LeCarre's first novel Call for the Dead, through his brilliant first big success The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, to Tinker, Tailor... and the Smiley/Karla trilogy. He has been called the greatest protagonist in spy fiction, sometimes even one of the best characters in contemporary literature. He is the anti-Bond, an aging, plump little man who probably never won a fight in his life and doesn't wear hats for fear that they make him look even more ridiculous. LeCarre casts him as a failed husband and cuckold to further emphasize his ridiculousness on the surface, but this is only seen as a weakness or something laughable by those who don't know him. In reality, Smiley tries hard not to let anything get to him. Indeed it is this calm and rationality, and his ability to meticulously analyze those things that would cause pain or panic in other men, that make him good at his work. But one person can penetrate this defensive barrier of cold logic: his devious nemesis, Karla. This conflict is the one area of Smiley's life that cannot remain purely business, that has to be personal. At times, particularly in the sweltering heat of their first meeting in India, Smiley's emotion gets the better of him, so much so that the rivalry seems more human and personal even than Smiley's marriage; this idea is symbolized in the novel by Smiley's lighter, a gift from his wife that Smiley allows Karla to take. But how can this very human conflict truly be expressed when Smiley and Karla have never even spoken? Throughout the interview the Russian does not say a word. Just like the Cold War, their conflict is never "spoken" or overt, only indirect and implied, yet each knows the other's character intimately. This makes their conflict more than pure business, and more than merely one of ideology. That seems one of LeCarre's major points in this work (and in Smiley's People) - that while one can explain away the Cold War by framing it as an ideological conflict, it was not fought by two populations with set ideologies - it was fought by individuals, people with failing marriages, people with sick daughters, people who are all ultimately human. LeCarre is undoubtedly the master of the genre, and this, as well as the other two of the trilogy (Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley's People) are his finest.
Rating:
Summary: Spy novel
Review: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John Le Carré was a very weird and confusing spy novel to read. At points, the story would get so involved in minor details that I would get lost in it. Still, the story demonstrates a spy mystery by having a mole in the spectrum of it all. This book focuses on George Smiley, a fired former spy of the British network, known as the Circus. Now divorced from his wife Anne, Smiley is brought back into the game to find the spy, the mole, in the current Circus network since he was once the best. All the secrets of the British intelligence are being given to the Russian enemy, Karla, and he is determined to find the one person in this deceitful game. After Control, the head of the Circus dies early in the book, Smiley continuously searches for the mole. It is Control who suspects in the first place there is a leak in the intelligence, and near the end of the book, Smiley unmasks the culprit, through a different list of people. Among the suspects are the four top heads of the British network by the last names of Alleline, Haydon, Biland, and Esterhase. Through the story, clues are given to who the traitor is in the Circus. Several people are asked questions such as the Russian, Tarr. He holds a diary from his old girlfriend, Irina, which shows some of the different Russian dealings, which are helpful to solving the mystery. Other people interviewed are the absent minded old lady Connie, and the former prisoner Jim Predux. Overall, this book was pretty hard to read because it was focused on the settings and minor details that weren't important to the story, so it took longer to get through. Such details as these were how the houses looked, and what food tasted like, which aren't relevant to the story. It did convey a good spy novel though in the sense that clues were given and the reader has to figure out who the mole is in the intelligence. If you like spy mystery novels, you will enjoy this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Smiley's Finest Hour
Review: What happens if you've lost your friends, your motivation, your career is hopelessly stalled and you're coming to realize the entire foundation of said career is hopelessly misguided? As John Le Carre shows us, we'd probably just soldier on, like Tinker, Tailor's immortal anti-hero, George Smiley. Smiley half-suspects that the capture of the M16 "mole" won't really matter in the end; he knows, anyway, that his country is no longer a nation of Empire and that all that awaits him is a drab retirement, but somehow, he finds the strength and the facility to keep batting for England: at the end of the day, he is actually serving his country. Apart from the remarkable revelation that is George Smiley, Le Carre renders another expose: spying is nothing like we think it is - in fact, it is desparately unglamorous, lonely, plodding work in which even the leading lights will end up drowning in bureacracy. There are many, many scenes where our hero must navigate some dimly lit file room or office library, and the occasional, cringlingly embarassing office social gathering. But have no fear: the mole is found. I agree with others that this is Le Carre's best work.
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