SOURCE: Gardam, Jane. “No Careless Talk in the Close.” Spectator 288, no. 9051 (26 January 2002): 53.

In the following review, Gardam praises Spies, contending the book is detailed, sensuous, and an effective evocation of boyhood memories.

Michael Frayn's new novel [Spies] comes disguised as a memory of boyhood experience during the last war, the friendship between a bewildered, inarticulate state-school boy and a boy from further down the street whose frightening father imposes an officer-class discipline on his apparently perfectly balanced household. The unravelling by the boys of a wartime mystery among the other residents of The Close (aptly named) at first seems to be the spark of the book; a tragic episode inside the greater conflict, quickly put aside, if never resolved. ‘Not everything then was reported or spoken about.’

But there is very much more. This is such a sensuous book that at times, while never trying to be poetic...