Book description
It began with the Night News Editor of the
Record
, in a foul temper, sending Hugh Curtis out on a time-wasting chase to
confirm a totally uninteresting rumour. It developed into the biggest
scoop the paper had ever known and one of the most unusual and dangerous
stories which Hugh had ever covered. The tip-off, which might have rated
three lines in an early edition, concerned a bogus telephone message
which sent a certain Mrs. Ward hurrying to a London suburban hospital.
The pay-off was a disappearance which sent Hugh to a desolate rendezvous
with men who were holding a nation to ransom. For once he was one step
ahead of Mollie Bourne of the Courier and it was not in Mollie’s nature
to play second fiddle to anyone. Pursuing her own line of investigation
she too was swept into the weird and thrilling climax to Paul Somers’
absorbing new story which is a fast-moving and exciting successor to
Beginner’s Luck
. Paul Somers is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908-2001). He was
born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester
and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in
Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist
for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London
News Chronicle
as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned
to Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the
BBC’s Overseas Service.
After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure
novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized,
televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages.
He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds - which have included
Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the
Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry - and for
never repeating a plot.
Paul Somers was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime
Writers’ Association.
