Dipping into a little bit of le Carré every so often has been a fun venture in my reading life over the past year or so. His books differ slightly from my usual tastes in terms of subject matter and, well, heavy male focus, but the three books I've so far read of the Smiley series have all been solidly enjoyable reads for me.

This installment, however, fell a bit flat.

The setup in the beginning really intrigued me — austere Scandanavian airport in the middle of nowhere, a spy who's not the brightest, a mysterious Citeron, a roll of film, a snowbank. When we return to London and the picture bigger is slowly revealed, that was all intriguing, too. But after about the halfway point, everything interesting to me just dissipated almost entirely.

The rest was a lot of men hanging around, complaining about women, 'preparing' for a mission that only came at the very end. It was clear throughout this that there was something larger than the Department going on, but I never felt like this was satisfactorily explained, at least enough to justify all of the build-up that, to me, never seemed to really go anywhere. The ending was a bit boring and rather confusing, and, again, no true motive was ever really revealed — it was more left to the reader to see how the characters had been played.

However, I am hopeful that this was just a brief dip in terms of my overall enjoyment of the Smiley books. Thankfully, this book closes a chapter in the series that opens on to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which I am very excited to get to soon.