The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: A George Smiley Novel, Book 3

John Le Carre is my favourite author and I have read most of his books including this one and I enjoyed the audio version just as much as the written one.

The narrator was excellent and the story was engrossing right from the beginning.

Highly recommend it specially if you are a fan of Le Carre.

Books narrated by Will Payton

No

not really - I like to stretch out the good books so I enjoy it longer rather than finishing them in one sitting

I believe this to be the best of Le Carres' George Smiley books. Jayston was an excellent narrator

I really love the novels of John le Carre, especially the Karla series. This may be le Carre's best work - better even than the Karla novels. The vertiginous manipulations, the moral ambiguities, the uncomfortable compromises made by the protagonist Alec Leamas, make this a gripping story with existential reverberations, even 50 years after it was first published.

If the ending of "Smiley's People" is a victory with chilling implications for the human soul, then the ending of this novel is a crushing defeat with hopeful inspiration for the individual. Nothing is ever as it seems in le Carre's best work, and that is doubly true here.

One note: even though it's listed as part of the Smiley series, George Smiley is barely even a minor character in this book - more of a shadowy emanation, and one which hints at another side of his identity.

The plot was most enjoyable. I envisioned Richard Burton in each scene, since I had previously viewed the movie.

Perhaps "The Day of the Jackal." Both books were very thoughtful and precise in articulating the characters.

The opening scene with the spy crossing the check point.

No.

I would state that LeCarre is a thinking person's author.

This was a great "cold war" period piece. There were a variety of great characters who were all interesting and complex. The plot was full of twists and turns and never predictable.

I loved Fiedler who was the intellectual East German counter intelligence man who was the counterpart of the English agent Leamas.

The book was very much dialog. I loved the hunting lodge conversations.

This book was made into a very good movie starring Richard Burton in 1965.

The book was written in 1963 but is just as relavant today as then. The reader will long for the era when communications took days instead of seconds.

The readers change of voice always left me knowing who was speaking. Michael Jayston has a great reading voice.

Yes, because you always suspected the whole story was a put up job, but just how much is not made known until the very end.

No - I am new to the audio book experience.

The ending absolutely stunned me. Spy is an excellent book and I hope my husband can listen to it alwo.

The plot kept me guessing. You really get to like the main character and there are twists that seem obvious but you can't quite figure out until the end. The story does end a bit abruptly with an epilogue - I feel like it needed a half a chapter just to tie things up a bit.

The performance is very good, changing voices even genders, makes it clear who is speaking, even during long conversations.

Not easy to turn off, but chapter's are sufficently long that you don't feel ashamed to stop for a period - almost like the end of an episode - not quite cliffhangers, but definately more questions to be answered.

The mood and tone reflects the deceptive lives of the spy world. It comes across as believable.

This story was long on detail and short on story-line...too many words for too little action and the voice was boring. I was disappointed.