The Mission Song Book

Bruno Salvador known to friends and enemies alike as Salvo is the ever-innocent twenty-nine-year-old orphaned love-child of a Catholic Irish missionary and a Congolese headman's daughter. Educated first at mission school in the East Congolese province of Kivu and later at a discreet sanctuary for the secret sons of Rome Salvo is inspired by his mentor Brother Michael to train as a professional interpreter in the minority African languages of which almost from birth he has been an obsessive collector. Soon a rising star in his profession he is courted by City corporations hospitals law courts the Immigration services and -- inevitably -- the mushrooming overworld of British Intelligence. He is also courted -- and won -- by the all-white Surrey-born Penelope star reporter on one of our great national newspapers whom with typical impulsiveness he promptly marries. Yet even as the story opens a contrary and irresistible love is dawning in him. Despatched to a no-name island in the North Sea to attend a top-secret meeting between Western financiers and East Congolese warlords Salvo is obliged to interpret matters never intended for his re-awoken African conscience.

A wonderful, classic le Carre now reissued in a stunning new package. Bruno Salvador has worked on clandestine missions before. A highly skilled interpreter, he is not stranger to the Official Secrts Act. But this is the first time he has been...