Smiley Begins Again
Review of the Penguin Classics 60th Anniversary hardcover edition (2022) of the original Gollancz hardcover (1961)

Smiley shrugged. “They dreamed of peace and freedom. Now they’re murderers and spies.”

I re-read Call for the Dead during a John le Carré binge after the author's death in 2020. I reviewed it then as Smiley Begins. I won't repeat the information from that review which was mostly about introducing the George Smiley character. Smiley was a former spy and agent handler for what the author called The Circus, his invented fictional name for the British Secret Service.

I'm now re-binging Carré after reading Silverview (2021), A Private Spy: The Letters of John Le Carré (2022) and the memoir The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (2016) and after seeing the latter's film adaptation at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival in September.

I'm going to look for all the previous novels that I had overlooked, but I couldn't resist a nostalgic re-read of Carré's first novel, written mostly on his morning commutes into London while he was still working for the Secret Service himself. This 60th Anniversary edition from Penguin Classics includes a new introduction written by the author prior to his passing.

For me, Call for the Dead still stands up as a strong first novel and as an excellent introduction to Carré's cynical world of espionage. It mixes the world of spies and detectives, as Smiley and his policeman friend Mendel investigate the apparent suicide of a foreign office employee. The clue which ignites Smiley's doubt about the suicide is that the dead man had requested a wakeup/reminder call for the morning after his death i.e. the "Call for the Dead". The resulting investigation uncovers a nest of spies.

See cover image at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/CallForTheDead.jpg
The front cover of the original 1961 Gollancz (UK) hardcover edition. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

Soundtrack
See soundtrack album cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/The_Deadly_Affair_%28album%29.jpg
The soundtrack for the film adaptation (renamed as The Deadly Affair, see below under Trivia) was composed by Quincy Jones and the featured song “Who Needs Forever?” was sung by Astrud Gilberto. You can hear the song from the film soundtrack here.

Trivia and Links
Call for the Dead was adapted for film as The Deadly Affair (1967) directed by Sidney Lumet and starring James Mason in the George Smiley role, renamed as Charles Dobbs as Paramount did not have the screen rights to the George Smiley character name which had been acquired by Columbia for The Spy That Came In From The Cold (1965). You can see a trailer for the film here. ( )

Cornwell-Carré's first novel and the introduction of characters George Smiley, Mundt, and Peter Guillam. As other reviewers have said, it is sort of a murder mystery with spies. It is interesting to see where it all started. The germs of various themes, character traits, and character relationships are here waiting for le Carré to figure out how to develop them. ( )

elefon till den döde är första boken om George Smiley - den stillsamme, till det yttre ganska oansenlige man som är brittiska underrättelsetjänstens skickligaste agent.

Fallet Fennan verkar vara ett rent rutinärende. Men den unge diplomaten skjuter sig på kvällen efter sitt första samtal med Smiley, som fått i uppdrag att kontrollera hans politiska lojalitet. Varför har Fennan då bett om ett nytt samtal, undrar Smiley, och varför har han beställt telefonväckning till nästa morgon? Är det verkligen självmord? Knappast, anser Smiley. Men vem har röjt Fennan ur vägen? Och varför? Och vad är det Fennans hustru försöker dölja?

i'm too dumb for this shit

that's one convoluted plot, and i play metal gear games

edit: i read it again. it's good. wow almost a year to the day that i read it last ( )

I'd never previously read this first of LeCarré's books featuring unlikely spy George Smiley, but I'm on a mission to read them all in sequence in 2020 and it seemed like a logical place to begin. This short book left me with a pleasant feeling of settling in with an old friend, both in terms of Smiley's character and LeCarré's writing.

I've read that there is no particular value to reading these books in order, and I can see why it might make sense for a reader to become immersed in the Karla trilogy first. There is certainly more texture and an elevated level of tension in those books when compared with Call for The Dead.

In this entry the author describes a backstory for Smiley that I found satisfying, well suited to this tale (note, though, that LeCarré reinvents this background as it suits the plot of subsequent entries in the series). And it is far less opaque than the later volumes. It's much easier to follow the direction of the story here than it is in the Karla books, for instance.

If I were reviewing this as a newly issued book, I would take exception to the conclusion. Not to how the events are resolved, but to the fact that LeCarré has us inside Smiley's head as he puts all the pieces together, but then has a final scene where Smiley recounts everything again for the other two principals. It felt a bit as if he was trying to pad the ending of what is basically a very short book.

But I won't quibble over that. Call of the Dead left me primed and ready to enjoy more of Smiley throughout the rest of the year. ( )