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The Confidential Agent Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Graham Greene (Author), Patrick Tull (Narrator), Recorded Books (Publisher)

4.2 453 ratings

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Trusted by no one, trusting nobody, the Confidential Agent is sent to England. But before his mission has barely begun, he comes face to face with an agent from the other side. As the car he is driving is run down in the fog, a thought strikes him: "It isn't probable - not in England, but it seems to be true, nonetheless - they're going to kill me."

Listening Length

7 hours and 29 minutes
Author

Graham Greene
Narrator

Patrick Tull
Audible release date

March 7, 2008
Language

English
Publisher

Recorded Books
ASIN

B0015R1WPE
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	7 hours and 29 minutes
Author	Graham Greene
Narrator	Patrick Tull
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	March 07, 2008
Publisher	Recorded Books
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B0015R1WPE
Best Sellers Rank	#82,171 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #805 in Espionage Thrillers (Audible Books & Originals) #2,077 in Espionage Thrillers (Books) #26,799 in Literature & Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

453 global ratings

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Ambrose Rankin

Entertaining

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2023

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Greene's "entertainments" - his term for the less serious novels - are fun reads and have held up well over the years. Confidential Agent is one of the better ones. Agents from opposing sides of an unnamed European Civil War - but based on Spain - battle it out in a still-at-peace London. Good characters, plot and London local color.

2 people found this helpful

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Mindo'ermatter

Intense Psychological Tale of Intrigue and Fear

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2021

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Written by Greene in early 1939 as "entertainment," the author's code for money-making popular novels, the book was actually released in September 1939, just as Nazi Germany invaded Poland and began World War II. The book is loosely based on the Spanish Civil War that was just ending when Greene was completing his writing.

The story focuses on "D." the book's protagonist, who has been sent to England to acquire a secretive coal contract from a British coal mine. D.'s homeland is struggling in a civil war, forcing them to use him as a clandestine "confidential agent" to complete the covert agreement.

D. has recently lost his wife, shot as a political victim, and D. begins his mission as a broken man unsure of his own future. The story is told from D.'s perspective, creating a suspenseful thriller as he faces perpetual delays, barriers, threats, and betrayals from competing enemies and "friends," creating a hopeless and life-threatening situation for D.

Greene's storytelling creates a dark and stressful psychological drama, as D. passively tries to fulfill his ill-fated mission, hoping to succeed honorably against corrupt and greedy forces thwarting and frustrating D.'s every action and intension.

The novel's strength comes from the author's vivid narrative descriptions and dialogues amid D.'s desire is to do just one thing "right" on his quickly obvious suicidal mission. Never intended as a fast-paced, action book, the author uses a long-chapter format that draws out D.'s prolonged emotional deterioration and increased isolation amid impending failure. Why does he continue when he has nothing to live for? That's the heart of the story.

Typically of Graham Greene's signature flawed and hapless characters, much of the author's personal desperation and struggles are reflected in the storyline's fatalistic tone, while the overwhelmed protagonist dysfunctionally attempts to be honorable and just.

This book is a good example of why I like Graham Greene and his ability to write well even when he feels the story doesn't deserve the efforts.

I bought Audible's narration supplement separately because it wasn't offered as a linked purchase or interactive purchase; however, I greatly appreciated narrator's British accent and inflections that added depth to my reading enjoyment.

Definitely 4.5 Stars!

5 people found this helpful

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Gregory Elmes

A page-turner old-fashioned crime procedural

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2021

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The Confidential Agent is in many ways predictable yet worth reading to the end. Set in pre-wwII England, unlike other Greene novels I have read, this one seems sparse and uncomplicated. The depiction of England is interesting to me. The episodes are dramatic and unlikely. People are disposed of, and reappear conveniently. The Eponymous foreign hero is mystified by the British way of doing things and he is treated with stereotypical suspicion by those he meets never minding the class.
I hope you can suspend your disbelief long enough to enjoy the book.

2 people found this helpful

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M. J. Rumpf

Something Very Different

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2017

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In these days of movie secret agents like James Bond and Jason Bourne, it's easy to forget that in reality, a good deal of secret agent business is rather low key. How would an agent who makes all that noise ever keep anything secret? Graham Greene's quiet, vulnerable agent D is just the kind of character who reminds us how this game really works. D is quiet, vulnerable and doesn't even know how to fight. His mission? To assassinate a head of state? To steal papers from an impenetrable fortress? No, it's to negotiate a coal contract for his country. Like Joseph Conrad's "Secret Agent", Graham Greene gives us a less glamorous take on the spy business, and reminds us that in war, even when one wins, it's possible to be also losing.

11 people found this helpful

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Robert Meyer

Very GG

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2021

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A bleak, spare tale, full of realism and insight.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Fantastic!

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2021

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Wow!
I'm not sure that I saw all the twists and turns of this book coming. Certainly not the ending.
This has the best quote from any Graham Greene book: "Perhaps that’s what the saints were at with their incomprehensible happiness—they had seen the end of the story when they came in and couldn’t take the agonies seriously."
Perhaps that quote captures the essence of this book.

4 people found this helpful

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helentroy

it's ok

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2020

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A mediocre Graham Greene is better than most other authors' good books. It was just fine.

6 people found this helpful

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Frank

Greene never disappoints.

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2021

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Just another great book by Greene. I think I have finished reading his novels now and that is the only negative. He is one of the few writers I know who can be both entertaining and profound, literary and popular. I'll say this starts a bit slowly but by the end it is very satisfying. Bravo!

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

mairin

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2017

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Excellent. A good read from start to finish

Mr M.

Where is the introduction by ian rankin as advertised?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2017

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Very good.
Page turner.
No nonsense although a bit dated.
Would have liked more about the Spanish civil war.
Disappointed not get advertised introduction...

One person found this helpful

M. Duncan

fast fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 11, 2015

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Written in six weeks whilst popping Benzedrine – the popular stimulant of the period and James Bond’s drug of choice – The Confidential Agent, as the author explains in the foreword to this edition, was written as an Entertainment solely for the purpose of making money for Greene’s family whilst he was going to be away in the army. The story concerns an agent of a foreign country called ‘D.’ who is travelling to England to obtain coal in order to stop his side from losing the civil war, pursued by nefarious agents of the other side who will stop at nothing etc. It’s a suspenseful spy story, without too many demands on the reader, and, as you would expect from Greene, well written throughout. The speed of composition doesn’t really show in the early chapters of the book, which are as well plotted and ingenious as most of Greene’s thrillers. Unfortunately the story reaches its high point about halfway through, and never really manages to capture the same excitement afterwards and it is only in the last third of the book that one gets the sense that he might be making it up as he goes along. The plot loses direction, and the ending isn’t thoroughly worked out. In any other writer’s hands this might have spelt disaster, but it is a mark of Greene’s astonishing skill that he still pulls it off, although not perhaps as well as he does in some of his better thrillers.

12 people found this helpful

Lovebooks

Not his best

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 2017

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Graham Greene says himself this is not his best work. Interesting but has plot flaws and the romance element is trite

3 people found this helpful

gee

Hard to concentrate

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 23, 2017

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I couldnt get into it..

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