Tracy

A well worth second reading, with great graphics, and Marek has put in, what I think is a sneaky drawing of the boy detective, Tin Tin, but you'll have to find him yourself! I've never liked the title “Dumb Witness”, but checking on the Goodreads list, the other title “Poirot Loses a Client” is well, not the same; I'll just have to live with it.

John le Carre's second novel, which also features George Smiley. Not as good as his first novel, “Call for the Dead”, as it lacks the black humour as the first, and also nothing to do with espionage, which is what le Carre/George Smiley are associated with. Smiley is asked by a friend and an ex-colleague to investigate a murder at a public school, in which we learn about the snobbery of the British public school system, and a little of Smiley's failed marriage and his connections in the Secret Service. Plot wise, it builds up, then falls flat at the end, by which time I didn't care about who murdered who, though le Carre admits this book wasn't his best. Looking forward to reading “The Spy who came in from the Cold”, which made his name.

This, the follow up to ‘Three Men in a Boat...' Mr Jerome(now married), Harris(also married) and George(still single), go on a (cycling)trip to the Black Forest. This tries to capture the essence of the previous book, but doesn't quite get there. I feel that he tries to hard to re-capture his youth, but portrays three middle men making fools of them abroad.