Single & Single - Softcover

Le Carre, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143171100 ISBN 13: 9780143171102

Synopsis

A corporate lawyer from the House of Single & Single is shot dead in cold blood on a Turkish hillside for crimes that he does not understand. A children's entertainer in Devon is hauled to his local bank late at night to explain a monumental influx of cash. A Russian freighter is arrested in the Black Sea. A celebrated London financier has disappeared into thin air. A British customs officer is on a trail of corruption and murder. SINGLE & SINGLE is a thrilling journey of the contemporary human heart - intimate, magical, riotous and subtly architected, showing us John le Carré at the height of his dramatic and creative powers.

About this title

Review:

Those who have followed le Carré's remarkable progress as writer (from the lean and brilliantly-plotted The Spy Who Came in from the Cold onwards) will be aware that the end of the Cold War gave the author no pause at all; while other espionage writers were floundering around for a subject, le Carré was able to deal with the dangerous realities of the modern world in precisely the same compulsive way he had always done. If some of the recent novels have, nevertheless, not had quite the elegant and commanding power of his best work, it's refreshing to welcome this new book as one of his most assured in years.

A corporate lawyer is brutally killed on a hillside in Turkey, and the reader is transported into a disparate but compelling series of events, taking us from a Devon seaside resort through the lethal world of the Russian Mafiosi to a tense climax in the High Caucasus. Of course, for le Carré character is every bit as important as plot: his protagonist, concealing his past security work by working as a children's magician, has failings as a father (which match the problems he had with his own father). In terms of the narrative, as so often before, the author has us at his command from the very first page.--Barry Forshaw

Review:

...more than just a great storyteller. In SINGLE & SINGLE he captures the Zeitgeist itself (Tom Wolfe)

The finest imaginative social historian of the post-war years (Times Literary Supplement)

In his maturity, he has done for popular fiction what the young Marlon Brando did for Hollywood . . . SINGLE & SINGLE is an adventure that takes us to the ends of the earth via the rich but often barren landscape of the human heart (Times)

About this edition

• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0143171100
• ISBN 13: 9780143171102
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 332