Single & Single - John le Carre

"Any reader who feared that the end of the Cold War would deprive Mr. le Carré of his subject can now feel a measure of relief. If anything, his subject of East-West misunderstanding has grown richer, and he now possesses vast new territories to mine" (The New York Times).
New York Times bestselling author John le Carré's novels deftly navigate us through the intricate shadow worlds of international intrigue with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him unprecedented worldwide acclaim.

A lawyer from a London finance house 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 to explain the arrival of more than five million pounds sterling in his young daughter's modest trust.

In Single & Single, le Carré masterfully establishes a sequence of events whose connections are mysterious, complex and compelling. He tells of corrupt liaisons between criminal elements in the new Russian states and the world of legitimate finance in the West. He also paints 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.