Victor Canning: Firecrest (USA 1972)

From the Publisher:
"It was a commonplace that none of the operators in the Department were normal. Normal men could never have operated. The demands of the Department were ab-normal." This is the key to a fast-paced adventure story, constantly intriguing, and with a powerful sting in its tail -- established hallmarks of each new Canning book.

How and why had the Department made a fatal mistake in the handling of its most favored operator, John Grimster -- a man obsessed with a mania for revenge?

Where had Professor Harry Dilling -- the gentle, devious sadist, who had taken Lily, a likable, vapid shopgirl and made her his creature -- hidden the research results the Department wanted? What had happened to the missing Firecrest Friday? These become Grimster's professional problems, while he fights his own personal one and tries to avoid the snares of his alter ego, the omnipresent Harrison.

Compelling and challenging, Firecrest is also a poignant, human story of love and its destructive as well as its enriching power.

Victor Canning: Firecrest. A Novel by the autor of QUEEN'S PAWN. New York: William Morrow, 1972, 238 p., $5.95.

Victor Canning: Firecrest (UK 1971)

From the Publisher:
"It was a commonplace that none of the operators in the Department were normal. Normal men could never have operated. The demands of the Department were ab-normal." This is the key to a fast-paced adventure story, constantly intriguing, and with a powerful sting in its tail -- established hallmarks of each new Canning book.

How and why had the Department made a fatal mistake in the handling of its most favored operator, John Grimster -- a man obsessed with a mania for revenge?

Where had Professor Harry Dilling -- the gentle, devious sadist, who had taken Lily, a likable, vapid shopgirl and made her his creature -- hidden the research results the Department wanted? What had happened to the missing Firecrest Friday? These become Grimster's professional problems, while he fights his own personal one and tries to avoid the snares of his alter ego, the omnipresent Harrison.

Compelling and challenging, Firecrest is also a poignant, human story of love and its destructive as well as its enriching power.

Victor Canning: Firecrest. London: Heinemann, 1971, SBN: 434 10769 7, 239 p., £1.90.