Inventing the dots

摘要

This is a book you can imagine Alec Leamas, the miserable spook hero of "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold", enjoying on the number 11 bus back to his dingy Hammersmith flat. "What do you think spies are: priests, saints, martyrs?" Leamas famously snarled. "They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives." Plus ca change, apparently. "Curveball" offers a squalid and up-to-date procession of real-life fools, traitors and game-players seeking to brighten their rotten lives. Principal among them is an Iraqi chemical engineer who pitched up in Germany without a visa in 1999.