In Which Nick Reads "The Constant Gardener" By John Lecarre.

The Constant Gardner.  I saw this book in a pile of books at the office that someone was trying to move for a buck a piece, used books that no wanted to find homes for.  I remembered that the Constant Gardener was a movie once, with I think Angelina Jolie and maybe Pierce Brosnan, and that it didn't do particularly well.  I had also struck out once with Lecarre, trying to read A Small Town in Germany at the airport on the way to some place or another.  I didn't enjoy it, though to be fair I don't think it is counted as one of his best. Good title though.

But I figured "Eh, it's a dollar, so I'll go for it".

I am glad I did.

It's a rough ride at first, only because the subject matter is so gut wrenching.  When the book opens Tessa Quayle has been brutally raped and murdered and the aid worker she was with in the Kenyan countryside has disappeared.  It seems she has escaped on a lover's tryst with the doctor, and it went bad.  The doctor is suspected.

Her husband, a career diplomat in the British Foreign service, knows better.  Tessa was trying to unravel a great consipracy with implications going all the way up to the hallowed halls of the British Government, but he's not sure exactly what she was up to.  He gathers all the documents after her death, reads them through, and discovers that she was trying to uncover medical fraud by a large pharma company.  They rushed a tuberculosis into Africa without actively testing it, and the side effects were killing Africans, notably woman.  Basically they were using poor Africans as guinea pigs so that when the drug was introduced into a wealthier western market it would have been tweaked.  The pharma company and the distributor have ties to the British government...not direct ties but monetary ties, influence, lobbying, etc. It's all rather believable and it's all rather damning, that the prosperity of the West continues to be at the expense of others.

So he figures it out (and we along with him, which is nice, a gift that apparently Lecarre has) and he tries to bring the whole thing down.

But.....

I'll leave it at that.  It was a decent book, a fair page turner.  The movie did look a bit more exciting, but the book was really rather good.  More Lecarre is in my future.

Oh, but if you DO read it, please read Mr. Lecarre's acknowledgements at the end of the book.  They are politely cantankerous (i.e. very British) and were a sheer delight.