The Secret Agent (Folio Society Edition) Joseph Conrad

Soho shopkeeper Adolf Verloc lives a double life as a secret agent for a foreign embassy in 1886 London. Under pressure to provoke public action against anarchists, he is coerced into orchestrating a spectacular terrorist act: the bombing of the Greenwich Observatory. When his plot goes disastrously wrong and results in the death of his vulnerable brother-in-law, Stevie, the domestic security of Verloc’s marriage to the fiercely protective Winnie shatters, leading to a profound act of betrayal and a shocking, final tragedy.