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Title: Too silly to be plausible
Review: This is a well-written satire with some of the same ingredients that work well in other works by the great Graham Greene. But in this case both the characters and the action are too far into the realm of comics to be believable. [Of course you might say that Graham Greene knew infinitely more about incompetence and delusion in the Secret Service than I do, and without doubt that is true, but Greene's other similar books (e.g., The Comedians) don't go this far and look more like the truth.] The dialogue ranges toward the cute. The best parts are the conversations between Wormold and his daughter Millie. Those involving Dr. Hasselbacher are rather good also. At his best Greene wrote as well as Hemingway, but not in this book.
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