110:, a Professor Wasserman, Colonel Russell learns that leaks regarding the highly secret work on negative gravity have been making their way to a rival firm in Germany for several years now. A world-class physicist become a wealthy industrialist, Wasserman is at home in both upper-class English society and German engineering works. Russell works mostly in the book's background to identify the traitor, helped by Richard Wakeley, a relatively young but very accomplished lawyer who is being considered by the government as a possible replacement for the soon-to-retire Russell. Much of the book is an examination of the complicated, even tortured relationships between Wakeley, Gervas Leat, Leat's step-daughter, the occasionally deliberately self-caricaturing Professor Wasserman, and a disaffected assistant to Leat whose wife is one of Leat's many conquests. Upper-class dinners, clubs, and government offices figure conspicuously as the plot advances from the English countryside to the heart of Venice. Only Colonel Russell is exactly what he seems to be on the surface and, as in
138:: In VENETIAN BLIND (Washburn, $ 2.95), William Haggard effectively draws a larger-than-life engineer-tycoon, a modern magnifico who lives in the grand manner unoppressed by codes and conventions. When such a man is concerned in the British quest for negative gravity, the problems of the Security Executive are obviously acute. International malefactions and private motives for murder combine to make a quiet, colorful, intelligent thriller.
155::The ramifications of a search for security leaks bring barrister Wakeley into the official orbit that is circling give-aways on "Negative Gravity", take him from England to Venice, and prove he is not perfectly equipped for the job. But it does prove the loyalty of suspected persons, the recent qualities of conscious treason, and the unexpected intricacies of Wakeley's own personal life.
147:, date unknown: (I)ts worst fault is that it is one of those smart thrillers which exude self-satisfaction about their milieu — in this case cabinet level top-security and millionaire industrialist high-life — and treat the reader as a sort of gawking poor relation. The plot is mildly ingenious but highly improbable.
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My novels are chiefly novels of suspense with a background of international politics. A Colonel
Charles Russell of the Security Executive, a not entirely imaginary British counter-espionage organization, while not a protagonist in the technical sense, holds the story line together in the background
106:, "negative gravity". Gervas Leat, a rich and imperious Englishman with a second home in Venice and a beautiful Venetian step-daughter who is hostess to his English manor, is working on negative gravity in two of his otherwise highly profitable factories. Through his ties with a minor figure from
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130:, date unknown: A sad falling-off after Mr. Haggard's admirable first attempt with Slow Burner.
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by his operations, while the characters in the foreground carry the action."
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