What a great book! Dystopia all the way...
(This photo is completely inappropriate)
Never mind espionage; even to get a job as a dock worker was beyond his powers. He was an office clerk who cowered from rats. He couldn't even buy his own black-market goods! Murder, blackmail, suicide - he hadn't the foggiest conception what these words really meant. It made her conscious, as she'd never been before, that thoughtcrime was nothing to do with crime.