The pious agent [Hardcover]

John Braine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1976

Xavier Flynn is the pious agent of John Braine's novel of treachery within the British Secret Service. A devout Roman Catholic, Flynn belongs to a group of agents hired to dispose of England's interior enemies.

Flynn's personal assignment is to search out and eliminate the members of an undercover Trotskyite group, whose survival depends on sabotaging a family-owned, credit-to-private-enterprise motorcycle factory.

"Braine is a smooth, sophisticated writer...THE PIOUS AGENT is an exciting and stimulating read."(The New York Times)

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

7 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 252 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum; First Edition edition (1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689107064
• ISBN-13: 978-0689107061
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,940,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars A distracting distraction, June 19, 2011

By 

Mario Pollacchi "Gorgon_Leader" (ARMADALE, Western Australia Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pious Agent (Paperback)

The act of reading a good book is a distraction from reality, a time to relax and immerse oneself into a narrative that constructs a world that in no way resembles that of the reader's reality. John Braine's foray into the espionage thriller succeeds in distracting the reader from the distraction that they happen to be participating in. All through the story the villain's plot is unclear and, as the pages turn, it is discovered that there happens to be more than one villain and they are all working independently against each other!

The hero is Xavier Flynn, a Roman Catholic killer working for Britain's Home Office who has the annoying habit of falling on his knees and praying every so often. While his self-imposed piety doesn't seem to deter him from chasing and bedding the odd lady, it does tend to add horror to the sanctioned killings that he carries out. There's something psychotic about a government assassin praying for the souls of the people he has been ordered to kill. Coupled to this fact is the author's penchant of peopling the novel with so many named characters that it becomes difficult to keep track of them all. Everybody, in this book, gets a name including the collateral damage that makes his appearance already stone-cold dead and the wife, of another victim, who never makes an appearance at all!

This is definitely a book you will only ever read once and, unlike 'War and Peace', you will spend the rest of your life wondering if you're a better person for having done so.