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Highly recommended: The trilogy of novels Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) , The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) , and Smiley's People (1979) On DVD: Happily, both Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People were beautifully adapted for the small screen (and shown on PBS) with Sir Alec Guinness playing spymaster George Smiley. Available from Amazon

John Le Carré (David Cornwell 1931- )

Dean of Cold War spy novelists, John Le Carré surged to popularity with The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, his 1963 story of espionage set against the moral decay of both East and West. A former British Intelligence officer himself, he captured the Cold War with an authentic voice and vulnerable characters, never more convincingly than in the trilogy of tales recommended here:

In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), a story set mostly in London, master spy George Smiley is called from retirement to smoke out a Soviet "mole" in the top ranks of British intelligence. Smiley strikes back at Soviet spymaster "Karla" in The Honourable Schoolboy (1977) by sending a hand-picked agent, Jerry Westerby, to confront Karla's network in Hong Kong, Cambodia and Vietnam. The Karla saga concludes with Smiley's People (1979) in which the aging George Smiley manipulates events in Bern, Hamburg and Berlin to finally overcome his Soviet nemesis.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 attacks and Iraq war, the prolific Le Carré (19 novels and counting) moved on to explore more contemporary subjects (for example, corporate corruption in The Constant Gardener, which became a successful motion picture in 2005), but turned back to the Cold War for inspiration with his latest novel, Absolute Friends (2003).

John le Carré, [pen name for David Cornwell] attended the universities of Berne and Oxford, taught at Eton and spent five years in the British Foreign Service.

Read his own words describing himself and his writing to his publisher's sales force, and an interview in Salon on publication of The Tailor of Panama. In "Espionage Lit" Aleksandar Hemon [Slate, 6/14/04] addresses "the enduring relevance of John le Carré's Cold War novels."