A Small Town in Germany Audiobook By John Le Carré cover art

A Small Town in Germany

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A Small Town in Germany

By: John Le Carré
Narrated by: Ralph Lister
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In the late 1960s, in the town of Bonn, capital of West Germany, a British Embassy officer by the name of Leo Harting goes missing—and forty-three confidential-or-higher files with him.

Dispatched from the British Foreign Office to investigate, Alan Turner arrives in Bonn to find riots, protests, and a tenuous balance of power. As if there isn’t enough pressure, the embassy’s head of Chancery, Rawley Bradfield, makes it clear he has no intentions of making Turner’s investigation an easy one.

As Turner peels back the layers of chaos and desperation swirling around Bonn and the British Embassy, and grows ever closer to understanding the missing Leo Harting, he begins to uncover a web of deceit and corruption that threatens to upend British interests in Western Europe.

A “political ghost story,” as author John le Carré himself put it, A Small Town in Germany marks the first of his works taking place outside the realm of George Smiley’s Circus. Examining both geopolitical and psychological tensions—and where the two intersect—le Carré weaves yet another masterful spy thriller.

©1968 John Le Carré (P)2024 Dreamscape Media Espionage Historical Fiction International Mystery & Crime Mystery Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense

Critic reviews

“A Small Town in Germany is an exciting, compulsively readable and brilliantly plotted novel. Le Carré has shown once more that he can write this kind of book better than anyone else around—and he has done so without repeating himself.” — The New York Times Book Review
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Good story that's not quite a spy story and not quite a thriller. Le Carrè wrote it at a dark time in his life and his cynicism shows more than usual. Not his best novel, but certainly in the top half.

I didn't find the narrator as objectionable as did some other reviewers. The voices were distinct enough, and the accents changed sufficiently to indicate social class.

A Change Of Pace For le Carrè

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The story is good—early Le Carre’ spy novel. But the narrator is not good. Every exchange, every character sounds aggressive. No variation at all.

Narrator not good

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John Le Carre’s “ A Small Town In Germany” is filled with all the wonderful political intrigues, double dealings, and tension as England is facing potential unification of Germany through Moscow influence. A very good detective story and Allen Turner, as the typical disillusioned civil servant, is as hard as they come, as he doggedly strings together the pieces that Registry does not want him to know. A very good book for those who love the world of politics.

Great Story

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Narrator yelling & speeding. And intoning as if he thought listener could not perceive the natural inflection built in to the author's beautiful language, and as if everything needed one or more exclamation points. Often near unlistenable. Awful.

Worst narrator ever

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