A continental government with a civil war on its hands sends D., a former lecturer in romance languages, to England to buy coal... at almost any price. Failure means defeat. But D. has hardly landed before force, corruption, and treachery gather round him; he is pursued by both the English Police and the rebels' agents.
This is a good intelligent thriller with some very droll humour. No James Bond moments but there is a tension that is maintained from the beginning of the story aboard a ship sailing to England through to the conclusion.
I did find it annoying that the agent D. is referred to as simply D., all through the book, no idea why this was done.
This is one of the books that Greene referred to as an 'entertainment' seemingly to place them on a lower tier than his big novels. There is no drop in standard and for a Greene the ending is almost happy.
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