A Delicate Truth

A Novel

By: John le Carré

Narrated by: John le Carré

Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

From the New York Times best-selling author of A Legacy of Spies. John le Carré’s new novel: Agent Running in the Field.

A counter-terrorist operation, code-named Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: To capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: An ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister’s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be - or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher “Kit” Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit’s daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?

©2013 John le Carré (P)2013 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"A novel that beckons us beyond any and all expectations." (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post)

Master writer, master narrator

I am a long-time Le Carre fan and was not disappointed by this story, although the ending does leave one hanging. I also didn't know what a great narrator he is.

Good story but an abrupt end

Did le Carre reach his word quota and decide to stop writing? Good buildup but no climax.

Brilliant All The Way Around

A Fabulous Treat! Thank you Mr LeCarre. I look for your genius in print and the wait is always worth the while. Now in Audio you deliver the package of your brilliance as the Master of all masters! Encore! Encore!

A latter-day Jeremiah of espionage & statecraft.

If for whatever reason, during the last twenty years, you've missed John le Carré's anger, and if his last 10 books were too subtle for you, and if you didn't catch le Carré's moral outrage in 'the Constant Gardner' and 'a Most Wanted Man', then you might need to skip 'A Delicate Truth'. In his newest novel, John le Carré tackles the amoral world of private contract espionage, rendition, and ineptness. Le Carré attacks Western ethics, Western hypocrisy, the West's venal “war gone corporate.”

John le Carré war is a battle of young idealism vs amoral and often incompetent mercenaries. It is a war of principled, but flawed individuals vs what Olen Steinhauer summarized as the "shortsightedness, hypocrisy, lies and unfettered greed that plagues the “post-imperial, post-cold-war world".

This isn't the most artful of le Carré's novels, but it is probably one of his sharpest. He dares the reader to follow him in his role as a latter-day Jeremiah of espionage and statecraft. He condemns the hypocrisy and the false gods of the Post-Iraq War/WOT West in his aim to "root out, pull down, destroy and throw down" the inhuman idols of the West. His NeoCon critics might aim for le Carré's eyes, but they can't destroy his vision or overlook his balls

Unsurpassable

It’s as if your own brain is telling you the story. Lecrae is the best reader of novels that I have heard. I would recommend this book to anyone who cares about knowing how the real world works and wants to be entertained by it. The spy craft is as always impeccable.

Inconsistant and Uneven

John le Carre is a master of suspense and storytelling, and his own work sets a standard to which A Delicate Truth fails to attain. The secret mission to which “Paul Anderson” is sent is farcical, his role and the dialog just silly. The book only gets interesting and suspenseful when it shifts focus to the parallel story of Toby, of the foreign office. The book seems written with two distinct efforts, the second, the masterful le Carre of old, and the first, a bungled attempt to string together a story to unravel in the second half of the book. In the same way, the author’s narration of his own work makes it riveting in the second half, while the first half his slushy slurring reading is a distraction and his accented characters distinctly lesser than later in his reading. All in all for readers of le Carre this book ends with enough of his former skills to warrant a read, thought it’s a bumpy one.

Le Carre is a great actor as well as great writer

I love hearing John Le Carre read his books. One of the best. Ever.

A rare tolerable, reading by LeCarre

Write what you know… and LeCarre Is a brilliant writer, but his readings are usually distracting from the story. For this book, though he did an admirable if not excellent job the characters nuances did come out clearly. the story itself I learned was inspired by an actual event involving the IRA.

I haven't enjoyed a tale this much in many listens

Although this is didactic Le Carre -- a cautionary tale of war and intelligence gone corporate -- it’s also a very exciting listen. Le Carre's plot, prose, character, and dialogue are superior to any other espionage novelist I've encountered, and he’s at his best when creating ethical dilemmas (though any including defense contractors and lobbyist-types are less morally ambiguous than in some of his classic novels!)

I loved loved loved being read to by Le Carre! The narration is actually excellent once your ear tunes into him, except for one questionable production choice, an incident of which pops up in the audio sample provided: A "handler" when on a telephone echoes like bad long distance circa cold war landlines. This is not characteristic of the listen as a whole, however.

As a novel this may not stand among Le Carre’s finest, but as a contemporary espionage yarn it can’t be beat. There are some now standard le Carre characters and political stances, but what delightful dialogue, character observation and sharp turns-of-phrases. Graham Greene would have loved this entertainment.

This novel reminds me of why I love reading. Having the author tell me the story and "turn his own phrase" and "bite" his own dialogue is icing.

Stunning, as always. Read by the master himself!

My mother-in-law turned me on to the works of John LeCarre more than 15 years ago, with "Smiley's People" and since that time I've read everything I could get my hands on. John LeCarre is not only a master of the spy genre, but literature itself. His prose is precise and beautiful; often times I'll find myself re-reading lines or paragraphs just to enjoy the way he phrases things so artfully. His characters and the stories they inhabit are unmatched. No punches are pulled and his works are based in a world much closer to reality than the "we're good/infallible/always heroic and justice driven" world of most fiction (and most politicians). If near-immortality is ever scientifically possible, I'm hoping LeCarre uses whatever contacts he may still maintain in the intelligence world to prolong his life (and continue writing).