A Murder of Quality

A Murder of Quality by John le Carré

I don’t know what happened with A Murder of Quality. The author, John le Carré, did not construct a story nearly as good as his first novel, Call for the Dead. He was more ambitious this time around and, in the end, a little careless. The story is not tight.

My biggest problem with le Carré’s is that he hates women. He very obviously hates women. It was evident in Call for the Dead, and it really shines through in the opening of A Murder of Quality. He is so in-your-face with his hatred for women that an intelligent reader cannot believe that the victim of the story’s murder, a woman named Stella Rode, is an innocent. Thus, when le Carré gives the reader clues, they come across as unnecessary redundancies.

The novel’s biggest failing is that the protagonist, George Smiley, is a spy in something that is not a spy story. It is clear that le Carré had issues with the culture of England’s boarding schools and wanted to write a novel about it. But Smiley, as le Carré created him, doesn’t fit in that world, and so the entire story reads awkwardly. Most of the central characters are caricatures, and the women are mostly clichés (the succubus, the gossip, the spinster, and the dingbat). Nothing really worked for me. It was all thrown together. Poor, poor execution.

This was only le Carré’s second novel, so he had yet to grow out of cliché. I maintain hope that the third novel avoids these pitfalls.

D