The Secret Agent

First published in 1907, this novel is set among anarchists and police in late-Victorian London. Adolf Verloc keeps a seedy Soho shop and draws a retainer from a foreign embassy, which orders him to bomb the Greenwich Observatory so that Britain will crack down on refugees. His wife Winnie, her simple brother Stevie, the Assistant Commissioner, and the bomb-maker the Professor move through fog, offices, and the shop parlor. The plot turns on a bungled outrage and a domestic reckoning. It is a political thriller of spies and a marriage, not a documentary of any one real bombing.

Bound in black and yellow image blocked red cloth. Red endpapers. Black slipcase blocked with UV spot varnish design on front.