Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré.

Called back from the margins of British intelligence, George Smiley must identify a Soviet agent inside its leadership. John le Carré turns the investigation inward, toward an institution whose habits of secrecy make both trust and betrayal difficult to recognize.

The interest lies as much in compromised loyalties as in the solution. It is a sharp book for discussing the price of service when loyalty to an institution comes into conflict with judgment about the people running it.