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Sep 27, 2011jgrnlees rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
The book jacket description for this title begins with the words, "Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carré's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind." Unfortunately, I found the book to be neither frightening nor heartbreaking. If "exquisitely calibrated" is synonymous with well-written, then I suppose this part of the description can be considered true. I thought the plot to be quite boring, however, and gave up the reading of it when about 1/3 of the way into it. Most of the action to this point took place in Nairobi and Lake Turkana was only mentioned as the scene of the crime. My mother tells me that le Carré's earlier books are much better (she used to read everything he wrote until this title, after which reading she stopped reading his new works), so I won't write him off as a writer until I've read one of his earlier spy novels.