YMMV / The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Just how much of Leamas' cover as a bitter, disillusioned alcoholic is an act?
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: In the 1991 foreword to The Looking Glass War, Le Carré said that he felt The Spy had glamorized espionage by making Control such a fiendishly brilliant spymaster, and that the final showdown at the Berlin Wall with Liz and Leamas Together in Death had made the book end on too romantic a note.
• Sacred Cow: You'd be hard-pressed to find any "Greatest Spy Novels" listicle that doesn't have this book in the top five.
• Sequel Displacement: So much so that Cold got a cinematic adaptation two years before its direct predecessor, Call for the Dead, did.