2.5 stars

Well this left me feeling completely flat. The saddest thing about this book is that it is as relevant now as it was 80 years ago. Israelis and Palestinians are still at war with no end in sight. More people die and there's no solution, which is pretty much what Le Carre presented us with in these pages.

It's a complicated story of double agents that is much better told by the synopsis than my poor efforts at being concise.

I listened to the new audio recording of this book and even though I've listened and loved several of Adjoa Andoh's narrations before this I'm afraid that this time she let the accents get the better of her. The rolling of r's on the Arab and Israeli characters got more and more pronounced whilst the Germans were positively barking by halfway through. As for Charlie, she had permanent Barbie/AQI disease. All in all I was quite disappointed. I'd have preferred a straight reading.

So in conclusion I didn't enjoy the reading and I wasn't convinced by the storyline. I have a chequered past with Le Carre though so if you love him unconditionally then you'll probably enjoy this. I was bewildered by the halfway through and once I'd listened to the audio I watched the BBC series just so I could figure out what had occurred. (And even though it was a good production I still felt miserable at the politics and wasn't convinced by Charlie at all).

Sorry, not for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for the audio advance review copy.