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A Legacy of Spies
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Tom Hollander
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
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Night Manager: Enter the new world of post-Cold War espionage. Penetrate the secret world of ruthless arms dealers and drug smugglers who have risen to unthinkable power and wealth. Our Game: With the Cold War fought and won, British spymaster Tim Cranmer accepts early retirement to rural England and a new life with his alluring young mistress, Emma.... Tailor of Panama: Le Carre's Panama is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption. It is also the country which on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal.
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From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels.
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Abandoned by his parents, Bruno Salvador has long looked for guidance. He found it in Mr. Anderson of British Intelligence. Working for Anderson in a clandestine facility, Salvo (as he's known) translates intercepted phone calls, bugged recordings, and snatched voice-mail messages. When Anderson sends him to a mysterious island to interpret during a secret conference, Bruno thinks he is helping Britain--but then he hears something he should not have.
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The never-before-seen correspondence of John le Carré, one of the most important novelists of our generation, is collected in this beautiful volume. During his lifetime, le Carré wrote numerous letters to writers, spies, politicians, artists, actors and public figures. This collection is a treasure trove, revealing the late author's humor, generosity, and wit—a side of him many listeners have not previously seen.
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Le Carre's Panama is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption. It is also the country which on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal.
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By: John le Carré
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Save Time and Listen. Don't read
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By: John le Carré
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After the assassination of his wife and son, Gabriel Allon retires from his brutal anti-terrorist career and loses himself in his previous cover job: art restoration. But when Tariq al-Hourani, the Palestinian terrorist responsible for his family’s death, begins a killing spree designed to destroy Middle East peace talks, Gabriel once again slips into the shadowy world of international intrigue. In a global game of hide-and-seek, the motives of Gabriel and Tariq soon become more personal than political.
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Reluctant Assassin
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The Evening and the Morning
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- Narrated by: John Lee
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Performance
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Story
It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns. In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined.
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I was really waiting for this book!
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By: Ken Follett
Publisher's summary
Number-one New York Times best-seller.
The undisputed master returns with his first Smiley novel in more than 25 years - a number-one New York Times best-seller and ideal holiday gift.
Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley, and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications.
Interweaving past with present so that each may tell its own intense story, John le Carré has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In a story resonating with tension, humor, and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator, Peter Guillam, present the listener with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.
Critic reviews
“[Le Carré's] novels are so brilliant because they’re emotionally and psychologically absolutely true, but of course they’re novels.” (New York Times Book Review)
"[Le Carré] can convey a character in a sentence, land an emotional insight in [a] phrase & demolish an ideology in a paragraph." (Publishers Weekly [starred])
“Any reader who knows le Carré's earlier work, and quite a few who don't, will assume that any attempt to second-guess the mandarins of the Service will backfire. The miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.” (Kirkus)
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When Finn, a former British spy, is poisoned by a Russian assassin, his ex-boss Adrian, chief of MI6, wants vengeance. He also wants answers - information that only Finn's widow, Anna, knows. Taken to America for protection and information, the former Russian agent faces her greatest test: to ensure her freedom and protect her child, she must uncover the full truth before anyone else - even as friend and foe both set her in their sights.
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Instriguing spy story. Excellent reader.
- By richard reznichek on 12-08-12
By: Alex Dryden
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Topaz
- By: Leon Uris
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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On the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Paris, 1962, Devereaux and Nordstrom uncover Soviet plans to ship nuclear arms. But when nobody acts after sharing his findings, Devereaux becomes the target of an assassination attempt and soon realizes the plot extends far beyond Cuba - and himself. A thrilling and well-paced novel filled with Cold War intrigue, Topaz features two agents on a journey around the world to save NATO and themselves.
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A spy thriller in disguise
- By Shmuel M on 04-14-19
By: Leon Uris
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Babylon Berlin
- Gereon Rath, Book 1
- By: Volker Kutscher
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Berlin, 1929. Detective Inspector Rath was a successful career officer in the Cologne Homicide Division before a shooting incident in which he inadvertently killed a man. He has been transferred to the vice squad in Berlin, a job he detests even though he finds a new friend in his boss, Chief Inspector Wolter. There is seething unrest in the city, and the Commissioner of Police has ordered the vice squad to ruthlessly enforce the ban on May Day demonstrations.
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It's no Bernie Gunther Mystery ...
- By Brian English on 01-28-18
By: Volker Kutscher
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A Spy by Nature
- A Novel
- By: Charles Cumming
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Alec Milius is young, smart, and ambitious. He also has a talent for deception. He is working in a dead-end job when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, the elite British Secret Intelligence Service, handing him an opportunity to play center stage in a dangerous game of espionage.
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I highly recommend this little gem
- By Chou Young on 02-14-08
By: Charles Cumming
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Eichmann in My Hands
- A First-Person Account by the Israeli Agent Who Captured Hitler's Chief Executioner
- By: Peter Z. Malkin, Harry Stein
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1960 Argentina, a covert team of Israeli agents hunted down the most elusive war criminal alive: Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the Holocaust. The young spy who tackled Eichmann on a Buenos Aires street - and fought every compulsion to strangle the Obersturmführer then and there - was Peter Z. Malkin. For decades Malkin's identity as Eichmann's captor was kept secret. Here he reveals the entire breathtaking story - from the genesis of the top-secret surveillance operation to the dramatic public capture and smuggling of Eichmann to Israel to stand trial.
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Excellent the first person account
- By Barrett Francescatti on 02-09-22
By: Peter Z. Malkin, and others
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The Ghost Writer
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Roger Rees
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Adam Lang has been Britain’s longest serving—and most controversial—prime minister of the last half century. As pressure mounts for Lang to complete this memoirs, he hires a professional ghostwriter to finish the book. As he sets to work, the ghostwriter discovers many more secrets than Lang intends to reveal, secrets with the power to alter world politics - secrets with the power to kill.
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Too close to the truth?
- By carl801 on 11-24-07
By: Robert Harris
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A Great Deliverance
- Inspector Lynley, Book 1
- By: Elizabeth George
- Narrated by: Donada Peters
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an ax in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry".
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good debut novel
- By Stevon on 11-11-19
By: Elizabeth George
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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Shattered
- By: Dick Francis
- Narrated by: Fiacre Douglas
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When jockey Martin Stukely dies after a fall at Cheltenham, he accidentally embroils his friend Gerard Logan in a perilous search for a stolen videotape. Logan is a glassblower on the verge of widespread acclaim.
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Narrator has flat, almost mechanical voice!
- By Jaegersmum on 05-21-14
By: Dick Francis
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River of Darkness
- By: Rennie Airth
- Narrated by: Christopher Kay
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1921, the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two staff are found in a manor house in Surrey. The police have put the murders down to a violent robbery, but Detective Inspector Madden from Scotland Yard has his own suspicions. In the meantime the killer is plotting his second strike.
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New Mystery Written in 1920's Style-What A Thrill!
- By Nancy J on 06-27-12
By: Rennie Airth
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The Echo
- By: Minette Walters
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Best-selling author Minette Walters captivates mystery aficionados throughout the world with her evocative, multi-layered novels, which have been translated into 22 languages. In The Echo she spins a finely-wrought web of secrets and betrayals, love and guilt that entangles everyone who touches it. A homeless man has been found dead of starvation—huddled next to a food-filled freezer—in a London socialite’s garage.
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Cumbersome, dull and not worth the time
- By Celia on 04-08-14
By: Minette Walters
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Back Channel
- By: Stephen L. Carter
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
October, 1962, in Cuba: Soviet ships off-load what intelligence reveals to be nuclear missiles. In Washington, President Kennedy and his advisers are in furious debate over how long they can wait to discover what the Soviets intend before dropping the first bomb. And, in Ithaca, New York, Margo Jensen - a 19-year-old Cornell sophomore - is swept up in a bizarre concatenation of circumstances that will make of her the back-channel liaison between Soviet Premier Khrushchev and Kennedy.
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GREAT spy thriller!
- By Mark on 12-04-16
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I haven't enjoyed a tale this much in many listens
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Good book. Get the Michael Jayston version instead
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Good book. Get the Michael Jayston version instead
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Who writes “unlistenable etc. “
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The Pigeon Tunnel
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Spying is Waiting.
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The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
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The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels.
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good reading but can't navigate
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Only a tease, a taunt of le Carré's brilliance
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Greatest love story of the last fifty years
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A Small Town in Germany
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Overall
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From the New York Times best-selling author of A Legacy of Spies. "Haven't you realized that only appearances matter"? The British Embassy in Bonn is up in arms. Her Majesty's financially troubled government is seeking admission to Europe's Common Market just as anti-British factions are rising to power in Germany. Rioters are demanding reunification, and the last thing the Crown can afford is a scandal. Then Leo Harting - an embassy nobody - goes missing with a case full of confidential files.
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Recollects the Tension, Jingoism and Polarization
- By Scott Hammond on 06-09-15
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The Tailor of Panama
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Not one of Le Carré's best
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The Little Drummer Girl
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On holiday in Mykonos, Charlie wants only sunny days and a brief escape from England's bourgeois dreariness. Then a handsome stranger lures the aspiring actress away from her pals - but his intentions are far from romantic. Joseph is an Israeli intelligence officer, and Charlie has been wooed to flush out the leader of a Palestinian terrorist group responsible for a string of deadly bombings. Still uncertain of her own allegiances, she debuts in the role of a lifetime as a double agent in the "theatre of the real".
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Terror is Theatre: Le Carré Awakens Anger & Love
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By: John le Carré
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Absolute Friends
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By chance and not by choice, Ted Mundy, eternal striver, failed writer, and expatriate son of a British Army officer, used to be a spy. But that was in the good old Cold War days when a cinder-block wall divided Berlin and the enemy was easy to recognize.
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Save Time and Listen. Don't read
- By Cyrus on 02-04-04
By: John le Carré
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Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
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A lawyer from the London finance house of Single & Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside by people with whom he thought he was in business. A children's magician is asked by his bank to explain the unsolicited arrival of more than five million pounds sterling in his young daughter's modest trust. A freighter bound for Liverpool is boarded by Russian coast guards in the Black Sea. The celebrated London merchant venturer "Tiger" Single disappears into thin air.
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The spy who came back to the bank
- By Darwin8u on 03-12-14
By: John le Carré
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John le Carré Value Collection
- Tailor of Panama, Our Game, and Night Manager
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Night Manager: Enter the new world of post-Cold War espionage. Penetrate the secret world of ruthless arms dealers and drug smugglers who have risen to unthinkable power and wealth. Our Game: With the Cold War fought and won, British spymaster Tim Cranmer accepts early retirement to rural England and a new life with his alluring young mistress, Emma.... Tailor of Panama: Le Carre's Panama is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption. It is also the country which on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal.
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you want to know what I think?
- By Anniebligh on 11-24-14
By: John le Carré
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Our Kind of Traitor
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and with Britain on the brink of economic ruin, a young English couple takes a vacation in Antigua. There they meet Dima, a Russian who styles himself the world’s number one money launderer and who wants, among other things, a game of tennis. Back in London, the couple is subjected to an interrogation by the British Secret Service, who also need their help. Their acquiescence will lead them on a precarious journey through Paris to a safe house in Switzerland, helpless pawns in a game of nations.
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Be Prepared - Read at your own risk
- By Tim on 10-20-10
By: John le Carré
What listeners say about A Legacy of Spies
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Darwin8u
- 09-12-17
All for England
"We don't pay a lot, and careers tend to be interrupted. But we do feel it is an important job, as long as one cares about the end, and not too much about the means."
- John le Carré, A Legacy of Spies
Le Carré's fiction career can be roughly be divided into two broad, angry worlds (if we ignore his brief, early attempt at crime fiction): Cold War espionage novels and post-Cold War espionage novels. 'A Legacy of Spies' bridges this gulf with one of the great characters from le Carré's early works (let's call them his Broadway House books) by placing one of the best characters from the Cold War, Peter Guillam, George Smiley's right-hand man, into his post-Cold War period (let's call these books his Vauxhall Trollop books). By doing this, le Carré essentially sets up a novel where the retired "heroes" of the Cold-War "Circus" are judged by the lawyers of Whitehall/Legoland/Vauxhall Trollop.
If you didn't think a fictionalized account of a bureaucratic, HR nightmare could be sexy, well, think again. Le Carré's cold genius is found in his ability to show the moral contradictions involved in espionage work and also place that into context to the modern world. This book allows le Carré to juggle both the moral difficulties of the past (Ends>Means) and contrast that with the current state of Mi6 in the UK (Means>Ends). In his struggle to discover if the means of the past were worth the moral costs, while illuminating if the bureaucratic efficiency of the now is effective or even moral, le Carré discovers one core truth of the Modern World: the lawyers and the bureaucrats have won.
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46 people found this helpful
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- J. Miner
- 09-15-17
Regrets
Would you consider the audio edition of A Legacy of Spies to be better than the print version?
Yes
What other book might you compare A Legacy of Spies to and why?
the spy who came in from the cold
Have you listened to any of Tom Hollander’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No
Any additional comments?
Regrets in most of those five star reviews I have given for far lesser works. This, if not a masterwork, is very close and I will re listen many times.
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24 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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- Will Cunningham
- 09-21-17
Excellent
Yet another excellent novel from Le Carre. The story is about a mission preceeding the book, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. All of Smiley's people are in retirement and the Circus is trying to head-off legal action stemming from the mission, and Alex Leamas' mission in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. (I suggest watching the movie again to reaquaint with the characters and plot.) This new book takes place after the Karla Trilogies, so it should be read in order (last) to understand the subleties that are not explained in-depth or are brushed over. Le Carre presumes the audience has read all the books up to this point. I think the action is fine and suspenseful -- this is typical Le Carre -- people reading files and documents and listening to secret recordings; I see no point in complaining about this because that's how all of his novels are written (no gunfights, no car chases).Retired old Peter Guillam is the star of the novel, and Alex Leamas; we briefly catch up with Smiley towards the end. I loved all of the books in the Karla trilogy, this is a fourth installation which also brings The Spy Who Came in from the Cold into the Karla books.
Tom Hollander (starred in the mini-series The Night Manager) is outstanding; his rendition fits in beautifully with the preceeding books in the series; i suspect he listened to Michael Jayston and Le Carre himself narrate to prepare. His voice is low and steady, and it is easy to tell when the action switches from a Guillam memory or Guillam reading a top secret document file. Very well done all around - BC
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- Chris Marlowe
- 09-21-17
A long slow conclusion to the Smiley series
Tom Hollander is wonderful reading this ending and coda to the story that starts with Le Carre’s start. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, and all the rest. Ghosts haunt, the past is exhumed. We go through it all again and many loose ends are tied off and fused. It makes me want to go back and read or listen to them all again.
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- christopher
- 10-07-17
Another great LeCarre, it goes without saying, but
Occasionally confusing with frequent time shifts but as always, beautifully crafted, with moments of tension and suitably menacing softly spoken characters. The story as such, as good as any Le Carre. But why did he leave the denouement entirely to our imagination - Le Carre who would without doubt have made it a tour de force ? It seems almost like the writer himself got bored or tired, didn't feel equal to the task of producing one more passage of vintage workmanship. And for me, the Smiley Europe statement rings false, probably because I am disappointed with the European response to Brexit, the "we never really wanted you here in the first place, you have nothing in common with us, and now you've decided to leave we are really going to stick it to you". I don't think that's the Europe that Smiley had in mind.
I have to say that Hollander's reading is outstanding - pacing perfect, he has an ability to bring characters immediately to life with appropriate accents, tones and mannerisms of speach even to the point of producing one character pretending to speak like another.
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- EastTexLawGirl
- 10-02-17
Hollander and Le Carre': A Perfect Partnership
I am pretty sure I have read everything Le Carre' has written - even the less than stellar post Cold War efforts. Returning to his original roots and characters, this latest effort is delightful. Tom Hollander's narration - performance really - is perfect. If he ever decides to give up full time acting, reading audio books would be a worthwhile second career. It is really quite astounding how each character sounds exactly as described - gender, class, nationality, age, are all pitch perfect. Bravo to both gentlemen. A wonderful listen~
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- publicvoice
- 09-27-17
A Decent Legacy
A Legacy of Spies is a decent post-mortem on the events of Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Decent, but not excellent. Through Peter Guillam we get a second look at the background leading up to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. An old, retired Guillam is brought back to London to answer inquiries concerning the tragic results of the operations in the Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Unsurprisingly, this brings up the specter of the Circus mole, cold-named "Gerald" (I'm trying to avoid spoilers) who is brought down by George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Strengths of the novel:
1) Le Carre writes interrogation scenes extraordinarily well.
For emotional reasons and simple self preservation he does not want to reveal the details of his previous operations. The interview scenes are well written. We are able to piece together events based on Guillam's answers, the questions he's being asked, and later through reports and old telegrams he reads.
2) This work is a plausible background to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold which was not a long novel.
3) The narration by Tom Hollander is very good.
Weaknesses
1) The conclusion is not thrilling. Perhaps that cannot be helped. This work is an exploration of the effects of a Circus operation. There are no international consequences at stake (no cold war) and since most of the players are very old...well, I hate to say it, but their lives aren't worth as much. They have less life left to lose.
2) The novel waits to the end to reveal when this inquiry is taking place. But given the ages
of the characters, we can guess (early in the novel) that the inquiries in A Legacy of Spies almost certainly aren't happening in 2017. It might have been best to clarify that up front.
3) As a companion piece, this novel is reworking old ground and as such it is intended for people familiar with Le Carre''s earlier work. Furthermore, this is a moral autopsy of that fictional "history." We know that the cold war ends and that nothing anyone did or might have done in those operations would have changed the outcome for the better. This leaves us sorting out people's intentions and the conflict between national (good for England) duties versus personal duties (good for this specific person.) There are no surprising discoveries on that moral front.
On the other hand, this novel shows that the irreconcilability of such moral duties is what has made the spy world an excellent source of tragedy in John Le Carre's work rather than a source of action (except for a few brief scenes) in Ian Fleming's work.
I recommend this novel to readers who enjoyed both The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and want to revisit those stories.
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- eclectic reader
- 09-17-17
Reacquainted with old friends
It is fun to meet many of the characters from former LeCarre books. As always he excels at character development. Always an eye for detail - things like how a passing character puts on her reading glasses. The resolution of the plot is less definitive, but in many ways fits with Smilie's character.
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- Linda
- 09-17-17
Best Spy Writer Around--Read Spy in From Cold
No doubt about it, le Carre' is the best spy writer of them all. At 85 this may be his last book but it will also be one of his best books. It is essential that the reader have read The Spy Who Came In From the Cold before reading this latest book. If you don't read From The cold first you will be hopelessly lost and will not understand the implications of what is going on. This story is looking back on events that occurred years ago during the Berlin Wall and intrigue of that era. Smiley is always present even though he isn't. The Circus is pulling in the only spy still around in hopes of getting him to reveal the back story on the death of Alec Leamus and Liz gold as they attempted to escape over the wall into West Germany. Fortunately, the new people are not nearly as smart as they think they are. An amazing story of intrigue, good intentions leading to bad endings for the good of Britain. this author is the best. The narrator Tom Hollander is excellent.
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- Maine Colonial 🌲
- 09-09-17
Still the master
Like any other lover of espionage fiction, I’ve read all of le Carre’s George Smiley books. I’ve also seen the movies and I recently listened to the BBC radio dramatizations. Those dramatizations were entertaining in themselves, but also excellent preparation for Legacy of Spies.
Legacy of Spies is told by Peter Guillam, who is recalled to London from his Breton retirement so that he can be not-so-collegially grilled by today’s MI6 agents about certain events that took place in the old Cold War days and that are the subject of the first George Smiley book, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and, to a lesser extent, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
The present-day denizens of what the agents of Smiley’s era called the “Circus” now work not out of a fusty, ramshackle Victorian, but an ostentatious modern monolith. And today’s agents, especially Peter’s principal interrogators Bunny and Laura, are so full of self-importance and concern for potential present-day liabilities that they can’t be bothered to show any regard for an old agent put out to pasture, a veteran of a war that is in the past and, to them, of considerably lesser importance than whatever it is that occupies their time.
As Bunny and Laura interrogate Peter, he relives those past events, through file documents and his own memories. At 86, le Carre has lost none of his ability to tell a story and, especially, to portray the melancholy and pain of lives lived in deception and betrayal, all for a cause that doesn’t always clearly deserve the sacrifices made on its behalf.
What a treat to listen to the audiobook of this title, read by English actor Tom Hollander. He didn’t just read the book; he acted it and I will always hear his voice in my head when I think about this book and the Peter Guillam character.
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