SOURCE: King, Francis. “Uneasy Lies the Head of OPEN.” Spectator 269, no. 8564 (29 August 1992): 28-9.

In the following review, King contends that Frayn makes convincing use of different narrative voices in Now You Know.

In recent years there have been an increasing number of cases of civil servants breaching the Official Secrets Act by leaking confidential documents to the press or the opposition. Sometimes the culprits have been eventually identified and punished, sometimes not. If one were oneself a civil servant, party to something morally repugnant, would one be justified in committing the same sort of disloyalty? Or should one first resign from one's job? This is the problem at the heart of Michael Frayn's new novel [Now You Know].

Also at its heart is 61 year-old Terry, ‘a combination of self-righteousness, charming rascality and self-satisfied humour’. Having worked as a Thames lighterman, actor, D.J., journalist and school-teacher and having...