The adventures of Heine

About the book

Heine begins by complaining that peacetime intelligence work pays poorly, although he has found ways to make his position comfortable. The outbreak of European war offers the larger responsibilities he has wanted, and he travels from America to direct operations in Britain. His accounts follow agents, disguises, military secrets, and schemes to influence public affairs, but their most persistent subject is Heine's opinion of himself. Wallace lets the narrator's vanity and elaborate self-justifications expose weaknesses he would rather attribute to other people. The linked episodes combine espionage with comic reversal and a British wartime perspective on the enemy. Reading them means listening for the distance between Heine's claimed mastery of events and the less flattering possibilities his descriptions inadvertently reveal.

• Vanity and self-deception
• Wartime espionage
• Unreliable narration

Why read it

Heine's efforts to preserve his dignity give the spy adventures a continuous comic personality.

English Ward, Lock & Co. edition of 1929, containing eighteen chapters