A Thrilling Spy Cover

I blogged about Call for the Dead by John Le Carré before, here and here. One of te objectives I have this year is to read more of his work, as he is a master of spy fiction, a genre I want to properly discover. But I digress. What I wanted to blog about today is how brilliant this particular cover of the novella. Everyhting there is perfect: the cold monochrome colours, rather calming but giving an icy feel, the two men in the background, one crouching slightly as in speaking in a conspirational tone, the man reading the newspaper on the foreground. There is a sober ominous tone to the whole picture. I love it, because it shows that you don't need high spectacles, guns and a sexy vamp to create a thrilling cover.