Great book and well read. Michael Jayston is a great reader and lends himself to the characters.
Book is interesting and often times dramatic.

John le Carré's first novel is a subtle story of friendship, espionage, guilt and tradecraft. le Carré is one of those great genre writers who I think..Show More » will be read 200 years from now. This short first novel foreshadows many of the themes and moral ambiguities of later le Carré espionage novels.

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Not le Carré's finest, but that is like saying here a minor Faulkner, a good-effort Chandler or even a throwaway Conrad. 'A Murder of Quality' finds G..Show More »eorge Smiley out of his element (although to be fair, Smily IS defined by always being just a little out of his element). Instead of in an espionage thriller, he is dropped by le Carré into a boys school murder.

It is as if, with his second novel, le Carré is wondering whether spy fiction or detective fiction should be his future calling. It does make me briefly pause and imagine how the arc of his career might have turned out if le Carré had pursued crime instead of espionage writing.

If you are new to le Carré, don't start with this one. If you love le Carré this will be a short and interesting break from his brilliant espionage œuvre.



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I read this novel years ago, but when I saw the movie, I knew I would have to listen to the audiobook. I really liked the movie, but by the time I'd..Show More » finished the audiobook, it was clear to me (once again) that movie-making is really an exercise in making compromises. As I listened to George Smiley slowling peeling back the many layers of deception, many of which the movie barely hinted at, I found myself completely drawn again into the story in that way that only a great novelist can do. As Smiley walks the cat back, the tension builds slowly but inexorably toward exposing the bane of all counterintelligence operations, the dreaded mole.

While the movie was excellent, two main characters, Percy Alleline and Toby Esterhaze, were completely miscast as simpering morons. That said, Gary Oldman and Colin Firth nailed Le Carre's main characters so completely that as the audiobook played, I did not have to imagine what George Smiley and Bill Haydon looked like. I already knew.

It's been said before, and I agree, that Le Carre is not a great spy novelist, but rather a great novelist who happens to write about spies. The reader did a superb job. His rendering of George Smiley's understated voice was spot on.

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Well sport, this was a messy, sometimes uneven AND occasionally even a plodding novel but I absolutely loved every single word of it. Le Carré is ofte..Show More »n compared to Graham Greene, but the only real literary comparison for this novel is Joseph Conrad. I was wondering why I kept thinking of Victory and Nostromo, and why I was overcome with this desire to read The Secret Agent? Conrad's ghost floats and haunts almost every page of this wonderful, beautiful, and an ultimately sad spy novel.

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Like with the Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley's People on its own is perhaps a 4/4.5 star novel. It is fantastic, but taken as an entire work, the Karla ..Show More »Trilogy is simply amazing

A near perfect ending for one of the, if not THE, best trilogies ever (LOTR perhaps). Is there a better summation for the place we find ourselves HERE and NOW in this the 21st century? Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a fantastic spy novel that owed a lot to Graham Greene; The Honourable Schoolboy was another fantastic spy novel that owed lots to Joseph Conrad; but with Smiley's people, after reading/listening to it, you realize John le Carré owes nobody nishto now. He owns the genre.

Michael Jayston does an amazing job narrating le Carré. He belongs in the top shelf of audiobook narrators. His variation for voices is different enough to distinguished the characters, but subtle enough to not distract from the flow of the narrative or the melody of le Carré's prose.


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