F. van Wyck Mason (1901–1978)

This is an exciting espionage adventure in the long-running Colonel North series. The earliest North adventures were more detective stories than anything else, but here North is in pure superspy mode and it fits him. Assigned to get the formula for a deadly gas from a defecting scientist, North's plane goes down over the Mediterranean before he can get to the meeting. But somebody claiming to be Hugh North shows up for the contact who appears to be playing against the Americans and the show more Russians. Upon arriving in Tangiers, the real North is immediately thrown into prison and cannot convince anyone of authority that he's the real thing. It's well done and puts North in the ranks of some of the great spies of fiction. show less

Mason was a competent fiction novelist of the inter-war period, and did produce a number of tales set in the early days of the American War of ndependence. Tim Bennet, an honest privateersman falls in with Desire Harmony, pregnant due to her consorting with a British Officer. The American Navy is organized as an iimortant historical background to this romantic and gory tale. The matter of slavery is shown as the brutality it was.

Like Mason's other Col. North novels written before 1960, this is more of a standard detective mystery wrapped in an espionage cloak. The author is skilled in this sub-genre, pretty much owning the US side of it. Col. Hugh North must find a spy known as the Guardsman. The enemy agent is dealing US secrets to the highest bidder and killing anyone who gets in his way. When North enters the case, a Swedish diplomat is killed in DC for trying to help bring down the Guardsman.

F. van Wyck Mason.had a privileged life which started in Paris france. He learned english by the time he was ten. his father was a US consul to France. This story tells of the first phases of the american War of Independence. the three cities being Norfolk Virginia, Bermuda, and Boston. He wrote several tales in this genre, and they follow a gentleman of the period, who rescues a beauty from a nefarious foreigner. His historical details are quite well researched, so I remember this among show more others of his, fondly. show less