Only With a Bargepole.

The Story of a Most Unlikely Spy #4

by Joyce Porter

Eddie Brown is confused. He knows he is debonair, suave, cultured, intelligent and fatally attractive to women. Why, then, does Life keep coming apart in his hands? For reasons which the government is not yet prepared to disclose, Eddie - ex-schoolmaster and fluent Russian linguist - is a member of the Special Overseas Directorate. Known to initiates as the S.O.D., this is an organisation specialising in industrial espionage and it is, incidentally, on Our Side. Spying is a very nerve-wracking business and when Eddie is entrusted with a perfectly simple courier job, he does rather tend to see sinister figures lurking under every bed. He responds in a typically Eddie way, using his initiative in situations where a modicum of elementary horse-sense might have been more appropriate. Before he knows what's happening, his primary mission of delivery a small parcel to an address in Vienna sinks without trace and Eddie finds himself flashing around Europe, hopelessly in league with a gang of kidnappers. The kidnappers' victim is Miss Muriel Drom, the daughter of Eddie's boss at S.O.D. At first Miss Drom is strangely resistant to Eddie's charisma but eventually as they get to know one another and face death side by side, her attitude undergoes a mysterious change. Finally . . . Well, everybody loves a happy ending, don't they?

Paperback

First published June 1, 1971

About the author

Joyce Porter was born in Marple, Cheshire, and educated at King's College, London. In 1949 she joined the Women's Royal Air Force, and, on the strength of an intensive course in Russian, qualified for confidential work in intelligence. When she left the service in 1963 she had completed three detective novels.

Porter is best known for her series of novels featuring Detective Inspector Wilfred Dover. Dover One appeared in 1964, followed by nine more in a highly successful series. Porter also created the reluctant spy Eddie Brown, and the "Hon-Con", the aristocratic gentlewoman-detective Constance Ethel Morrison Burke.

Reviews

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not her best work. The last of the Eddie Brown spy spoofs, our less than ideal hero finds himself sent to Austria to deliver a package and goes to the wrong address (transposition!) . Of course he happens to find himself with the gang about to kidnap his boss's daughter, who just happens to be in Austria learning Russian. Fair enough start for this sort of thing, Eddie gets wrapped up too close with the daughter, then being seduced by an aging Italian beauty- a lead in to his capture by the devilish Russians before finally being rescued by the evil goon, Westhartpool Joe .... finally a few car crashes later, Eddie and the daughter - closer than ever!- are dumped back into cozy England where Eddie is cornered into wedding the darling daughter. As i said, not her best..... but funny and ribald.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comedy spy spoof greatness.