In this intense espionage thriller set in the late nineteenth century and written in 1907, decades before Graham Greene and John le Carre, Joseph Conrad tells the "simple tale" of a double agent in an anarchist cell. But when Mr. Verloc keeper of a seedy London shop where he lives with his wife, his infirm mother-in-law, and his delicate brother-in-law, becomes involved in an attempt to bomb the Greenwich Observatory, the outcome is anything but simple.