A Murder of Quality by John le CarréMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jacket Blurb: John le Carré's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him -- and his hero, British secret Service Agent George Smiley -- unprecedented worldwide acclaim
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George Smiley was simply doing a favor for Miss Ailsa Brimley, and old friend and editor of a small newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried reader: "I'm not mad. And I know my husbad is trying to kill me." But the letter had arrived too late: its scribe, the wife of an assistant master at the distinguished Carne School, was already dead.
So George Smiley went to Carne to listen, ask questions, and think. And to uncover, layer by layer, the complex network of skeletons and hatreds that comprised that little English institution.
Read as an audio book.
There are enough reviews summarizing the book that I'm going to skip the rehashing part.
This second installment is not a spy story, it's a classic mystery. I'm not entirely sure that George Smiley solved the mystery so much as he poked around enough that the antagonist finally cracked. I think it also needs to be said, this was Mr. le Carré's second book and here, in the 2020's, it is easy to look back and say this wasn't a polished book, it lacked this or that, etc. It was the authors second book written 60 years ago>/i>. It has the feel of a new author getting their literary feet under them.
I rather think it is going to be interesting to watch Mr. le Carré's writing prowess develop as the series unfold, to watch as outside events shaped the coming plot lines, to see little snippets of the past from the present. The best part, I don't have to wait for coming installments!
But back to the book. I mostly enjoyed this. I had some trouble with the narration in that I wasn't always sure of which character was speaking and where the sentence breaks were. Was this a function of poor reading? I have no way of knowing - but I was frequently a bit confused as to who was talking to whom. I would just zone out for a bit until the story got back on track and I was on more solid ground character-wise.
It is a twisty-turny mystery, with obvious red-herrings, obfuscation, and not so subtle social commentary. I quite enjoy these older mysteries because they tend to be on the shorter side - the paperback came in at 160 pages and the audio book was about five hours? It was short. A nice "snack" that I can enjoy on my daily commute but doesn't take a month to read.
Recommended if you enjoy older, British, thinking type mysteries.
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