LeCarre pays a visit to Peter Guillam in this book that unearths Guillam's involvement with Alec Leamas and takes the reader behind the scenes portrayed in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Guillam's mentor George Smiley looms in the background of the novel. LeCarre fans will not be disappointed as the narrator, and the author behind him, revisits the toll taken on lives during the Cold War and the consequences of his part in it.