I'd tried to read this twice before, but didn't make it past the snoozy opening pages. But after those, it picks up quickly and jogs right along through the end. Our protagonist, Mr. Wormold, is a lovably milquetoast English expat running a failing vacuum shop in Havana, raising his 17-year-old daughter alone after his wife left him years ago.

The plot kicks off when Wormold is approached by a foreign agent handler from MI6, and he realizes that his financial troubles will be over, as long as he keeps reporting secrets back to England. The only problem is that there are no secrets to report — so, he starts inventing them. This setup could easily wobble into absurdist slapstick (and at times it does), but the way the narration sticks so close to Wormold and his good-intentions-gone-awry instead makes it kind of a charming, heartwarming read.

I didn't expect the book to be so funny, but Greene also does an excellent job of interweaving some real tension toward the end of the book, as

Wormold — naturally — stumbles his way into IRL spycraft and its attendant mortal dangers.