The Secret Agent

Unlike most of Joseph Conrad's novels, THE SECRET AGENT is not set on the high seas. This highly political novel, first published in 1907, takes place in late-nineteenth-century London, where Mr. Verloc, an agent provocateur, is involved in a plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. Narrator Steven Crossley is in complete command, navigating Conrad's complex sentences with ease. When several characters are speaking, Crossley's voice changes to make the dialogue much easier to follow. He also draws on a wide range of timbres, mannerisms, and accents to define each of the characters--from the gruff-voiced Chief Inspector Heat to the more plaintive tones of Verloc's long-suffering wife. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine


Thoroughly ironic and even sarcastic, this early, atypical Conrad novel is an ultimately tragic, comedy of errors spy story, which challenges the oral interpreter to set the right tone. Lean too heavily on the Dickensian caricatures and the tale seems a tastelessly cruel joke. Go too far the other way and you miss the point, as well as the humor. Geoffrey Howard gallops through the narrative without trying though he fittingly gets caught up in the excellent prose. However, the recording still misses something essential in the book's personality. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine