Gentlemen and Players

By: Joanne Harris

Narrated by: Steven Pacey

Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times best-selling author takes a riveting new direction with this richly textured, multi-layered novel of friendship, murder, revenge, and class conflict set in an upper-crust English school - as enthralling and haunting as Ian McKewan's Atonement and Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley

Audere, agere, auferre.

To dare, to strive, to conquer.

For generations, elite young men have attended St. Oswald's School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric classics teacher who has been a revered fixture for more than 30 years. But this year, things are different. Suits, paperwork, and Information Technology rule the world, and Straitley is reluctantly contemplating retirement. He is joined in this, his 99th, term by five new faculty members, including one who - unknown to Straitley and everyone else - holds intimate and dangerous knowledge of St. Ozzie's ways and secrets, it's comforts and conceits. Harboring dark ties to the school's past, this young teacher has arrived with one terrible goal: Destroy St. Oswald's.

As the new term gets underway, a number of incidents befall students and faculty alike. Beginning as small annoyances - a lost pen, a misplaced coffee mug - they soon escalate to the life threatening. With the school unraveling, only Straitley stands in the way of St. Ozzie's ruin. But the old man faces a formidable opponent - a master player with a strategy that has been meticulously planned to the final move.

A harrowing tale of cat and mouse told in alternating voices, this riveting, hypnotically atmospheric novel showcases Joanne Harris' astonishing storytelling talent as never before.

©2006 Frogspawn, Ltd. (P)2006 BBC Audiobooks America & HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Best of all is a dazzling climactic twist...its last move is a winner." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Harris combines the conventions of the academic novel -its vicious politicking and rich dynamics - with the taut suspense of a thriller as she leaves tantalizing clues as to the perpetrator's identity....This is one hypnotic page-turner." (Booklist)

Terrific thriller

What a great book! I couldn't stop listening. Great narration, tremendous suspense. Highly recommended.

Well worth your time.

An interesting story with a great surprise ending. Very well written and kept my interest throughout.

Marvelous

I really enjoyed this novel. In addition to being quite a good suspense story, it has all sorts of great little pieces of sly humor about educational bureaucracy and academic foibles. I loved it.

College

I had to read G&P along with 3 other books for a sociology class I had and this audio book saved my life!

Which is the gentlemen and which is the player?

Engrossing mystery set in one of my favorite literary environments—a British boarding school. Sabotage and scandal are afoot at this illustrious upper class boarding school. One of our narrators is the victim and one is the perpetrator. I gave the book four stars because although plot twists and thrilling turns abound, there are some plot holes that left me unsatisfied. The motive for the saboteur’s revenge seems a bit thin, but is interesting nonetheless. I plan to re-read and listen for clues to the ending within the text.

superbly crafted

I did have a bit of a hard time getting into this story, but I am glad I stuck with it. Superbly crafted mystery novel plus perfect narration - a great listening experience.

Wonderful read

I could not put my ipod down. I shut my eyes and I was transported to a West End theatre where I was entertained by a cast of amazing characters. The reader was magnificent, the plot was top notch British--very dramatic, full of the intellectual.

Diabolical cat and mouse

This is a revenge story in the extreme. Seeking payback for years of being invisible and irrelevant, "Snide", now reinvented as a novice instructor at St. Oswalds private school for boys, sets about manipulating teachers, students and administrators in an inticately planned plot to destroy the school. Half the story is told through Snide's eyes, including the childhood history that set current events in motion. The counterpoint is the narrative of Roy Straightly, classics professor and the one instructor who has the best chance of figuring out and stopping the plot.

This is not an action packed thriller, but a slowly paced, meticulouly detailed cat and mouse game in which the tension comes from knowing the POV of both the cat and the mouse. We don't know the current identity of Snide, so that becomes part of the guessing game. I actually did figure out who it must be about half way through, and from that point it was a matter of how to stop the cat from anihilating the mouse. Good twists, extremely well written and very well narrated. Small complaint that it got a bit talky at the point that Straightly confronts Snide - in the tradition of TV villians who give a monologue about why they have done what they've done. Wrapped up in an unconventional way that I'm not sure if I liked or not, but I do appreciate that the ending was not predictable.

Loved it.

A fun and clever thriller set at St. Oswald's, a venerable exclusive private school for boys with a long history and a solid reputation. There are two narrators relating the story, the first being Roy Straitley, the Classics teacher with the heart of gold who is looking forward to his "century", i.e. his 100th term at the school, and the second being the now grown child of the school's former caretaker, who had developed an unhealthy fixation on the institution and one of it's students in pre-pubescence, and is now out to bring St. Oswald's down in a chaos of carefully orchestrated scandals and meticulously planned murders. We know from the very beginning that people will get killed, though we don't know who, why, how nor when, nor whether Straitley will end up as the hero who saves the day, or as one of the killer's victims... or possibly both?

Loved Steven Pacey's performance and will be on the lookout for more audiobooks narrated by him.

Wicked, dark, and funny...

This was a page turner full of twists and surprises. Harris is one of my favorite writers. Her writing reels me on with its horror and keeps holds me with her wicked humor.