It's 1965, and the world lives on a knife's edge. After the nuclear standoff in Cuba, and with Vietnam even now becoming a major conflict zone, the Cold War is colder than ever. The Circus, home of British intelligence, has one formidable clandestine asset in Moscow: a senior officer in the Red Army who is privy to deep Soviet secrets. But when a British agent is shot on a routine visit to Helsinki, George Smiley uncovers a counter-intelligence operation that puts all that in jeopardy. The trail leads not to Berlin or Vienna but to Los Angeles, where Smiley's nemesis, the Russian master spy known only as Karla, may have a long-term, low-profile agent --- a Taper Man --- poised to expose London's man in Moscow.

It is spring in 1963, and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West’s spy war against the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only for a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumor that Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Susanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But in his absence, the shadows of Moscow have lengthened. Smiley soon finds himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come and set him on a collision course with the greatest enemy he will ever make.

Sergeant Lester Ferris, who is about to be retired, is serving out his time on the backwater island of Mancreu, a former British colony in legal limbo, belching toxic clouds of waste and facing imminent destruction by an international community concerned for their own safety. The perfect place for Lester is also the perfect location for a multinational array of shady businesses. Meanwhile, he befriends a brilliant, Internet-addled street kid with a comic-book fixation who will need a new home when the island dies.