The Secret Agent is Conrad's dark, and darkly comic story of a band of spies, anarchists, agents-provocateurs plotting and counter-plotting in the back streets of London in the early 20th Century. The novel centers on Verloc, a shop-owner, phony-anarchist and double-agent, who becomes embroiled in an ambitious terrorist plan to bomb the Greenwich Observatory. It also bleakly satirises early 20th Century anarchism and the operations of the police and intelligence forces, while being none too complimentary about the media and general public either.