-
The Honourable Schoolboy
- A George Smiley Novel
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 27 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $27.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
A Perfect Spy
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Remembrances of loyalties past
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Night Manager
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Good book. Get the Michael Jayston version instead
- By David Schafer on 07-28-16
By: John le Carré
-
The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
good reading but can't navigate
- By RB Vancouver on 01-07-17
By: John le Carré
-
The Russia House
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"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.
-
-
Spying is Waiting.
- By Darwin8u on 03-17-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Constant Gardener
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 17 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Greatest love story of the last fifty years
- By Darwin8u on 06-30-13
By: John le Carré
-
A Small Town in Germany
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Recollects the Tension, Jingoism and Polarization
- By Scott Hammond on 06-09-15
By: John le Carré
-
A Perfect Spy
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Remembrances of loyalties past
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Night Manager
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Good book. Get the Michael Jayston version instead
- By David Schafer on 07-28-16
By: John le Carré
-
The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
good reading but can't navigate
- By RB Vancouver on 01-07-17
By: John le Carré
-
The Russia House
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"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.
-
-
Spying is Waiting.
- By Darwin8u on 03-17-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Constant Gardener
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 17 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Greatest love story of the last fifty years
- By Darwin8u on 06-30-13
By: John le Carré
-
A Small Town in Germany
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Recollects the Tension, Jingoism and Polarization
- By Scott Hammond on 06-09-15
By: John le Carré
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
you want to know what I think?
- By Anniebligh on 11-24-14
By: John le Carré
-
Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The spy who came back to the bank
- By Darwin8u on 03-12-14
By: John le Carré
-
Silverview
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Toby Jones
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Le Carré's SILVERVIEW brings him and us back home
- By Close Listener on 10-14-21
By: John le Carré
-
A Delicate Truth
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
I haven't enjoyed a tale this much in many listens
- By connie on 05-10-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Pigeon Tunnel
- Stories from My Life
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Global Literary Treasure
- By Darwin8u on 09-16-16
By: John le Carré
-
The Mission Song
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: David Oyelowo
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Only a tease, a taunt of le Carré's brilliance
- By Darwin8u on 03-24-15
By: John le Carré
-
Agent Running in the Field
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.
-
-
Who writes “unlistenable etc. “
- By Thomas on 11-02-19
By: John le Carré
-
The Secret Hours
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn.
-
-
Just about perfect
- By June Lapidow on 09-28-23
By: Mick Herron
-
Absolute Friends
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Save Time and Listen. Don't read
- By Cyrus on 02-04-04
By: John le Carré
-
A Private Spy
- The Letters of John le Carré
- By: John le Carré, Tim Cornwell - editor
- Narrated by: David Harewood, Florence Pugh
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Truly engrossing from start to finish
- By Dan on 01-31-23
By: John le Carré, and others
-
The Tailor of Panama
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Not one of Le Carré's best
- By S. Wilson on 03-31-18
By: John le Carré
-
The Company
- A Novel of the CIA
- By: Robert Littell
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 41 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"If Robert Littell didn't invent the American spy novel," says Tom Clancy, "he should have." In this spectacular Cold-War-as-Alice-in-Wonderland epic, Littell, "the American le Carre," takes us down the rabbit hole and into the labyrinthine world of espionage that has been the CIA for the last half-century. "Ostensibly a single novel, The Company can also be listened to as an anthology of cracking good spy stories," says ( Publishers Weekly).
-
-
My Review of the Reviews
- By Matthew on 03-31-04
By: Robert Littell
Publisher's summary
As the fall of Saigon looms, master spy George Smiley must outmaneuver his Soviet counterpart on a battlefield that neither can afford to lose.
The mole has been eliminated, but the damage wrought has brought the British Secret Service to its knees. Given charge of the gravely compromised Circus, George Smiley embarks on a campaign to uncover what Moscow Centre most wants to hide. When the trail goes cold at a Hong Kong gold seam, Smiley dispatches Gerald Westerby to shake the money tree.
A part-time operative with cover as a philandering journalist, Westerby insinuates himself into a war-torn world where allegiances - and lives - are bought and sold.
Brilliantly plotted and morally complex, The Honourable Schoolboy is the second installment of John le Carré's renowned Karla trilogy, and a riveting portrayal of post-colonial espionage.
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The spy who came back to the bank
- By Darwin8u on 03-12-14
By: John le Carré
-
A Perfect Spy
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Remembrances of loyalties past
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-13
By: John le Carré
-
Hornet Flight
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's June 1941, and the low point of the war. England throws wave after wave of RAF bombers across the Channel, but somehow the Luftwaffe is able to shoot them down at will. The skies, indeed, the war itself seem to belong to Hitler.
-
-
An Outstanding Spy Novel
- By C. McCoy on 03-13-05
By: Ken Follett
-
The Winds of War
- By: Herman Wouk
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 45 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers. Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - and all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Robert on 05-24-13
By: Herman Wouk
-
Triple
- A Novel
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: Raza Jaffrey
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Egypt comes closer and closer to developing a nuclear bomb, the Mossad’s number one Israeli agent is given an impossible mission: to beat the Arabs in the nuclear arms race by finding and stealing two hundred tons of uranium. The world’s balance of power will shift. And the Mossad, the KGB, the Egyptians, and Fedayeen terrorists will play out the final, violent moves in this devastating game where the price of failure is a nuclear holocaust....
-
-
Triple poorly performed
- By Jpop on 03-13-21
By: Ken Follett
-
The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
-
-
Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
-
Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The spy who came back to the bank
- By Darwin8u on 03-12-14
By: John le Carré
-
A Perfect Spy
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Remembrances of loyalties past
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-13
By: John le Carré
-
Hornet Flight
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's June 1941, and the low point of the war. England throws wave after wave of RAF bombers across the Channel, but somehow the Luftwaffe is able to shoot them down at will. The skies, indeed, the war itself seem to belong to Hitler.
-
-
An Outstanding Spy Novel
- By C. McCoy on 03-13-05
By: Ken Follett
-
The Winds of War
- By: Herman Wouk
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 45 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers. Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - and all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Robert on 05-24-13
By: Herman Wouk
-
Triple
- A Novel
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: Raza Jaffrey
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Egypt comes closer and closer to developing a nuclear bomb, the Mossad’s number one Israeli agent is given an impossible mission: to beat the Arabs in the nuclear arms race by finding and stealing two hundred tons of uranium. The world’s balance of power will shift. And the Mossad, the KGB, the Egyptians, and Fedayeen terrorists will play out the final, violent moves in this devastating game where the price of failure is a nuclear holocaust....
-
-
Triple poorly performed
- By Jpop on 03-13-21
By: Ken Follett
-
The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
-
-
Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
-
The Unlikely Spy
- By: Daniel Silva
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“In wartime,” Winston Churchill wrote, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” For Britain’s counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable - a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent.
-
-
The Unlikely Spy
- By Margaret on 12-14-09
By: Daniel Silva
-
No Comebacks
- By: Frederick Forsyth
- Narrated by: Nigel Davenport
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deception, blackmail, murder, revenge - these are themes of stories that move from London to the coast of Spain, from Mauritius to Dublin. Whether his subject is assassination by stealth, gun-smuggling or the cruel confidence trick Forsyth is never less than compulsive.Here are eight stories with the Forsyth touch - a brilliant and original collection by an incomparable craftsman of suspense.
-
-
Some excellent stories
- By Christopher on 08-05-12
-
Night Soldiers
- By: Alan Furst
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times bestselling author Alan Furst is widely recognized as master of the historical spy novel. Furst’s works are vivid evocations of long-forgotten heroes and feature plots that unfold to the inexorable cadence of history. Night Soldiers is a simultaneously thrilling and illuminating tale of espionage set in 1934.
-
-
Best Alan Furst novel!
- By Placeholder on 04-27-11
By: Alan Furst
-
Meet the Tiger
- A Simon “The Saint” Templar Novel
- By: Leslie Charteris
- Narrated by: John Rayburn
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fiction world of today needs a “Saint” more than it ever did. For years now that scene has been dominated by the “anti-heroes"—those grim gray operators in a sunless sub-culture where global issues are worked out with totally unemotional pragmatism, those hapless uninspired puppets manipulated and expended by ruthlessly dedicated little brothers of Big Brother. It made morbidly fascinating narrative, but it never gave anyone a lift until it climaxed in the hyper-gadgeted parodies of 007 extravaganzas.
-
-
droning
- By Kindle Customer on 04-27-24
By: Leslie Charteris
-
Ordinary Thunderstorms
- A Novel
- By: William Boyd
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One May evening in London, Adam Kindred, a young climatologist in town for a job interview, is feeling good about the future as he sits down for a meal at a little Italian bistro. He strikes up a conversation with a solitary diner at the next table, who leaves soon afterward. With horrifying speed, this chance encounter leads to a series of malign accidents, through which Adam loses everything—home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, cell phone—never to get them back.
-
-
Amazing Story Teller
- By Dorothy on 09-07-14
By: William Boyd
-
Down Cemetery Road
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Julia Franklin
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a young girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husband’s wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew, as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.
-
-
Not as good as Slough House
- By wisconsinclark on 08-09-20
By: Mick Herron
-
The Ghost Writer
- A Novel
- By: Robert Harris
- Narrated by: Roger Rees
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Too close to the truth?
- By carl801 on 11-24-07
By: Robert Harris
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
Troubles
- By: J. G. Farrell
- Narrated by: Kevin Hely
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland - to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancée he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the dim and shabby splendour of the Palm Court, surrounded by gently decaying old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer.
-
-
Absolutely delightful read
- By E. Kim on 02-25-20
By: J. G. Farrell
-
Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
-
-
Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Eye of the Storm
- Sean Dillon, Book 1
- By: Jack Higgins
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Former allies in the IRA, Sean Dillon and Martin Brosnan have chosen different paths. Now Dillon is a terrorist for hire, a master of disguise employed by Saddam Hussein. Brosnan is the one man who knows Dillon’s strengths and weaknesses…and brilliant mastery of espionage. Once friends, now enemies, they are playing the deadliest game of their careers. A game that culminates in a frightening - and true - event: Iraq’s attempted mortar attack on the British war cabinet at 10 Downing Street in February 1991.
-
-
YAAA--W--N
- By Trudy Owens on 02-03-15
By: Jack Higgins
-
The Last King of Scotland
- By: Giles Foden
- Narrated by: Mirron E. Willis
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his Maserati, has hit a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, obsessed with all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. So begins a fateful dalliance with the African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror.
-
-
Worst Production Ever
- By James on 01-24-07
By: Giles Foden
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
A Perfect Spy
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Remembrances of loyalties past
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Russia House
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"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.
-
-
Spying is Waiting.
- By Darwin8u on 03-17-13
By: John le Carré
-
A Delicate Truth
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
I haven't enjoyed a tale this much in many listens
- By connie on 05-10-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Night Manager
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Good book. Get the Michael Jayston version instead
- By David Schafer on 07-28-16
By: John le Carré
-
A Small Town in Germany
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Recollects the Tension, Jingoism and Polarization
- By Scott Hammond on 06-09-15
By: John le Carré
-
The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
good reading but can't navigate
- By RB Vancouver on 01-07-17
By: John le Carré
-
A Perfect Spy
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Remembrances of loyalties past
- By Darwin8u on 04-13-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Russia House
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"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.
-
-
Spying is Waiting.
- By Darwin8u on 03-17-13
By: John le Carré
-
A Delicate Truth
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
I haven't enjoyed a tale this much in many listens
- By connie on 05-10-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Night Manager
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Good book. Get the Michael Jayston version instead
- By David Schafer on 07-28-16
By: John le Carré
-
A Small Town in Germany
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Recollects the Tension, Jingoism and Polarization
- By Scott Hammond on 06-09-15
By: John le Carré
-
The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
good reading but can't navigate
- By RB Vancouver on 01-07-17
By: John le Carré
-
The Pigeon Tunnel
- Stories from My Life
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A Global Literary Treasure
- By Darwin8u on 09-16-16
By: John le Carré
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
you want to know what I think?
- By Anniebligh on 11-24-14
By: John le Carré
-
The Little Drummer Girl
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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".
-
-
Terror is Theatre: Le Carré Awakens Anger & Love
- By Darwin8u on 07-24-12
By: John le Carré
-
Agent Running in the Field
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.
-
-
Who writes “unlistenable etc. “
- By Thomas on 11-02-19
By: John le Carré
-
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Other George Smiley Stories
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
PerfectStoryteller with Perfect Narrator
- By Steve on 07-02-22
By: John le Carré
-
The Tailor of Panama
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Not one of Le Carré's best
- By S. Wilson on 03-31-18
By: John le Carré
-
The Constant Gardener
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 17 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Greatest love story of the last fifty years
- By Darwin8u on 06-30-13
By: John le Carré
-
The Mission Song
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: David Oyelowo
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Only a tease, a taunt of le Carré's brilliance
- By Darwin8u on 03-24-15
By: John le Carré
-
Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The spy who came back to the bank
- By Darwin8u on 03-12-14
By: John le Carré
-
A Most Wanted Man
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Roger Rees
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Fascinating, angry and worldly-wise spy fiction
- By Darwin8u on 05-25-14
By: John le Carré
-
Silverview
- A Novel
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Toby Jones
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Le Carré's SILVERVIEW brings him and us back home
- By Close Listener on 10-14-21
By: John le Carré
-
Absolute Friends
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Save Time and Listen. Don't read
- By Cyrus on 02-04-04
By: John le Carré
What listeners say about The Honourable Schoolboy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Craig G Laurer
- 10-30-18
Le Carré at his best
What a great 1970s spy novel. While Viet Nam rages in the background, Smiley’s crew teams up with the CIA to unravel the story of a possible key asset in the Far East, and ultimately bring him in, if possible. Narrator Jayston once again captures the characters - and especially George Smiley - perfectly. No one else could read a Smiley novel like he does.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Douglass
- 10-04-21
Alright
Certainly not my favorite le Carre work, but entertaining enough. It's much more broad than his best works, and I think it suffers for it. nonetheless, its entertaining enough for a long car ride and is well read. I thought the motivations of some characters were pretty thin by the finale, but perhaps I would have felt differently if I were a brit living in the 1970s.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John R
- 11-24-22
Top Five Spy Author
Very good espionage tale.John was in his prime here.
Wish there were more like this.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kindle Customer
- 07-29-15
Much More Modern than I Expected
While this novel is ostensibly a sequel to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, it bears little resemblance to its predecessor (and here, that's a very good thing). While TTSS was a story about civil servants approaching middle age, this is almost a parody of love 'em and leave 'em James Bond novels.
George Smiley is a king constantly in check in this novel, and his operative, Westerby, is the one taking all the risks. Unfortunately, he has a journalist's zeal and lacks a diplomat's prudence, and he becomes ensnared in his own plot to control the opium trade in Asia. Like the James Bond novels, he is sent there to use his sexual prowess to ferret out information, but instead, he winds up falling in love with his mark.
Finally, when Smiley manages to wrangle Westerby back into the fold, the real heroes and villains of the story are revealed. Also, there is, of course, a twist at the end that I can't reveal, but much like TTSS someone previously thought harmless turns out to be the main thorn in the side of the British empire.
On the whole, the best parts of the novel are the commentaries on Southeast Asia in the 1970's. The region, itself, was a crumbling empire that was the bone over which dogs like the U.S, the U.S.S.R. and the U.K. fought, and Smiley and his arch-nemesis, Karla, are constantly at odds. They fight over ideology and control of their agents, but their main concern is the fate of countries that were once colonies and are now trying to govern themselves complete with rampant corruption, organized crime, etc. It is in Smiley's complete renunciation of control of the situation where he ultimately finds his greatest strength (though whether Smiley is still the main character at the end of the novel is open to debate).
Structurally, the novel meanders quite a bit, so if you're looking for a taught, fast-paced thriller, this is probably not your cup of Earl Grey, but if you go with the digressions, the journey is immensely satisfying. The novel is much more than the sum of its parts, and everyone's story winds up delivering more and more insight into the total picture of the East and West during that tumultuous period.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- STA
- 06-19-18
Pretty good
While the plot is really convoluted (like real life in the intelligence world i suppose) this novel is extremely unique in its handling of spies in the Vietnam War, particularly journalists who are also intelligence operatives. May frustrate some fans of the author's earlier work, but a worthy story if you give it a chance.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- William F. Mcguiness
- 04-11-22
Deep, complex story!
The reader does an excellent job interpreting this great story. Read the sequel: Smiley's People.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Hannes
- 04-22-13
nice
This applies to all the Jayston readings...excellent in general, but he gets a bit tripped up on accents in this one, although admittedly a challenge to manage Chinese, American and other accents. But his rendering of Ricardo's Mexican accent was more of a bland eastern European sound. At times I just wish he didn't bother. The story is vintage Le Carre, verging on less believable at times as he goes international.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeff Lacy
- 12-12-19
Excellent performance
Excellent performance of a viscerally written and cinematically imagined story. Full characters and exotic locations.b
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Peter Ryers
- 09-22-20
Wonderful narration and writing
Michael Jayston is wonderful and LeCarre is a first class writer. The story is complicated to the extreme and almost tedious. Recommended just got the writing and narration.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- EHN
- 06-17-23
Unrivaled
Le Carre is the standard by which all other spy novelists are judged. George Smiley, who plays a major role, is a brilliant and conflicted hero.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!