Nick Harkaway’s new spy thriller ‘The Taper Man’ sends George Smiley to the U.S. in 1965 as Cold War tensions and a culture clash with “The Cousins” unfold.
The Story
Nick Harkaway’s new spy thriller, “The Taper Man,” extends the spy world created by his late father John le Carré, sending British spymaster George Smiley to the United States in 1965.
Set two years after the events of le Carré’s breakthrough novel “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” the book follows Smiley as he pursues a Soviet agent and negotiates with “The Cousins,” le Carré’s fictionalized CIA.
The novel’s title refers to a deep-cover agent left behind after a spy ring is busted, intended to “bide their time” and await instructions.
Harkaway said writing a Cold War story in 2026 feels like “writing in the mirror,” adding that “many of the same discussions are carrying on,” even as the global situation is “weirdly the same” in some ways and “weirdly different” in others.
“The Taper Man” is Harkaway’s second le Carré novel since his father’s death in 2020. His earlier Smiley novel “Karla’s Choice,” published in 2024, reintroduced readers to Smiley, the methodical spy character from le Carré’s “The Circus.”
Harkaway, whose real name is Nicholas Cornwell, is the youngest of four sons of David Cornwell, an MI6 agent turned author who wrote under the pen name John le Carré.
In describing his approach, Harkaway said le Carré’s writing helped him because “there are no throwaway characters,” and that other figures—from a taxi driver to a bellhop—each have an “interior life.”
Among the characters returning in the new book are Control, a spy chief from “The Circus,” and Roy Bland, a left-wing firebrand turned MI6 agent who appeared in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
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