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by Merrill R Abbey
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by Fodor's
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by Evelyn Bence
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by Kevin Munroe, Dave Wilkins (Illustrator: Sean Galloway) (Illustrator: Tony Washington)
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by Edgar Rice Burroughs
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Spy Who Came In from the Cold
by John Le Carre
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Bantam (1984-06-01)
ISBN: 0553238256
EAN: 9780553238259
Mass Market Paperback
Release Date: 1984-06-01
SKU: mon0000028533
Condition: Good
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
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.
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Amazon.com Review
It would be an international crime to reveal too much of the jeweled clockwork plot of Le Carré's first masterpiece, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. But we are at liberty to disclose that Graham Greene called it the "finest spy story ever written," and that the taut tale concerns Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin. Leamas is responsible for keeping the double agents under his care undercover and alive, but East Germans start killing them, so he gets called back to London by Control, his spy master. Yet instead of giving Leamas the boot, Control gives him a scary assignment: play the part of a disgraced agent, a sodden failure everybody whispers about. Control sends him back out into the cold--deep into Communist territory to checkmate the bad-guy spies on the other side. The political chessboard is black and white, but in human terms the vicinity of the Berlin Wall is a moral no-man's land, a gray abyss patrolled by pawns. Le Carré beats most spy writers for two reasons. First, he knows what he's talking about, since he raced around working for British Intelligence while the Wall went up. He's familiar with spycraft's fascinations, but also with the fact that it leaves ideals shaken and emotions stirred. Second, his literary tone has deep autobiographical roots. Spying is about betrayal, and Le Carré was abandoned by his mother and betrayed by his father, a notorious con man. (They figure heavily in his novels Single & Single and A Perfect Spy.) In a world of lies, Le Carré writes the bitter truth: it's every man for himself. And may the best mask win. --Tim Appelo
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Customer Reviews
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Intrigue, Intense character development, Spies as they are meant to be
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-11-05
John Le Carre can put into a 223 page book what some authors today need 600 pages to tell. He is not just a master with the dialogue, but with the mood, setting and gives you a complete rundown of the politics in that small number of pages. There is no need for me to give you a rundown of the storyline; many have done that before me. What I'm here to say is that even after 45 years, this book is still relevant and although some might say it is dated, it gives us an accurate appraisal of the 1960's in Europe - something our current history books can't do.
Loving a good spy novel, I began to read Le Carre, starting with "Our Game" because I bought it at a library book sale. It was just okay at best - very rambling and with no real focus, it seemed. What was I missing? So I read "Single and Single" because I bought it at a church book sale. It was really bad. This just seemed like drivel from an author that had no idea where the story was going. But I knew that Le Carre was the primo spy writer, but nothing I was reading was showing me any of it. So I didn't panic, but instead read all of the reviews on Le Carre's other books. Then I started at the beginning of his success with "The Spy Who..." Wow!! Now this is a master spy writer at his best. The characters were intense and their sweat came through to the reader and I was sweating with them. The Cold War seems so long ago, but this book brought it back to me like I was again living it. The historic information of this type of book is long forgotten and our younger, Nintendo/ PlayStation playing, non-readers should pick up this book and see what they may have missed the first time around, but might not during what may be coming next in the world as Russia is making its comeback.
I will now go back and read the two earlier works and then progress through the best of the rest. If anyone has started reading Le Carre during the last several books, like me, it would be well worth their time to start here and then begin the series when the master storyteller was in his heyday.
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Cold Reality
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-10-23
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold has been heralded as one of the greatest spy novels ever. John LeCarre, a British Intelligence agent who served during the Cold War until his identity was given to the Russians by double agent Kim Philby, wrote this timeless classic in 1963. It covers the story of Alec Leamas, as an agent, friend, spy, lover, and killer. Leamas takes on a mission to defeat his nemesis Mundt in East Germany, knowing full well it may be his last. Le Carre wrote his novel as a conduit from which he could communicate his viewpoints on matters dealing with morals, politics, ideology, and world affairs. Le Carre was able to do this without all the blood and gadgets so commonly found in your typical spy novel, and in the process, convey much deeper principles.
The novel was a quick and intense read; one that packed quite a punch. The intensity comes not from the blazing guns of a secret agent, but the dialogue, treachery, deception, mind games, and aggression expressed by the many rounded and dynamic characters. Those looking for a bloodbath or risqué spy novel will not find it here. LeCarre tells his story with limited exposure to violence and sex, which made the story more raw and realistic. The true catch of the story is the game of cat and mouse; the never-ending cycle of espionage that winds up enveloping the lives of both participants and innocents. The life and nature of spy work is portrayed quite convincingly and one has to wonder how much of it came from LeCarre's own wartime experiences. My father served in the intelligence community, and it's my knowledge of his experiences there that made me impressed with the way LeCarre's novel exposed the moral dilemmas and paradoxes associated with the perilous work of espionage. As a political science major, I found the book was a metaphor for many schools of thought dealing with world politics and human nature.
Some would complain that LeCarre's novel is all about people's feelings, is too cold, or does not have enough action packed fight scenes. They are exactly right, and those who say it takes away from the novel are missing the point. This book was written to show the world that spy work is unglamorous, unrewarding, uncertain, immoral, and cold. It serves as a reality check to those who are fascinated by spy work because they see movies like James Bond. It exposes the real world, where there is no definitive good and bad. It makes us question our own actions. Luckily for us, not all literature or film is created for pure entertainment value. Sometimes there is a brain behind the final product.
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold conveys the tragedies of war, along with the intensity of forbidden love, revenge, and betrayal. Once you pick up LeCarre's novel you will not be able to put it down. Finally doing so leaves you begging for more.
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Great Spy Novel
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-25
Well if you never read a spy novel like myself then this would be a perfect entry point. First the positives the book was great because it was not so long the book was 224 pages so if you have a couple of hours to kill or on an airplane then this would be a perfect book to read and it was great because it dealt with the cold war era which is pretty interesting stuff.
The negative would be is that it is an old book but a good book certain british lingo such as macintosh meaning raincoat is something we americans would not understand but overall it was a great book and the lingo was not too bad that it confused anyone that read it. I was hoping for a happier ending but I was bitterly disappointed with what did transpired at the end but the book did keep me interested so overall I was happy.
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The perfect novel for a 3 day weekend
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-06
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Recommended by a Washington Post article, this book does not disappoint. It starts off with action in Berlin then spins a web of deceit and lies that keep the reader engrossed. We follow our main character through twists and turns and in different countries. The climax? Completely out of left-field. Shocking. As I finished the book, I sat and started at the ending for a good five minutes.
Buy this book! A great summer read. A great weekend read. Worthy of a space on your bookshelf.
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Very clever, equally dated
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-06-17
2 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
There is no question that Le Carre casts a unique plot with this book, and he keeps his spies very much on the human side. He lets us into his characters' thoughts without giving anything away and they are not cartoonish. Although it is complelling, it becomes more of a puzzle and a history lesson about the cold war in the 60s than a genuine work of lasting literary value. Le Carre can write an amazing sentence now and then, but a story so locked into the circumstances of the day it was written in creaks with a bit of rust after 44 years. There are certain scenes and certain turns of phrase that put me off just a dash with their aged presentation, but I am old enough to remember the Berlin Wall and the machinations of both sides of the conflict, and it is a bit nostalgic to remember what things were like in the spy game before computers, satellites and cell phones. Le Carre doesn't put his heroes through the ringer the way his contemporary Alistair MacLean did, but he can write suspensefully, and ultimately this novel satisfies the need for a good yarn, as well as challenging the reader to figure out what's going on before the book's hero does. The anticommunist preachiness that creeps in is also a bit much in light of the time that has passed and what has happened in the meantime, but that goes by fairly quickly. It borders on melodrama without taking that final leap, but some of the dialog suffers all the same. It's a great taste of a bygone era of history, and of writing, and should be read as that. If you're looking for the cutting edge of spy fiction, this book lies at the other end of the scale. Anyone who writes a spy story owes Le Carre a debt for being one of the progenitors, but he didn't quite cross into literature territory the way Maughm did with the
Ashendon stories.
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