Fictional spymaster George Smiley is back in "The Taper Man," a new thriller set in the world of John le Carré and written by his son, Nick Harkaway LONDON -- Britain is wracked with anxiety about national decline, Russians are meddling, and relations are strained with the U.K.'s American cousins. Cold War tensions with modern parallels ripple through “The Taper Man,” a new spy thriller set in the world created by the late John le Carré, and written by his son, Nick Harkaway. The novel sends British spymaster George Smiley to the U.S. in 1965, chasing a Soviet agent and negotiating a culture clash with “The Cousins,” le Carré’s fictionalized CIA.
Its title refers to a deep-cover agent left behind after a spy ring is busted, to bide their time and await instructions. Harkaway says writing a Cold War story in 2026 is like “writing in the mirror.” He said the global situation is “weirdly the same in some slightly alarming ways, it’s weirdly different in some alarming ways.” And “many of the same discussions are carrying on.” Published this week in the U.K. and Nov. 17 in the U.S. by Viking, “The Taper Man” is Harkaway’s second le Carré novel since his father’s death in 2020. Smiley is second only to James Bond in the annals of iconic fictional spies, and Harkaway was made acutely aware of the risk he was running by messing with a beloved universe.
Harkaway, whose real name is Nicholas Cornwell, is the youngest of the four sons of David Cornwell, an MI6 agent turned author who used the pen name John le Carré. Drawn to writing but keeping a distance from his father’s world, Harkaway made his name with sci-fi thrillers, including “The Gone-Away World,” “Gnomon” and “Titanium Noir." But perhaps he was fated to enter what he calls the “Smileyverse.” George Smiley’s voice was one of the first he ever heard as a child, when his father read aloud passages from his works in progress. It’s unclear whether the chair has anything to do with it, but Edward Kirke, Harkaway’s editor at Viking, said “The Taper Man” is infused with the le Carré spirit.
That lets Harkaway give the unobtrusive spy a “mouse-eye view” of Los Angeles, whose scale, landscapes and attitudes seem as alien to him as the moon. Harkaway contrasts the watching-and-listening role of British intelligence with the aggressive ethos of The Cousins, who are “warriors in this Cold War, not shadows,” and are prepared to move fast and break things, including moral boundaries. It’s a view that chimes with the outlook of le Carré, who became a strong critic of U.S. foreign policy in the post-9/11 “war on terror” years.
The Circus is a place of diligent work and office rivalries as well as risk and treachery. It’s a gritty, grubby view of espionage pushed even further in Mick Herron’s “Slow Horses” series about a group of damaged MI5 misfits. Herron has acknowledged his debt to le Carré.
And sometimes they’re hungover and sometimes they’re divorced, sometimes they are stupid and sometimes they’re clever. Sometimes the stupid ones overrule the clever ones, and intelligence work is a lottery, is a cock up, is a mess." The le Carré world continues to expand. Harkaway’s brothers run a film and TV production company behind “The Night Manager” and the upcoming BBC/MGM+ series “Legacy of Spies,” in which “Succession” star Matthew Macfadyen plays Smiley.
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