Book Thingy: Another Graham Greene
I was shocked to learn that Graham Greene's novel Our Man in Havana was based on a true story that happened in Germany. It was the Cold War, and everywhere was a spy, oh my. This actual MI6 British Operative in Germany created a whole spy network of their guys and our guys. Their Guys were the Russians, and our guys were the Allied Forces preventing Russia from taking over the world. In reality, there was a cold war going on behind the scenes between the Soviet Union, which were countries Russia had procured from being one of the victors of WWII. The Western European nations were allied with the USA, and their governments were set up to be independent nations. The stakes were high: the good moral Democrat societies or the godless Communist Soviets. The battle continues today.
So, there are some people who took advantage of citizens' paranoia and victimhood to the cleaners. Greene set tales of the true story from Germany into his setting in Cuba when it was under the Military Dictator Batista from 1952 till Castro, the communist Dictator, took over in 1958. In this period, master spy games were happening worldwide between the USA and the USSR. So, Greene used a real example of how easily things can be tricked when everyone plays a nasty espionage game. In Havana, James Wormold was the master spy and a vacuum cleaner salesman. He created spies working with him against the Russian spies against Britain. As in the Thin Man novel and books, the spies on both sides were paper thin because they were just spies on the report James Warmold created. Of course, he made some mistakes that led to unforeseen disasters.
It took a while to get a copy. So, I’ll read it this week and explain in depth how a vacuum cleaner salesman easily fooled the greatest intelligent agencies in the world. Ahh, can’t wait to reread the details.
Enjoy. Hope it meets your expectations.