Magnus Pym, lifetime secret agent and presently counsellor for certain unmentionable matters at the British Embassy in Vienna, is missing, believed defected.

Rick Pym, father to Magnus, founder and managing director of numberless defunct companies, self-styled Colonel, fantasist and confidence trickster extraordinary, has finally died in the arms of two whores. It is while Magnus is in England to bury Rick that he elects to disappear. Taking his secrets with him, he goes to ground in the Devon boarding house of the ancient and motherly Miss Dubber that has long been his secret hiding-place.

The chase is on: for a missing person, for the truth about a charming man. It is conducted by Pym himself as well as by his pursuers. While Pym in a desperate confession to his son recounts his quest for love and faith, and his first steps in deception, his pursuers unearth a trail of duplicity.

In this most beguiling of spy stores, John le Carré guides us effortlessly through fifty years of alternative Britain, introducing us along the way to a hilarious company of ambulance chasers, war racketeers, shady lawyers, property sharks, lovelies and fixers; and then to Occupied Austria, to Czechoslovakia, Berlin, and finally to the goal of every ambitious traitor of our time – America.

Blending wit and compassion with unflagging tension, le Carré sweeps us into a secret universe in which his essentially innocent hero strives to reconcile the conflicting elements of his very English heritage.