A Murder of Quality by John le Carré

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1962 mystery was the second novel of the author of the Karla Trilogy. 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; the suffocating environment of public schools (that is, private schools); and the 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.”

Smiley is contacted by a wartime co-worker 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 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.

The Long Sunset by Jack McDevitt
Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

This book is the 8th in “The Academy” series, but I see no reason a new reader couldn’t pick this up and still enjoy it. Read in order, there’s a clear timeline, but each book is a stand-alone science-fiction adventure.

Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins is a top-notch interstellar pilot, specializing in exploratory missions and the survivor of quite a few hair-raising adventures. But the political climate of the world right now is that humans can’t afford just to go exploring, there’s no money and besides, what if they meet something scary? Space is now the province of a couple private companies who do tours and one that’s working on terraforming a new planet for humans.

But then a signal from many light-years away is received, and it’s so compelling that a researcher decides they have to go look. He puts together a team with Hutch as the pilot, and they manage to get underway even as the stop order is hitting their comms.

I found this first part of the book slow going. The conversations about how the team might run into aliens determined to follow them back and wipe out humanity are repeated over and over. A thing I like about McDevitt is the idea that advanced civilizations are going to realize there’s no point in being automatically hostile. I don’t know that I believe it (just like some characters in this book!) but I want to. But the same question just gets hammered on too many times.

As in most of the Academy novels, there’s no straight line between the goal of the mission and  how they get there – much sightseeing is involved. McDevitt is great at throwing in fictitious books and plays his characters have experienced, so we get a lot of that too. Eventually,  Hutch and some of the crew are going to get a crash course communicating with a different set of aliens than they were looking for.  McDevitt isn’t one to come up with fantastically strange life-forms – his aliens are pretty much like us in terms of what they want out of life. In this case they apparently also invent instantly recognizable items, like telephones. It’s actually pretty funny that this crew from more than 200 years in our future knows what a 1970s telephone looks like.

There’s a huge disaster looming over the alien civilization, which the humans know about and the aliens don’t. The solution is overwhelming. Should they tell? Can they even figure out a solution? Can they find help? How to persuade Earth, given that space travel is now seen as unnecessary? There was a great big whopping idea early on, and I was disappointed when McDevitt only gave it one line of recognition later.

The dialogue is occasionally pretty clunky, and I don’t find much difference between the five members of the crew, but well-rounded characters has never been McDevitt’s strongest thing. It’s told exclusively from Hutch’s POV except for a few diary entries from the others. Don’t forget to read the little media headlines.  And I think he failed to give the reader a sense of real danger; there’s conflict but except for the return to Earth (that was tense) it didn’t catch my emotions. But what was very satisfying is a big discovery regarding the Monument Makers, the mystery that begins the very first in the series. Also, it’s hopeful – we’re left with the satisfaction that people can empathize with strangers, and given all the information, we’ll do our best to do the right thing. If McDevitt wanted to end this series, this wouldn’t be a bad place to do it.