Artillery of lies - Derek Robinson (First edition)

It is 1943 and British Intelligence has only just stumbled on Germany’s most successful spy ring. For two years the Eldorado Network has sent a steady stream of invaluable secret information out of Britain to the Abwehr office in Madrid – or so the Abwehr believe. But when the British pin down Eldorado, he is nowhere near Britain and the network does not exist. One man in a small room in Lisbon has subjected German Intelligence to an elaborate and brilliant hoax.

The British are not laughing for long. All too often Eldorado’s fiction comes dangerously close to the facts. And when they fly him to England, so they can monitor his dispatches, the complications begin to multiply. Spies – real, phoney and imaginary – collide on missions of national importance that increasingly border on farce.

Derek Robinson’s black comedy of double- and triple-bluff gives a gloriously different picture of military intelligence. And while his plot is always inventive, exciting and tremendously funny, the best joke of all is that it is based soundly on the truth.