When Evelyn and I visited England in 1990, tube stations and bus panels were filled with advertisements for Ian McEwan's new novel The Innocent. It seemed unusual for a book to get so much attention, and in one of my then favorite genres (spy novel). I was excited, but had to wait nearly a year for the book to appear in paperback in the United States.
The Innocent follows a young Englishman assigned to a secret project in the classic espionage setting of 1955 Berlin. A joint American-British team is digging a tunnel into the Russian zone in order to tap their telephone lines. Our hero needs to learn his role and navigate the competing loyalties of his co-workers. He starts an affair with a German woman whose motives we readers are more skeptical about than he is.
The espionage is well handled, although spy novel aficionados might feel there's too much distracting romance. The story takes a genre-shifting turn about two-thirds of the way through, but the twist felt organic rather than a gimmick.
A very entertaining genre novel.
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