British Intelligence Agent George Smiley interviews a potential candidate for a role in the Foreign Office but decides against hiring the chap. The man, apparently mortally upset at being turned down, offs himself that night, blaming Smiley’s decision in his suicide note! When Smiley visits the man’s widow the following morning he picks up the phone for a call intended for the deceased - but why would a man choosing to end it all that night then arrange for an early morning wake up call?
Call for the Dead is John le Carre’s first George Smiley novel, a character whom he would write about on and off for the rest of his career in 9 novels. This is also my first le Carre book and I thought it was pretty decent, despite spy stories not usually being my bag.
Le Carre’s view of espionage feels more grounded than the more popular presentation of it in Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. Smiley is an unprepossessing man in looks - he’s charmingly described as resembling a toad - and he was installed as a university teacher in Nazi Germany when he was an active agent. His main role was to earmark suitable candidates for intelligence agents and nothing more. He became psychologically damaged from his (unmentioned - at least in this book) experiences and got taken out of the field.
Compare that to Bond, who was boozing, gambling, and shagging his way through picture postcard locations in a sportscar with explosions in the background while wearing tuxedo plot armour, and the two characters are night and day!
But le Carre still knows he’s writing in the spy thriller genre and isn’t averse to action set pieces, having Smiley fight Commie agents and sometimes, miraculously, winning the physical altercations despite being out of shape and decidedly un-dangerous! That said, there are a fair share of mundane scenes where Smiley isn’t doing all that much either. It’s a story of fits and starts regarding the reader’s interest.
The twisty tale kept me engaged for the most part although the novel suffers from the same thing that all spy thrillers do, which is convoluted plotting. The villains’ motivations are essentially shrugged off in the end and their goals are nebulous at best. When it’s revealed what the spies were doing, and you begin wondering how exactly it would help achieve their vague purposes, the overall impression of the novel feels meaningless.
And then I started thinking about the rest of the story and it began to feel kinda pointless - like a less funny version of the Coens’ superb spy thriller piss-take movie Burn After Reading. What were the consequences to Smiley? He didn’t kill anyone and suicide is the official ruling. So what are the stakes for him - particularly as he isn’t the least bit married to his job? It’s also not a mystery you’re meant to solve as le Carre doesn’t introduce the actual culprit until the final third of the book. And once we know whodunit, it’s a little tedious waiting for the blighter to get their inevitable comeuppance/s.
The story is occasionally exciting to read in the moment, and the pages fly by, although extensive exposition passages definitely slow things down every so often (but also aren’t all that dull to read). It is undeniably unmemorable: a nobody is dead, silly reasons are behind it, and the main character is only slightly involved without any real consequences to him whether he gets to the bottom of things or not. It’s murky in my mind now and I’ve just finished the book - it’s definitely not going to last!
I got the sense that le Carre knew how complicated these kinds of stories get because the penultimate chapter literally recounts the entire novel in summary - which is definitely wearisome to read having just read everything that’s being recounted! So, I don’t know who would do this but, if you wanted to read an extremely truncated version of the novel, you could just read the 9 page Chapter 17: Dear Adviser and be done with it!
While this is a “George Smiley” book, other characters like the copper Mendel and Smiley’s colleague Guillam feature to great effect. I also enjoyed Smiley’s greasy boss Maston. It’s to le Carre’s credit that the characters are as well defined and identifiable as they are.
Call for the Dead is written in a somewhat clunky fashion in places, perhaps a style of the time (the book was published in 1961 - which possibly also explains the casual antisemitism scattered throughout), perhaps the author’s inexperience (it was his first novel), and soars in others, reflecting the uneven quality of the book. It’s certainly readable and holds the attention, with sharp characterisation, so it’s no surprise that le Carre would go on to have the career he did, but the novel also lacks a powerful or impactful narrative to really stand out.
The book is a perfectly decent spy thriller and a fine beginning for readers new to John le Carre and George Smiley - not too taxing to read and doesn’t overstay its welcome with an overlong page count. But don’t expect an especially brilliant novel either - maybe le Carre wrote one later in his life, but he definitely didn’t with Call for the Dead.
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