Here is a spy story with a difference. it has the taut plot and growing tension we expect from a thriller; but. like Graham Greene's novels in this genre, it goes deep into the springs of action. The trouble starts with a burglary at a Kensington antique shop run by George Vickers and a Polish refugee, Edward Saneck. Edward's landlady and mistress, Jessica Holt is involved in a series of mystifying and ever more sinister happenings; and when it turns out that certain people she know  are betraying their country, Jessica is faced with an agonising moral dilemma, and finds out how the innocent can get smeared by the evil of those with whom fate brings them in contact.

The story is all too credible in itself; but it is made still more convincing by fine characterisation. These people are flesh and blood, not dummies dressed up in cloaks and daggers. Particularly impressive are the Superintendent and Inspector of the Special Branch - real human beings, but mutually anti-pathetic ones - who carry the investigation to its dramatic end.