In 1938, Graham Greene was busy writing two novels. The
better-known book became his classic, The
Power and the Glory, about the Mexican whiskey priest. But Greene feared
that The Power and the Glory would
not sell, and he needed money to support his family. Therefore, in the
mornings, he wrote one of his “entertainments”, The Confidential Agent. As an entertainment, The Confidential Agent qualifies as a thriller. It has a
fast-moving plot, reversals of fortune, and plenty of action. In this regard, Greene’s
tale is like those of his contemporary, Eric
Ambler, and later writers such as Alan Furst, who inhabit the same shady
and treacherous underworld of pre-World War II Europe.
But this is Graham Greene. This is Greeneland.
So while The
Confidential Agent meets all of the requirements of a thriller,
nevertheless, it has that twinge of angst for which Graham Greene is famous.
For instance, the protagonist is never given a name, only the initial “D.”. In
this, we perceive shades of Kafka. Further, D. is haunted by the past. The civil
war in his home country (the Spanish Civil War?) killed his wife and left him
in prison, expecting execution. Having escaped captivity, D. is assigned a
mission to England by his embattled government. But D’s past pulls at him all
the while. His memories, his wounds, and the adversaries have traveled with him
to try to thwart his mission to buy coal on behalf of his government. D. is not
a James Bond or even a George Smiley. He’s an amateur, a scholar of the
medieval French text The Song of Roland.
He’s intimidated by the thought of personal violence even though he has
suffered his share.
I don’t know if there’s any Graham Greene book that I wouldn’t
recommend. Graham Greene’s “entertainments” are weightier than many other writers’
most ambitious works. Greene establishes characters quickly and deeply. Although
one can describe the tale as “action-packed”, you are taken by fleeting and seemingly minor
characters such as Else the cleaning girl at the hotel and the gang members of the mining town. Thus, if you’re
looking for something both entertaining and more considerate, you will likely
enjoy Graham Greene’s The Confidential
Agent.
P.S. If you happened to get the Vintage books edition, be
sure and read the introduction by Scottish (crime) writer Ian
Rankin. For a further appreciation of Greene, check out Pico Iyer’s The
Man Inside My Head.
