Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
How to Juggle Family, Espionage, and Laziness
Exposition (Initial Situation)
We learn about the Verloc household: Mr. Verloc financially supports his wife Winnie, along with her mother and brother Stevie, who is mentally disabled. Verloc has a double life: he runs a pornography shop and spends a lot of time hanging out with anarchists, but is also an undercover agent keeping an eye on them for a foreign government.
One day, Verloc has to meet with his new boss (Mr. Vladimir), who says he's sick of having Verloc draw a government paycheck without doing any tangible work. Verloc is very afraid of losing his job (which allows him to make a lot of money while being lazy), and claims that his work has prevented many deaths, but Vladimir doesn't care about prevention. He wants to see results. So he tells Mr. Verloc to make sure that an attack is carried out in London: he wants someone to bomb the Greenwich Observatory. This initial situation sets in motion all the events that will occur for the rest of the novel.
Rising Action (Conflict, Complication)
Who Blew Himself Up?
We find out from an anarchist named Alexander Ossipon that someone has blown himself up in Greenwich. Already, the action starts to rise as we wonder who has gone and blown himself up. When another man named the Professor says that he recently gave explosives to Verloc, Ossipon is dumbstruck.
The plot thickens as Chief Inspector Heat, going through the human remains left by the bomb, finds a piece of fabric with Verloc's address stitched into it. Uh oh.
Heat's boss wants him to leave the case alone, and instead takes it upon himself to investigate. As the plot unfolds, it eventually comes out that Verloc has killed Stevie by bringing him into his plot to bomb the observatory. Verloc's plan was to have Stevie bomb the Observatory. But Stevie tripped and blew himself to smithereens.
Climax (Crisis, Turning Point)
Don't Mess with Winnie
When Winnie finds out that her brother Stevie is dead, she is disgusted with Verloc. After he ridiculously tries to blame her for Stevie's death, she becomes insane with grief and stabs Verloc with a kitchen knife, killing him. Once the deed is done, she freaks out at the thought of being hanged for murder, and runs out into the street to escape.
She doesn't know where to go, but she runs into Ossipon, who agrees to help her. She hands him her life savings so he can buy each of them a train ticket. At the last second, though, he leaps from the train they've boarded (with all of Stevie's money) and leaves Winnie high and dry.
Falling Action
Ossipon Realizes He's Not a Great Guy
A week after Verloc's death, Ossipon is hanging out with the Professor, still obsessed with the newspaper article that reports the suicide of a young woman. Ossipon knows that the woman is Winnie, and that she committed suicide because of what he did to her. He cant stop thinking about the wording that the newspaper uses to describe her death, and doesn't much feel like meeting with any of the women in London who support him financially.
Resolution (Denouement)
The Doubt-y Professor
After speaking with Ossipon, the Professor walks out into the London streets, where he's completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people living in his city. Throughout the book, the Professor has tried to preserve the fantasy that he is superior to everyone else. But this fantasy pretty much dissolves in the face of so many people, especially considering that someone blew himself up a week earlier and everyone has already forgotten about it. It's not much in the way of a resolution, but it definitely tops of a pretty bleak sundae of a story with an ultra-depressing cherry.