Isn't it ironic, don't you think? My desk at home, Geilston Bay. August 2011. Another day, another substantive draft review disappeared into the ether. Consider this the truncated version... Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana might be a touch more satirical than his more literary offerings (he considered this one an ‘entertainment’), but that doesn’t stop it being a rather dark send up of intelligence services, written at the height of the Cold War. The plot revolves around a vacuum cleaner salesman recruited into the British Secret Service, increasingly out of his depth who eventually finds himself in a hole. His solution? Keep digging! It’s a great read that manages to touch on his regular themes (Catholicism, ‘duty’, love and death) while remaining light enough to provide a few laugh-out-loud moments. Highly recommended. Hans Keilson’s Comedy in a Minor Key was actually written in 1947, but didn’t receive an English translation until much later. This short novel centres on ...