Publisher's summary
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.
In Single & Single the writer who both epitomizes and transcends the novel of espionage opens with a haunting set piece, then establishes a sequence of events whose connections are mysterious, complex, and compelling. This is a story of corrupt liaisons between criminal elements in the new Russian states and the world of legitimate finance in the West. Le Carré's finest novel in years, it is also an intimate portrait of two families: one Russian, the other English; one trading illicit goods, the other laundering the profits; one betrayed by a son-in-law, the other betrayed, and redeemed, by a son.
This is territory le Carré knows better than anyone. Masterful and prescient, he is writing at the top of his creative powers, and Oliver Single, the central protagonist, is one of his most fascinating characters yet.
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I haven't enjoyed a tale this much in many listens
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Who writes “unlistenable etc. “
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Wonderful narration
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Good book. Get the Michael Jayston version instead
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Be Prepared - Read at your own risk
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Not one of Le Carré's best
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Only a tease, a taunt of le Carré's brilliance
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Call for the Dead (Abridged): George Smiley had liked the man and now the man was dead. But why? Fennan was dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn’t go on. Smiley decides to investigate – only to uncover a murderous conspiracy with its roots in his own secret wartime past. A Murder of Quality (Abridged): Miss Ailsa Brimley is in a quandary. She's received a peculiar letter from Mrs Stella Rode, saying that she fears her husband is trying to kill her.
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PerfectStoryteller with Perfect Narrator
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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
- By RB Vancouver on 01-07-17
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Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian’s family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise.
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Le Carré's SILVERVIEW brings him and us back home
- By Close Listener on 10-14-21
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Our Game & Absolute Friends (Abridged)
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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. But when both Emma and Cranmer's star double agent and lifelong rival, Larry Pettifer, disappears, Cranmer is suddenly on the run, searching for his brilliant protégé, desperately eluding his former colleagues, in a frantic journey across Europe and into the lawless, battered landscapes of Moscow and Southern Russia, to save whatever of his life he has left.
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Engaging but often hard to follow
- By m. bryant on 01-21-23
By: John le Carré
What listeners say about Single & Single
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joel A Henner
- 02-20-24
Worth the trouble
Not le carres best effort but an entertaining listen delivered in jaystons excellent rendering. Full of the usual red herrings and wit.
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- Darwin8u
- 03-12-14
The spy who came back to the bank
I wish I could claim credit for the catchy title/phrase: The spy who came back to the bank., but it has Mr. Moneyball* written all over it.
After reading and reviewing Our Kind of Traitor, I kept being drawn back to Single & Single, a le Carré I listened to and read last year, but never actually got around to reviewing. Both Single & Single & Our Kind of Traitor are part of le Carré's banking/black-market brand of post-Soviet spy fiction. Certainly not everyone's genre jam, but being a finance guy myself, I kinda dig 'em.
Anywho, this is one of those post-Cold War, pre-Iraq war novels where le Carré emerges as not just the grand master of spy fiction, but as perhaps the grand master of both the Cold War and the Ambiguous Thaw. He was noticing in the late 90s what a lot of the rest of us only figured clearly out a few years into the War in Iraq. Those who are guarding the BIG secrets, might not be the most trustworthy people around.
I love how le Carré plays around too. He isn't just angry, he is also clever and confident. Part of me really wants to believe that in the beginning of Single & Single, the gun that both exists and doesn't exist seems like a twist on Chekhov's gun. Let's call it Schrödinger's gun. Ladies and gentlemen of the court, this gun both exists and it doesn't. This gun that shows up in Scene I has already gone off, or perhaps it hasn't. No need for Chekhov. No need for Chekhov's gun. Everyone please keep your juried seats. As the big C once said, "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." During this stage of le Carré's career, it seems like THAT is all he wanted to do. Break promises. Break with the past. Show you the gun, and the write a whole damn book about ignoring it.
* Michael Lewis
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32 people found this helpful
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- Veronica
- 10-29-19
More!!!
Enjoyed the story, the characters, the humor... just wanted one more chapter at the end... to know Sammy and his mom were ok that the bad cop was put away!!!
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- Tom Gallagher
- 03-23-22
Not his best
OK. Expected more. Smilies people frowning
Overall still my favorite author for the genre.
Thanks
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- Cathleen
- 05-10-22
One of the best by Le Carre!
Complicated story. Full of heart. Oliver a fantastic character who looked unpromising at beginning. Fantastic writing and narration!!
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- Jefferson Spires
- 02-10-18
Michael Jayston reads Le Carre splendidly
I enjoyed all of the characters enough to want to continue following their life stories!
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- Jesse Luke McBride
- 03-24-20
I know it’s cliche but the guys a master
The sheer command of the language - he twists a it into the most perfect and precise product - and storytelling through character. They say he’s the greatest spy novelist but he’s one the greatest English novelists period, of the twentieth and twenty first century.
People overlook the post Cold War stuff but the writing is much better than the early Smiley books and more gratifying.
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- Alan C. Earing
- 02-24-18
ok... i like it!
No super spies, no fancy equipment, just some cloak and dagger and flawed human interactions!
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- sherri
- 04-14-13
Not Le Carre's best listen
John le Carre is a master at knowing when to cut a scene and what to leave out, how to give just enough information to make you pay attention and figure things out. The way he layers out information can be as puzzling as life but not so puzzling that, even listening, you can't keep track. Except with this book. I recommend it as a book to read rather than to hear because it jumps around in time and place so quickly and frequently that the listener is constantly playing catch-up, especially if you listen while doing something else and your attention is split.
Those who find the book fully absorbing might be OK with it. It's harder to follow the narrative thread if you're not invested in the main character, Oliver Single. He's a cipher, a blank slate on which others write. That's his purpose in the book. He might summon up some backbone in the end--I won't know until I get a hard copy from the library and finish reading with my eyes instead of my ears.
The main strength is that Michael Jayston is such a good narrator that you will know who is talking even when you don't know where or when the scene is occurring.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Stephen
- 12-23-17
le Carre Wrestles With His Father’s Ghost
This is a very good but not excellent le Carre. But very good LeCarre is a still a high standard.
Because of leCaree’s series of autobiographical stories, Pigeon Tunnel, we know that battle between Single & Single is his way of putting finishing touches on past with respect to his con man father.
This gives the book added depth. Strongly recommended.
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