Hopscotch

Hopscotch is a 1975 espionage thriller by the American writer Brian Garfield. Its protagonist, Miles Kendig, is one of the CIA's most experienced deep-cover officers, and the novel begins with the injury that ends his career in the field.

The Agency's solution is a desk job, and Kendig's answer is to walk away. Retirement turns out to be worse than the work, and the remedy he finds is a memoir that gives away everything he has learned, sent out one chapter at a time so that neither the CIA nor the KGB can afford to let the next instalment appear. Most of the book is the pursuit that follows, conducted by a man who has decided he has nothing left to lose and is enjoying himself for the first time in years.

The action moves across Europe, and the plot is a competition between two intelligence services and a retired officer who understands both of them better than they understand him, with the weekly instalment setting the clock. Garfield wrote thrillers and westerns for more than a decade on either side of this book, and it is the one in which his interest in professional competence is given the most room.