Tinker Tailoring with Le Carre's usual style?

Advantages: Good, solid crime fiction
Disadvantages: Not along the lines of Le Carre's spy thrillers - may disappoint some

...Introduction If you're expecting something along the lines of a spy thriller such as 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' or 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold', then this book may not be for you. This book, although still involving George Smiley, is much more of a murder mystery. I've seen other reviews likening it to Agatha Christie - unfair, I think, because Le Carre's own style is unmistakeable - but it is certainly of that genre. If you like well-written crime fiction, however, you will like this. I was certainly pleasantly surprised. The author John Le Carre, real name David John Moore Cornwell, was educated in Berne and Oxford, before teaching at Eton. He then worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Europe before embarking on his literary career. He is most famous for his spy thrillers. In all, he has written 19 books...

sunmeilan 24.08.2005 · Read review
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Review of A Murder of Quality - John Le Carre

JPG Le Male - from a female perspective!

Advantages: Sexy smell, long lasting, great design, women love it!
Disadvantages: none

...I first bought this aftershave for my partner over 2 years ago, and neither of us have tired of it since. I bought it after a friend recommending it and I am so glad that I did! THE PACKAGING Ok, the baked bean tin exterior isn't perhaps the most original casing for a fragrance (although perhaps a useful storage pot!), but the actual bottle of JPG Le Male has become an icon because of it's unique, sexy design. It looks great on display, and I even have an empty bottle as an ornament on my shelf, alongside an empty JPG Classique bottle (the female equivalent, also in an attractive body-shaped bottle but in a dusky pink!). It looks much more stylish than many other perfume bottles around. THE SMELL Firstly, it is distinctive. I work in a bar and even in the smoky atmosphere I can still tell immediately when a customer is...

fallenangel68 29.05.2006 · Read review
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Review of Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male Eau De Toilette Spray

FREE DVDs

Advantages: Free trial, large choice, post included,new realeases
Disadvantages: see review

...I like movies and I like freebies, so when you get offered both in one swoop you?re bound to accept! I used my two week free trial with this company and remained with them for a couple of monthsbefore moving on to try many other companies free trials (and winning a new DVD player on Tesco DVD rental site on their free trial offer). I then had an email from DVDs 365 asking me to go back, and offering me a free DVD if I did so. I had just left Tesco (with my new DVD player) so I chose to go back with them. ∆◊◊ THE SERVICE THEY OFFER ∆◊◊ Basically it?s like going to a video shop and hiring films on DVD, except you don?t pay for each film you chose ? rather a monthly fee for which you can watch as many movies as you can fit in, for us this is usually around 8 a month (2 a week usually weekends...

dabmim 15.11.2004 · Read review
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Review of dvds365.com

John the Entertaining

Advantages: Very emotional writing
Disadvantages: Quite slow paced

...Up until now, I'd only ever heard of ''John the Revelator'' as a song. Judging from the several mentions of the song in the story and given that author Peter Murphy works in the music press, I suspect that's where the title of this novel came from as well. How much I enjoy the song depends on which version of it I hear, but with no such concerns with the book, I was able to enjoy it fully without worrying if someone had done a better version elsewhere that I was missing out on. John Devine is a teenager stuck in a small Irish town with a single mother, no real friends and a rather worrying fascination for bodily parasites, mostly intestinal worms. His only human contact is with his mother Lily, Mrs Nagle, an elderly neighbour and Harry Farrell, a local jack-of-all-trades. His only break from the house and from school is Sunday Mass. Not...

Soho_Black 06.08.2009 · Read review
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Review of John the Revelator - Peter Murphy

John Lewis

Advantages: Great range of services
Disadvantages: None

...John Lewis is a department store with 29 shops around the UK. They offer a wide range of high quality goods in departments such as: gifts, lighting, pictures, china and glass, linens, haberdashery, furnishing and fabrics, womenswear, lingerie, beauty, nursery, menswear, audio, toys and kitches/kitchenwear. Within the store they stock not only their own range of goods but also other branded names such as, Jigsaw, Joules, Levi and Warehouse in clothing, Bobbi Brown, Clarins and Clinique in the beauty section and Bose, Apple and Canon in electricals. As you can acertain they sell a wide range of products from knitting needles and wool to high end audio systems. All items are of great quality and if anything falls below the standard you will expect they have a great returns and refund policy with a flexible 28 days. They will even return...

rachieb123 12.10.2009 · Read review
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Review of John Lewis (Department Stores)

le cercle rouge

Advantages: Read Opp
Disadvantages: Read Opp

...le cercle rouge Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, this film is similar to his previous film Le Samourai, in that there are good guys and bad, and there are the cops and robbers. The translation of the title meaning the Red Circle was based upon a Buddhist motto about those people who are destined to meet, eventually will. In this film the types of scenes included are an escaping prisoner, murder scene, police man-hunt, mob battles and an armed robbery to steal diamonds. The film starts off showing a German named train running through I would guess Paris. Though scene by scene the actors performances and directions really smartly executed and cool to watch. Corey, who has just been released from prison on good behaviour notice from the police, is given a job to do by a Prison Guard. Inspector Bourvil is escorting...

costas1234 28.06.2008 (31.05.2009) · Read review
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Review of Le Cercle Rouge (DVD)

Le Samourai

Advantages: Great Film
Disadvantages: Viewing Aspect ratio is Low

...Le Samourai There is a small bird in a cage in a dull looking apartment room, a man wearing a trench coat and a felt hat, and he goes out of the room and adjusts his hat. Jeff Costello (Alain Delone) then jumps into a car, with a set of master keys. He starts the car, and smokes a cigarette. Eventually he finds the right key by good luck and drives off. He then meets a criminal mechanic. The mechanic gives Jeff some cash, later goes to his pocket and gives him a gun. Here during this scene not a word is spoken. This film is low on dialogue though maintains a great sense of direction, pace and focus throughout. The suspense of each scene and the plot is amazing to watch. He then goes to a flat and meets a young woman who is named Jane (Anthoine Delone). She is a woman who is there to provide an alibi for Jeff. It does not...

costas1234 20.06.2008 (29.05.2009) · Read review
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Review of Le Samourai DVD

Surprising Picture Quality - Panasonic DVD-S54

Advantages: Incredible picture quality when compared to my old non-upscaling player with a scart lead
Disadvantages: Sometimes disc drive can be really noisy when DVD's initially load.

...At first I wasn't convinced by up-scaling DVD player technology but was persuaded after reading an article in "What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision" magazine. Unable to afford a Blu-Ray player my sister and I bought the Panasonic DVD-S54 to match our parents brand new Panasonic TX-32LZD80 LCD television as their Christmas 2008 present. Admittedly it was a slightly selfish purchase as we both live at home and wanted to watch DVDs on the big new TV ourselves! We bought the player from the electrical retailer Comet for about £100 just before Christmas so there were no discounts applied. On Christmas day when opened we found a relatively small box tightly packed with the player in polystyrene packaging. All the components such as cables, remote and manuals were well presented in their own protective plastic bags, to keep them protected. The player...

bobbacon985 12.02.2009 · Read review
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Review of Panasonic DVD-S54

German Ghosts

Advantages: good story, well researched, atmospheric
Disadvantages: present tense, strange ending

...I've known the famous author of spy-thrillers John le Carré (né David John Moore) for many years, in the 1960s I saw the film The Spy Who Came in From the Cold made after the book with the same title, I read A Small Town in Germany in the 1970s and Russia House in the early 1990s; I found the film and the books thrilling, why didn't I read more of his 24 books? I've realised that I'm too simple-minded for the genre, I often have to read an ending more than once until I get the pivotal twist and that can be frustrating. When I read a review about Absolute Friends (2003), I thought I could give it a go, what intrigued me was that the story is set in Germany, for me it's an extra pleasure to find out how an author describes a country I know well, what they find worth mentioning, if they've done their homework and have got everything...

MALU 01.02.2008 · Read review
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Review of Absolute Friends - John le Carre

Recommended? Absolutely

Advantages: Great characterisation and writing
Disadvantages: Style may not be to everyone's taste

..."Absolutely," says Ted Mundy, often, using that typically middle-class phrase of the mid 20th century. But only a part of his background - he was educated at an English public school - conforms to this stereotype. The rest of him has been formed by a wide variety of environments and influences which combine to make him a perfect spy. Readers of John Le Carré will recognise that last phrase, the title of one of his previous novels. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War was declared over, many book reviewers lamented that this also spelled the end of the spy story. Not so. It is alive, well and thriving in the master's hands; partly because Le Carré has always written novels which happen to be about spies, rather than spy stories, and partly because, well, there are always new enemies against whom the dark arts of espionage can be...

Chouchinciao 02.10.2007 · Read review
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Review of Absolute Friends - John le Carre