If pressed (go on, press me) I confirm I would describe the late John le Carre's spy fiction as canonical, most particularly The Spy who Came in from the Cold; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and A Perfect Spy. These are brilliant literary novels that evoke an underworld born of the dangerous times in which I grew up. Le Carre's later, post-cold-war novels I find a little overwrought and marginally too polemical. That is probably just me.
Nick Harkaway is le Carre's son and a very accomplished writer (this is an understatement) and he doubtless comprehended the dangers in penning a novel that fills in the gap in the dramatic timeline between The Spy who Came in, and Tinker Tailor. Karla's Choice is that book and Harkaway succeeds supremely - the three novels now stand as a captivating trilogy. I will not run any spoilers in case you have yet to encounter le Carre's (and now Harkaway's) George Smiley. I envy you the journey. For those of you who are already acquainted with Smiley, I hope the following description of this most unlikely super-spy will reassure you how well Harkaway has inhabited his leading character:
Without a tie and with several pairs of spectacles distributed around his reading-room lair, you might have taken him for anything from a schoolmaster recovering after the term time's excessive use of restorative alcohol to a bibliophile ticket collector newly pensioned from the Cornish Riviera Express.
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