A Perfect Spy

A Perfect Spy is a novel by the English writer John le Carre, published in 1986. It is about the mental and moral dissolution of a high-ranking intelligence officer, and a good deal of it is drawn from the author's own life.

Magnus Pym is the man at the centre of it. He is ostensibly a diplomat in Vienna and also a spy, and he lives there with his wife Mary and their son Tom. When he returns to England for his father's funeral he vanishes.

The intelligence service searches for him, and what the search establishes is that he had been working for the Czechoslovak secret service for most of his career. The novel is his life story, and the relationship between him and his father Rick is the part of it that matters most.

Le Carre has said that the book is the most autobiographical of his novels, and the account of a son and a charming, dishonest father is the piece of it that reviewers have most often noticed.