All Spies Are Liars

When Quentin Rowan published his first spy novel, Assassin of Secrets, it was initially received with glowing reviews. But five days after its release, it became clear that the novel had been almost entirely plagiarized, and the publisher immediately recalled the sixty-five hundred copies and issued an apology. Apparently, Rowan had mastered not the skill of writing a good spy novel but the mechanics of literary cut-and-paste.

In her piece about Rowan for The New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicombe includes a paragraph from Assassin of Secrets which may prove a window into Rowan’s…