I read this book thanks to the ‘Overdue’ podcast—they weren’t thrilled, I loved it. Greene’s slim novel is a satire on Cold War spying that points up the absurdity of much of spycraft, but also how easy it was, post-WWII, to be swept up in the paranoia. An unassuming British vacuum cleaner salesman, James Wormold, is inadvertently recruited as an operative in 1958 Havana, just four years before the Cuban Missile Crisis. The assignment seems like an easy way to earn extra money to give his daughter Milly all the advantages she wants. But before he knows it, he’s managing a real staff and risking the lives of real operatives he’s never met. Greene was a consummate literary stylist, slowly creating an insidious world that takes over Wormold’s life. The supporting characters—drinking buddy Dr. Hasselbacher and slimy Police Captain Segura—are deftly drawn. The novel is entertaining, but Greene has a larger point: “I don’t care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them in organizations…. I don’t think even my country means all that much,” Wormold admits. “There are many countries in our blood, aren’t there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?” (197).