Magnus Pym, counsellor at the British Embassy in Vienna, has suddenly vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a life-time secret agent.

Pym's life it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets.

Dominated by a father of mythic dimensions, a confidence trickster on an epic scale, Pym has from the age of seventeen been controlled by two agents who have been his lifelong mentors. It is these two men, betrayed by his disappearance, who are orchestrating the search, racing each other and time itself, desperate for clues to find the perfect spy

Le Carre is a perfect spy novelist. A first rate espionage novel, perhaps his best... The New York Times