[1] It features George Smiley, the most famous of le Carré's recurring characters, in his only book set outside the espionage community.

Brimley, who personally runs the magazine's advice column, receives a letter from a reader, Stella Rode, who claims that her husband, a public school junior master in the town of Carne, is plotting to kill her.

But Rigby's superior believes that the murder was perpetrated by a homeless madwoman, Janey Lynn, whom Stella had befriended.

Presenting himself as a representative of Brimley's magazine who is writing Stella's obituary, Smiley talks to some of the Carne School faculty and to others in the town who knew the Rodes.

The examination of Stella's body has told the police that the murderer must have been "covered in blood," but little physical evidence was found at the crime scene.

In one such parcel she finds clothing stained with blood, including a plastic raincoat, the "silver wings" described by Janey; apparently the killer wore it to protect himself from bloodstains and then put it into one of the boxes that was sent on to the charity.

Another key piece of evidence seems to be Stanley's briefcase containing the exam questions, left unattended for a time at Fielding's place on the night of the murder.

When Tim Perkins, a boy in Fielding's school house, achieves a suspiciously high score on the exam after Stella's death, it looks as though he may have cheated by examining the contents of the briefcase before Stanley retrieved it later that night.

Suspicion grows when Perkins is found lying dead at the side of the road after being killed in a hit and run.

Perkins had to die because he had cheated for himself on the exam, meaning that he had seen the contents of the briefcase the night of Stella's murder and could expose Fielding's attempt to frame Stanley.

It stars Denholm Elliott as George Smiley, Glenda Jackson as Ailsa Brimley, Joss Ackland as Terence Fielding, Billie Whitelaw as Mad Janie, David Threlfall as Stanley Rode and a teenage Christian Bale as Tim Perkins.