British Everyman vacuum cleaner salesman is enticed to become a spy in Cuba. He needs money you see to create a secure future for his head strong beautiful daughter. The more reports & agents the more money and so he begins to invent them, which is fine until these things start becoming true.

This is exactly the kind of English novel I dislike.. whereas Eric Ambler had the every-man spy thriller down pat, this is almost a farce. The Kafkaesque nature of spying is writ large but the plot is a tad obvious these days and there isn't anything else there. The characters fulfil their allotted rolls and no more, the Havana setting seems tame and banal compared to what I imagine it should be like at the time period (maybe because I read it in Cuba, I demanded more).

Not sure if I want to try anther Greene, this one just falls flat. ( )