Lamplighter S. Series

The Looking Glass War

by John le Carre

Published 1 December 1965

How long was it since the department had mounted an operation Too long.

There had been a time when the distinctions were clear: the Circus handled all things political while the Department dealt with matters military. But over the years the power had slowly passed to the Circus, and the Circus had elbowed the Department out.

Now suddenly the Department had a job on its hands. Uncertain evidence suggested Soviet missiles being put in place close to the German border, while vital film had gone missing and a courier was dead.

Lacking active agents and the time to recruit afresh, the Department had to find an old hand who would prove its mettle. Fred Leiser, German-speaking Pole turned Englishman, once a qualified radio-operator, now something in the motor trade, must be called back to the colours and sent East ...

A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carre

Published 1 January 1960

'The Germans mustn't know. Not on any account. They mustn't know he's gone; they mustn't know we're looking for him; they mustn't know there's been a leak'

The missing man: Harting, refugee background, a Junior Something in the British Embassy in Bonn. The missing files: forty-three of them, all Confidential or above. The timing: appalling and probably not accidental; radical students and neo-Nazis rioting; critical negotiations in Brussels.

London's security officer Alan Turner is sent to Bonn to find the missing man and files as Germany's past, present and future threaten to collide in a nightmare of violence.

Call for the Dead

by John le Carre

Published 1 January 1961

George Smiley had liked the man and now the man was dead. Suicide. But why

An anonymous letter had alleged that Foreign Office man Samuel Fennan had been a member of the Communist Party as a student before the war. Nothing very unusual for his generation. Smiley had made it clear that the investigation - little more than a routine security check - was over and that the file on Fennan could be closed.

Next day, Fennan was dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn't go on. Why Smiley was puzzled ...

A Murder of Quality

by John le Carre

Published 1 September 1964

George Smiley was simply doing a favour for an old friend, Miss Ailsa Brimley, who edited a small religious newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried woman reader: 'I'm not mad. And I know my husband is trying to kill me.' The writer of the letter was one Stella Rode, wife to an assistant master at Carne School, Dorset, and by the time it arrived, she was dead. Carne was an ancient, self-regarding Church foundation, proud of its proper standards of social distinctions. George Smiley went there to listen, take sherry, ask questions and think. And thus uncover, layer upon layer, the complexities, skeletons and hatreds that comprised this little English institution.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

by John le Carre

Published December 1963

Written by the author of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "The Honourable Schoolboy" and "The Little Drummer Girl", this is a terrible story of an English agent. It shows the realities behind the news paragraphs which record the shifts and tensions of the Cold War.