The Spy Who Couldn't Count

Book excerpt: Spies like Jyp are hard to find. Inflicting Christian names like Jefferson Youll on a young lad already saddled with a surname like Patbottom is a sufficient handicap for anyone, but if you have the misfortune to be educated at Watlington County Grammar and end up as thick as a plank, life gets very tricky indeed. Settling for Jyp and braving a succession of dead-end jobs, he finds sanctuary in a Government statistics department dealing with figures. To escape the amorous attention of his ever-helpful colleague, Jyp dives into another office, where he is mistaken for a trained spy killer and recruited by one of Britain’s security departments. Bumbling, he takes on a fight to unmask a series of trusted spies in the heart of Whitehall in a desperate battle to win the hand of his true love.