The Sandpit
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The Sandpit
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Narrated by:
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David Bark-Jones
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, he doesn't expect to find them both in danger. Every day is the same. He drops Leandro at his smart prep school and walks to the library to research his new book. His time living on the edge as a foreign correspondent in Rio is over.
But the rainy streets of this English city turn out to be just as treacherous as those he used to walk in the favelas.
Leandro’s schoolmates are the children of influential people, among them an international banker, a Russian oligarch, an American CIA operative and a British spook. As they congregate round the sports field for the weekly football matches, the network of alliances and covert interests that spreads between these power brokers soon becomes clear to Dyer. But it is a chance conversation with an Iranian nuclear scientist Rustum Marvar, father of a friend of Leandro, that sets him onto a truly precarious path.
When Marvar and his son disappear, several sinister factions seem acutely interested in Marvar’s groundbreaking research at the Clarendon Lab and what he might have told Dyer about it, given Dyer was the last person to see Marvar alive.
©2020 Nicholas Shakespeare (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"A remarkable contemporary thriller - with shades of Graham Greene and Le Carré about it - but also a profound and compelling investigation of a hugely complex human predicament. Brilliantly observed, captivatingly written, grippingly narrated - a triumph." (William Boyd)
What listeners say about The Sandpit
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Sharon Barron
- 16-04-21
Fantastic: intrigue, very well written, brilliant
Dyer is a former broadsheet foreign correspondent, with principles, who gives up his job when instructed to do something he doesn't like. He has a son by an estranged Latin American beauty, who he has placed in a private he attended as a boy. Through the school he meets an Iranian physicist who has discovered something incredible. What follows is beautifully told tale of intrigue in the academic world of Oxford.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Peter Mucklow
- 18-08-21
The Sandpit
A gripping story beautifully narrated and one which poses many interesting questions for the reader.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Richard
- 26-07-20
Great Story beautifully written and narrated
If you love Oxford this book makes the modern city really live reflecting the influx to North Oxford London and International monied families. He really gets the world of North Oxford prep school life and the society of parents and children. Threaded through this canvas is a ripping yarn. Hard to put down once stated.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- AJ
- 23-06-21
A promising start and then peters out
A fascinating premise is set up, and the first third or so is quite interesting, but then almost nothing else happens at all. I was extremely bored by the end.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Roger Southard
- 21-02-21
Hard to keep interested
Nicely read but I struggled with this book. Did not feel characters really came alive.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- J E STEWART
- 15-04-24
The author “lost the plot”!
Well read, good idea for the story, but all was quickly lost, as it meandered off in various directions.
Simply put, the author “lost the plot”!
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