A Murder of Quality

A Murder of Quality is a novel by the English writer John le Carre, published in 1962. It is his second book and the only one of his novels that is a conventional mystery rather than a story of espionage.

Ailsa Brimley is the editor of a small Christian nonconformist magazine in London called Christian Voice, and she writes its advice column herself. Among the letters she receives is one from a reader named Stella Rode, who says that her husband, a junior master at a public school in the town of Carne, is plotting to kill her.

Because Stella's family has been connected with the magazine for generations, Brimley treats the letter as a real warning rather than the work of somebody who is unwell. She goes to a colleague from her wartime work in intelligence, and he is George Smiley.

Smiley is the character le Carre is best known for, and this is the one book in which he is set down outside the intelligence community and asked to work out who did what in an ordinary town.