Book info

• Title A Murder of Quality
• Author John le Carré
• Year 1962
• Genre Mystery

Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doyleys and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. As Smiley probes further beneath Carne's respectable veneer, he uncovers far more than a simple crime of passion. In his second George Smiley novel, le Carr moves outside the world of espionage to reveal the secrets at the heart of another particularly English institution. The result is a pitch-perfect murder mystery, with Smiley as master detective.

Thoughts

I read the first George Smiley book a while ago and quite liked it but if I’m honest, I’d forgotten most of the details. The only thing I could remember is that he was a spy… except in this story, he wasn’t! This time, Smiley is dispatched to Dorset to investigate a murder before which the victim wrote a letter suggesting her husband was going to kill her. It’s about private schools and the politics of class, and Smiley investigates without really having any legal recourse to do so. And so it’s perfectly fine but it feels just kind of lacking anything to really grab you and make it a pageturner.

Rating: 3 / 5