John le Carré

"John le Carré's new espionage novel where... be honest, we had you at le Carré didn't we?"

- Advert for Our Kind of Traitor (2010)

Real name David John Moore Cornwell, John le Carré was a real-life member of MI 5 and the Secret Intelligence Service until he was blown by Kim Philby to the KGB. While he was in the service, he started writing novels and carried on once he'd left.

His novels are definitely of the Stale Beer flavour of Spy Fiction, being very dark in places. Eight feature his most famous creation, George Smiley.

Has added several espionage Stock Phrases (and popularised existing ones), both among the public and, apparently, real spies.


 * Call for the Dead: adapted as The Deadly Affair (1966), with James Mason.
 * A Murder of Quality: Smiley takes a brief retirement, becomes a public school teacher and has to investigate a murder.
 * The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963): adapted into a film and considered a classic.
 * The Looking-Glass War: adapted into a film.
 * A Small Town In Germany: Set in Bonn
 * The Naïve and Sentimental Lover: Le Carré's only non-spy novel.
 * The Quest for Karla trilogy: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. The first and third were dramatised by The BBC (two, considering its setting--mid 1970s SE Asia--is a bit harder to do, but a radio adaptation exists) and starred Alec Guinness as George Smiley. A feature film of Tinker was released in 2011, starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley.
 * The Little Drummer Girl: adapted into a film starring Diane Keaton.
 * A Perfect Spy: a semi-autobiographical novel, dramatised by the BBC.
 * The Russia House: adapted into a film starring Sean Connery.
 * The Secret Pilgrim: Last novel to feature Smiley, a collection of reminiscences from Ned of The Russia House.
 * The Night Manager
 * Our Game
 * The Tailor of Panama: the film of which starred Pierce Brosnan.
 * Single & Single
 * The Constant Gardener: recently adapted into a film starring Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes.
 * Absolute Friends
 * The Mission Song (2006)
 * A Most Wanted Man (2008)
 * Our Kind of Traitor (2010)


 * Anachronic Order : common; le Carre often goes back in time to explore the psychological development of his characters.
 * Anti-Villain: The first novel in particular.  wind up as spies because.
 * Author Avatar (Magnus Pym)
 * Badass Israelis (a whole operational team of them in The Little Drummer Girl)
 * Based on a True Story (most of his books have at least a grain of true events in there; Smiley is thought by some to be based on SIS chief Sir Maurice Oldfield, although Le Carré himself identified author and MI 5 officer John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris, as Smiley's model)
 * Batman Gambit (in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold)
 * Berlin Wall (crucial in the climactic scene of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold")
 * Defictionalization (Some spy-speak that le Carre just made up, such as "tradecraft", is now actually used by MI5 and MI6 agents in Real Life)
 * Bittersweet Ending (very, very widespread. One of le Carré's trademark touches is that the price of success in matters of espionage is permanent emotional and psychological damage to those who have had to participate in betrayal.)
 * Blackmail: Both by the Circus (a "burn") and by criminals.
 * Blue Blood: George Smiley's wife, Lady Ann. A Murder of Quality spends some time unpacking their relative social discrepancy; many people in her circle consider him a totally inappropriate husband.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer : Connie Sachs (in Tinker, Tailor ...)
 * Cold War
 * Con Man: Rick Pym of A Perfect Spy is the king of conmen, based on le Carré's own father. Also Toby Esterhaze of the Circus, in "The Secret Pilgrim", convinces the CIA that an exiled Hungarian professor - a charlatan, completely worthless agent - is an anti-Communist hero, so that the Americans take him off the British hands and put him on their own payroll.
 * Double Agent (several)
 * Feed the Mole, Fake Defector... actually, most of the serious Espionage Tropes appear somewhere in Le Carre's novels.
 * Knowledge Broker (Connie Sachs, an ex-spy)
 * May-December Romance : VERY common in the books, with romances by Jaded spies and confused beautiful Twenty-Something women showing up in eight of his books. George Smiley himself marries a woman twenty years his junior.
 * Who cheats on him serially.
 * Moscow Centre (Trope Namer)
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: Le Carré uses his own made-up code names for various organisations in order to avoid revealing classified information. For example, the KGB is always referred to as "Moscow Centre" and MI-6 is referred to as "The Circus" because its headquarters is on Cambridge Circus (in reality, it wasn't).
 * Retcon: Smiley loses about a decade or so off his age between Call for the Dead and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
 * Ripped from the Headlines : Several of his books have come out in advance of the headlines from which they were ripped. A few months after Single & Single was released, there was a minor scandal involving Citibank laundering money for Russian Mobsters. Le Carré's submitted his manuscript for Our Game, a book about a civil war breaking out in the Caucasus, about three months before the rekindling of war in Chechnya. And The Constant Gardiner came out just as the New York Times published a series on the misdeeds of pharmaceutical companies in Africa.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism (quite cynical.)
 * A Small Town in Germany (Trope Namer)
 * The Spymaster ("Control" and later Smiley himself)
 * Spy Speak : "The Sandman is making a legend for a girl" and thousands of other examples.
 * Truth in Television
 * Write What You Know