The Constant Gardener
John le Carre
Scribner
<p>Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carr&#233;'s new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much older husband, Justin, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive.<P>A master chronicler of the deceptions and betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, le Carr&#233; portrays, in <I>The Constant Gardener,</I> the dark side of unbridled capitalism. His eighteenth novel is also the profoundly moving story of a man whom tragedy elevates. Justin Quayle, amateur gardener and ineffectual bureaucrat, seemingly oblivious to his wife's cause, discovers his own resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barel...