Lindsay Trevor is unexpectedly contacted by a stranger, one Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith, who offers him a chance to undertake an important mission for his country. Lindsay, who spent two years after WWI with the Secret Service, is tempted; but with his wedding only days away, he firmly declines. However, when Marian Rayne calls off the wedding without a word of explanation, Lindsay is in the mood to do something reckless, and offers his services to the mysterious Mr Smith. To his astonishment, Lindsay finds himself with his hair dyed red and impersonating his own third cousin, Trevor Fotheringham, who suffered a nervous breakdown after only a short time as private secretary to a man named Algerius Restow, apparently the key figure in a conspiracy to plunge Europe into war. It is Smith's contention that Fotheringham was involved in Restow's activities, possibly under the compulsion of blackmail; and Lindsay's mission is to learn what those activities are. Lindsay successfully infiltrates the household, soon recognising that the greatest threat to his position is Restow's librarian, Drayton, a dangerously perceptive individual who reminds the nervous interloper of a bird of prey. But Drayton is only one possible road to exposure: Lindsay discovers that Fotheringham was involved with a girl called Elsie Manning, who seems to know more than she should about his work for Restow. But even as Lindsay tries to win Elsie's trust and discover what she knows, he is dealt a stunning blow when one night he sees a young woman slipping secretively into Restow's house via the back door. It is Marian Rayne...

Like its series predecessor, Fool Errant, Danger Calling is an enjoyable tale of ordinary people being plunged into espionage, danger and romance. While the first novel in the Benbow Smith series involved the potential sale of new weaponry to a foreign power, this second tale lifts the stakes even higher, dealing with a deliberate plan to precipitate another war. It becomes evident that men in high and influential places - politicians, manufacturers, journalists - are being blackmailed into actions that will create violent unrest across Europe. Scraps of intelligence point to Algerius Restow as the prime mover in this conspiracy. Restow is a public figure, claiming descent from half a dozen nations, who has, as he boasts, "starved in all the capitals of Europe"; a man who has made and lost enormous fortunes, famous for his art collection, and equally notorious and lauded for his personal extravagance and his philanthropy. In person Restrow is a massive figure, with a character to match. He is overpowering, almost violent in his manner; demanding, domineering and quite possibly dangerous; and yet, as Lindsay realises ruefully, also oddly likeable, particularly in his unabashed passion for his ex-wife, Gloria Paravicini, who he pursues with the lack of restraint that marks all his actions.

Lindsay is only too well aware that he must not let his involuntary liking for Restow cloud his judgement about what is happening under his roof - the nature of which is made appalling clear when Drayton sends "Trevor Fotheringham" to deliver an open threat of exposure and ruin to Sir John Gladisoe, the head of a major British steel-works, ordering him to cut wages and alter his workers' conditions until he forces them into a strike. Lindsay is unable to obtain any firm indication of Restow's involvement, or otherwise, in the blackmail scheme, but as events play themselves out he grows increasingly certain that it is the apparent underling, Drayton, who is the main force behind the plot; yet if so, what is Restow's position? Lindsay is aware from the outset that danger threatens Elsie Manning through her involvement with Fotheringham; but when he learns that Marian Rayne, too, is somehow caught in Drayton's net, disaster seems to be looming from all sides. But a still more shocking discovery is in store for Lindsay: an encounter with a disreputable acquaintance from his Secret Service days reveals to him that a man thought - hoped - long dead, a man who sold his services to the highest bidder during WWI, a conscienceless profiteer who slipped through the fingers of five pursuing nations, is not only still alive but very active. Whatever Lindsay's personal fears and feelings, he now knows he must put them aside to resume his pursuit of the shadowy individual known only as "the Vulture"...

Though he gives his name to this series, in truth we see even less of the elusive Benbow Smith (and his multilingual parrot, Ananias, who functions rather like a Greek chorus) in this novel than we did in Fool Errant. This elusiveness, however, is all part of the fun: if we saw more of Mr Smith - and of Ananias - we would, I suspect, believe in him rather less. Danger Calling is an engaging novel that successfully overcomes its own improbabilities via a number of unexpected touches. There is a certain amount of jingoism about the story - a German and a Frenchman capitulate, but the Englishman threatened with exposure of his family's secret decides to sacrifice all rather than cooperate with the blackmailer - but at the same time it is refreshingly free of the class prejudices and assumptions that were rife at its time of publication, including that birth and breeding are more important than what a person is. It is a dark secret about her own family and background that causes Marian Rayne to break her engagement to Lindsay Trevor; a secret that, when he learns of it, Lindsay waves away impatiently as a thing of no importance. It is also noteworthy that while this is a novel with two leading female characters, it is working-girl Elsie rather than upper-crust Marian who emerges as its heroine.