SOURCE: Keates, Jonathan. “A Well-Tended Eden.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5157 (1 February 2002): 22.

In the following review, Keates discusses the significance of setting Spies in an English suburb, the book's subtle references to other works of fiction, and its treatment of the themes of “morality and the nature and impact of truth.”

Suburbia, more especially the grid-plan sprawls making up Greater London on its western and southern sides, is one of the twentieth-century's greatest gifts to fiction. Its stifling limitations, real or fancied, force desire and imagination to burgeon like the rhubarb grown by gardeners under upturned dustbins. A prevailing atmosphere of civic order and tranquillity among the villas and bungalows has, by its very nature, to be deceptive. Since everything about these dwellings is false, from their architectural mimicry—a Spanish hacienda, a William Morris “House Beautiful”, or a timber-framed manor—to the horticultural omnium-gatherum which crams tennis court...