The Secret Agent (1907) By Joseph Conrad

While Joseph Conrad is highly regarded as an author, I’ve not previously read any of his works, not even his classics Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness.  A friend however sent me a copy of Conrad’s The Secret Agent, so I decided to give it a try. 

The book had many good points and a solid story line, but I found it very difficult to read.  While it is only 249 pages, it took me a couple of weeks to complete, partly because I’ve been busy, and partly because I found it a challenge to maintain interest long enough to finish each chapter.   And believe me, he’s not the type of writer one can put down mid-chapter, because if you do, you must start the chapter over again at the beginning.

Conrad, one could say, likes compound sentences.  In fact, he excels at them.  They are grammatically correct mind you, but several of them are two and three pages long.  I often found myself losing the noun and verb, long before I found the period.

This is not to say the story itself was bad, quite the contrary.

Set in London, the main character is a Mr. Verloc.  He is a secret agent in the employ of a never named foreign embassy. In reality however, he’s not a secret, in fact he has a close working relationship with a London police inspector – a sort of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch your back” kind of relationship.  The plot commences when both of them end up with new bosses. They share in common an exceedingly low opinion of their new directors.

Verloc is pressured by his new boss to find someone who can set off a bomb at the Greenwich Observatory (don’t ask why, it’s detailed, in detail, in an early chapter).  When he does, the story unfolds, and the final chapters read as fast, as the early chapters read slow.  The chapter near the end of the book when Verloc’s wife finds out what is going on is an excellent and memorable piece of literature.

The book does touch on some fascinating issues however: the difference between an anarchist and a revolutionary, the role of women in the late 1800s early 1900s, and (no spoiler here) the character Stevie.  

Recommendation:  For literature majors only; and even then just long enough to finish your coursework.

Click on Amazon to purchase this book.