A Murder of Quality

Beautifully intelligent, satiric and witty — Daily Telegraph

For Alisa Brimley, editor of the small magazine Christian Voice, receiving a letter from a longtime subscriber might otherwise be a perfectly normal occasion—except Stella Rode, the reader in question, writes that her husband is planning to kill her. Brimley calls upon an old wartime friend to help her investigate: retired Circus spy, George Smiley.

Before Smiley can begin, Rode is found murdered, and Brimley asks Smiley to venture to the small town of Carne, home of the elite Carne School where Rode's husband is a public school junior master. Once there, he sets about peeling back the layers of pretense and artifice that cloak both town and institution, and discovers that there's more to Rode’s murder than a simple crime of passion.

John le Carré’s second novel finds George Smiley in a classic whodunnit-style mystery. Trading the international intrigue of the Circus for the small village of Carne, A Murder of Quality is a deft examination of another uniquely British institution: the elite public school.