Synopses & Reviews
In pre-Castro Cuba, James Wormold's wife has left him for another man, leaving him alone with his teenage daughter Milly. Wormold's career as a vacuum cleaner salesman doesn't net enough to pay for Milly's champagne tastes, so when an acquaintance offers him work with the British secret service, he readily accepts. Unfortunately, Wormold has no information to relay to the home office, but he's not about to let a small matter like that keep him from the gravy train. Undaunted, he creates a vast network of agents, eventually passing off a sketch of a vacuum cleaner's circuit diagram as a secret military installation. This marvelous coup marks Wormold as a rising star and lands him his very own private secretary. But when people around him start dropping like flies, Wormold realizes that someone is taking his little game very, very seriously. This sparkling spoof is one of Greene's funniest and most accessible novels.
About the Author
Graham Greene was born in 1904. He established his reputation with his fourth novel, Stamboul Train. In 1935 he made a journey across Liberia, described in Journey Without Maps, and on his return was appointed film critic of the Spectator. In 1926 he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church and visited Mexico in 1938 to report on the religious persecution there. As a result he wrote The Lawless Roads and, later, his famous novel The Power and the Glory. Brighton Rock was published in 1938 and in 1940 he became literary editor of the Spectator. The next year he undertook work for the Foreign Office and was stationed in Sierra Leone from 1941 to 1943. This later produced the novel The Heart of the Matter, set in West Africa. He died in April 1991.