Our hero, Edward Leithen, seems indistinguishable from Dick Hannay - but who cares? Here we enjoy the next step on the way from Bulldog Drummond to James Bond, via Sherlock Holmes and Dornford Yates. The heart sank momentarily - but only momentarily - when the heart of the adventure was revealed to concern an international criminal organisation (forces beyond our control etc), but then one tunes in to Hunted only to be confronted with 'Hourglass', and after all, were not Smersch and SPECTRE cut from the same cloth? The action moves swiftly, the writing is a delight, the values refreshing while at the same time inspiring nostalgia. The villain comes off the page much more memorably than Moriarty, and the conclusion shows how these things really should be done, and really would be done in a better world. I loved it. ( )