Single & Single Audiobook By John le Carré cover art

Single & Single

Preview
Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Single & Single

By: John le Carré
Narrated by: John le Carré
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $14.99

Buy for $14.99

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

A lawyer from the London finance house of Single & Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside by people with whom he thought he was in business. A children's magician in the English countryside is asked by his bank to explain the unsolicited arrival of more than five million pounds sterling in his young daughter's modest trust. A freighter bound for Liverpool is boarded by Russian coast guards in the Black Sea. The celebrated London merchant venturer "Tiger" Single disappears into thin air.

In Single & Single, the writer who both epitomizes and transcends the novel of espionage opens with a haunting set piece, then establishes a sequence of events whose connections are mysterious, complex, and compelling. This is a story of corrupt liaisons between criminal elements in the new Russian states and the world of legitimate finance in the West. le Carré's finest novel in years, it is also an intimate portrait of two families: one Russian, the other English; one trading illicit goods, the other laundering the profits; one betrayed by a son-in-law, the other betrayed, and redeemed, by a son.

©1999 John Le Carré (P)1999 Hodder Headline Audiobooks, All Rights Reserved; 1999 First Simon & Schuster Edition
Espionage Spies & Politics Suspense Thriller & Suspense England Great Britain
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_T1_webcro805_stickypopup

Critic reviews

"[Le Carré is] more than just a great storyteller. In Single & Single, he captures the Zeitgeist itself." (Tom Wolfe)
"...the finest imaginative social historian of the postwar years." (The London Times Literary Supplement)

Carefully Plotted Stories • Rich Character Paintings • Complex Hero
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
Having le Carre narrate is great, because you know the characters are coming through the way he intended them. Just a fun tightly woven drama about Western corruption and post-soviet Mafia, with le Carre's wonderful evocation of London inter-agency law enforcement. Same type of culture as in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."

Filial piety meets Western money laundering

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Enjoyed every minute of it, and superbly narrated by the author. I highly recommend if you enjoy LeCarre's carefully plotted stories and rich character paintings.

Another Fine LeCarre Tale

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Another great novel by the Dean of spycraft. For inveterate LeCarre readers, having the author read his own work makes this read infinitely more rich. This listens like an old time serial radio drama with Mr LeCarre performing all of the characters. I want to go back and read his other novels now that I've heard him speak through these characters

True performance art...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Look, if you like spy novels, then you must like Le Carre'. And this book needs to be part of your collections. Well done.

Another great work bu Le Carre'

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

In fairness, I didn't listen to the book so can't say how good or bad it is/was. And the reason i couldn't listen to it was that the narration is VERY poor for listening in a car. Most of the time the narrator speaks in a looooow and deep voice which forces you to crank up the volume. This is interspersed with parts that are REALLY loud. No way to maintain a balance. The low speaking portions were so frustrating that inspite of really trying to listen, I just couldn't.

Pity....

Might have been good, but impossible to hear

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

If you liked A Perfect Spy, this is a great followup. A great listen.

More Father & Son Tension

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You’ll never be disappointed with an abridged Le Carre story read by the author. (The unabridged never are, I believe.) What a treat! So many more to enjoy!

Abridged, narrated by John Le Carre? Yes!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

His narration is grating and self indulgent. Storyline is not particularly clear. Go back to his earlier books just the best.

Not one of his best.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

It seemed to come together all too quickly in the last quarter, almost like he felt he needed to wrap it up in time to keep a dinner date.

I loved it, up until then.

Not his best work

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I normally avoid abridged versions of books, but I picked this up because it was read by Le Carre himself and I thought perhaps that meant it would be OK. Le Carre is a reasonably good, if somewhat uneven reader. However, I was disappointed in the abridgement. What makes Le Carre novels great in my opinion - all the poetic detail that paints the characters and their surroundings - was missing. (I went to my paper copy of the novel to see if it was there, and it was.) Pretty much only the plot was left. It was an OK plot, but not the magical experience that full length Le Carre audio has been for me. (I highly recommend all of the full length Le Carre novels narrated by David Case/Frederick Davidson.)

Missing the magic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.