The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (1907)

No mini-unit of espionage/spy novels would be complete without a reading (in this case a rereading) of Conrad's The Secret Agent. His protagonist is neither an adventurous hero, as in The Riddle of the Sands, or a clever hero, as in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, or even an ingenious anti-hero, as in The Day of the Jackal. The Englishman Mr. Verloc is an agent provocateur for an unnamed foreign embassy, a planted member of an anarchist group, a purveyor of soft-core pornography, and a sometimes police snitch. He is a man of few principles whose chief motivation seems to be a dislike of real work. When he is ordered by his handler at the embassy to persuade the anarchists to blow up Greenwich Observatory, he fears the loss of his primary source of easy income if he does not see that the task is done.
Having obtained explosives from The Professor, a fellow anarchist, Mr. Verloc enlists the help of his wife's mentally handicapped younger brother, who does not understand the import of his actions. The resulting explosion has unintended tragic repercussions for all concerned.

This is a very "dirty" book--the London surroundings and weather are pictured as squalid and ugly and unwholesome; almost all the main characters' actions are prompted by self-serving motivations rather than by idealism of any sort; even the police operate under an agenda of their own rather than in a quest for justice. Conrad is the best ever when it comes to creating an atmosphere of despair.

Only two characters are truly impassioned, rather than just casually corrupt. Mrs. Verloc is motivated to violence by the love she has for her brother. The Professor is motivated by his belief that the world must be remade by violence. "Exterminate, exterminate," he says. "That is the only way of progress." Surprisingly, they emerge as the only two even marginally admirable characters in the book because they alone think outside themselves.

The Secret Agent is so much more than a mere spy novel that it is perhaps unfair to compare it to others in the genre. It's like comparing Hamlet and The Lion King. They may contain many of the same elements, but.....


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Interesting side information gleaned from background reading: The Professor in The Secret Agent served as a primary inspiration for Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. He reportedly read the book a dozen times and urged his family members to read it so that they could understand him.

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I previously reviewed this book in May of 2011.