Upon hearing that John le Carré, spy novelist maestro, has a novelist son writing an additional, ninth volume in the George Smiley canon, what is a sensible reaction? I suggest to you most readers would be as skeptical as I was. Yet it only took a few pages of Karla’s Choice to make me gasp with astonishment. Nick Harkaway seems to have stepped right away from his prior seven novels and imbibed his father’s genius. On the page, Harkaway reads like, sounds like, and feels like John le Carré, to an amazing and gratefully received extent. For Karla’s Choice is brilliant. Set at the height of the Cold War in 1963, it stars, of course, George Smiley, rotund, mild-mannered super spy, who has resigned to restore his marriage. Summoned for a quick temporary job when a Soviet killer sent to assassinate a Hungarian emigre in London defects, he plunges in. An intricate game of intricate spying ensues, behind which sits Smiley’s nemesis, and the book’s plot roars along with great gusto. Best of all, Harkaway’s prose is pitch perfect, that rolling deluge of rhythmic, complex paragraphs. That the grand master’s son should produce the best spy novel of 2025 startles me, but don’t take my word for it, run to buy Karla’s Choice.
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