A Perfect Spy is the life story of Magnus Pym, a British intelligence officer and double agent. The book opens in Vienna where Magnus is ostensibly a diplomat and also a spy, living with his wife Mary who assists with diplomatic matters and their son Tom. After returning to England to attend his father's funeral, Pym mysteriously disappears. As his fellow intelligence officers frantically search for him it becomes clear that, throughout most of his career, Magnus worked as a spy for the Czechoslovak secret service. Although intrigue, wit, and suspense make up much of the novel, the story of Magnus Pym is partly an unadorned recollection of his childhood and memories of his father Rick Pym.