[Le Carré's] new novel, which marks a sharp break away from the tortured world of George Smiley and his colleagues at the Circus, springs from the author's complete immersion in the stream of Middle-East terror and counterterror. They spill out into many of the European cities to which the action of The Little Drummer Girl takes us. Le Carré entered that grim world looking for a fresh plot for Smiley, but he soon discovered that the locale demands a cast of entirely new characters. So he has given us Kurtz, Litwak, Ned Quilley, Tayeh, Salim, Khalil, the indomitable Joseph whose real name is Gadi Becker, together with a troop of subsidiary people, each drawn so as to be sharply remembered. Then, of course, there is Charmian, the girl, the drummer girl, known as "Charlie," or "Chas," or often "Charlie the Red," in deference to the color of...