Any reader who knows le Carré’s earlier work, and quite a few who don’t, will assume that any attempt to second-guess the...
After having turned from his peerless chronicles of George Smiley and his fellow spies to the tale of his own life (The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, 2016), le Carré returns to put yet another spin on the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).
Looking back from half a century later, Peter (ne Pierre) Guillam resolves to tell the truth of how his senior colleague Alec Leamas met his death along with his lover, Elizabeth Gold, that fatal day at the Berlin Wall. More than an old man’s memories prompt this valediction. When Peter, long retired from the British Intelligence Service to a Brittany farm, is summoned back to London, the Service’s chief lawyer, a man who introduces himself only as Bunny, informs him that Christoph Leamas, Alec’s bastard son, has discovered Liz’s daughter, Karen, and made common cause with her, threatening a lawsuit against the Service and correspondingly ruinous publicity for leading their parents to their deaths through misdirection, falsehood, and professional betrayal. Many of the documents that might help explain the circumstances, Bunny notes with asperity, have gone suspiciously missing; what troubles Peter even more is the documents that survive, which root Alec's and Liz’s fatal shootings not only in Alec’s long-known battle of wits against Stasi Deputy Head Hans Dieter Mundt, but also Alec's well-concealed and institutionally unauthorized attempt to smuggle out of East Germany his most recent supplier of information, Doris Gamp (codenamed Tulip), the put-upon assistant to senior Stasi official Dr. Emmanuel Rapp who’s been passing on photographs of classified documents her husband, ambitious Stasi functionary Lothar Quinz, has brought home.
Any reader who knows le Carré’s earlier work, and quite a few who don’t, will assume that any attempt to second-guess the mandarins of the Service will backfire. The miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2511-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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