A Murder of
Quality - John le Carré
This 1962 mystery was the second novel of the author of
the Karla Trilogy and, more recently, The
Constant Gardener and A Legacy of
Spies. At only about 150 pages, A
Murder of Quality lacks elbow room. That is, it feels like the novelist had
to restrain himself from exploring themes such as the lingering effects of WWII
on those that had to fight it in particular but how the past haunts the present
in general; the suffocating environment of public schools; religious
differences between Church of England and Nonconformists; and the overall deceptiveness
of mere appearance and persona. Retired spy George Smiley, for example, looks
like “the very prototype of an unsuccessful middle-aged bachelor in a sedentary
occupation.” But the inoffensive appearance masks the fact he has, one
colleague observes, “the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin.”
To sum up the plot, Smiley is contacted by a wartime
coworker who has received a strange letter. A woman who lives in a public
school town writes that she afraid that her husband, one of the masters there,
has designs on her life. Smiley recalls that Terence Fielding, brother of one
of Smiley's colleagues in intelligence during the war, teaches classics at the
school. However, Smiley hears that the letter writer has been murdered. Smiley
is invited by the local police to investigate since the local chief of police
knows a little of Smiley’s WWII exploits, wants to hold off Scotland Yard, and
the middle class chief is not comfortable investigating the quality that are
connected to the public school.
Like Maigret in a Simenon novel, or Campion in an
Allingham novel, Smiley finds himself investigating the crime in a world with its own rules of manner
and conduct. Also in the whodunnit manner, there are red herrings and odd
characters galore. This early novel is well-worth reading for fans of le Carré,
Alan Furst, and whodunit writers with a little edge like Tey, Marsh, Innes and
Highsmith.
No comments:
Post a Comment