Book Log 2015 #22: Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

Greene's novel The Third Man is a classic in the espionage genre, with its tense depiction of postwar Vienna as it segues from hot war to Cold War.

This is not The Third Man.

Instead, this novel takes a humorous look at spying (if I remember correctly, Greene called this an entertainment rather than a novel in the forward to the edition I read). A vacuum salesman in Havana is approached by British intelligence to serve as their eyes and ears in the Cuban capital. While he doesn't quite have a head for espionage, the salesman does have a head for fiction, and creates a network of fictional contacts (and drawings of imaginary weapons, which are actually close-up drawings of vacuum parts). At first this helps him pad his income (which he needs to keep his daughter in school and on her horse), but things quickly turn dangerous when the Brits, the Russians, and the Cuban police start to take his lies seriously.

I really enjoyed this, as the humor and satire balanced out well with the more serious back end. It's a quick read, too, as it's on the shortish side (more of a long novella, really).

(Popsugar Reading Challenge: nothing I haven't used yet, but it would count for a book that became a movie and a book set in another country)