A circus performer turned superspy is caught up in a Cold War web of
conspiracy and death when the body of a murdered CIA agent is discovered
in a Hawaiian marine park. By any definition, Ringling Wallenda Grove is
an extraordinary man. The son of expatriate Russian former circus
owners, he mastered the arts of acrobatics, animal training, and magic
at a young age; distinguished himself as an officer in World War II; and
went on to amass a fortune of several million dollars before going into
semiretirement. But there is another side to this man that few know
about. R. W. Grove is a master spy, having honed his trade as a postwar
intelligence agent with the OSS. Now the murder of a company agent,
whose body was found floating among the aquatic animals in Honolulu's
popular Sea Life Park, is pulling Grove back into the game. A deadly
international conspiracy is afoot, involving the nation's most bitter
and dangerous enemies, and it centers on a covert CIA operation
code-named Zed--an undertaking so secretive that even the president can
know nothing about it. Renowned for his provocative, stunningly realized
speculative fiction, Philip Wylie joined the ranks of John le Carré, Len
Deighton, Robert Ludlum, and other masters of the espionage thriller
when he first published The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise. Brimming with
action, intrigue, and ingenious twists and turns, the novel brilliantly
captures the fears, anxieties, paranoia, and rampant conspiracies that
hallmarked the Cold War era.
