Sweet Tooth

In 1972, Serena Frome is a Cambridge graduate whose looks and quick mind catch the attention of MI5. Britain is still deep in the Cold War, and the Service has a plan to shape the cultural debate by quietly paying writers whose views suit the government. The scheme goes by the code name Sweet Tooth.

Serena has spent her life devouring novels, which makes her an obvious choice for the job. Her assignment is to approach Tom Haley, a young writer with a promising future, and win her way into his circle without revealing who she works for. She begins by admiring his stories. Before long she is falling for the author himself.

That puts her in an impossible position. Every day she has to keep up a false identity with a man she loves, and the longer the deception runs, the harder it becomes to hold together. Her work demands that she trust no one, yet the relationship at its center depends on exactly that.

Ian McEwan, the Booker Prize winner who wrote Atonement, combines a spy story with a love story and a sly look at the relationship between writers, readers and the powers that would use them. It is a novel of intrigue, betrayal and desire.