The perfection of the pacing and plot aside, John le Carré is an exceptional writer, giving just the right detail to create a scene and navigating the complexities of class and society with an artists ease. The characters have their unique views and they express them profoundly.

Plus his spy-jargon is pitch-perfect and so smoothly inserted into the story that it took me half the book to realise I was reading something like "the headmen scoping a deaddrop picked up a double they could use for stock with the Cousins" and knew exactly what was going on without even thinking about it.