The title is an echo of Graham Greene, for the book takes the spy genre as Greene developed it, and recasts it in a contemporary scenario, with a very independent woman as the protagonist and narrator. The setting is in the near future, when Scotland has left the UK and has developed, in effect, into a one-party state. The Party needs the revenue from Shetland's oilfields to keep the country from fiscal disaster - and to keep itself in power. When...