Audiobooks: Three books with great tales and great narrators

"Agent Running in the Field," by John le Carré. (Penguin Audio, Unabridged, 9½ hours)

John le Carré, master of espionage and gifted voice actor, gives an outstanding performance narrating his 25th novel, a spy thriller set in England's torrid summer of 2018.

As Brexit and a visit from the American president create havoc, spy handler Nat has been relegated to heading British intelligence service's substation for has-beens and screw-ups called "Haven." Nat, a champion badminton player, is challenged to a match by a young, Brexit-hating, Trump-loathing man named Ed, another of le Carré's idealistic innocents.

One thing leads to another, and the rest of le Carré's distinctive ingredients come sifting in: queasy loyalties and disillusion, enemy agents' unholy infatuation with one another, and cynical, high-level scapegoating. Cryptic, exciting and witty, the novel is further enhanced by its author's delivery. His rich, woodwind baritone mutates effortlessly into an arrogant old-boy bray, industrial Midlands clunk and the brittle tones of "one of those upper-class girls who grew up with ponies."

The plot does execute a few improbable maneuvers, but that is more than compensated by the perfect unity between story and narrator.

"The Big Book of the Dead," by Marion Winik. (Tantor, Unabridged, 5 hours)

Marion Winik's reminiscences of dead family members, friends and others is as much a memoir as it is a salute to those who have lived. There is sadness here but also humor and wit and an overall feeling of engagement with life.

Each person — and, in some cases, animal — is captured in an eloquent vignette, at times high-spirited or melancholy and moving. Among her subjects are her mother, the golf champ; her first, much-loved husband, who lost his battle with AIDS; her stillborn baby; Rocco, a cat; Leslie, a personable goldfish; and the man whose life taught her that it's "necessary and gorgeous to be who you are" — which could be the central message of these marvelous portraits.

"The Man That Got Away," by Lynne Truss. (Lamplight Audiobooks, Unabridged, 7½ hours)

This is Lynne Truss' second novel starring Constable Twitten. It is summer 1957 in the English seaside town of Brighton and young Twitten has become a devotee of Nancy Mitford's "Noblesse Oblige," in which the elements of "U" (upper-class) and "Non-U" locutions were set before a class-obsessed English public.

Twitten insists, unheeded, that the book could be a valuable forensic tool in identifying criminals — and so it turns out to be. But that vindication comes long after the madcap plot has wended its way through the town's seedier holiday attractions and bumped up against a ragtag selection of miscreants, among the police-station charlady and "criminal mastermind," Mrs. Groynes.

Matt Green narrates this deft caper with a fine selection of voices and infectious enthusiasm for its many about-turns. He sounds as baffled as we are by where this is all heading — and as pleased, too, when we find that a group of supposed musicians are, unknown to each other, operatives from Interpol, New Scotland Yard, MI5, Brighton Police and Mrs. Groynes' gang.