An account of a public schoolboy whose proficiency in the fibbing department, and the fallout from a schoolboy crush, opens up a marvellous fictional world of espionage.

The educational career of an impossibly smug public-schoolboy, compulsive liar and Oscar Wilde wannabe, Adrian Healey, whose duplicitous pranks and game-playing somehow get him embroiled in an international espionage case with his university professors. As fuge and subterfuge feature, Adrian searches for the meaning of life; well, his life anyway.—Tony Hagger