The Secret Agent is Conrad’s dark, and darkly comic story of a band of spies, anarchists, agents-provocateurs plotting and counter-plotting in the back streets of London in the early 20th Century. The novel centers on Verloc, a shop-owner, phony-anarchist and double-agent, who becomes embroiled in an ambitious terrorist plan to bomb the Greenwich Observatory

The Department has faded since the war, effectively mothballed, without agents or resources. But now, with intelligence of a possible missile threat, it again has a mission. This is a chance to prove its influence to those at the Circus, like George Smiley, who think the Department's time has passed. The opportunity to reclaim former glory cannot be missed - even though it means putting men's lives in desperate risk, on foreign soil.

The Looking Glass War is a gripping story of the amorality of espionage - unflinching in its depiction of spying and the men involved, who are as much full of vanity and fear as of selflessness and courage.