Rating: 
Summary: Not his best work.
Review: I've been a Le Carre fan for many years. His Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is extraordinary. This lastest novel falls short of his best. Justin, a career British diplomat, has been content to grow yellow freesias for his beloved younger wife. Suddenly Justin's well ordered life becomes turbulent when Tessa, his wife, turns up brutally murdered. Then, the understated and boring Justin springs into to action to discover the true details of his wife's and her friend's murders. Justin slips away from the British Diplomatic Service and becomes a pretty good spy. As he uncovers the conspiracy of the world's largest pharmaceutical corporations, his life becomes endangered. The story's premise and its characters didn't ring true. Tessa seemed a naive and well meaning do-gooder, not the hard-nosed lawyer she supposedly was. Justin was never quite able to fill the shoes of a strong leading character. His motive for becoming a spy, to avenge his wife's death, seems at times pathetic rather than heroic. The drug trial conspiracy would have been totally suspect as contrived if not for the recent scandals surrounding the cancer research facility in Seattle. This organization has been accused of some of the same abuses as the companies in the novel. Anyone who has followed the Seattle scandals will find the parallels in the book uncanny. Despite its flaws, The Constant Gardener, would be an OK summer afternoon's read. Wait for the paperback.
Rating: 
Summary: Not His Best Work
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: No weeds in this garden
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Le Carre In Top Form
Review: This is the fascinating story of a man trying to learn what happened to his murdered wife, whose death is tied to the deadly use of an imperfect drug, which a pharmaceutical company, run by an unscrupulous CEO, is testing in Africa. In contrast to some le Carre novels, this is a tightly calibrated narrative that moves quickly and without pomposity. The meetings between the protagonist, Justin Quayle, and some devious bureaucrats in the foreign office are a mid-book high point. The last chapter is also great. There, the protagonist's sad adventures suddenly appear as the heartbreaking quest of a husband with suicidal survivor's guilt. In this chapter, the harsh world rewards the forces of good, but only ironically. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: couldn't put it down
Review: Not only couldn't put it down but inflicted it on my friends. This is a fascinating, heart-breaking, and ultimately depressing look at our multi-national corporate world. On the positive side the books demonstrates once again that LeCarre has made a successful leap from teh Cold War into the modern error (there were a couple of stumbles on the way, but never mind). It is also great to see a novel about Africa where the heroes and villains cut across nationalities and ethnicities, with nary a bow to Political Correctness. I won't spoil the book by telling the plot, but it is a real activists credo -if you don't want to Do Something at the end you've lost your soul. My one quibble that takes this from 5 stars is that Our Heroe is a litlle too clever and lucky at getting what he needs to get in order to get to the end of the novel 'nuff said.
Rating:
Summary: These are REAL villains.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Literate and Satisfying
Review: I enjoyed this book a great deal. I was reminded of how thoughtful, literate and complex a writer LeCarre is -- he towers over most of the best seller fiction crowd. The book is also a tragic and touching love story. The climax is very moving. I'm glad also he cast a shadow over the greedy multinational pharmas. I suspect they are much more vile than they are portrayed here.
Rating:
Summary: Coming to grip with internal demons
Review: 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?
Rating: 
Summary: Constant and poor gardener
Review: Poor English - boringly written story - two times too long. After not having finished the "Taylor of Panama" I shall NEVER touch a book by Le Carré again. Sorry for having wasted my time.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, light reading
Review: John LeCarre truly creates authenticity with his characters! I had read an interesting review of this book in my local newspaper and was intrigued by the critic's description of the plot. Unlike LeCarre's previous books, this one is easier to follow since there are fewer characters to keep up with. Great writing style....I would highly recommend it.
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