Her social work has brought to her notice that drug trials are being rigged and the African patients are being treated as ‘Guinea Pigs’ to perfect the medicine prior to it being launched in the Western markets.
He does a vanishing act and starts to painstakingly trace back Tessa’s story – her fight to get big Pharma to account. Then on he is just as good as one of Le Carre’s old spies. Justin is not convinced but he plays the hapless husband till the moment to strike arrives. (In fact later on it is revealed that Bluhm was gay and died a brutal death just like Tessa). And it was the doctor who did her in and escaped the scene. The PR narrative is that Tessa was promiscuous and having a blazing affair with her mentor – an African doctor. But ol’ Le Carre readers know his hand by now and we know that it is only a matter of time and moment before he transforms himself into a ‘one-man-army’ battling the evil and faceless powers who want to spin the narrative. Her husband Justin Quayle quaintly called the gardener is initially shown to be shy, self-effacing and ineffectual person. The novel has a dramatic opening – a British lady (Tessa), wife of a diplomat and an active social worker, has been raped and brutally murdered in the African hinterland. Set in the beautiful land of Africa that is facing trouble and strife due to war and the AIDS epidemic the story has Le Carre navigate the intrigues of the British Establishment and Pharma MNCs that creates death and tragedy for the native folks. Still the story is supposed to be an understatement for as Le Carre says, “Nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world, but I can tell you this, as my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard”. It seems to be less a world of fiction as the reality bites sharp and close. Le Carre turns his sharp pincer focus on the pharma industry and its unethical testing practices in the war and strife-torn Africa where human lives seem to matter less than would be the case in the Western world.
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