THE CHINKS IN THE CURTAIN The Story of a Most Unlikely Spy

The Story of a Most Unlikely Spy #2

by Joyce Porter

"The Chinks in the Curtain" features the return of that most reluctant spy Edmund Brown, first met in "Sour Cream with Everything." Returning ignominiously from Russia to England, he is dispatched to Paris to discover why a source of information has dried up. He infiltrates the household of a Russian emigre through the salacious, if somewhat skeletal, embraces of the Prince's niece. There he uncovers a plot to restore the old regime to Russia, hatched by the Prince and a Rasputin-like priest whose motto is "Give God something to forgive you for." But the underlying sinister implications of the plot elude our hero until the eleventh hour. Joyce Porter irreverently juggles the familiar paraphernalia of midnight tiptoeing, hidden microphones and conniving seduction into a hilarious travesty of the spy story.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

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 4 out of 5]

2nd of Joyce Porter's Eddie Brown spy books. This one finds him in Paris at a weird old fancy chateau with secrets. Meets up with a sympathetic russian spy that he has to team up with and an underweight but voracious young lady to find out what the russian emigres are up to in the locked room! Turns out it is a nefarious plot to blow up much of the world! (by poisoning embassies all over and thereby setting off nuclear war among the super powers). This would leave our weird russian emigres to move in and take over. Very entertaining- funnier (buy sillier) than Dover- which is saying a lot.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laugh out loud entertainment. A fun read.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious.
Joyce Porter is in need of a major reprint of this series and her other series, Honourable Constance Burke.