Spies

“A master of intellectual mystery masquerading as ripping popular entertainment . . . a gorgeous melancholy that shivers the mind.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the author of bestselling Booker Prize finalist Headlong, a mesmerizing novel about secrecy and a child’s game turned deadly earnest.

When Stephen Wheatley returns to the site of a dimly remembered but troubling childhood summer in wartime London, we are brought back to a quiet, suburban street where two boys, Keith and his sidekick-Stephen—are engaged in their own version of the war effort: spying on the neighbors, recording their movements, ferreting out their secrets.

But then the boys’ game of espionage takes a sinister and unintended turn. A wife’s simple errands and a family’s ordinary rituals—once the focus of childish speculation—become the tragic elements of adult catastrophe.

In gripping prose, Spies reaches into the moral confusion of youth to reveal a reality filled with deceptions and betrayals, where the bonds of friendship, marriage, and family are unraveled by cowardice and erotic desire.

Michael Frayn powerfully demonstrates that what appears to be happening in front of our eyes often turns out to be something we can’t see at all.

“A novel of extraordinary power and wisdom.” —The Baltimore Sun

“Bernard Shaw couldn’t do it, Henry James couldn’t do it, but the ingenious English author Michael Frayn does do it: write novels and plays with equal success.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

“Secrets assume an unexpected power and excitement as Frayn reveals that a little of the fascist is buried in every clever child, and that spying can be a soul-destroying game.” —Chicago Sun-Times