The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Oct 7, 2024 9:42 AM

Author:John le Carré,Robert Forest,Simon Russell Beale,Brian Cox,Ruth Gemmell,Full Cast

George Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realised characters in British fiction. Bespectacled, tubby, eternally middle-aged and deceptively ordinary, he has a mind like a steel trap and is said to possess ‘the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin’. It is 1962: the height of the Cold War and only months after the building of the Berlin Wall. Alec Leamas is a hard-working, hard-drinking British intelligence officer whose East Berlin network is in tatters. His agents are either on the run or dead, victims of the ruthlessly efficient East German counter-intelligence officer Hans-Dieter Mundt. Leamas is recalled to London where, to his surprise, instead of being washed up and consigned to a desk he's offered a chance to have his revenge by becoming a pawn in a brilliantly-conceived plot to destroy Mundt. But in order to do so he has to stay out in the cold a little longer... Starring the award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, and with a distinguished cast including Brian Cox as Alec Leamas, this tense, compelling dramatisation perfectly captures the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, intricate thriller.

Reviews

This gripping novel by the world's bestselling thriller author will have you on the edge of your deckchair.

—— Daily Express

Blockbuster perfection... An exhilaratingly brainy thriller. Not since the advent of Harry Potter has an author so flagrantly delighted in leading readers on a breathless chase

—— The New York Times

Exceedingly clever... Both fascinating and fun... A considerable achievement

—— The Washington Post

Brown's novel adroitly blends the chase-stuffed thrillers of Robert Ludlum and the learned romps of Umberto Eco... For anyone who wants more brain food than thrillers normally provide

—— The Sunday Times

A gripping bestseller... Brown has cracked the bestseller code

—— Guardian

A new master of smart thrills… A pulse-quickening, brain teasing adventure

—— People

Intrigue and menace mingle in one of the finest mysteries I've ever read. An amazing tale with enigma piled on secrets stacked on riddles

—— Clive Cussler

Wow... Blockbuster perfection... An exhilaratingly brainy thriller. Not since the advent of Harry Potter has an author so flagrantly delighted in leading readers on a breathless chase

—— The New York Times

A heart-racing thriller. This story has so many twists that it would be a sin to reveal too much of the plot in advance. Let's just say that if this novel doesn't get your pulse racing, you need to check your meds

—— San Francisco Chronicle

Some genuinely fascinating insights into Grail history make this the best thriller FHM has read in yonks

—— FHM

Don Winslow is the kind of cult writer who is so good you almost want to keep him to yourself

—— Ian Rankin

A fiction whose effect on the reader is almost as addictive as the slimming sweets on which Eugene becomes so disturbingly dependent

—— Sunday Telegraph

Ruth Rendell's sense of place and disdain for her characters elevates a sordid case of arson into an artful exploration of sinister self-delusion

—— Books of the Year, Evening Standard

She has made the city her own, and writes with both knowledge and compassion about its streets and buildings, its transport and its shops - and above all about its inhabitants ... As ever Rendell writes with wry and witty authority ... It's intelligent stuff, and very readable

—— Spectator

Rendell is marvellous at psychological tension, and the suspicion that these ways will be sinister is what hooks the reader. Setting out her cast with conviction, she unrolls their lives at a stately, ominous pace

—— The Sunday Times

Psychologically acute and extremely disturbing, Ruth Rendell's work is outstanding

—— The Times

Rendell has a Dickensian empathy, informed by a prodigious love of London life. Her account, bursting with colour and vitality, is a treat to read

—— The Independent

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