"The undisputed master returns with a riveting new book--his first Smiley novel in more than twenty-five years. Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations...

"It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West's spy war against the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only for a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumor that George Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be...

George Smiley goes to the aid of his former colleague, Ailsa Brimley after she receives a letter from a woman predicting her own murder and naming her husband as the killer. After the woman is found dead, they uncover secret societies, sexual abuse, and a mysterious boy.

At the height of the Cold War, a former agent for the British Secret Intelligence Service is called back to root out a Russian spy who has infiltrated the organization's highest levels.