A Murder of Quality, by John Le Carré

Somehow this early story by Le Carré over the years escaped my attention. Together with what I believe is his first novel (Call for the Dead), this tale sits more in the murder mystery genre rather than with spies and such, which made his fame. Nevertheless, it is well-crafted both as a mystery and as a literary work. Suffusing the story is a critique of English society and class divide. It might be worthwhile to compare the style of the Swedish police/detective novels (see earlier posts about Sjöwall and Wahlöö), crafted with tight, clean prose, with the more artful language of Le Carré. Both are wonderfully wrought, on similar canvases, yet are so distinctly different that one may marvel over the flexibility of language and the creativity of the human mind.