Call for the dead

It was less an interview than an amiable conversation over a walk in the park.

George Smiley had been sent to speak to a high-ranking civil servant after an anonymous tip-off that he was a security risk.

It was a formality - and the two men liked each other.

Why then, did it apparently drive the poor man to despair? And why was he found dead the next day, the victim of an unnecessary suicide?

Call for the Dead launched John le Carre's unparalleled career as a novelist, and introduces one of fiction's most famous spies - George Smiley, who is both brilliant and unremarkable.