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A Murder of Quality
 
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A Murder of Quality (Paperback)

by John le Carré (Author)
2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
RRP: £7.99
Price: £5.09 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Paperback: 192 pages
  • Publisher: Sceptre (14 May 2009)
  • ISBN-10: 0340993731
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340993736
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 1.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 48,315 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #21 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > L > Le Carre, John > Complete List

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Product Description

Review

‘Beautifully intelligent, satiric and witty’

(Daily Telegraph )

‘Vastly entertaining’

(Sunday Telegraph )

‘For my money, le Carré is the equal of any novelist now writing in English’

(Guardian )


Product Description

Stella Rode has written two letters to the Christian Voice’s problem column: the first was a tip for preparing pastry; the second declares that her husband may be planning to kill her. And by the time George Smiley is handed the second letter, Stella is already dead. Travelling to the old, cloistered institution of Carne School, Smiley discovers that neither the very respectable people of the school nor the murder are as straightforward as they appear.


A Murder of Quality is an ingenious mystery – with all of le Carré’s unmatched skill for deft plotting – and a wry, intelligent commentary on class warfare of a particularly bloody kind.

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Average Customer Review
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Claustrophobic 'English' public school mystery. Dated and disappointing, 22 Aug 2009
By Hooligween "Rowena the Red" (Kernow, Great Britain) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This is the second in Le Carre's Smiley series and it didn't work for me at all. It's nothing to do with the world of espionage. Instead 'A Murder of Quality' is about an investigation into a domestic murder, when thw wife of a school-teacher at a public school is murdered. Normally, I'm just as happy with 'crime' as a genre as I am ferreting around with 'cold-war' or 'spy' stories. But this one really doesn't translate well to a modern reader.
It feels much more like an Agatha Christie-style investigation than a Smiley novel, and seems to add very little to that character's back-plot (unlike Call for the Dead which preceded this novel and which did brilliantly introduce Smiley and his post-WW2 world). 'A Murder of Quality' is concerned with the re-organisation of society after the Second World War, with the conflicts between varying levels of the middle classes and their religions. It strikes very few chords today and feels very distant.
The mystery itself is not particularly interesting, and Smiley could so easily be replaced by Hercule Poirot or indeed Any Little Old Lady (who happened to stick her nose in). Reading between the lines, I wonder if Le Carre was searching for a direction to take Smiley in, and this was an experiment in the form of the 'traditional English murder-mystery'.
If you enjoy that kind of tale then this book may well suit you. But if you're looking for early examples of the genius that appears in 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold' then I'd suggest you avoid this one...
4/10
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