The Secret Pilgrim
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Narrated by:
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Michael Jayston
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By:
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John le Carré
About this listen
George 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'.
The Berlin Wall is down, the Cold War is over, but the world's second oldest profession is very much alive. Smiley accepts an invitation to dine with the eager young men and women of the Circus' latest intake; and over coffee and brandy, by flickering firelight, he beguilingly offers them his personal thoughts on espionage past, present, and future. In doing so, he prompts one of his former Circus colleagues into a searching examination of his own eventful secret life.
©1991 David Cornwell (P)2014 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Zoo Station
- John Russell WWII Spy, Book 1
- By: David Downing
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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By 1939, Anglo-American journalist John Russell has spent over a decade in Berlin, where his son lives with his mother. He writes human-interest pieces for British and American papers, avoiding the investigative journalism that could get him deported. But as World War II approaches, he faces having to leave his son as well as his girlfriend of several years, a beautiful German starlet. When an acquaintance from his old communist days approaches him to do some work for the Soviets, Russell is reluctant, but he is unable to resist the offer.
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Overall great listen!
- By Patricia on 02-28-24
By: David Downing
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Topaz
- By: Leon Uris
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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On the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Paris, 1962, Devereaux and Nordstrom uncover Soviet plans to ship nuclear arms. But when nobody acts after sharing his findings, Devereaux becomes the target of an assassination attempt and soon realizes the plot extends far beyond Cuba - and himself. A thrilling and well-paced novel filled with Cold War intrigue, Topaz features two agents on a journey around the world to save NATO and themselves.
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A spy thriller in disguise
- By Shmuel M on 04-14-19
By: Leon Uris
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The Heart of the Matter
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Michael Kitchen
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Scobie, a police officer in a West African colony, is a good and honest man. But when he falls in love, he is forced into a betrayal of everything that he has ever believed in, and his struggle to maintain the happiness of two women destroys him.
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Starts Very Slowly then Boom!
- By Michael on 05-21-17
By: Graham Greene
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Daughters of Eden
- By: Charlotte Bingham
- Narrated by: Kim Hicks
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Daughters of Eden focuses on the lives and fortunes of four very different young women at the outbreak of the Second World War. Marjorie, left at a boarding school by her emigrating mother; plain Poppy, pushed into marriage with a mean-spirited aristocrat; Kate, despised by her father, but determined to prove herself; and man-mad Lily, who turns out to be the bravest of them all. That all of them are chosen to work undercover for the espionage unit at Eden Park is a surprise, not least to them.
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An amazing book everyone should read.
- By XX on 09-11-05
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The Best of Our Spies
- Spy Masters, Book 1
- By: Alex Gerlis
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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France, July 1944: a month after the Allied landings in Normandy, and the liberation of Europe is under way. In the Pas-de-Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young British Special Operations executive secret agent working with the French Resistance, disappears. In London, her husband, Owen Quinn, an officer with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth about her role in the Allies' sophisticated deception at the heart of D-Day.
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The Best Kind of Spy Story
- By Linda Hanson on 01-11-16
By: Alex Gerlis
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The Shadow Killer
- By: Arnaldur Indridason
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Reykjavik, August 1941. When a travelling sales rep is found murdered in a Reykjavik flat, killed by a bullet from a Colt 45, the police initially suspect a member of the Allied occupation force. The British are in the process of handing over to the Americans, and the streets of Reykjavik are crawling with servicemen whose relations with the local women are a major cause for concern. Flovent, Reykjavik's sole detective, is joined by the young military policeman Thorson, the son of Icelandic emigrants to Canada.
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Tawdry, depressing, and unsatisfying
- By Gail N. on 11-26-18
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A Spy by Nature
- A Novel
- By: Charles Cumming
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Alec Milius is young, smart, and ambitious. He also has a talent for deception. He is working in a dead-end job when a chance encounter leads him to MI6, the elite British Secret Intelligence Service, handing him an opportunity to play center stage in a dangerous game of espionage.
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I highly recommend this little gem
- By Chou Young on 02-14-08
By: Charles Cumming
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Season of Darkness
- By: Maureen Jennings
- Narrated by: Tom Craig
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the disastrous retreat of the British army from Dunkirk in 1940, England is plunged into a state of fear. The threat of a German invasion is real, and many German Nationals are interned in camps across the country. One such camp is on the ancient moor land of Prees Heath, near the small town of Whitchurch in Shropshire, where Tom Tyler is the sole detective inspector. Young women from all walks of life have joined the Land Army, to help desperate farmers keep the country fed. Then one turns up dead.
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much better than average historical detective
- By connie on 09-30-12
By: Maureen Jennings
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Triple
- A Novel
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: Raza Jaffrey
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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As Egypt comes closer and closer to developing a nuclear bomb, the Mossad’s number one Israeli agent is given an impossible mission: to beat the Arabs in the nuclear arms race by finding and stealing two hundred tons of uranium. The world’s balance of power will shift. And the Mossad, the KGB, the Egyptians, and Fedayeen terrorists will play out the final, violent moves in this devastating game where the price of failure is a nuclear holocaust....
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Triple poorly performed
- By Jpop on 03-13-21
By: Ken Follett
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River of Darkness
- By: Rennie Airth
- Narrated by: Christopher Kay
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1921, the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two staff are found in a manor house in Surrey. The police have put the murders down to a violent robbery, but Detective Inspector Madden from Scotland Yard has his own suspicions. In the meantime the killer is plotting his second strike.
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New Mystery Written in 1920's Style-What A Thrill!
- By Nancy J on 06-27-12
By: Rennie Airth
What listeners say about The Secret Pilgrim
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Catherine
- 04-02-12
Excellently read finale for Smiley
This collection of short stories is primarily for the Le Carre completist, referring as it does to characters and events from his earlier work, mainly occurring in the Karla trilogy and The Russia House, the full significance of which would be lost on a first time Le Carre reader. The structure is a little laboured, relying on Smiley's reminiscences to a graduating class of new secret service recruits to trigger corresponding memories of the narrator Ned's experiences of life as a spy which are a little too conveniently packaged into extended anecdotes. I'd imagine this creaky device would grate on the written page - it's certainly a sad retreat from the ingenious interweaving timelines of Tinker Tailor -but it's a tribute to Michael Jayston's brilliant performance that Le Carre just about gets away with it. Considering the several unforgettable character studies Le Carre had created by this point in his career Ned emerges as rather colourless and derivative, an ersatz Peter Guillam unfortunately lacking Peter's charisma. The stories themselves are undeniably entertaining but appear just a touch too neat and easily resolved to the die-hard Le Carre fan, a sort of M16 Tales of the Unexpected. They also show a tendency to recycle plot devices, character types and motifs from earlier, better novels. (A trivial but telling example is the remarkable coincidence of several of his jaded heroes in this and other later novels having tricky relationships with estranged sons who are invariably called Adrian - did neither Le Carre nor his editor notice the repetition?) Ironically, considering his reputation as the master Cold War chronicler, the fall of the Berlin Wall may have come at just the right time to prompt him to find fresh themes and settings. Michael Jayston works wonders with the occasionally threadbare material to give one of his best performances as a Le Carre narrator, which is high praise considering his many fantastic readings of Le Carre's work, and is the main reason for my high overall rating for this audiobook. He approaches the material with utter conviction and succeeds wonderfully in not only creating dozens of distinct characters but in setting a haunting tone of regret and loss that I don't think would have fully emerged from the page alone. He also deserves a medal for his sensitive treatment of what could have been an excruciatingly embarrassing sex scene in the second story, bravo!
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- Mary-Anne
- 03-20-12
Brilliant, just brilliant
What did you like about this audiobook?
Brilliant, just brilliant.
How has the book increased your interest in the subject matter?
Absolutely, John Le Carre has always done that.
Does the author present information in a way that is interesting and insightful, and if so, how does he achieve this?
They were fascinating & scary times to live through in real time and Le Carre's novels set the tone of the times so well.
What did you find wrong about the narrator's performance?
Nothing!
Do you have any additional comments?
I have really enjoyed Michael Jayston's reading of all the Le Carre novels and I am following him to other authors I may not have read in hard copy books, but will now listen to.
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- Karl
- 06-12-15
Another great book from Le Carre
A more varied and diversified story compared to Tinker Taylor of Smileys People, but still intense and thrilling. A great book!
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