They were always in mourning at Carne; the small boys because they must stay and the big boys because they must leave,the masters because respectability was underpaid; and now,as the Lent Half (as the Easter term was called) drew to its end,the cloud of gloom was as firmly settled as ever over the grey towers of Carne.
Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort,with her doilies and china ducks,and secondly by being murdered.
George Smiley,who has his own connection with the school,is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. Smiley knows that Stella feared her husband would murder her,but as he probes further beneath Carne's respectable veneer,he uncovers far more than a simple crime of passion.
In his second George Smiley novel,le Carré moves outside the world of espionage to reveal the secrets at the heart of another particularly English institution. The result is a pitch-perfect murder mystery,with Smiley as master detective.
'Beautifully intelligent,satiric and witty.'Daily Telegraph
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 9780141196374Number of pages: 192Weight: 145 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 11 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Beautifully elegant,satiric and witty
John le Carré
One of the greatest spy novelists of all time,John le Carré was born in 1931. His third novel,The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,secured him a worldwide reputation,which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People all featuring his most famous character,George Smiley,the quintessential Cold War operative. An antidote to Fleming's racier James Bond,Smiley is cool,thoughtful,somewhat academic and (superficially) "breathtakingly normal"with a somewhat ambivalent attitude to the Service and its efficacy. His other novels,thrillers which range widely covering variously political issues of the arms trade,modern conflict and drug-trafficking,include: A Most Wanted Man,Our Kind of Traitor,A Delicate Truth and the recently adapted The Night Manager. His only work of non-fiction,The Pigeon Tunnel,was a Number One bestseller in 2016.
Visit the John le Carré author page
Kommentar