Disorderly Elements Format: Paperback

There's a recession on, you know. With an unemployed son and a baby on the way, those are not words that Michael Wyman wants to hear, particularly not from his employers - the university where he's a professor of philosophy, or the British secret service for which he's worked for 30 years. Yet both employers at once have informed him that he's being laid off without a pension. Happily, a miracle is at hand, in the form of a Communist spy burrowed deep into the highest reaches of British intelligence. An East German defector can identify the spy, and is willing to give up the information, but only to one man. At fifty-six years old, Wyman has one last chance to get back in the game and get out on his own terms.

Sweeping government economy measures pose great problems for Michael Wyman, a university teacher on a 30-year secondment to British Intelligence. Not only does his MI6 job disappear, but he loses tenure at his college due to cutbacks in funding. Faced with double redundancy, he also discovers that his lover is pregnant. Where lesser men would give up, Wyman creates a phantom intelligence leak. This solution, which involves the KGB, CIA, and his own department, both secures his future and wreaks appropriate revenge on his oppressors. A delightful and clever first novel with a fast-moving plot, extremely witty dialogue, and a style that combines the best of espionage fiction with a "sting" of classic proportions.John North, L.R.C., Ryerson Polytechnical Inst., Toronto
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.