20th Century Our Man In Havana (Paperback)

Le Carré's effort isn't bad, but its often-maudlin tone detracts from the humor of the situation. Not so Greene, who subtitled his book "An Entertainment" and meant it. He doesn't waive all suspense and tragic overtones in search of punchlines; one of the chief joys of this book is how well it works as a spy novel. But unlike heavier Greene works like "The Power And The Glory," "Our Man" plays in a kind of high-adventure, almost Ian Fleming kind of way.

Greene's novel concerns a struggling British vacuum salesman living in Cuba, Jim Wormold, recruited by U.K. espionage to provide intelligence on the local scene as it becomes a hot spot in East-West relations. Wormold can't resist their money, but decides that instead of giving honest information, he will make up stories with the "assistance" of a stable of recruited agents he invents on the spot.

"Just lie and keep your freedom," advises Wormold's best friend, an old German doctor with a mysterious background named Hasselbacher. "They don't deserve the truth...They have no money, except what they take from men like you and me."

So Wormold does exactly that, for the benefit of his blossoming daughter, the flower of his heart whose faith in him and God he seeks to preserve though he doesn't share either belief. The result is a tangle of tall tales about alcoholic pilots and Mata Hari (...) he basically makes up as he goes along.

At one point, he wonders whether he pushed his luck when he presents the plans for one of his vacuum cleaner models as a secret Soviet base, but he's hopelessly addicted to his fiction almost as much for the pleasure of creation as for the financial reward: "It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of consciousness - he had only to turn on a light and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action."

Wormold is playing a dangerous game; in addition to snookering his own country, he is also attracting the notice both of the rival camp and the Havana police in the intimidating person of Captain Segura, a rumored torturer who covets Wormold's daughter. But in oddly detached fashion, perhaps because his life lost much of its purpose when his wife left him years ago, Wormold improvises his way through with cosmic aplomb.

There is a deeper meaning to this book, based on Greene's belief that neither East nor West deserved any special allegiance during the Cold War. One character puts it this way: "They haven't left us much to believe, have they? Even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being."

It's possible to take issue with Greene's value-neutral attitude, but his execution is so deft, and his style so entertaining, that you can't help but admire him. "Our Man In Havana" is a thoroughly mesmerizing comedy that manages to impart some subversive truths about where the moral lines exist between serving one's government and serving one's fellow man.

It involves, of course, a vacuum salesman -- who becomes a spy, sort of. He is recruited by British Intelligence, and makes money by "recruiting" imaginary agents and sending them on expensive fictional missions. Brillliant, farcical and more illuminating and entertaining than a hundred Ludlum-type "thrillers."

The amazing thing about Greene is his ability, in the context of his stories, to capture the essential humanity of his characters and place it in writing, and to convey deeper meanings and truths which underly their movements and plot.

Greene's tale might seem preposterous -- but it isn't. Before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese employed an agent who clearly fabricated reports, and proposed means of sending secret signals from a boat he didn't own, and a house he leased to naval officers. In truth, intelligence agencies have suffered legions of failures and even the best of them made egregious mistakes with similarly disastrous consequences. Greene's book is not merely an amusing tale of a few people, it is an allegory and expose of the fallacies of secret organizations, and a biting commentary about the extremes to which they can go to protect their own -- rather than the public's -- interest. Greene, to be sure, must have witnessed some of the bungling, and underlying his farce is a warning and a commentary.