I think this is the only time in my life I've actually liked the movie better than the book, but perhaps my expectations were too high (I hadn't read or heard of LeCarré before this). Basically I'd thought that since it was about pharmaceutical company conspiracies to test drugs on poor Africans and kill people who get in their way, I'd love it... I was wrong, but maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised.

I felt Le Carré didn't address the pharmaceutical issue with enough depth, and focused too much on making the main character, Justin, run all over the world, trying to solve the mystery of his wife’s murder. I also never really warmed up to Justin; he started out as a spineless bureaucrat, and didn’t develop or grow much—he ended up merely as a regretful spineless bureaucrat. Le Carré also threw in a weird religious character at the end, which felt completely random and disjointed from the rest of the book.

Overall, Le Carré’s writing was a bit too Dan Brown-ish for me—meaning that the book was too exciting to put down, but I was constantly irritated by his typical “beautiful smart woman” and “nerdy middle-aged man” characters. If you’re looking for a page-turner, this is definitely worth a read, but if you’re looking for a substantive manifesto against the pharmaceutical industry (and yes, I do realize I might be the only weirdo in the world looking for this in a novel), you’ll be disappointed.