Graham Greene delivers here a classic espionage novel, fiction, set in Cuba around the time of the revolution, Greene writes in his knowledgeable subject area of expertise a comedy account of a chance vacuum salesman being recruited by Mi6 as their ‘Man in Havana.’ Struggling lone parent Wormold runs a little enterprising vacuum franchise and looks after his blooming teenage daughter, Milly. It is his spoiling her with a horse that he kind of seizes on the opportunity of becoming a spy, reasoning with himself solely really that he is in it for the extra cash. Hawthorne is the Mi6 officer who recruits Wormold and he is to and for between Cuba, Jamaica and London head office reporting on the growing successful mission of Our Man in Havana. Wormold delivers in what he sees as the safest way possible a series of critical intelligence to the British government. He has photographs of military installations in the Cuban Sierra (not dissimilar to the Russian / Soviet military installations of the later Cuban Missile Crisis), a string of local agents infiltrating and influencing critical areas of Cuban society. He is creating much excitement and hover in London they are well pleased. He collects his enhanced expenses and the bosses decide to expand the operation and send out an assistant and also the lovely young spy/secretary, Beatrice. Wormold’s secret, however, is that he’s actually fabricating all the intelligence with a keen imagination. The military installations are just a state of the art vacuum cleaner that’s been taken apart. The agents are fictitious people or people he has never even met. Yet the reports seduce the bigwigs back in Blighty. The farce grows more and more out of control until it actually becomes a real spy adventure with mishaps including the assassination of his German drinking buddy and best friend, Dr Hasselbacher and he is under a lot of scrutiny by the dirty old corrupt abusive brutal police chief, Captain Segura. Captain Segura wants the freshfaced teen Milly to be his bride and isa a bit lenient on our man, Wormold, as result of seeking the bride’s hand in marriage. Things get totally FUBAR and Wormold ends up shooting a suspected enemy agent and is forced to finally flee the Caribbean Island and head back to the safety of the United Kingdom. His charade is exposed but incredibly despite all the fake evidence, the actual real spy stuff that he accidentally does and to avoid embarrassment leads to him being retained by the intelligence service and ultimately he cops off with secretary Beatrice in a pleasant romantic twist to a wild old tale of Cold War era espionage gambits.