George Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realised characters in British fiction. Bespectacled, tubby, eternally middle-aged, and deceptively ordinary, he has a mind like a steel trap and is said to possess 'the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin'.

Miss Ailsa Brimley is in a quandary. She's received a peculiar letter from Mrs Stella Rode, saying that she fears her husband – an assistant master at Carne School - is trying to kill her. Reluctant to go to the police, Miss Brimley calls upon her old wartime colleague, George Smiley. Unfortunately, it's too late. Mrs Rode has just been murdered. As Smiley takes up the investigation, he realises that in life - as in espionage - nothing is quite what it appears. 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? To discover the truth, Smiley must lift the lid on a world of hidden passions and dangerous hatreds.

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Product details

Listening Length	4 hours and 42 minutes
Author	John le Carré
Narrator	Michael Jayston
Audible.in Release Date	01 July 2014
Publisher	Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B079P8Y45Q
Best Sellers Rank	#19,079 in Audible Audiobooks & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Audiobooks & Originals) #288 in Crime Thrillers #1,047 in Classic Literature #8,644 in Crime Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews

5 star		48%
4 star		31%
3 star		17%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from India

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Gopinathan T

Rather Confusing

Reviewed in India on 17 December 2020

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While surprises are all in order in thrillers, the final surprise of making Stella somebody so different was more than a bit unconvincing. The author's focus seems to have been on social commentary as he mentions in the afterword.

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U. K. NagaRaju.

John Le Carre' is unparalleled.

Reviewed in India on 14 February 2021

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It is not possible to derate John le carre', whatever may be the Novel by him. He never disappointed me. I have full collection of All his novels. They can be read again and again!

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Rajarshi Roy

A No Nonsense Murder thriller

Reviewed in India on 2 January 2020

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Out and out murder thriller, old school love triangle sort of a thing. Those looking for a Cold War reference would be disappointed. A nice Christmas read, to say the least, a bit shallow in parts, moves too fast at times for comfort.

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client

Interesting

Reviewed in India on 14 July 2020

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An excellent book.

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Yolo762

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on 17 July 2018

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A very exciting read

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Amazon Customer

Four Stars

Reviewed in India on 23 November 2015

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Good read from Le Carre

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Aseem Sinha

Three Stars

Reviewed in India on 28 April 2016

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Give it a miss and you aint gonna lose anything in the series.

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Loco Poco

Damn clever thriller

Reviewed in India on 29 January 2018

Today there are so many thrillers since almost everybody seem to be writing thrillers. So you have to be damn good stand out from this crowd. This book is the second installment of the Smiley Series but it has nothing to do with the Cambridge Circus and its agents.
It's more of a probe into Smiley's character as he plays a detective as a favour for a friend.
You can skip it and you'll lose no substantial information when the series as a whole is considered.
But this is a damn good novel and really quick to read. So I didn't see any reason to miss it.

P. S. The thing that I found interesting here has actually nothing to do with the Smiley series but with Game of Thrones. GRR Martin has directly borrowed without modifications a few terms from this book which made crucial GoT stuff, for eg. The Long Nights, & ...they were called crows b/c they dressed in black... and a few other things.

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Top reviews from other countries

P. G. Harris

Detective George Smiley

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 November 2017

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This is the second of John Le Carre's Smiley novels, and like the first, Call for the Dead is interesting both in itself as a story, and for the picture of an emerging novelist.

In this, Le Carre seems to be exploring a different course for Smiley's and hence his own career. Here Smiley has left the Circus, and is encouraged by a magazine editor, and old acquaintance, to look into a cry for help from a reader. Things take a fatal turn and Smiley finds himself looking into a murder in the claustrophobic, political and arcane world of an English public school.

This is a straightforward detective novel, with no element of espionage in it, and Le Carre seems to be establishing Smiley as an English Poirot, ready to launch into a series of novels.

As with the previous book, Le Carre is experimenting with characters, in particular the magazine editor has elements of being a prototype for Connie Sachs.

Also of interest is the strong social and political tone of the work, a common thread throughout Le Carre's career. Both in the story itself, and in an afterword, this is an absolutely vicious attack on the English public school system, both for its cruelty to those within it, and for its corrosive impact on society. Like Orwell attacking the excesses of the Stalinist left, this has the feel of an insider biting the hand which beat him.

13 people found this helpful

Graham of Watton

Getting into his stride

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 June 2018

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Written in the early 1960's, 'A Murder of Quality' is the second John le Carré book in which the main character is ex-British intelligence officer George Smiley. Having left the world of spying towards the end of 'Call For the Dead', the first book in the series, it's another 'who-dunnit', in which the Smiley cleverly solves a brutal murder at a boys' public school. Stella Rode, the wife of one of the teachers at the school is savagely beaten to death and suspicion initially falls on a local mad woman who she had got to know through her charitable work. Mrs Rode is an outsider - looked down upon by the other wives at the school for being northern, non-conformist and middle-class. But who would hate her enough to kill her?
In 'A Murder of Quality' le Carré is getting into his stride in developing the character of Smiley. It's also an unmissable opportunity for him to pour out his feelings of loathing and disgust towards the public school system of the time and in which he had suffered as a boy. It's brief, and not as thrilling as the later books in the series, but is nevertheless an enjoyable read.

5 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

An early work by a modern master.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 September 2020

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John le Carre is best known for his spy stories but this, his second published novel, although involving Smiley, is a murder mystery with shades of Agatha Christie. The public school setting is reminiscent of a late Poirot story, although in that case it is a girl's school, but the writing, of course shows far more literary skill than Christie's. Its characters, like Christie 's express the snobbish attitudes of the period, but unlike Christie, who is expressing her own prejudices, le Carre, as he makes clear in his Afterwords, is surprising these class prejudices. Not a Smiley classic but still a good read.

One person found this helpful

Alistair

Before JlC really got into his stride

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 August 2017

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I love John le Carré's work as a rule, but hadn't read these early books. This one's not bad, but I don't think it would be down as a Penguin Classic if it weren't for its value in providing a context for his later works.

A Murder of Quality is a fairly standard crime thriller set in a public school. What turns out to be much more interesting than the book itself is le Carré's two afterwords written in the 1990s and early 2000s, which give his strongly held opinions on the public and grammar school systems. I got the kindle version on offer for 99p; it's certainly worth it at this price.

6 people found this helpful

Reviewer19

Interesting plot, different from the rest of the series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 June 2020

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One wonders why Le Carre wrote this and how it relates to the rest of the spy series. It could probably be read as stand alone book and follows Smiley's investigation of a murder of a women married to one of the teachers at a prestigious school. Whilst this is a good murder mystery and could be read in a day (very short), it lacks the same espionage intrigue as the rest of the stories and seems to bridge the gap between Smiley's retirement and his return to the Circus. There are some amusing character studies in this and comparisons between classes which are interesting. You could probably miss this out and still understand the following books.

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