Single & Single

Le Carre, John

ISBN 10: 0684859262 / ISBN 13: 9780684859262

Published by Scribner, 1999

About this Item

First edition hardcover with full number line signed by Le Carre to the title page. Tight and square with minor bump to text block top corner, small stain to rear endpage. The DJ in mylar is lightly soiled with trace shelfwear. Autograph copy sticker to front panel. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 352 pages; Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 44894

Bibliographic Details

Title: Single & Single

Publisher: Scribner

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First Edition; First Printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

The high-stakes world of international finance turns deadly as a lawyer from a London banking house is murdered, a London merchant banker vanishes, a Russian freighter is intercepted in the Black Sea, and a children's magician discovers an unexplained fortune in his daughter's trust fund. 400,000 first printing. BOMC Main.

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