Silverview
Silverview is a spy thriller novel by the British author John le Carré, published posthumously on 12 October 2021 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House.[1]
The story centers on Julian Lawndsley, a 33-year-old former London financier who abandons his high-pressure career to open a bookshop in a quiet East Anglian seaside town, where he encounters the charismatic but unreliable Edward Avon, a Polish émigré with ties to the British secret service, drawing him into a clandestine operation to address a major security breach.[2][3]
At 224 pages, it stands as le Carré's shortest adult novel and his final full-length work, discovered in draft form among his papers following his death in December 2020, with minimal editorial intervention beyond light copy-editing by his literary executor.[1][2]
The narrative explores enduring le Carré themes of loyalty, betrayal, and the moral ambiguities of intelligence work, set against a fragmented modern British Secret Service grappling with internal divisions and external threats.[4][5]
While praised for its elegant prose and characteristic tension, reception has been mixed, with critics noting it as an enjoyable but lesser entry in le Carré's canon, potentially feeling abrupt or underdeveloped compared to his masterpieces like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.[4][6][3]