Spy Who Came In From the Cold - John Le Carre

Alec Leamas is a world weary secret agent for British counter-intelligence, working out of Berlin. He has been running a network of agents in Berlin for many years, very successfully, but recently things have been going wrong, and when his last agent is shot and killed trying to crossover into the West, he returns to England. His boss, Control, asks him to do one final very important (and very dangerous) assignment, a devious plan designed to result in the death of the powerful head of East German intelligence. Leamas agrees... I'd heard a lot about John Le Carre, and seen many of his books in the library and bookshops. His name seems to be synonymous with ...  Read the complete review

A must-read. - Advantages: Simply a most profound 20th-century novel I read, If you care for movie American Beauty, you might have stopped to ponder at the line "You've treated her like an employee!" The novel shows what the universal "treatment" is about. , If you are looking for a mirror, it will put you in the picture. - Disadvantages: Seems to be a "for-men-only" stuff.