Conrad's only spy novel, The Secret Agent is set in the filthy and depraved city of London of the 1880s. Adolf Verloc, a bumbling police informer and the undercover agent for an unnamed European embassy, is recruited to bomb the Greenwich Observatory. Horrified and afraid, he fools his wife (who married him only so he would support her) into letting her half-witted brother, Stevie, help him; Stevie explodes the bomb prematurely and blows himself to bits. When she discovers the truth, Verloc's wife goes mad with rage and grief. This bleakly ironic tale of isolation, despair, and lack of love is perhaps Conrad's most powerful novel, and is a dark satire of English life, with amoral characters on both sides of the law.
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