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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.
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. London sends Alan Turner to control the damage, but he soon realizes that neither side really wants Leo found alive.
"Glasnost" is on everyone's lips, but the rules of the game haven’t changed for either side. When a beautiful Russian woman foists off a manuscript on an unwitting bystander at the Moscow Book Fair, it's a miracle that she flies under the Soviets' radar. Or does she? The woman's source (codename: Bluebird) will trust only Barley Blair, a whiskey-soaked gentleman publisher with a poet's heart.
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.
New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John le Carré's fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man.
John le Carré, the legendary author of sophisticated spy thrillers, is at the top of his game in this classic novel of a world in chaos. With the Cold War over, a new era of espionage has begun. In the power vacuum left by the Soviet Union, arms dealers and drug smugglers have risen to immense influence and wealth. The sinister master of them all is Richard Onslow Roper, the charming, ruthless Englishman whose operation seems untouchable.
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.
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. London sends Alan Turner to control the damage, but he soon realizes that neither side really wants Leo found alive.
"Glasnost" is on everyone's lips, but the rules of the game haven’t changed for either side. When a beautiful Russian woman foists off a manuscript on an unwitting bystander at the Moscow Book Fair, it's a miracle that she flies under the Soviets' radar. Or does she? The woman's source (codename: Bluebird) will trust only Barley Blair, a whiskey-soaked gentleman publisher with a poet's heart.
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.
New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good "patriots" -- this is the fabric of John le Carré's fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man.
John le Carré, the legendary author of sophisticated spy thrillers, is at the top of his game in this classic novel of a world in chaos. With the Cold War over, a new era of espionage has begun. In the power vacuum left by the Soviet Union, arms dealers and drug smugglers have risen to immense influence and wealth. The sinister master of them all is Richard Onslow Roper, the charming, ruthless Englishman whose operation seems untouchable.
Over the course of his seemingly irreproachable life, Magnus Pym has been all things to all people: a devoted family man, a trusted colleague, a loyal friend - and the perfect spy. But in the wake of his estranged father's death, Magnus vanishes, and the British Secret Service is up in arms. Is it grief, or is the reason for his disappearance more sinister? And who is the mysterious man with the sad moustache who also seems to be looking for Magnus? In A Perfect Spy, John le Carré has crafted one of his crowning masterpieces.
George Smiley is no one's idea of a spy - which is perhaps why he's such a natural. But Smiley apparently made a mistake. After a routine security interview, he concluded that the affable Samuel Fennan had nothing to hide. Why, then, did the man from the Foreign Office shoot himself in the head only hours later? Or did he? The heart-stopping tale of intrigue that launched both novelist and spy, Call for the Dead is an essential introduction to le Carre's chillingly amoral universe.
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, John 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.
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.
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.
A Murder of Quality, set in the early 1960s, sees George Smiley investigating a murder in a public school. When the wife of one of the masters is found bludgeoned to death, Smiley, out of loyalty to an old friend, agrees to look into the case. But his investigation raises a multitude of questions. Who could have hated Stella Rode enough to kill her? Why was her dog put down shortly before the murder? And what did Mad Janie see on that fatal night?
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.
Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carré's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much older husband, Justin, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive.
Simon Russell Beale stars in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of John le Carré's first novel, which introduced his most famous character, George Smiley. This dramatisation, set in London in the late 1950s, finds Smiley engaged in the humdrum job of security vetting. But when a Foreign Office civil servant commits suicide after an apparently unproblematic interview, Smiley is baffled. Refusing to believe that Fennan shot himself, Smiley decides to investigate.
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.
In this definitive biography - blessed by John le Carré himself - Adam Sisman reveals the man behind the bestselling persona. In John le Carré, Sisman shines a spotlight on David Cornwell, an expert at hiding in plain sight - "born to lying," he wrote in 2002, "bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist."
In a legendary novel that appears to predict the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Graham Greene introduces James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman whose life in transformed when he is asked to join the British Secret Service. He agrees, and finds himself with no information to offer, so begins to invent sources and agencies which do not exist, but which appear very real to his superiors.
The unrivaled master of spy fiction returns with a taut and suspenseful of dirty money and dirtier politics.
For nearly half a century, John le Carre's limitless imagination has enthralled millions of readers, listeners, and moviegoers around the globe. From the cold war to the bitter fruits of colonialism to unrest in the Middle East, he has reinvented the spy novel again and again. As menacing and flawlessly paced as The Little Drummer Girl and as morally complex as The Constant Gardener, Our Kind of Traitor is signature le Carre.
Perry and Gail are idealistic and very much in love when they splurge on a tennis vacation at a posh beach resort in Antigua. But the charm begins to pall when a big-time Russian money launderer enlists their help to defect. In exchange for amnesty, Dima is ready to rat out his vory (Russian criminal brotherhood) compatriots and expose corruption throughout the so-called legitimate financial and political worlds. Soon, the guileless couple find themselves pawns in a deadly endgame whose outcome will be determined by the victor of the British Secret Service's ruthless internecine battles.
I agree with many of the other reviewers that this book was boring, hard to follow and had an unsatisfactory ending. There are a lot more entertaining books out there to spend your time on.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful
I blamed a technical glitch for the absence of an ending to this book, only to learn after11 1/2 hours that the abrupt ending was no mistake. Surely he could have made his point in fewer words that bankers, politicians, criminals, and secret government agents are in cahoots to get rich at our expense.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful
Firstly, I don't often write reviews unless a book is outstanding or so far below par that a warning to potential purchasers is warranted. This book falls into the latter category. This is NOT a book you've come to expect from John le Carre. It is so slow and tedious and you keep waiting for some action...any action but there is none. Towards the end of the second download, I kept trying to give him a chance thinking that there must have been a 3rd download that I missed. When I got to the end of the second download which was truly and sadly the end, I was incensed that I spent so much time listening to absolutely nothing.
There has to be a sequel...because it is as though this book ended in the absolute middle. It didn't even dither off to a slow end. It just stopped. This is probably the worst book I have listened to or read in 4 years. Do not waste your time.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful
Maybe 3.5 stars. I liked it more than I was prepared to. Reminded me in a lot of ways of Single & Single. It was a tight morality tale in a world lacking morality. Like most of le Carré's post-Soviet/post-Cold War spy novels the real play here is not East v West, THAT is just a side show, the real conflict is ALL internal. William Faulkner's famous quote from his Nobel Prize speech that "the human heart in conflict with itself" is the only thing worth writing about, regardless of the genre" seems to perfectly capture le Carré. But le Carré doesn't just use that idea with people, he uses that idea with institutions (Secret Intelligence Service), and with whole counties. The modern world is a world in conflict with itself. God is dead. But maybe, just maybe, He still listens to all your phone calls, still reads all your text messages, and despite all the past promises made -- and He might just decide to screw you in the end.
16 of 18 people found this review helpful
Book: typical le Carre. Builds slow and you have pay attention to get the players right. Once you do, it gets good. Then you get excited. Then you get nervous. Then you anticipate disaster. Then he builds tension. Then you cannot wait to see what happens to each of the ten or so characters the author has developed for you and to whom you have become attached or at least interested. Can't say more without spoiling.
Then you will want to pitch a brick through your PC or trash your iPod or what have you as for some unknown reason, the author simply ends the stupid book leaving you absolutely not knowing what happened to eight of those ten characters! For some idiotic reason, he is leaving them stranded and vulnerable. Then Audible thanks you for listening! I was soooo irritated! There is NO resolution to all the characters you have come to know. I HATE books that have open endings, but I NOW know I hate even more any book that simply drops you cold with no conclusion whatsoever as to ending OR characters. I am not speaking of a "this could happen" endings... I am saying you are dropped with no knowledge of anything. Just Terrible - Grade D
Reader: Solid. Bit of an issue distinguishing voices, but overall grade good B
18 of 21 people found this review helpful
I felt that this story was too long on details and character development not long enough on activities. I was shocked at the sudden ending; I felt cheated.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful
Sometimes when I have crab cakes I find some filled with too much bread and not enough crab. That is what it felt like when I put down one of my most favorite authors. I was pleased that he focused on powerful institutions that do much damage to our species. In The Constant Gardener we learned a good deal about how abusive pharmaceutical is and in this one he attempted to do the same thing with our financial empires that have gotten the world into such difficulties. Greed dominates, the powerful seek to hold on to what they have and to get even more. In this book there are too many characters to keep in touch with. His character development is shallow. Where is Smiley? Where are those wonderful figures who lack a true sense of self and who can take on the coloration needed to survive so easily to fill in the void of an ill defined or non-existent self. He copped out at the end and took the easy way out. I always enjoy reading LeCarre even if I find fault on occasion. A mature writer with a critical and insightful eye.I will continue to read everything he writes if I live long enough.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful
Le Carre has lost it. A pointless, meandering story with those awful British mannerisms. (Every sentence ends with a question...doesn't it?) After an hour of listening I had no idea what the wretched book was about and was just irritated with the awful,chatty,dialogue that made me want to punch someone, preferably an upper-class British twit. A dud!
4 of 5 people found this review helpful
I never feel strong enough to write a review, but I HAD to write about this book. I tried to listen to it 3 times and finally realized that it wasn't me but a book I just couldn't get into. It had SO many elements going on at one time, that I couldn't keep track what story I was trying to follow. Is this book about the defector? Is it about the couple? Is it about the British Agency characters? If I heard one more, "Hear me Now" I would die. This is not a book I would recommend unless you have trouble sleeping!
3 of 4 people found this review helpful
I started this book about 10 times. I finally made it to 2 hours and then asked myself why am I doing this? It is so awful, George Smiley would say Mr. LeCarre has reached the time to retire.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful