Counter espionage! In this business you’re either a brave man or a dead one... A look of intense surprise came over Mrs Marques’s face. Then her mouth opened. Her face twisted in supreme agony for a split second; then she slumped sideways on the settee. You have to be as tough as seven devils in hell for Process 5... but it’s artistic.

Kane looked at her appreciatively. “I don’t know whether anybody’s ever told you, but you’ve got the swellest pair of legs I’ve ever seen” he said. Valetta looked at him sideways along her dark eyelashes. He thought she was very beautiful; her mouth delicate, sensitive, almost tremulous. He could look at it for hours on end. It was that kind of mouth...

Messrs Kane and Guelvada were very successful at their job. The job was spying, or to be more accurate it was usually spying on spies. In other words counter-espionage. Like all good professionals they knew that the work was not easy, and the four tales of their assignments are all tense with the situations that arise only to be overcome or evaded – but not forgotten. It is said that action speaks louder than words, and indeed, when the necessity arises, these two can become quite astonishingly active, but the interest of their adventures lies as much in the thinking out done by both as in the actual solving of each crisis. The stories are the kind that tempt one to look at the bottom of the page to see what happens – were it not that so much happens in between that, whether the pair are in London or Lisbon or any other odd place, the excitement is continuous.