Irina cruza la frontera a través de la alambrada que separa Checoslovaquia de Austria. Acaba de divorciarse, dejando a su ex marido que es oficial de la policía política checoslovaca y proyecta unirse a su padre, escritor mundialmente famoso, que ha encontrado su refugio secreto en algún lugar de Occidente. Pero mientras sus primeros amigos la ayudan a llegar a un destino desconocido, la muerte golpea, y la sospecha se convierte en su constante compañera: ¿Acaso ella misma es una carnada para encontrar el rastro de su padre, o es un simple peón en un juego de mayores intereses?

I'm a glutton for vintage stories written about espionage, cold war era shenanigans and political machinations. As written elsewhere, Helen MacInnes certainly belongs to the pantheon of spy novelists, and deserves a place alongside novelists such as LeCarre, Ambler, early-Ken Follet, Freemantle and Deighton. I've read many of MacInnes' oeuvre and this is one of the cold-war settings that I've enjoyed the most. In my view her more human approach in her writing has aged well unlike Len Deighton's and some of Brian Freemantle's.

MacInnes' novels feel really well-pulled together and she's an expert at building suspense without the story feeling contrived. Admirably, the narrative in this book doesn't feel dated, even though, historically, it is set in bygone times. While I had a few niggles (Jo Corelli seemed poorly-described as to her inclusion in the group and David's participation was overly reliant on a very long ago military career and friendship with Irina), the plot was captivating and had a few not-so-surprising developments that didn't detract from the story as a whole. ( )

I was surprised and pleased with this story, a first time read for me of a book by Helen MacInnes. It was a page-turner, can't-put-it-down type of book, with lots of plot twists. Very good, will be reading more by this author! ( )

Though she was a successful and prolific author, like many women she is basically forgotten. In terms of plotting she’s right up there with LeCarre, Ambler and Deighton. There were fewer chases, fights and gunplay though, that I noticed and wondered how one of the guys would have written this novel. There’s also a bit more backstory to the characters than is sometimes done with these books. It isn’t espionage exactly, but it’s close. Someone has to be smuggled out of a closed country and so a lot of the techniques and trappings for doing that echo a spy thriller. MacInnes drew a sharp distinction between the sumgglee and the smugglers and I thought that worked well although all of them are supposed amateurs. It is a bit of a stretch that David would volunteer for the job in the first place though. ( )

Nice cold war spy story. It could have used a quirky character or situation. ( )