The Innocent by Ian McEwan (Vintage)

by Patrick O'Connor

THE main protagonist in this story certainly starts off as an innocent but that can't last in 1950s Berlin.

It is the beginning of the Cold War and a joint CIA/MI6 operation builds a tunnel from the American sector to the Russian sector (an event which really happened). Leonard Marnham, is a 25 year old Englishman seconded from the Post Office to help tap the phone lines of the Russians.