The very first book in the long, long Sam Durell series. Durell has to win the confidence of a missing scientist's sister to try and find him before the enemy does. The cold war background is pretty good, and there are some very suspenseful sections of the book as Durell and the sister try to flee their pursuers, but there are also more than a few awkward sentences and dialogue that sounds too much like written English and not spoken. Overall, a pretty easy and relatively enjoyable read, but not in a league with Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm series. I have read a later book in this series, Assignment Manchurian Doll, which was better written and more smoothly plotted, so I have hopes the series improves from this somewhat mediocre beginning. (It had better, since I seem to be the number one Edward S. Aarons collector on LibraryThing, as a result of coming across nearly the whole series at a Library sale.) ( )