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First thing to say is that I thought the quality of the writing deserved a more sophisticated plot. The plot seemed overegged to me and kept changing key as if Greene couldn’t quite decide if he was writing a psychological thriller or a comic farce. The novel opens with a preposterous premise � a cell of Nazi spies hide a vital roll of film inside a cake which is the prize at a fete. That they choose this wholly irrational method of passing on vital information makes you feel you’re entering into a whacky comedy. This feeling is given further weight when someone is murdered at an equally preposterous séance. An entire chapter was then dedicated to a dream. I don’t like dreams in novels. It seems like cheating. And this dream was a clumsy and unrealistic way of imparting important background detail. However all this is taking place during the London Blitz and it was the descriptive writing and detail of his evocation of this moment in history that was my favourite part of this novel. “In Gower Street they were sweeping up glass, and a building smoked into the new day like a candle which some late reveler had forgotten to snuff.�

The plot, though never entirely believable, becomes more gripping at the half way point. Most of all though it was the quality of Greene’s writing that impressed me and left me wanting to read more of his work.