Call For The Dead by John Le Carré

In the hearts and minds of the English spy thriller fan, there has always been a simple competition: James Bond or George Smiley

One is gorgeous, ruthless, cruel, irresistible to women (and men, at least in Skyfall and all the fan fiction), a blunt instrument of violence and attack, unleashed to create havoc while preventing havoc deemed by his controllers to be worse, a leading man, an aristocrat barely (though slightly) troubled by conscience or regret, a bully, a masochist, a sadist, a killer, a thug… the other one is basically a petty bureaucrat, an Hercule Poirot type who often solves mysteries related to spying, who’s in a bad marriage but does seem to genuinely have some friends, who is respected in his field but doesn’t seem to be feared, who is often overlooked and frequently under [thought of as less proficient than he is (under suspected? That’s not what I mean – there’s definitely a word for this..?) UNDER-ESTIMATED (Christ I’m fucked and depressed (forgetting words)), who tends to also finish his assignments with a trail of dead bodies in his wake, although usually not dispatched (from life) by his own hand…

I suppose a younger person, a less wise person, would assert that James Bond is spy thrillers for people who fuck, and that George Smiley is spy thrillers for people who think [about fucking?], but I don’t know if this really holds.

Sir Ian Fleming famously (and I do mean famously) began writing the James Bond novels after he got married and wanted to fantasise about shagging around (and killing and stuff), whereas John Le Carré never famously did anything, except write some books and, eventually, die.

Maybe James Bond spy thrillers are for the sexually repressed, the horny, the unsatiated and the insatiable, while George Smiley spy thrillers are for the people who are actually bored of sex, rather than the kind of people who say they’re bored of sex but aren’t actually bored of sex, y’know, in fact they wish they were bisexual Bondian figures, pansexual Roger Moores, rutting with abandon in, on, and around the cunts, asses, mouths, balls and hands of the world.

James Bond novels, maybe (the Sir Ian Fleming ones, not the sexually repressed later ones written by other, less shag-happy, less cunt-struck, less horned-up and flesh-intrigued writers), are for those who pine for a fleshier, a raunchier, an eroticker existence, whereas George Smiley novels are for, I dunno, people who are quite happy with the amount of fucking they do, even if it’s like really not a lot?

I don’t know.

It’s been a while since I’ve read a Fleming. It’s been a day since I read a Le Carré. (As in this one, I finished it yesterday.)

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In this novel, the first Le Carré wrote that featured his most famous (only famous?) character, Smiley is basically trying to solve a murder mystery and (spoilers ahead) it basically all turns out that the solution was right in front of him the whole time and that the solution was that the man who definitely didn’t kill himself (even though he’d allegedly killed himself) wasn’t secretly a spy, but his wife (a woman!) was secretly a spy.

This novel is short, so the blunt sexism (“omg it couldn’t be, could it, a woman who is a spy????”) type reveal only comes a hundred pages or so after it becomes obvious, upon explanation of all the narrative facts, that the wife (who is a woman and a spy!) is going to turn out to be the “baddie”, and Le Carré’s route through the narrative is fun and engaging and features some unexpected narrative twists and turns (e.g. someone tries to beat George Smiley to death with a lead pipe, like off of Cluedo).

It’s fun, it’s frothy, it’s exciting, it’s thrilling. And it’s very much of its context: genre fiction written by an establishment poshboy in the early 1960s. If that isn’t your thing, then this won’t be your thing.

That said, though, Call For The Dead is an excellent example of a spy thriller aimed at someone who has cum enough and may well believe they’ll never cum again.

It’s everything you could want from a spy thriller. Unless you want your spy thrillers riddled with sex, sadism and snobbery, in which case (other than a couple of bitchy asides from the narrator about Smiley himself (e.g. “he looked like he spent a lot of money on very bad clothes”)), all three are sorely lacking.

James Bond it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad!!!