Peter Guillam, a dedicated colleague and student of George Smiley, of the Secret Intelligence Service known as Circus, has retired to his family farm on the southern coast of Britain when a letter from his old service calls him to London.

The reason? His past from the Cold War era has come back to haunt him. The espionage operations of gathering information, which were once the pride of London's secret services, will now be thoroughly examined by a generation that has no memory of the Cold War. Someone will have to pay for the innocent blood that was once shed in the name of the greater good.

Artfully weaving the past with the present so that each tells its own story, John le Carré offers us a novel of exceptional and timeless quality.