The Confidential Agent

By: Graham Greene

Narrated by: Patrick Tull

Trusted by no one, trusting nobody, the Confidential Agent is sent to England. But before his mission has barely begun, he comes face to face with an agent from the other side. As the car he is driving is run down in the fog, a thought strikes him: "It isn't probable - not in England, but it seems to be true, nonetheless - they're going to kill me."©1941 Graham Greene (P)1988 Recorded Books

Cool story

Green wrote about such different places and situations. Most of the ones I have read are about people facing an inner struggle during war or revolution. This is one of his early ones I believe, but still good.

A minor nightmare by Graham Greene.

Perhaps one of Greene's lesser works, but the intensity and brilliance of his writing shines through. This book is more of a nightmare than a classic spy story, and also reminiscent of of a great old film noir. The sound quality is flawed, it sounds old, but by no means disqualifying. Patrick Tull is one of the great dramatic narrators. He is thoroughly British and his authentic accent may be a barrier for some listeners, but for many of us this is a feature not a bug, heh. Highly recommended!

So Much More Than an “Entertainment”

That’s the word Greene used to describe this book. Written in six weeks on a Benzedrine jag, because he needed the money, Greene disliked it so thoroughly that he asked that it appear under a pseudonym. Perhaps because they weren’t hopped up on artificial stimulants, the critics rightly identified The Confidential Agent as a ”tour de force”.

And it really is. Yes, there are cloaks and daggers here. But most of them are figurative, making this story far more emotionally complex and harder-hitting than any thriller, more deeply thoughtful than a mere cloak-and-dagger spy adventure. Greene blends the headlines of 1939 with the medieval epic The Song of Roland to create a powerful, seamless whole. And Patrick Tull is, as always, magnificent at the mic, his reading bringing out all the ambiguities and paradoxes – political as well as personal.

approach it as a fable

This is not meant to be a Tom Clancy thriller. Even when trying to write what Greene called "entertainments" (versus his more literary works) to make a living, Greene is still quite deep, making moral statements with brilliant dialogue. This is also far from being one of Greene's best novels, though.

He wrote "Confidential Agent" (circa 1938-39) to put food on the table while he was working on "The Power and the Glory," but, being Graham Greene, it's not just a spy story even if that's what he was aiming for- it's kind of archetypal. The characters are not supposed to be well developed, I think, but sketches of types found in situations of injustice and rebellion and global economic disparty. You can read into it that the espionage revolves around the Spanish Civil War, but it is meant to be a generic situation. Imagine the audience for that in pre WWII England.

My problem with the audiobook is the narration --afer a few chapters I got used to it, but found it irritating at first. I am unfamiliar with the narator; he is either British and (rightly) affecting a nondescript European accent for the main character (whose nationality is not given in the novel on purpose)-- or someone using a British accent and trying to do so. In reviews of other books, I read that some U.S. listeners find some Brit accents hard to follow; if that is your circumstance, avoid this download because the narrator swallows a lot of vowels in this work, whatever his nationality.

I wish there were more of Greene's novels on this site. Audible, please give us more Greene (and his best novels) so more Americans (and Canadians like me) can rediscover the man who has been termed the "best Catholic novelist of the 20th century" (though I suspect the currrent pope wouldn't agree).

Lukewarm.

I love Graham Greene's work, and had read many of them over and over. However, this book just didn't get me excited. First, the background, the when where who was very vague. I like novels in this period because it explained and supported the characters' thoughts and actions, but I didn't feel it here. Also, towards the end, the bit of the love between the two main characters were awkward. Last and important, I didn't care for the narrator, whose reading was so flat that I couldn't bring myself to go over the book again, which I usually did before I decided whether or not I like the story.