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Call for the Dead
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins
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Publisher's Summary
An unabridged reading by Michael Jayston of John le Carré’s first novel, which introduced his most famous character, George Smiley.
Smiley is one of the most brilliantly realised characters in British fiction. Bespectacled, tubby, eternally middle-aged, and deceptively ordinary, he has a mind like a steel trap and is said to possess ‘the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin’.
This novel, set in London in the late 1950s, finds Smiley engaged in the humdrum job of security vetting. But when a Foreign Office civil servant commits suicide after an apparently unproblematic interview, Smiley is baffled. Refusing to believe that Fennan shot himself soon after making a cup of cocoa and asking the exchange to telephone him in the morning, Smiley decides to investigate – only to uncover a murderous conspiracy with its roots in his own secret wartime past.
What listeners say about Call for the Dead
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2018-02-03
excellent narration
this was my first audible book and first book by this author. great experience overall.
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Overall
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- Langer MD
- 2021-08-07
Worth a Credit
I bought this book after purchasing the BBC collection of George Smiley radioplays. A few reviewers commented that the unabridged books are far better at exhibiting John Le Carré's talents, so I found this audiobook to explore.
They are partially correct.
Le Carré definitely goes much deeper into the thoughts and motivations of a beloved character in the espionage genre: he makes it clear that George Smiley is no superspy like James Bond, for example. The character is dumpy, easily overpowered, something of a cog in British Secret Service infrastructure, lets his philandering wife take advantage of him
..and is eminently relatable. George Smiley is a refreshingly realistic character.
Beyond creating an interesting protagonist, however, Le Carré's greatest strength is undeniably his clever plots. Full of twists and turns, the Cat & Mouse games between 'The Circus' (Le Carré's version of MI-6) and East German spies in London are captivating in 'Call for the Dead'.
Less fortunately, some stretches of text are hard to follow, dialogue is often silly, descriptions are superficial, and efforts at characterization are frankly unspectacular. If this is an exemplar for Le Carré's writing, I confess I'm not terribly impressed.
The narration by Michael Jayston, however, is praiseworthy. His tone is comfortable, timbre and cadence are professional, and his voice-acting is spot-on - Jayston *is* Smiley.
This unabridged story provides some insight, but it’s not terribly superior to the BBC treatments. The incredible narration renders this short episode in the George Smiley catalogue worth 6.5 stars out of 10 - I'm glad I bought it - but you won't go wrong sticking to the plot-centred abridged iterations.
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