The Constant Gardener: A Novel

It's not terribly written, but not unlike an African summer day, it plods along rather slowly without any clear destination in mind. Some of the humor and nuances are interesting. There are times when you just want to say, "just get on with it for Cs." (typical Lecarré)

Having watched the Movie..I have a hard time paying attention to the book...With John le Carre, it's a given that it'll get read eventually....I should've read the book before seeing the Movie... constantly comparing the characters to the Movie version....

I'am a fan of anything le Carre..

I watched 'The Constant Gardener' several years ago and enjoyed the movie despite Rachel Weisz's presence on screen. I can't help but include the film in this review because it impacted dramatically my enjoyment of the book which I picked up used (7500 colones) while traveling in Costa Rica. It was 100 degrees on the beach and a conspiracy tale of powerful pharmaceuticals set in the African heat seemed apropos.

Le Carre's writing is strong and I cannot fault him for the characters he created. They are all easy to picture and a thriller with this sort of detail contrasts starkly with the majority of throwaway paperbacks. However, whereas in most spy, conspiracy, espionage novels we know too little until the end and the characters are simple outlines of real people, 'The Constant Gardener' errs on the other side. The entire plot is outlined within the first half of the book. We know all the players. We know who the bad guys are. We know who the trusted friends are. We know what the evil company did and who was killed because of it. There are no surprises once we reach the second half of the book (and this isn't due to my seeing the movie because most of the plot I had forgotten by the time I picked up the book) and it simply drags. Our protagonist (who's transformation from pushover to hardened whistleblower is fully realized in the movie) simply goes around having... conversations. Nothing really happens, nothing really changes, and his personal odyssey is without any real tension. I simply wanted the book to end.

The best part of the book to me was Le Carre's obvious research on big pharmaceutical companies. You get a sense that a bit too much of this fiction is based on actual fact. For this reason I enjoyed it and kept with it, long after I'd given up on the characters and forward progression of the plot. It also has inspired me to more heavily research 'Glaxo Smith Klein', the pharmaceutical who supplies me with my prescribed epilepsy medication. I'd recommend watching the movie, enjoying Ray Fiennes fine performance and not picking up this novel.

The Constant Gardener is basically a detective story in which Justin Quayle (The Gardener and Detective) investigates who was responsible for his wife’s murder. As the novel progresses he finds more and pieces in the puzzle until all is revealed at the end.

John Le Carre however is an outstanding writer of detective thrillers because he adds more than others.

The following is a list of features that stand out to put this novel above other detective novels.

• The start – “The news hit …. Woodrow took it like a bullet, jaw rigid, and chest out, smack through his divided English heart”.
• The main characters Justin and Tessa are as interesting as Smiley and the spies in his other novels. In this book however he has switched from amoral characters to those who care. The main characters develop and change as the plot develops as real people do. This makes the characters more real.
• Supporting characters are developed to be almost caricatures making them amusing as well as interesting. Woodrow and his wife are archetype British upper crust types. Gloria takes the role of supportive, accepting no knowledge wife even at the expense of appearing a bit stupid. Woodrow goes off to do the right thing as a soldier’s son and servant of the Government. The High Commissioner Coleridge sounds very British when he refers to his boss as that s*** Pellegrin but always follows his directions down to the last details.
• Descriptions of places such as the Nairobi Kibera slum, The Deserts of South Sudan and Northern Kenya, Uhuru Hospital and the British High Commission create a vivid impression and bring these places to the reader in a very real way.
• Insight into Kenya, which has a lot in common with many other ex-colonies of the British Empire seen by ex colonials as having gone backwards.
• Moral issues raised – betrayal of ordinary people, evil of uncontrolled capitalism. These issues hit home to a sensitive western reader. Am I also party responsible for what is happening in Africa with the involvement of my government?
• Story of how Justin Quayle (the Gardener) is elevated by tragedy or a story of Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Something that readers like as it could apply to them.
• The flow – the plot moves quickly and interest is maintained. Descriptions are detailed and important but don’t slow the plot. Key questions and issues exist at each point in the plot until the end but not too many to cause the reader to switch off.

The title to this book may entice horticulturalists - but the well known surname of the author should tell any interested reader that this is another spy novel. Self-proclaimed his fourth best spy novel, Le Carre's theory is not so much the Cold War (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) but is more about how big corporate America/world rules the politicians who are puppets in the works.

And, beneath the puppets are the poor. And, among the poor must be the poorest. So, this book occurs in Kenya where poverty is only less depressing that the high rate of Aids epidemic - where the book cites 75% of the infected persons of the world are in Africa.

And, helping the poor means helping with economy of scale. Taking outdated drugs off western civilization's shelves and passing to poor African nations becomes a corporate tax deduction, which is combined with goodwill and public relations twists about how the large conglomerate donated significantly expensive medications to the helpless out of Samaritan quests - not otherwise. But, the pills are ignored in this book, become impotent as their expiry date arrives long before distribution, and uses for the drugs often are prematurely applied in relatively less regulated Africa. The result? Unnecessary death of the indigenous pill takers - but at the classic philosophical question of mankind: is one man's death worth it to save the lives of many more?

The answer is obvious to corporate greed which looks upon Africa as both a tax haven and testing cite. To the locals, and few of the main characters of this book, it is anything but a question to which an affirmative response is deserved. And, so the chase goes.

A hit-man death in the beginning of one of the idealists leads to the spouse chasing down the reason for the kill. And, we discover much of what is reviewed above. The specifics are not needed, as the underlying concepts remain true today just as they were true at the time of the novel and for decades before the novel's publication. The bottom line is the only line of demarcation for most companies, and the corporate leaders of this book, although with names and clothing and apparently of mankind, make day-to-day decisions violating the most obvious Judeo-Christian ethics; and, that is what this novel seeks to reveal.

Other artists in film and literature have touched upon this same topic. But, few have included the tragedy of this theme by depicting the horrid poverty of the innocent Africans who are subjected to man's cruelty to mankind.

This is a fun novel to read, and the ending is not unsurprising. Unfortunately.

The Constant Gardener is my first John le Carre book and I can safely say I shall be reading more of his work. I must admit it wasn't anything like I thought it would be but then I didn't really have a clear idea in mind what the story was going to be about. Sometimes that's the best way to be surprised I find; don't do too much delving into what a book is about, just plunge on in and hopefully be pleasantly surprised with what you read. This was the case for me with The Constant Gardener. It started off a little slow but when it switched to Justin's view of things it picked up speed and all I wanted to do was read and read and read.

This suspenseful novel is based around the murder of Tessa, Justin's wife. As you read through you discover the great love Tessa and Justin shared and feel his grief and also his anger and need for uncovering the sorry state of affairs that led to Tessa's murder. We follow Justin as he sets about understanding why Tessa's life was cut short and whilst he tries to make sense of things his own life is in danger.

Le Carre has done a wonderful job, if you can use such a word in relation to this sentence, in opening the reader's eyes to the corruption present within the pharmaceutical world. This book is fiction but you can bet, although I wish we couldn't, that things of this nature happen on a daily basis. It's political and it's disgusting. New drugs are being tested on Africans with dire consequences and everyone seems to be turning their heads pretending not to see or for those companies directing the tests see but they don't see the poor Africans dying and being used like guinea pigs, they see the big dollar sign. Greed is a horrible game, especially when it affects poor innocent people who really don't have their own voice or the courage to say no. These people get told lies that the drugs will help them and really, they of course want to believe this is true and so trust in the big money-hungry giants whilst unbeknownst to them they are just a pawn in a corrupt business game.

I could go on and on talking about this book and the issues it raises, the frustration and anger it produces in me and the disgust I feel at how human beings treat other humans with little or no regard at all in order to secure self-empowerment, but if I did that you would probably stop reading the review right about now. I will say that I really liked the ending, another thing I wasn't expecting and I felt it was concluded just right. I have heard others say the movie is better than the book, which I always find hard to believe but so many people can't be wrong can they? I can't wait to seek out the movie, sit down and watch this entertaining story come alive on screen. Thank you, John le Carre, for giving me a lot to think about.

The negative reviews of this book usually contain words like "dull" or "slow-paced." Le Carre's trend has been away from protagonists who, in the context of their particular story, are extraordinarily suited to handle what challenges the plot offers, even if Le Carre points out their inadequacies as people for reasons of characterization. In that context, this extraordinarily suited individual may seem more of a hero, because he sees his world more clearly than we might in his place, and is able to do more about it than we could.

Justin Quayle is not stupid or weak, but he's focused on a smaller picture of home and duty, like the mass of us. During the day, he's a dependable and minor bureaucrat in the British Foreign Service, not singled out for any sort of distinction. He tends flowers in his spare time, when he's deliberately not paying attention to the possibility that his wife carried out an affair with a handsome African physician - before the two of them were savagely and inexplicably murdered. The book is not about solving the puzzle; no one will ever be tried for his wife's murder, though his findings might result in an incidental loss of profit for the perpetrators when revealed to the public. The book is about his (and our) growing insight into a meaner, uglier world from which his wife tried to protect him while she confronted it, and the sense of closure this provides him.

Justin Quayle is Le Carre's best-drawn character since [i]Russia House[/i], and Africa has provided Le Carre with a setting as anarchic and dramatically rich as Europe or the Middle East. It may be different and require more patience to enjoy than some of his earlier works, but it is undoubtedly one of his best-written books, with the movie being the best feature-length adaptation of his work to date.

Where does the creator of George Smiley, expert spy master of the cold war, go find a new theme? Le Carre readers must have asked themselves this question. Fortunately, after a couple of attempts in different directions, Le Carre has found a new cause: Pharmaceutical companies and their dealings, in particular in Africa. He tackles a highly sensitive and complex set of issues. As he says himself in the acknowledgements, in comparison to real life, his revelations are as 'tame as a picture postcard'.
We learn about the almost random testing of drugs on innocent Africans who believe that the men in white will cure them. We learn about the multi-national complexities of the pharma industry and the decision makers who are far removed from the African reality. We follow the scientists who, having signed deals with the company, were pressurized to either ignore or falsify the evidence of fatal side effects of the drug under investigation. "The drug is good", says one of the inventors of the drug, " we just did not have enough time to test it out before releasing it." The complete disregard for the lives of human guinea pigs who 'would die anyway' reveals an incredible cynicism of the promoter of the drug in Africa, who repeats 'I love Africa'. The comprehensive network of evidence cover-ups, disappearance of bodies and destruction of records, paints a bleak picture of the goings-on in a country like Kenya. The deals made by the Foreign Service in London as well as Nairobi, bring a touch of familiarity to the intrigue and the plot. It is a novel, let's not forget it, although the reality of Kenya today is pretty realistically drawn with the corruption of the system, the readiness of the governments to strike deals with multinationals as well as the brutal police force, the "Moi boys". Le Carre is true to his reputation as an expert in character development. With fine attention to detail, he creates a set of characters who are as much stereotypes of British Foreign and Secret Service operating in Africa as they are real and complex individuals. The most intriguing character and the one who will attract most compassion from the reader, lives only through the descriptions, dialogues and daydreams of others. She lived life fully until caught up in the drug scandal. We know early on what happened to her, but Le Carre builds the events in a quest of discovery by her husband, the constant gardener. He is changed in the process of the quest and brings the story to a logical conclusion.
In the current debate around GMO (genetically modified organism) research, the difficulties some scientists experience when publishing critical research results on pharmaceuticals, the newly rekindled interest in Africa by western politicians, THE CONSTANT GARDENER is a very topical book. It is also captivating, and, despite the gravity of the issues, a good and intriguing story.

LeCarre weaves a tale of deception, broken trusts, conspiracy, murder, becoming of age, and retribution. In that regard, this wonderfully written novel strikes several chords similar to his 1970's - `80's novels. The KGB/CIA becomes Three Bees, a pharmaceutical monopoly intent on sucking the life out of the African countryside. The British Government remains the same as any government, duplicitous, dishonest, uncaring of individual life, greedy and ineffectual. Africa represents innocence; it's government, pimps. The characters are frequently cowardly; the protagonists often confusing.
Tessa Quayle is the young wife of Justin Quayle, a career Foreign Service Officer. Passionate about the death of Africa, she embraces the causes of AIDS, tuberculosis, spiraling downward poverty, sexual abuse and the imprisonment of women. Where she is a whirling dervish of ideas, hopes, tears and prayers, he is nonchalant and distracted. She loves him and recognizes the danger lying beneath still waters. She protects him, and early on, reportedly trapped in an affair with a Nigerian Doctor, she is murdered.
Like many of LeCarre's heroes, Justin Quayle becomes resolute in proving his worth, but more importantly his wife's worth. After a certain passage of time for mourning, he announces `Tessa's mission (is) henceforth (my) own.'
Here's the deal on LeCarre. He is a brilliant author. Yes, he takes 100 words when 15 would do. Yes, there are some long paragraphs, long pages, and long chapters. He uses words like macabre, polemic, winged seraph, lank and inconsolable.
He also writes beautifully. He is the kind of writer in which the words occasionally sound like music. He drafts the kind of sentences you want to read a few times over because of the way the words flow out of your mouth. He writes of resignation "dumped at the railway station with bad memories and promises." Later, when he grows into the idea of what he must do, LeCarre says, "freed of his burden, he moved with symbolic lightness. Sharper lines defined his features. A strange light burned behind his eyes."
But this should not go unnoticed. Do you want to read something light and superficial? Do you want to read something akin to a TV movie? If you want to read something fast like an airplane novel, don't buy Hermann Melville. Don't buy Leo Tolstoy. Stay away from William Manchester. Watch out for John Keegan. And for Heaven's sake. Stay away from John LeCarre.
This book is the main course, not an appetizer. This is the main event, not the undercard. This is Mozart, not Billy Joel. LeCarre asks only that you be willing to work at the enjoyment he has created. So if you are willing, enjoy.

The very beautiful, much younger wife of a minor British diplomat with the "High Commission" in Nairobi, Kenya, is brutally murdered together with her supposed lover, an African doctor with Belgian citizenship. She had been active on researching about the ill-doings of a giant and powerful multinational company for the distribution and sale in Africa of medications manufactured by a big pharmaceutical concern, all ineffective, or stale, or given with the wrong indications - and she had come a little too close to discovering the truth. The widower, a rather mild and ineffectual man mostly known for his gardening activities, transforms himself into an astute and relentless investigator of the circumstances of his wife's murder and of its perpetrators. His success, against the dirty play of even his immediate superior who's not entirely innocent, takes him to his own death, while the villains remain the victors on the field. A bitter conclusion to a well studied, researched and written novel by the Master who, in the lack of the erstwhile foe the K.G.B., finds the present danger in multinationals and their absolute lack of scruples when it comes to the bottom line. It makes even the most conservative reader look at the "Seattle people" of demonstrators and protesters against "globalization" with a different and less jaundiced eye, even though never condoning their violences. It's hardly believable that one could review a book from his political standpoint ("too much left wing", see the comment immediately preceeding this one, dated July 27)rather than its literary merits. Welcome back, Mr Le Carré, to your known mastery in spinning a tale.

A moving love story, an all-too-believable conspiracy, and settings so real you can smell them (Africa, London, Italy, Canada), contribute to the pleasure of Le Carré's latest. But what makes the book a standout is Le Carré's graceful, articulate prose and sharply drawn characters. Le Carré's trademark ability to invest the unspoken with as much meaning as the spoken, to flesh out dialogue with body language and cerebral maneuvering, is in top form here.
Although the crumbling of the Cold War sapped the spy novel of its urgency, the faceless, global enormity of corporate intrigue has a chilling power at least its equal and Le Carré taps a rich vein of reader outrage in a novel which explores the complex plight of Africa and the predatory callousness of Western profiteering.
In a departure from convention, Le Carré opens his story from the point of view of a secondary character, a high-level British diplomat of exceeding venality. Through Sandy Woodrow we hear of the rape and murder of a diplomatic wife, Tessa Quayle, in the wilds of northern Kenya's bush. Woodrow lusted after Tessa, and paints her as a loose woman, the flighty, much younger wife of a dull, upper-class twit. Her death is certain to inspire tabloid headlines, accompanied as she was by a charismatic, crusading black doctor who has disappeared from the scene. The official version: a scandalous lovers' tryst, tragically beset by bandits. Or, alternatively, the black lover killed the diplomat's wife in a fit of rage and fled.
In Woodrow's eyes, Justin Quayle is a hoodwinked, cuckolded, mediocre has-been, too consumed with his constant gardening to control his wife. But just when you're wondering why anyone would want to read about these tiresome, pathetic people, point-of-view shifts to Justin. In his grief, Justin is "groomed and pensive and remote," a silent figure, willing to be misunderstood; despised by Woodrow, romanticized by Woodrow's wretched wife, suspected by the police. "Lesley is accusing him of murder, yet all she gets is a small frown linking him to his inner world."
At last, grief getting the better of him, Justin does admit a terrible guilt, but not the husband's rage the police expect. Tessa chose to isolate him from the causes she espoused, he says, to avoid compromising his official position. "She follows her conscience, I get on with my job. It was an immoral distinction. It should never have been made." Leaving Nairobi, Justin determines to shed his baggage and make peace with his wife's death by following in her footsteps, adopting her conscience as his own.
He sidesteps official questions about her activities and his knowledge of them, denies any knowledge of a report documenting a grave medical abuse in Kenya. "But he has every idea. It is the terrible time. It is the time when he feared he might have lost her; when her young face grew harder by the day and her young eyes acquired a zealot's light; when she crouched, night after night, at her laptop in her little office, surrounded by heaps of papers flagged and cross-referenced like a lawyer's brief...."
Woodrow has seen Tessa's document but Justin doesn't know what he did with it. Justin never saw it. He knows only that it has to do with a corporation called ThreeBees and a powerful new TB drug called Dypraxa; that the death of a village woman in the same slum hospital where Tessa lost her baby inspired Tessa's big crusade.
Justin's odyssey takes him to the places where they first met, courted, and loved, reliving their life together. A crusader, a lawyer, a woman of money and privilege, Tessa had strong convictions about love and about law. Calling on the spycraft that surrounded but never engaged him, Justin drops out of sight, covers his tracks, learns to suspect everyone. He studies Tessa's meager written legacy at her beloved family estate on Elba and, using a blend of instinct and detective work, begins reconstructing the missing document - the one he knows cost Tessa her life - to expose a monstrous conspiracy with tentacles that reach into his own diplomatic corp.
Le Carré's layered story explores profiteering, expediency, the long reach of corporate behemoths and the corruption of government, but also calls into question the efficacy of exposé which can destroy the good and leave the bad. Justin Quayle emerges as a quiet, methodical, thoughtful man, inspired to feats of courage and conviction by love. Sensitive and astute, he rises to the occasion a true hero.

In the epilogue of THE CONSTANT GARDENER, John LeCarre says the story he he has just told is not completely truthful. The truth is worse. He points to the recent death in Kenya of Father John Kaiser, an American priest from Minnesota who had spent many years ministering to the needs of Kenyan Christians and was found dead of a bullet wound to the head fifty miles northwest of Nairobi.
I think THE CONSTANT GARDENER can be compared to THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Like the PATIENT, GARDENER is lyrical at times, and it is also composed of two stories: one a tale of true love (doomed from the first pages) and the other a tale of death and destruction brought about by greedy government officials of both the European and African persuasion, large corporations, ambitious politicians, and religious fanatics.
Lest one think this is a diatribe against Western capitalism, let me hasten to say LeCarre goes to some pains to point out the existence of BUKO Pharma-Kampagne of Bielefed Germany, which is dedicated to separating the goats from the lambs in the pharmaceutical industry, and revealing the misdeeds of the former in the third world while pointing to the "good" deeds of the latter. Think of BUKO as the OMB of the drug world.
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I did not find the love story and it's end as wrenching as that in PATIENT, though the scene at the morgue is terrible enough. The main character, Justin Qualye, has something of George Smiley about him. Although the rest of the world thinks his wife has been unfaithful, he doggedly pursues the truth and ignores what others say. In the end, he finds he really did not know his wife Tessa, but he has been able to reconstruct a picture of her and she is with him in spirit. Whether he is delusional with grief or she is a spirit guide or both the reader must judge.
Although the book deals with pressing social issues (that unfortunately I am too familiar with because of my work), many may not be aware of them. If LeCarre succeeds in raising conciousnesses good for him. Unfortunately, many people think the people of Africa are expendable. Sadly, as elsewhere in the world, Muslim extremists are making things worse in Sudan, Nigeria, and other parts of Africa. The role of the United Nations in this tale is sadly accurate. The ray of light seems to be that those who would help Africa have finally realized it's salvation lies in the hands of women.

John Le Carre could write the Yellow Pages and make them interesting. From the first Le Carre book I read, when I was in high school, "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold", through "A Small Town in Germany", the "Smiley" books, "Little Drummer Girl" and "The Night Manager", to this one, Le Carre has a way with words and mood. So what if the Cold War, as we baby boomers knew it, is over? Le Carre has no lack of material.
The story of woman, murdered in Kenya. who got a little too close to a mega-pharmecutical conspiracy, "Gardener" introduces us to a set of characters all too believeable in this day and age. We follow the dead woman's husband, Justin Quayle (the Constant Gardener of the title), as he searchs across three continents in pursuit of his wife's killers and their motive. Even with a somewhat predictable ending, Le Carre holds us close in Justin's journey in search of justice. There are no James Bond "gimmicks" here and you will have to look elsewhere for the likes of Pussy Galore or SMERSH. But still, Le Carre, ever the consoment professional, can make your grocery list read like things that go bump in the night. And that's high praise indeed.

John leCarre of Cold War espionage fame has over the years widened his scope, while still giving us the insider's look into the worlds of diplomats and spies--which turn out not to be so separate at all. I need not rehash the plot, other than to say that this is intelligently written and suspenseful, a great read as most of LeCarre's books are. The author raises many ethical issues that are hard to resolve, but bear considering. The major issue in the book, testing of a drug that is still unsafe on an unsuspecting poor population, and a cover up of the bad results, is clearly abhorrent. But LeCarre raises more subtle issues.What are the developed world's obligations to the third world in the case of pharma companies? How far must we go in protecting their patent rights if the result is denying access to the poor? Is exclusive protection in rich nations sufficient reward, and should we let generics be developed much more quickly where they are needed? LeCarre raises issues about the basic morality and efficacy of a simple issue like food aid--should we continue it if doing so requires making deals with the very governments which pursue a fruitless civil war that causes the famine in the first place? And of course LeCarre brilliantly paints the world of diplomacy and its compromises.
If all this profound thinking scares you away, don't let it. LeCarre includes an unprobable, doomed love story, a mystery to unravel, and a few surprises along the way as characters slowly reveal their true selves. This one is an intelligent page turner of high quality.

Le Carre deserves a Nobel prize for his spy novels, especially "Tinker Tailor" and "Little Drummer Girl" But the images -- and the villains -- of the Cold War came tumbling down with the Berlin Wall. We've been fortunate in our spy literature. Who could be better bad guys that the Nazis and the Soviets? But old spy novelists have to stretch a little to come up with suitably nefarious villains these days. Le Carre demonizes an evil pharmeceutical company. Mercifully, it's not an American company -- Le Carre is always good at avoiding cliches -- but (of all things) Swiss/Canadian. This may be the first novel in the history of the world to make the Canadians the bad guys. Does it work? Not completely. I can't accept that pharmaceutical companies are the embodiment of evil, driven only by greed to commit unspeakable acts. On the contrary, business executives are only moderately evil -- just like the rest of us. To be a five-star novel, this one needed an argument, a bit of moral ambiguity. The "pharma" company should have had its say; the peerless crusader, Tessa, needed warts -- caught with her hand in the till, or some other repulsive act, while she was doing good.

Justin Quayle is a diplomat with the British High Commission in Nairobi. A mild man who loves gardening, Quayle is devastated when he hears that his beloved, much younger wife Tessa has been brutally murdered while attending a conference with her companion, African Dr. Arnold Bluhm. Rumors are rampant and deal with everything from the relationship between Tessa and Bluhm to the the reason for her murder. Justin emerges from the paralysis of mourning and decides that his goal is to throw himself into the task of tracking Tessa's quest for human rights in Nairobi and thus finding out the motive for murder. As he tries to duplicate Tessa's movements during her final days, Justin discovers that her efforts had been directed at a large drug company which is unethically testing drugs on poor Africans who have contracted tuberculosis. Le Carre takes the reader through a seemingly unending series of interviews and manipulations between Justin, the pharmaceutical company and the diplomatic corps. The same effect could have been achieved in many fewer pages, but the story remains a haunting and interesting one.

The constant gardener in this tale is Justin Quayle, an unproductive mid-aged British diplomat in Kenya whose beautiful, activist, younger wife has been brutally murdered. Justin, whose gardening supposes a general state of denial or complacency, is, for once in his life, decisive in his international search for the answers to her murder. Tessa, his wife, it turns out has been meddling a little too closely to the ethically questionable practices of a pharmaceutical conglomerate (she has been gathering evidence that they are forcing a potentially harmful TB drug on the impoverished). She also, in her activism, has acquired an associate, a native doctor, who dies with her but whose body is mysteriously missing from the site.

Some of the best writing is also in the development of the diplomatic corps characters, like Sandy Woodward, Quayle's superior. While the `government' should ostensibly assist Quayle in his search for truth, we know it does not, in any way. In fact, it is maddening to the reader that Quayle (who is a career diplomat, after all) should not realize this until late in the novel. The mystery isn't so much in the identification of the murderers as it is the reason for Tessa's death: what prompted it, what she knew, who else knew, etc.. Although it must have been tough to let the old Cold War go, Le Carre has successfully, I believe, maintained his ability to write complicated plots about believable people in believable trouble.

John Le Carre has been writing suspense, espionage, and mystery novels for more than 40 years now. I read the first few of them when I was in high school (say 30 years ago) and enjoyed them, mostly for the odd characters that the author peopled his books with. Over the years, he's written everything from straight spy novels ("Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and "Smiley's People") around to more romantic spy novels ("The Russia House"), comic versions of the spy novel ("The Tailor of Panama") and even attempted serious straight fiction (the largely unsuccessful "The Naive and Sentimental Lover"). Many of the previous books are more cheerful, or eccentric stories, so it's important for the purposes of this review to remember what first got Le Carre attention. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which was published basically at the same time as the James Bond movies, and which featured a rather drab, mundane spy who actually failed to fulfill his mission, and (I'm going to give away the plot here) actually gets killed at the end of the book failing to save the girl. If you keep that in mind, when I tell you that the current book is about a pharmaceutical multinational corporation and one man's challenge to it, you'll have an idea what the book is like.

Le Carre hasn't, much of the time anyway, been about plot in the first place. His characters and atmosphere, and especially his sense of English dialog and personality, are very precise and honest, at times unflinching. His characters, especially, are very entertaining with their particularly British eccentricities, which Le Carre recreates for you with a steady and sure hand. The prose here is sometimes tough for an American to follow--witness the other review here--but the whole thing has a very English feel to it.

All in all, Le Carre's characters carry this, as most of his other novels. It's a good book. Just don't expect any solutions to the world's problems here.

Le Carre' creates an amazing backdrop of Africa to tell a tale of a giant pharmaceutical company, and the people who live and die from an untested cure for TB. The story centers on the life of a woman, Tessa, who is involved in relief work among the real people of Africa and discovers that these same people whom she has grown to love and admire are being used as guinea pigs in order to make big profits for a pharmaceutical company and those in it's employ. Tessa begins to gather information to prove what she suspects. She is joined in this pursuit by an African doctor, Arnold Bluhm, who is as dedicated to her cause as is Tessa. Tessa is married to Justin Quayle, a member of the British diplomatic corps, and keeps what she is involved in secret from Justin so as not to put him and his career at risk. What happens next is the horrible murder of Tessa, and the dissapearance of Dr. Bluhm whose company she had been in. The question of who murdered Tessa poses many possibilities. Her husband, Justin, a mild-mannered British gentleman gardener, is compelled to delve into Tessa's secret life and decipher the clues and information left behind in order to discover his beloved wife's mission. This is an amazing interpretation of Africa, very vivid and full of life and noise. While it is a novel pitting big money business against the everyday common person, there is nothing common about the characters involved or the situations that develop. It portrays the depths to which even the meek and mild mannered can reach out and gather their strength when the cause is truth and justice and love.

With this book Le Carre has finally successfully abandoned the cold ware era spy genre that he himself largely created. I felt the writing was tighter and the characters more finely drawn than in any Le Carre book for a good long while. His subject was interesting - global exploitation of the miserable third world - and has been largely explored by other reviewers.
However, while the underlying dynamic has changed - we are now talking about rich versus poor instead of West versus East - much else has not. We are still visiting midlevel technocrats, doing a more or less competent job in an exotic and somewhat depressing location, and trying to keep their individual heads above water while around them swirl larger issues. This is OK and a good part of the fun.
We are also taken on a familiar Le Carre ride down a path of futility, and here I have a little problem. Based on reading most of his other books I had a pretty good idea how things would wrap up half-way through the book and Le Carre did not surprise me. I know the man is trying to make a political point and I'm sure he felt the book ended the only way it could to make that point. And please don't think for a moment I didn't enjoy and recommended the book. It's just that if he could have set up the plot and characters he did and gone somewhere, anywhere, even slightly unexpected, the book would have been much more interesting.

Le Carre, one of the most richly satisfying writers of any genre, has finally turned his attention to the most neglected continent, Africa. The result is his most politically resonating novel since The Little Drummer Girl. The story begins in the aftermath of the murder of the activist wife of a mid-level British diplomat stationed in Kenya. The bad guys are soon revealed to be agents for a greedy multinational pharmaceutical company and complicit corrupt government officials. The widowed husband, jolted awake from his bucolic stagnation not just by his wife's murder but by the cruel and clumsy coverup by his own colleagues that follows, unearths the plot, resolute and resigned to his personal fate. Lest one think that the political content of the novel is a convenient diatribe against corporate greed, I find that the tactics employed by drug companies when threatened by inconvenient research data (misleading press releases, hack advertisements under the guise of "medical reviews" by well-paid physicians, and character assassination of scientists whose views threaten the corporate bottom line) are quite accurately portrayed, minus the physical skullduggery which I consider a forgiveable theatrical device. And yes poor nations really do suffer when lobbyist-influenced government officials inhibit the attempt to produce cheap generic forms of patented life-saving drugs they cannot afford. The prose is rich and flawless as usual; I found myself rereading some paragraphs just for the beauty of the literary architecture. The characters are deep and well-formed, and quite believable, with few exceptions. The police interrogation of Woodrow and Justin is a gem within a general masterpiece. Long time readers of Le Carre will note the familiar theme of a middle-aged man called to idealism and action by a traumatic event, and this resonates well here. A minor point, at last we have a beautiful female character who is NOT a sexual libertine! In summary, one of Le Carre's best, and timely for all that. It is gratifying that Le Carre can still produce a work that is literarily exhilarating, and yet creates the desire in the reader to do something, even in a small way, to alleviate suffering in a stricken continent.

John leCarre of Cold War espionage fame has over the years widened his scope, while still giving us the insider's look into the worlds of diplomats and spies--which turn out not to be so separate at all. I need not rehash the plot, other than to say that this is intelligently written and suspenseful, a great read as most of LeCarre's books are. The author raises many ethical issues that are hard to resolve, but bear considering. The major issue in the book, testing of a drug that is still unsafe on an unsuspecting poor population, and a cover up of the bad results, is clearly abhorrent. But LeCarre raises more subtle issues.What are the developed world's obligations to the third world in the case of pharma companies? How far must we go in protecting their patent rights if the result is denying access to the poor? Is exclusive protection in rich nations sufficient reward, and should we let generics be developed much more quickly where they are needed? LeCarre raises issues about the basic morality and efficacy of a simple issue like food aid--should we continue it if doing so requires making deals with the very governments which pursue a fruitless civil war that causes the famine in the first place? And of course LeCarre brilliantly paints the world of diplomacy and its compromises.

If all this profound thinking scares you away, don't let it. LeCarre includes an unprobable, doomed love story, a mystery to unravel, and a few surprises along the way as characters slowly reveal their true selves. This one is an intelligent page turner of high quality.

This was my first Le Carre novel, chosen because his article on its primary theme (the pharmaceutical giants of the modern era) in THE NATION piqued my curiosity. Without question, the book kept me flipping pages, and all the plot strands are satisfactorily resolved by the end.
However, compared to Margaret Drabble's THE GATES OF IVORY, another British novel which bounces from country to country, which explores the nature of evil and corruption in the modern world, and which features a multitude of characters, Drabble's book is a Vermeer portrait to Le Carre's political cartoon.
Drabble's characters are complex and three-dimensional; Le Carre's are caricatures. Drabble's philosophy and perceptions are thoughtful and deep; Le Carre's are superficial. Plot is only one aspect of Drabble's richness as a writer; plot is primarily Le Carre's modus operandi.
TRUST US, WE'RE EXPERTS by Stauber delves more deeply into the gritty realities of the contemporary pharmaceutical world; but if you prefer fiction to non-fiction and are looking for fast-paced beach reading, THE CONSTANT GARDENER is a thriller based on the dark realities of today's drug industry, and it is fun, engaging, and will make a great film.

John le Carré's novels are an acquired taste. It wasn't until I read TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE, and then viewed the BBC's marvelous screen adaptations of these two books, that I came to appreciate the author's methodically intricate plot and character development that results in more of an identity profile of the chief protagonist than anything else. (For me, le Carré's Smiley will always bring to mind the features of Alec Guiness, who starred in the aforementioned BBC productions.) There are no Bond-like capers here, and those expecting such will become excruciatingly bored.
In THE CONSTANT GARDENER, Justin Quayle is a faceless, government bureaucrat attached to the British High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya. His job is to represent Her Majesty's government on an international committee of other faceless bureaucrats charged with monitoring the efficiency at which aid moneys for the poor and starving reach the intended recipients. The committee has no investigatory authority, so high level and endemic African venality is ignored. On the other hand, Justin's wife, Tessa, belongs to a private group that investigates corruption with a vengeance. Her efforts have uncovered the criminally negligent misuse of a new drug, Dypraxa, designed to treat tuberculosis. The drug's manufacturer, megapharmaceutical KVH, is trialing Dypraxa on the indigenous African population, and apparently covering up the drug's fatal side effects. As THE CONSTANT GARDENER opens, Tessa has been found murdered on a field trip into the African bush. Is there a link?
The storyline unfolds from three viewpoints. First and foremost, there's Justin, whose guilt over his hear-no -evil, see-no-evil detachment from his wife's investigations compels him to follow her lead posthumously, reopen the probe in the face of Foreign Office opposition, and attempt to discover the true circumstances of Tessa's demise. (Did KVH have her killed? Was the British government somehow involved?) Then, there are Sandy Woodrow, the ambitious and morally flaccid Head of Chancery for the Brits in Nairobi, and Gita Pearson, an Anglo-Indian admirer of Tessa's employed by the High Commission as a low-level functionary.
The novel's conclusion, like most of life, is painted in muted gray tones, not stark black and white as one might wish. It's certainly an unhappy ending, although that's appropriate considering the nature of Justin's internal demons brought on by his beloved's lonely death. Yet, the evil he confronts is both banal and ambiguous. Perhaps it's a tragedy of the 21st century that such is the nature of the baseness now pervasive in the world, not the more focused deviltry of Hitler, Stalin, or the Red Menace. I guess I'd have to say that I miss the good old days of the Cold War. That period enabled the author to script endings that were personally more satisfying, that of SMILEY'S PEOPLE being a case in point, which engendered more a sense of triumph of "good" over "evil". Thus, while THE CONSTANT GARDENER is meticulously crafted with the usual le Carré penchant for excellence, for me it lacks punch. Where's George Smiley when you need him?

I had just finished reading The Informant: A true story by Kurt Eichenwald. The Informant is a non-fiction account of how the FBI used an Archer Daniels Midland executive to gather information in the lysine antitrust case the government brought against the corporation. I was ready to read more and Le Carre's The Constant Gardener fit the bill.
Often, when I read fiction such as Le Carre's, I wonder how much of it was based on truth. By the time I had finished the book I was sure that the pharmaceutical-government complex was up to something in not only Africa but elsewhere as well. Powerful companies who are not opposed to killing the people who stand in their way seem very likely to me. The suspicion surrounding the death of Karen Silkwood a Kerr-Mckey employee or even my recent novel about the military-industrial complex and an organization of fictitious aerospace contractors comes to mind.
John Le Carre has done a marvelous job at describing in detail his characters and their surroundings. The setting of the story is Kenya. Carre's writing and descriptions reminded me of how Hemmingway wrote about Africa in The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories.
In John Le Carre's The Constant Gardener the plot moves fast and tense and his characters are well drawn. For me The Constant Gardner was an exciting book to read and one that I would recommend to any one who enjoys either a mystery or a thriller.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.Until now,I'd never thought about the terrible danger to underdeveloped countries at the hands of corrupt governments taking huge monetary bribes from unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies who would thus be able to use these unsuspecting,poverty-stricken people as guinea pigs for semi-tested drugs. John Le Carre made me think,and caused me to feel so ashamed that more"civilised"countries could be responsible for the sickness and hideous deaths of these poor,innocent victims,simply to get a drug on the market before anyone else beat them to it. I think that a proof of the integrity of his writing in causing me to forget that I was reading a novel,speaks for itself. I am so impressed with his passion and style that his characters are really irrelevant as I found that the actual story was overshadowed by the cause that he espouses--that of bringing world attention to the power of these huge conglomerates.Thank you,Mr.LeCarre for opening my eyes.

This is an ambitious and very well intentioned novel. Unfortunately, Le Carre falls short of his best work and this book has some significant flaws. The ambitious part of this work is an attempt to combine 2 disparate genres; a psychological novel and a socially relevant novel. The psychological part is Le Carre's description of the obsessive quest of his protagonist to reconstruct, and really to re-experience, the last days of his beloved wife. This portion of the book is done very well and displays Le Carre's ability to develop characters and the plot in a subtle and penetrating fashion. The socially relevant portion is Le Carre's effort to expose the miserable medical conditions in Africa and the moral corruption of many international pharmaceutical companies. Despite Le Carre's noble intentions, this aspect of the book is less interesting. His presentation of this issue comes across as very black and white. In one sense, this is legitimate, as Big Pharma has often behaved disgracefully in developing nations. As an artistic device, this is less successful. One of the best features of Le Carre's Smily novels was the persistent moral tension surrounding the ambiguity of his protagonist's conduct. What is permitted in the pursuit of a good cause? This type of tension is absent from this book and it lacks the interesting moral dimension of his best novels. I am afraid that the plotting is a little contrived as well. Another contrast between this book and the Smiley novels. Still, this is a good book. From almost any other writer of popular fiction, this book would be an unmitigated success. Le Carre's best work, however, raises expectations that this book does not meet.

Justin Quayle is a British diplomat who is married to a younger Tessa. Tessa is a lawyer that believes in justice. Her aid campaigns have given her the nickname: "the Princess Diana of the African poor." Much to the dismay of Justin, Tessa is found dead in the wilderness while she was visiting Lake Turkana in Kenya. A handsome black doctor, Arnold Bluhm, is her companion and thought to be her secret lover has vanished after her death.
Tessa is thought to have been killed because of the relation with drug companies. She was trying to expose the truth behind the Three Bees company production of Dypraxa, a tuberculosis remedy with unfortunately fatal side effects. Justin�s bosses destroyed Tessa�s report on this drug. Tessa had witnessed the death of Wanza, a native, whose village was used at guinea pigs for this drug.
Justin is trying to investigate Tessa�s murder. He follows the last steps that she took. He is in his hotel one night when he has a bad thrown over his head and throne against the floor. He is then threatened to not to search for Tessa�s killer. This does not throw him off track, he is determined to find his wife�s killer. He had many attempts on his life. One time when he was with one of Tessa�s friend they were almost run over by two taxis.
In John Le Carre�s, �The Constant Gardener�, he makes the book interesting by keeping up suspense in the case of Tessa�s death. The only thing that would have made this a better book was if he would have stayed on her murder and not get off track.

It is a fascinating coincidence that John Le Carre, greatest of spy fiction writers, and Elmore Leonard, who is in the first rank of detective fictions writers, have both turned to Africa in their latest works.
Le Carre has chosen Kenya as the locale for "The Constant Gardener" and a multinational pharmaceutical company to replace the evil empire as its villan. Tessa, the beautiful young wife of a middle-aged British foreign service officer is murdered while she is gathering information on the deadly side-effects of a new and hugely profitable treatment for multi-resistant Tuberculosis. Her companion, a handsome black doctor, who is widely thought to be her lover, has vanished. Her husband, Justin, who, we must believe, knew almost nothing of his wife's crusade to expose wrong-doing by KVH (the drug company)embarks on a quest to retrace her steps and recover the missing information.
In the process, the reader is given a short course in the ways multinational drug companies fiddle drug testing, bribe the medical profession, and stifle dissent. The lectures are fitted into a fast-moving plot in which the grieving Justin must elude attempts by his own superiors to keep him under wraps, as well as murderous pursuers who dog his steps from continent to continent. Along the way, Le Carre manages to skewer the foibles of the Foreign Office just as effectively as he did the British intelligence service in his Smiley books. He also creates a gallery of unforgettable characters -- more fully realized than in any previous novel.
Leonard's protagonist in "Pagan Babies", Father Terry Dunn is still haunted by the massacre in his church during the genocide in Rwanda five years before. One of the perpetrators asks Fr. Terry to hear his confession and gets a stiffer penance than he counted on. Fr. Dunn returns to his native Detroit, ostensibly to raise funds for his mission. In typical Leonard fashion we are treated to a delicious farrago of con and counter con, cross and double cross. Yet the image of forty-seven bodies lying hacked and shot to pieces in his church pursues Dunn and the reader like Banquo's ghost.
Le Carre is more obviously a crusader in his book than Leonard is in "Pagan Babies". "The Constant Gardener" is as darkly pessimistic as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold". Leonard's detached style in "Pagan Babies" is cool to the point of being cold. One roots for both authors' protagonists to overcome the bad guys, but afterwards feels a little guilty for likeing Father Terry so much.

John Le Carre is back with another great book. This time however, there is a change in the subject as well as technique. It is not one more espionage-spy thriller which has been the forte of Le Carre, but rather a subject which has been Robin Cook's domain. Yet, Le Carre has done full justice to the subject in his own inimitable style and has come out with a winner.
Le Carre's hallmarks of seamless narration, manipulation of the suspense, exquisite prose, investigative process, immaculate detailing, depth of understanding are all there. What is most appealing and touching is the passion. The plot:
British High Commission- Nairobi. The news comes to the chief of the administration Sandy that Tessa Quayle 25, the young and beautiful social activist wife of 40 year old Justin Quayle, the first secretary in the embassy has been murdered in a remote corner of Africa, alongwith her driver. Her companion -cum-Guru, Dr, Bluhm, A Nigerian doctor also an aid worker has gone missing. Tessa was a fiercely independent minded, jolly, daring aid worker affiliated to an UN agency. Tessa had strong opinions and didn't mind calling a spade a spade.
Justin Quayle, a mild mannered, simple-minded gentleman is shocked at the sudden death of his beloved wife. Justin had given full freedom and autonomy to Tessa who was half his age and had never bothered to find out what she was up to, and never interfered in her personal or professional life.
Justin is disturbed by the happenings around him. His colleagues and seniors, while expressing their deep sympathy and understanding are subtly questioning him to elicit some unknown information. Newspapers and local rags are printing all kinds of nonsensical stories: Tessa was in love with Dr.Bluhm, Tessa had an unhappy marriage, Tessa was cheating on her husband, Tessa was raped, Tessa was on some secret mission etc, etc. Staff is gossiping, the whole atmosphere has become very stifling and suffocating.
Suddenly the High Commissioner is re-called to London and has been asked to proceed on leave. Rob and Lesley, two smart cops from London have descended on Nairobi mission and are interrogating all the members of the embassy. Interrogations are making everyone uncomfortable, especially Justin who cannot understand the reason and rationale behind the line of questioning. He is intelligent enough to understand that something is seriously wrong somewhere, and he doesn't know anything of what others think he knows. Never to have pried into the independent life and work of Tessa, now he starts digging and discovers startling information, which further whets his appetite to unravel the truth.
The cops are suddenly called off and Justin is transferred to London. When he reports to Foreign Office in London, his boss wants him to take a sabbatical, a rest, which tantamounts to virtual house arrest. Rob and Presley the frustrated investigators who were rudely yanked off the case and were stripped off all the information collected by them have smelt a rat and as a measure of vengeance have decided to help Justin uncover the mystery of Tessa's murder and complete her incomplete mission. Justin manages to skip out quietly slipping the surveillance and starts his own investigation.
How he does his investigation and what all he discovers and finally what happens....is the superbly told story. I wouldn't like to spoil the fun of your reading.
During the course of this very interesting story, Le Carre raises very relevant and disturbing questions on many topics. The damage the unbridled quest of profits does to the humanity and exposes dark side of unfettered capitalism which could threaten the very existence of the human race.
There many such poignant passages which stir the reader's conscience and makes on think.The very title "Constant Gardener" is loaded with philosophical meaning. I welcome readers to explain the title.
Le Carre having written such a thought provoking and courageous book, goes out of the way to pen a three page disclaimer to ensure that he doesn't get sued. I have seen such an elaborate disclaimer for first time...what could be the reason? Ludlum never did any such thing!

In this sweeping story of moral obligation, you will look at the world from the saint's pathway, as explored by the saint's husband. The trials by fire are very real here, and that makes a consideration of choosing the right path all the more real and important.
The English Gardener is the most unusual and darkest of all the Le Carre novels about human nature, exceeding even The Little Drummer Girl in these regards. This book has more in common with the psychological crisis in Heart of Darkness than with the George Smiley spy novels. You will definitely, however, find some stylistic carry-overs from the cold war books.
Despite all of The English Gardener's emotionally disturbing features, there is beauty here . . . the beauty of idealism, love, and honor. Even in the densest, most forbidding jungle, wild flowers will relieve the darkness and provide hope. Every reader will be challenged to her or his core by the thought, "You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem."
Before describing the novel in more detail, let me caution all of those who are easily upset by the human ability to be inhumane, that this book teems with incidents of inhumanity in many of its worst forms. The emotional impact of this novel is intense and lasting. You may well have dreams (or nightmares) about it.
On the surface, the book is a detective story. Fragmentary reports and rumors seep in of a horrific and mysterious murder in Kenya of Tessa Quayle, the young newly-wed wife of a middle-aged British diplomat, Justin Quayle. Everyone knows more than they are telling, and seems to want to hush matters up except for two young English investigators. The press soon is having a field day making speculations about what Tessa was doing traveling under her maiden name with a black Doctor and sharing a room with him. Yet appearances are deceiving, and Justin soon begins to unravel an international plot of insidious proportions.
Tessa was a lawyer, and she had stumbled across "a great crime." Because of her husband's diplomatic role, they had agreed that she should pursue her investigation without involving him. "She follows her conscience. I get on with my job." As a result, he remained in his domesticated garden of diplomatic activity while she was stalking big game in the jungle of corporate greed. With her death, he leaves the garden of Eden having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, and follows her pathway.
Many people will find that the plot moves too slowly for them. After 30 percent of the book, you will already have figured out the mystery of "a great crime" (even if someone doesn't tell you the plot in advance as some reviewers may do). Clearly, the book could have been shortened by 100 to 150 pages without losing any important material from my perspective.
While you are dragging through document after document, keep in mind the benefits of Le Carre's approach. One reason for this extra length is because Le Carre provides elaborate raw detail, so that the reader feels like he or she is Justin and pursuing the wrong-doing directly. Another benefit of this bulk is that readers who may not be familiar with the details of pharmaceutical research, political lobbying, and business promotional practices will avoid being lost by the story. If you are familiar with this type of information, the story will definitely drag. Another reason for the involved material is that Le Carre is painting with a very broad brush and wants to be sure that you know that he is indicting all of society . . . not just the bad guys. The final reason seems to be a desire to present the fumbling efforts of an amateur investigator in a realistic way. All in all, these sections work, but they are extraordinarily laborious for the reader.
I thought that the main weakness of the book related to the actions of the business people involved. I found their greed, short-sightedness, and viciousness to be so extreme as to not be credible. A novelist asks us to suspend our disbelief inorder to enjoy the story. Here, the author has gone too far. Le Carre would have done well to have backed off a bit and colored them with some white and gray as well. As depicted, these executives seem to be pure disciples of Satan himself. That darkness is relieved by having many characters with white and gray qualities as well, but modern readers are accustomed to a bit more reality in their novels.
An important minor weakness is found in the science involved. Those who like great scientific realism will find the descriptions here a little off the mark in several places, particularly in terms of how toxicity is tested and revealed.
The book's greatest strength is challenging the natural human tendency to focus on what's right around us, the garden we tend. If we do so, we are very vulnerable to having those who watch the guardians be corrupted. In the process of that debasement, we are all lost. "We all betrayed her." is the sentence in this book that will haunt you afterwards. In this way, John Donne's poetry of "No Man Is An Island" is recalled.
A particularly rewarding stylistic device is starting the narration from the perspective of an outside observer who does not know the facts before switching to Justin's perspective. As a result, you will appreciate better the extent to which appearances can be deceiving . . . like the beautiful garden that a murderer may have filled with the bodies of victims.
After you have finished the story and have let its power wash over you, I suggest that you pick an area where you can explore ways to improve awareness of and interest in moral choices. How can you help others become constant to their moral purposes?
Look out for the needs of others, who are not speaking to you about their suffering!

I'm afraid "The Constant Gardener" has been lying around for many months on my night-time book shelf before I finally began to read it, even though Le Carre is one of my favorite writers of Cold War matters. I'm also afraid that for weeks I progressed very slowly in the book--I kept falling asleep--as the book plodded along, character after character appearing, as the interior navel-gazing of the principal characters became confusing rather than enlightening.

Still, after a time the book picked up speed, the action became more "active," and suspense was at last achieved in the final third of the book as Justin, the British civil servant protagonist, searches for answers to his wife's mysterious death. The overriding theme concerns the machinations of Big Pharma and their efforts to shortcut the usual long-term testing procedures with pushing a new drug in a region of the world where sophisticated judgments as to the effects of drugs are largely absent--except for some nosy do-gooders as represented by Tessa, whose murder starts the tale on its journey.

Le Carre is a fine writer, his settings seemingly valid, his characterizations often complex, and his knowledge of Kenya and the world of British diplomacy and drug manufacturing apparently on mark. Nevertheless, I think the book could have been judiciously cut by about 25 percent without undue damage to the richly drawn characters--some could have been left out or minimized--without harm to the novel's theme and story. A good and interesting read, but it is not one that will keep you up half the night because of its page-turning qualities.

It's amazing how LeCarre quietly sucks you into a story. His books often seem overlong and glacially paced, yet somehow, by the last quarter of a novel, I find I can't put his books down. The Constant Gardener is no different.

There are so many things LeCarre does well in this novel. First off, the characters are thouroughly fleshed out individuals. Next is the variety of locales; you feel like you've been to Kenya, London, Italy, and Canada, as the novel swings around the globe. This time around, the plot isn't as strong and driving as in previous novels, but LeCarre makes up for it with strong characterization in the leads.

One place the book fails is in the villains. I found they came off a bit hokey and sometimes generic. But it was easy to overlook that and other minor failings because the novel is otherwise expertly written. If you read this novel, I suggest you also try "The Billion Dollar Molecule". TBDM is a great work of non-fiction relating the trials and potential riches of drug developement. It makes for a nice bookend for "The Constant Gardener"

Wow, am I in disagreement with the reviewers who thought that LeCarre was creating villains out of thin air when he talks about experimental drug trials in the third world. If you heard him interviewed on NPR you would know that his "disclaimer" at the end of the book was tongue in cheek (a reader who gets his sense of humor would know that anyway). If you read the recent series in the Washington Post or the article in the New York Times Magazine in December you'd know he's not making this stuff up. Drug companies are testing experimental drugs in impoverished countries that would never be allowed in the US or Europe, with payoffs to corrupt governments and promises that they never intend to keep. And as LeCarre says, perhaps the worst crime is that no citizen of these countries would ever be able to afford to buy the drugs if they do come to market. Anyway, polemics aside, this is a fine book. Witty, engrossing, ultimately sad but it all hangs together very well. Don't buy it if you think LeCarre is just another thriller writer; but if you can give it the attention it deserves, you'll enjoy and benefit from it.

A book of subtle intrigue and human fraility, a characteristically understated story of charm, power and insight. Johm Le Carre writes, as always, because he has something to say and his way of communicating is through the novel.
In the Constant Gardener we are exposed to a world of powerful human instincts, believably good, complicated and banal characters. Le Carre captures the essence of corporate and personal egoism, ambition and greed, he shows personal foibles in the most human of ways.
The Constant Gardener is a constant delight, it has obviously been well researched, even in the areas where most novelists seem to fall flat e.g. Business, Diplomacy and Technology, to say nothing of his brilliant yet understated characterization of those involved in the murky underworld of national security, spies and spooks.
In a nutshell, another riveting English language classic from the master storyteller of our times.
Regards,
[email protected]

As usual, JLC's writing is superb, his storytelling skills can be matched only by a few mass paperback writers. That said, only the writing and the storytelling saves this novel from terminal boredom.

The plot is very simple and very thin compared to his classic novels - there is no need for a spoiler warning - it is exposed in the first 80 or so pages anyway, so there is really no surprises anywhere along the way. A pharmaceutical company is testing a TB drug in Africa on sick patients, a lawyer with a conscience gets whiff of wrong-doing, compiles a report and submits it to a sleazy bureaucrat in the British High Commission whom for some reason she trusts, even though she knows he is sleazy (she slept with him, apparently). The pharmaceutical gets warned, gets paranoid and kills the layer, and later on her Quixotic husband, who decides to take on the pharmaceuticals single-handedly. So much for the plot.

How can you stretch out a plot like that for nearly 600 pages? There are many tedious deviations involving secondary characters which badly bog the book down and I ended up skipping most of them.

To give credit where it's due, there are many interesting and well-researched details on pharmaceutical companies, African corruption, disease and life in the British High Commission. The way corporate interests dictate government policy. Otherwise, I'd toss the book after the first 100 pages. I think that if it was limited to 250 pages, it would have been a much better book, but alas, Mr JLC forgot to do the editing...

Anyway, I got through it somehow, but it's not going on my re-read list, to be sure. I watched the movie also, and this is one of those rare cases where the movie is better than the book.

Mr. Le Carre has written a collection of novels that can stand as the equal of virtually any Author, and generally his work towers over most. He is one of living legends of the genre he occupies, and in this, his 18th novel he demonstrates the elegant writing, the intricate story, and the diverse characters that have won him such respect as an Author. This novel, "The Constant Gardner" brings back the Author who brought sweeping novels like "A Perfect Spy", and the stories of Smiley and his people to readers.
Many Authors, who were dependent upon The Cold War for material, stumbled when the wall came down. Many recovered to various degrees; many others deservedly have faded, as their limited area of expertise became History. Still others try and concoct storylines from the former USSR, but the results are as fragmented as the Former Republics.
Mr. Le Carre never paused, as he is a writer, not a one trick hack. With, "The Constant Gardner" he has once again delivered a novel that is sweeping in scope, attentive to detail, highly relevant, and thankfully a work that takes its time. This Author does not write books that are meant to be skimmed. He writes thoughtful, cerebral, and often introspective work that takes time to read. He can write, so he does not need to fill his books with mindless violence, every techno-gadget real and imagined, or absurd and irrelevant love polygons.
The central player in this book is hardly computer literate. Not many Authors could pull this off without it reading as farce. However if you are tired of the banker/lawyer turned super-hero that assembles a massively parallel computer from 2 soup cans and his watch, this book is for you. If you like writing that can take the death of a single innocent person, and create more emotion from the reader than the writer who kills thousands while you yawn, again this is for you.
What extremely sparse and intelligent criticism of this book I have read can be remedied in the 4 page Author's note at the end of the book. This Novel is so close to the edge of non-fiction that the notes will surprise you. This is not a medical textbook, this is about very large international pharmaceutical companies and the impact they have. If you want detailed knowledge about drug testing, go to the Centers For Disease Control Website. This is not a short book; it would be impossible to create what this writer produced if satisfying the attention span of a gnat was the goal. Thankfully as many books get shorter and more repetitive, there are Authors who can still take the time, and have the talent to write a work of length. A work that is neither shorter nor longer than it need be.
If this were a movie it would run 3+ hours in length. This is not a pre-packaged insipid screenplay, designed to produce a sound bite movie that can be run the maximum number of times at the local Cineplex. There are brilliant writers of short stories. Penelope Fitzgerald, Julian Barnes, and John Banville produce more impact in a couple of hundred pages than many Authors can produce in one thousand pages, and half a dozen books. However like Mr. Le Carre they use the space they need, they use the space their talent allows them to use; their work's length does not indicate quality. They are writers not some former occupant of a profession, turned wannabee novelist that runs off yet another Xeroxed bit of mediocrity.
This is an important work that uses the novel to bring very real issues to an audience that an Author of Mr. Le Carre stature commands. That he chose to do this, as opposed to another version on a tired theme is a tribute to him as an Author a person, and to those he believes will be the readers and the beneficiaries of this book.
A book does not have to have a message of critical contemporary relevance to be important. This work does, and as such is not only a book to be read for entertainment, but a work that asks some very tough questions after showing very disturbing realities.

Le Carré exercises his gift of weaving intricate plot lines together while developing a multitude of characters with depth and substance. It is a daunting task, at least for this reader, to keep track of all the players - which are introduced in a dizzying few chapters of new names and new organizations.

Once you have settled into the book, and have identified the characters you can concentrate on the very current and topical geo-political backdrop to what is essentially complicated love story. What sets this romance apart is it's setting among the business of foreign relations, the plight of the third world, and the dirty business done behind the closed doors of corporate board rooms.

I think some readers where turned off by some of the characters, particularly Tessa Quayle - but I found her to suitably canonized in the eyes of her husband, after her untimely and brutal death. I think it is a realistic portrayal of obsession, and the lengths her husband goes to delay and offset grief with single-minded and dogged pursuit of the incomplete story that proved her undoing.

"The Constant Gardener," (2001), by outstanding British spymeister/author John LeCarre, was written and published in what may be considered a particularly difficult period for him, and for other authors who specialized in Cold War -inspired spy thrillers. Because, after the famous 1989 toppling of the infamous Berlin Wall that separated the western sectors of Berlin, occupied by the Western democracies, from the eastern sectors of the city, occupied by the Russians, there was no more Cold War. And, as Le Carre had that invaluable first hand knowledge and experience of the spy biz, he had been able, before the fall, to give us such masterworks as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and the Karla Trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: A Novel,The Honourable Schoolboy: A Novel, and Smiley's People: A Novel. What was Le Carre, as serious a novelist as any, to do? Presumably, he wanted to keep on writing, and so started giving us stories about international drug and arms dealers, and pharmaceutical cartels, and tricked them out with all the midnight meetings of the Home Office mandarins, and their ilk, that he previously had done so well. But, unfortunately, the novels of this period frequently read like mountains laboring to bring forth a mouse.

The protagonist of THE CONSTANT GARDENER, Justin Quayle, is a British diplomat, born of the upper classes, with rather little interest in the great issues of the day - he prefers working in his lovely garden--who is assigned a job in the British High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya. Quayle has been sent to Africa at a bad time: the continent's population has been nearly overwhelmed by AIDS, and President Arap Moi's Kenya is a country in its grip. Greed, corruption, and indifference guarantee that nothing will be done to ameliorate the situation. Quayle's beautiful, wealthy wife Tessa, daughter of an Italian countess, who has taken more interest in what is happening around her than her husband has, is raped and killed. The diplomat, for the first time, begins to take an interest in the larger world, and to investigate his wife's death. Quayle finds his wife has been looking into a major pharmaceutical company eager to promote its "wonder cure" for tuberculosis, and as the diplomat follows his late wife's lead, his safe, carefully constructed world begins to break apart, making him vulnerable to outside forces.

First things first, Le Carre does very well in giving us the physical and social life of Kenya and its capital city Nairobi, a British playground for more than a century. The Muthaiga Club apparently still stood, its pink walls bearing silent witness to the history it's seen: Danish author/plantation owner/ baroness Karen Blixen, writing as Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa (Modern Library)), meets her romantic, glamorous lover Denys Finch-Hatton, pilot and big-game hunter. And Beryl Markham, renowned African aviator, adventurer and author, meets him too. And on and on, you get the picture....

However, THE CONSTANT GARDENER is almost unbearably slow. At page 200, more than a third of the way into this long, 500 page book, there has been no onstage action yet. It's all backstory, and Tessa has been killed offstage. At page 300, we have had some minor burglaries, offscreen too, as, presumably bad guys go looking for important documents and wipe clean the hard disks of the computers belonging to persons of interest. At page 350, the plot finally kicks in, for any reader who has lasted so long, but, once again, almost all the action is offstage. We never actually meet the live Tessa, which I consider to be a blessing, as she sounds as if she would be a horrendously self-righteous prig. Another problem I had with this book: its author begins it, if you can remember the famous line of the Peter Finch character in the film Network (Two-Disc Special Edition), by more or less letting us know that `he's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.' Of course, Finch's network news anchor utters that line at the end of the movie; otherwise, where would the movie have gone from there? And where's the book supposed to go, if it opens in a fine rage?

More recently, Le Carre has seemed to be finding his footing again in his work, I'm happy to say. But I'd recommend anyone not a crazed fan of his begin at the beginning, with his best work; then skip to his later works, and avoid the novels of the soggy middle period completely.

John Le Carré has written a touching spy thriller that traces the transformation of a man who loses his wife to a diabolical intrigue, and sets out to discover who is responsible. The suspects are multinational pharmaceutical companies--as Le Carré puts it in his epilogue--"It is about individual conscience in conflict with corporate greed".

This story is prescient in its timeliness. In 2006 more articles are appearing in the press about the undue influence of pharmaceutical companies upon the medical profession. Some believe this is a conflict of interest for doctors. Le Carré's story posits the use of third world nations as testing grounds for drugs that have not passed sufficient clinical trials, and the mega-billions that rest on such exploitation.

The writing in this novel is superb. Le Carré's writing is spare and poignant. He lucidly describes the inner life of his lively and vivid characters. The tone of the novel is deeply sad and disappointed; it clearly points out where humanity is still failing to rise to its full moral potential. Despite its mordant critique of the greed of corporations, The Constant Gardener provides high quality entertainment and suspense. Well done--highly recommended!

November 8,2001
The Stanley Hotel
Nairobi,Kenya
That John Le Carre is a master story-teller goes without saying. His reputation sits solidly upon a strong foundation of popular books based on the John Smiley Character. I am sorry to say that,owing to a preference for non-fiction over fiction, I had not read a single one of his books until now.
The Constant Gardener was recommended by a friend who, upon learning of my intention to quit a job flying a new 747 so I could return to Africa to fly an antique, clapped-out Hercules, air-dropping food and supplies to the dispossessed of Southern Sudan, called to say I should read this book since it was set in the area around Lokichoggio, Kenya, the home of the UN's Operation Lifeline Sudan.
The central theme of the story is one of contemporary controversy: the role of "Big Pharma" companies in the Third World.
In a world of scarce resources, where emerging nations must choose between healthcare and basic education, between hospitals for the dying and schools for those just beginning life, do the creators of modern medicines have a human duty to provide product to developing nations irrespective of cost?
In the case of poor countries that cannot pay,is it an ethical quid pro quo to use these destitute populations as unwitting subjects in surreptitious clinical trials?
Dypraxa is a miracle cure in waiting. A short-course treatment for the "White Plague," tuberculosis. TB is rampant in AIDS-ravaged Africa. It is on the verge of re-exploding onto the scene in the developed nations of the First World.
KVH pharmaceuticals has developed an effecacious new treatment, but it is not yet ready for release in Europe and America. Toxicity levels are still being explored and one still remaining side effect is death in some patients.
Tessa Quayle (nee Abbott) is a young lawyer crusading in the cause of Human Rights,particularly Women's Rights, married to an older,low-level diplomat attached to the British High Commission in Nairobi,Kenya. She has painstakingly documented the shortcomings and failures of Dypraxa and, having failed to persuade both the manufacturer and the Marketer of the drug to pull it from the market, has embarked on a mission to bring her findings to the attention of Her Majesty's government and the Public Health Community.
Her efforts cost both her and her Black Belgian colleague and putative lover, Dr. Arnold Bluhm, their lives in a most grisly fashion. Tessa's body is discovered on the shore of Lake Turkana some miles east of Lokichoggio where she and the doctor had supposedly gone to attend a conference.
Responsibility for protecting the High Commission's interests falls to Sandy Woodrow,ambitious second to High Commissioner Porter Coleridge and unrequited,would-be paramour of the late Tessa. Sandy shoulders the burden of protecting the High Commission by offering sanctuary from the prying media hounds to Tessa'a husband,the ineffectual cuckhold Justin Quayle. Locked away in a basement room, Justin is shielded from prying eyes and a deepening scandal is averted.
Two up-and-coming detectives are sent out from Scotland Yard to conduct the investigation. The doggedly pursue each thread, carefully weaving their case in the face of Foreign Office duplicity, personal hidden agendas and corporate stonewalling.
The basic premise and structure of the story would make this book an adequate, if formulaic, murder mystery in any event. What transforms this story into a ripping-good yarn is Le Carre's gift for using the reader's complacency and preconceptions as a pivot-point aroound which he moves his story and his characters throough 180 degrees.
The initially obvious is wrong. Those whom we at first take to be honorable prove to be selfish and banal. Those whom we first disdain prove to have character of woven steel.
My experience with fictional stories of exotic places with which I am familiar is that they inevitably disappoint. The author always seems to get the details wrong.
In this instance Le Carre not only gets the details right, but he also captures the subtle undercurrents flowing through the lives of the members of the ex-patriot and relief communities based in Kenya.
Anyone who has spent time in East Africa will find his characters familiar,common even, yet not stereotypical. Bright,ambitious Asians of high academic achievement,like Ghita, are ten for a penny around Nairobi. It is to Africa's great cost that their potential contributions are suppressed by the remnants of Raj Colonial attitudes regarding class and "one's place" and thwarted both by corrupt government and native African resentment.
Le Carre succeeds in capturing the strange household dynamic between B'wana,Mama and the household staff. Not for nothing is the Swahili word for white man, "M'zungu", also the word for crazy. Loyalty of the type displayed by the servant Mustapha speaks volumes about the character of those whom he serves.
There is no place on earth more compelling than Africa and no place has broken more hearts or shattered more dreams. The ex-patriot community runs the full human spectrum from charlatan to saint. To some relief work work is just a job, a way to get money. To many it is a calling to serve a higher and more noble purpose. To those like the character Lohbeer,it represents a final chance for redemption from past sins.
For me, Africa is a place of retreat. A place to return to for a reflective change of pace and catech up on neglected reading. I started reading this book on a nine hour layover in Spain. It was such a page-turner that I spent the entirety of the all-night-flight from Madrid to Johannesburg sitting in a solitary pool of light,unwilling to sleep until I had reached the conclusion.
For those seeking cosmic justice, the ending will leave them unfulfilled. But the story ends in the only possible way and for that reason, this book is a great read.

The characters were interesting, the story intriguing, and the message was thought-provoking. Much has been written about the cruel and unethical experimentation on humans (especially on African poor), but this book makes the entire outrageous behavior of some drug companies come to life. Don't look for a happy resolution to the problem, because there won't be one. Perhaps the resolution will come when the world begins to put a stop to this horrible practice.