Murder Of Quality

Geschreven bij Murder Of Quality

spannend goed geschreven topper dus

Geschreven bij A Murder of Quality

This slim book is John Le Carré’s second novel while working as a British diplomat in Bonn and Bern or elsewhere in a roving capacity, and again it stars George Smiley (GS). He was Le Carré’s hero in his debut Call for the Dead, which described him as being an accomplished and committed spy since 1928, who survived a frightful and nasty war in Germany, and who is still (early 1960’s) wearing glasses, short, pudgy, and badly, but expensively dressed. He is also separated from his aristocratic wife Ann, and some characters in this book let him know that they know.
This book is not about espionage, but about a murder at Carne, a centuries ’ old public school. Miss Brimley, a WW-II colleague of GS in wartime intelligence, who has turned editor of a religion-based periodical, contacts GS when she receives a letter from the wife of a public school’s teacher, whose family has for generations subscribed to the journal. She claims her husband is planning to kill her... When she is found dead days later, she contacts GS and pleads with him to find out the truth. GS, still in retirement following the dramatic outcome of his first appearance in Le Carré’s debut novel, agrees and starts to investigate.
Le Carré’s subsequent description of the rift between the school and the rest of Carne village, the feuds, prejudices and resentments between and among new and old staff (many are alumni not employable elsewhere) are cruelly revealing of the class-based rifts in English society at the time. Le Carré manages at times to convey an atmosphere of awfulness about the English/British mindset not far removed from what the late film director Sam Peckinpah conveyed in his movie Straw Dogs, a film that has for many years been banned in Britain.
Great reading. Highly recommended.

Geschreven bij A Murder of Quality

Na tientallen jaren weer eens gelezen, ik meen het tweede boek van Le Carré. Wat een schitterend boek. Spannend, meeslepend, erg goed geschreven, prachtige sfeerbeschrijvingen, af en toe wat Engelse ironie... En grappig om George Smiley al te ontmoeten die later in veel boeken de hoofdpersoon is.

Geschreven bij Murder Of Quality

Goed geschreven, geweldig boek.