Published in late 1961, this was part of editor W Howard Baker`s New Order of SBLs, i.e. tougher, faster -paced and owing a degree of debt to US hardboiled school of pulp fiction. This is a creditable attempt, a story you would file under `promising new writer` (assuming you knew the writer`s true identity - this particular `Desmond Reid` was by an unknown, whose identity is recorded only as A. Garstin). Blake takes on an inoccuous case (finding a missing person for a firm of solicitors who wish to tell them about a bequest in their favour). At the same time, an inmate who has been protesting his innocence escapes from prison, apparently with official assistance. Soon Blake is embroiled in a world of sleazy night-clubs, gangsters, drug-smugglers and girls in gold lame dresses. Interestingly, Blake himself is still the same man he had been since the end of the war - one feels instictively he is wearing a Saville Row suit even though the author doesn`t comment on his attire. Not for the first time, publishers Fleetway/Amalgamated are a little obtrusive. There are at least four references to the Daily Express newspaper in general, and at least three to William Hickey`s society column in particular. When one character comments approvingly of Castro`s expulsion of Mafia types from Cuba, quite natural in terms of the plot, he quickly qualifies his remark to show he is not thereby endorsing the Castro regime per se, a rather stilted piece of dialogue for a journalist chatting in a bar you might think. In the early sections, the writing can be a little mannered, rather self-consciously pulpy, but becomes more natural as we proceed. The last section is noticeably better-written than the preceeding chapters and contains a couple of interesting plot twists. One is fairly predictable, but the other less so. The 64 page format (retained long after the end of the wartime austerity measures that caused it) helps keep things snappy and stops the story getting away from it`s creator. If there is a little unevenness in tone, that doesn`t prevent this being a satisfying read on the whole. ( )