Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a spy novel by John le Carré, first published in 1974. It is the first volume of a three-book series informally known as The Karla Trilogy, followed by The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. All three novels were published as a single-volume omnibus, The Quest for Karla. These three books are also the 5th, 6th, and 7th novel in the entire series of Smiley novels. In the novel, George Smiley, the old, estranged, overweight, taciturn and sharp-minded protagonist, is recalled from his uneasy retirement when there are signs that one of the top-ranking officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service (referred to throughout as "The Circus") is a Soviet mole.