A Legacy of Spies, John le Carre
A Legacy of Spies, John le Carre
24 Rating(s)
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

A Legacy of Spies

Bestseller

Author: John le Carré

Narrator: Tom Hollander

Unabridged: 8 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 09/05/2017


Synopsis

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The undisputed master returns with his first Smiley novel in more than twenty-five years--a #1 New York Times bestseller and ideal holiday gift.

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.
 
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.

About The Author

John le Carré was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British intelligence during the Cold War. For the last fifty years he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Adam on September 20, 2017

A reunion book, and quite a pleasurable one. Le Carré gets Smiley’s gang together one last time, knowing the reader will thrill at seeing them mashed against the modern world. It is particularly lovely to spend so much time in the head of the first-person lead Peter Guillam, who is as charming and c......more

Goodreads review by Jaline on June 02, 2019

Peter Guillam, who was George Smiley’s assistant for several years, is an old man now. He is back in Brittany puttering on his family’s farm with assistance from Catherine and her little girl Isabelle. Then he receives a “request” to get himself to HQ in London immediately. He is then interrogated by......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on November 19, 2021

3.5 stars In "A Legacy of Spies" John Le Carré takes us from the present day back to the time and setting of his most famous book "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold." ***** As the story opens Peter Guillam, a former protegé/right-hand-man of spy-master George Smiley, is a senior citizen living on his......more

Goodreads review by Mark on March 14, 2023

What a tangled web we weave. A Legacy of Spies by John le Carre is my first (yeah I know) le Carre book and it was a very entertaining and enjoyable read. The main character is a retired agent called Peter Guillam, living in Brittany (which does sound like a beautiful part of the world BTW) and is re......more

Goodreads review by Nigeyb on April 02, 2018

An immensely satisfying conclusion to the George Smiley series. The clever plot manages to reference many of the classic Smiley books and plotlines, and also to drag them into the 21st century. This means we learn more about earlier stories and also what happened to some of the characters, not least......more


Quotes

“[Le Carré's] novels are so brilliant because they’re emotionally and psychologically absolutely true, but of course they’re novels.” —New York Times Book Review

“Le Carré’s prose remains brisk and lapidary. His wit is intact and rolls as if on casters... I might as well say it: to read this simmering novel is to come in from the cold.” New York Times

“Le Carré is such a gifted storyteller that he interlaces the cards in his deck so they fit not simply with this book, but with the earlier ones as well.” —The Atlantic

"A kind of eulogy for the present as well as the past, A Legacy of Spies is haunting." —Chicago Tribune

"Swift and satisfying." USA Today

“We wish for more complexity and logic in our politics, so we look to make political art that is logical and complex: a genre defined by John le Carré.” —New Republic

“The spy master’s latest Smiley novel entwines today’s world with a lost one... Ingenious."
—Washington Post

"Intricately plotted and richly satisfying." —Star Tribune

"Gripping."—The Christian Science Monitor

"[Le Carré] can convey a character in a sentence, land an emotional insight in [a] phrase & demolish an ideology in a paragraph." Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Any reader who knows le Carré's earlier work, and quite a few who don't, will assume that any attempt to second-guess the mandarins of the Service will backfire. The miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.”
Kirkus

Praise for John le Carré

“One of our great writers of moral ambiguity, a tireless explorer of that darkly contradictory no-man’s land.”
Los Angeles Times
 
“No other writer has charted—pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers—the public and secret histories of his times.”
The Guardian (UK)
 
“I would suggest immortality for John le Carré, who I believe one of the most intelligent and entertaining writers working today.”
—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
 
“The constant flow of emotion lifts le Carré not only above all modern suspense novelists, but above most novelists now practicing.”
Financial Times
 
“A writer of towering gifts.”
The Independent (UK)