<P> Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was followed by The Honourable Schoolboy in 1977 and Smiley's People in 1979 . The three novels together make up the "Karla Trilogy", named after Smiley's long - time nemesis Karla, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence . These were later published as an omnibus edition titled Smiley Versus Karla in 1982 . </P> <P> These are the fifth, sixth, and seventh le Carré spy novels featuring George Smiley (The first four being: Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and The Looking Glass War). Two of the characters, Peter Guillam and Inspector Mendel, first appeared in le Carré's first book, Call for the Dead (1961). </P> <P> It is 1973, the height of the Cold War . George Smiley, former senior official of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (known as "the Circus" because its London office is at Cambridge Circus), has been living in unhappy retirement for a year after an operation in Czechoslovakia, codenamed Testify, ended in disaster with the capture and torture of agent Jim Prideaux . The failure resulted in the dismissals of Smiley and his superior, Control, the head of the Circus . Smiley is unexpectedly approached by Peter Guillam, his former protege at the Circus, and Under - Secretary Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service officer responsible for overseeing the Circus . At Lacon's home they meet with Ricki Tarr, a Circus agent who had been missing for months and had been declared persona - non-grata upon suspicion of having defected to Moscow . Tarr tells them of the existence of a Soviet mole at the highest level of the Circus . The mole is codenamed Gerald and is handled by Moscow Centre's agent, Polyakov, stationed at the Soviet embassy in London . Tarr tells them that when he obtained this information from a female Russian diplomat visiting Hong Kong and informed London, the woman was forcibly returned to Moscow . Tarr, realising someone in London had betrayed him, went on the run, eventually coming out to contact his former boss Guillam, the only person in the Circus he could trust . </P> <P> Smiley accepts Lacon's request to begin his investigation in absolute secrecy . He soon focuses on the details of the Circus's best source of intelligence on the Soviet Union, codenamed Merlin . Merlin had been developed and vigorously sponsored, under an operation codenamed Witchcraft, by four ambitious senior Circus men, led by Percy Alleline . Alleline had subsequently been made the head of the Circus following Control's ousting after Testify . Smiley believes the mole Gerald must be one of these four: Alleline himself, Roy Bland, Toby Esterhase, or Bill Haydon . By examining classified documents surreptitiously provided by Lacon and Guillam, Smiley discovers that the operation has a secret London end: a safe house where Alleline and his inner circle personally collect information from a Merlin emissary posted in London under diplomatic cover . Eventually, Smiley realises that the emissary must be Polyakov himself, and that the actual flow of information goes the other way, with Gerald passing actual British secrets ("gold dust") while receiving fake and worthless Soviet material ("chicken feed"). </P>

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