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Wasted Years
Wasted Years
May 14, 2025 5:23 AM

Author:John Harvey

Wasted Years

'John Harvey is one of the all-time greats and remains one of my favourite writers.' IAN RANKIN

As heard on BBC Radio 4 in the Resnick dramatisations, now collected in audiobook for the first time

_____________________

A series of brutal robberies takes Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick back ten years.

To a time when a rash of very similar incidents left him face to face with a frenzied sociopath who nearly brought his life to a premature end - and to a time when his wife ran off with her lover, putting paid to their marriage and leaving him with a psychic wound that still hasn't healed.

Now with the look-alike robberies escalating in violence, Resnick fights to track the men down before they kill, just as he fights to stem the poignant memories that threaten to overwhelm him.

Reviews

A densely textured procedural, reverberating with the sounds and side effects of broken wedlock... how Harvey makes these breakages count in the final solution is his magic and triumph. Another winner

—— Sunday Times

From Resnick's bruised marriage to his flamboyant sandwiches, from the precisely drawn characters to the surprising (yet strangely inevitable) climax, from the wonderfully telling details ... to the desolation of a decaying city, Wasted Years is a novel without one false note

—— San Francisco Chronicle

Allingham's characters are three-dimensional flesh and blood, especially her villains

—— Times Literary Supplement

A novelist of truly international stature

—— The Times

A complex and powerful exploration of the lives of a victim, killer and their families and friends... Villain is a moving and disturbing novel about loneliness, lies and the gap between expectation and reality. Highly recommended

—— Guardian

The interest for a British audience will lie in the chilly details it reveals about contemporary Japanese society...what comes across so forcefully is the rootlessness and alienation of the youth in Japan

—— Daily Mail

There’s only one thing as good as reading a John D. MacDonald novel: reading it again . . . He is the all-time master of the American mystery novel

—— John Saul

John le Carré has lost none of his ability in skewering the murkier foibles of the British Establishment. A tale of deception, greed, betrayal and ultimately, revenge . . . it is not until the last few pages that the full three dimensions of the plot are thrillingly revealed

—— Country Life

A writer of towering gifts . . . le Carré is one of the great analysts of the contemporary scene, who has a talent to provoke as well as unsettle

—— Independent

John le Carré takes us back to his favourite scenarios: Whitehall, the secret services, the gentleman's clubs, dodgy bankers, corrupt public schoolboys and gruesome American neo-cons . . . revelling once more in that imaginary world of secrets and lies that is le Carré's gift to us

—— Evening Standard

Tense, twisty, and driven by a melancholy insight into human motivation . . . deeply compelling

—— The Week

John le Carré is as recognisable a writer as Dickens or Austen, with an often-imitated but never rivalled cast of seedy spies, false lovers, public schoolboys struggling with guilt, and charming but immoral leaders of the brutal establishment . . . This is vintage le Carré and highly enjoyable

—— Financial Times

Thrilling, suspenseful . . . Fans will not be disappointed

—— Sunday Express

Utterly convincing characters, a tight plot . . . Wonderful

—— Sunday Mirror

Thrilling

—— Express

Choreographed with unsettling precision

—— Metro

When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré ... they were a journey into the wider world ... These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind

—— Aung San Suu Kyi

Plunges the reader into a modern-day thriller...Dad won't be able to put it down

—— Metro

[It] has all the essential ingredients of his masterpieces: the dilemmas of duty, patriotism and decency

—— Simon Sebag Montefiore , Metro 'Books of the Year'

John Le Carré at his masterful best . . . nobody does it better

—— Ben Macintyre , The Times 'Books of the Year'

Widely hailed as a return to the good old Smiley days . . . le Carré writes with laconic elegance

—— Kate Saunders , The Times 'Books of the Year'
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