Eye of the Needle has an even more rigid structure, although nobody to my knowledge has ever noticed it: there are six parts, each with six chapters (except for the last part, which has seven), the first chapter in each part dealing with the spy, the second with the spy catchers, and so on until the sixth, which always tells of the international military consequences of what has gone before. Readers do not notice such things-and why should they?-but still I suspect that regularity, and even symmetry, contribute to what they perceive as a well-told story.

The other feature Paper Money shares with Eye of the Needle is a wealth of good minor characters-tarts, thieves, half-witted children, working-class wives, and lonely old men. In subsequent books I have not done this, for it only diverts from the main characters and their story; yet I often wonder whether I am being too clever.

Today I am not as sure as I was in 1976 of the links between crime, high finance, and journalism; but I think this book is true to life in another way. It presents a detailed picture of the London that I knew in the seventies, with its policemen and crooks, bankers and call girls, reporters and politicians, its shops and slums, its roads and its river. I loved it, and I hope you will too.

SIX A.M.

1

It was the luckiest night of Tim Fitzpeterson's life.

He thought this the moment he opened his eyes and saw the girl, in bed beside him, still sleeping. He did not move, for fear of waking her; but he looked at her, almost furtively, in the cold light of the London dawn. She slept flat on her back, with the absolute relaxation of small children. Tim was reminded of his own Adrienne when she was little. He put the unwelcome thought out of his mind.