Single & Single (1999)

so-so; Russian mafia seeks revenge on turncoat son of their London bankers

I could not get excited by this book. Almost boring. ( )

What links a corporate lawyer facing death on a Turkish hillside with a children's entertainer from Devon? An interesting thriller spanning Europe from England to Georgia. ( )

In some ways the best, in some ways one of the worst of le Carré's books. The best, in that it deals with a genuine sense of outrage against the corruption that runs like a rotten seam through the British Establishment. The setting (finance) is something I know a little about, and it rings pretty true. One of the worst of his books, because we've seen it all before: deception on several levels, the self-doubt and angst that come with deception, and the love of a good woman. But it doesn't stop Oliver from being one of my favorite le Carré heroes, or the theme from being any less true than it ever has been. ( )

Publisher's Summary:
A corporate lawyer from the House of Single &Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside for crimes that he does not understand. A children’s entertainer in Devon is hauled to his local bank late at night to explain a monumental influx of cash. A Russian freighter is arrested in the Black Sea....
The logical connection of these events and more is one of the many pleasures of this story of love, deceit, family and the triumph of humanity.

Single & Single are a firm of financial enablers. Among their clients are the Russian capitalists, the Orlov family, out to make quick roubles. Their biggest scheme so far is the sale of "clean caucasoid" blood to the West. Money managers, the House of Single, Tiger Single, the senior partner, with his son Oliver, are set to reap a fortune. However events impair the smooth flow of cash, and the Russian partners turn to a new means of profit-making, drugs. As a lawyer in a financial management organisation, Oliver draws the line at drugs. It jeopardizes the future of the firm, and his own. He informs on his father to British government officials in the hope of cutting a deal. It takes four years for the government to act, and then their actions result in Tiger's disappearance. But it seems that Oliver was not the only one to betray Tiger.

This was not an easy story to listen to, although narrated extremely well by Michael Jayston. The event with which the story opens, the death of Albert Wincer, really comes midway in the plot, and from that point on Le Carre feeds the reader tidbits, almost in the style of jigsaw puzzle pieces plucked randomly from the box. Sometimes the bits fit, and at other times we have to mentally set them aside for later use. If this was a held-in-the-hand paper book the reader would have the advantage of flipping backwards and forwards, re-reading bits, but you can't do that with an audio.

One of the things that other reviewers have commented on is the fact that at the end it felt as if Le Carre could not get shut of the reader quickly enough. However I had made up my mind about my rating well before that. Perhaps I would have liked it better if I was "reading" it in another format. I may not have had the continuity problems that I referred to earlier. The story did have redeeming features: interesting characters, and good exploration of the relationships between them. ( )