Cirrus@Austlit

'Two brothers, a fast car, and a hit-and-run accident in the night..... Is this a set-up for murder? Superintendent Hurst investigates and discovers it's the geography that counts.'

Source: Radio Times, 20 July 1961, p.13.

'Into a perfectly normal, well-to-do, middle class house burst two strangers, political assassins who plan to murder a traitor from their side of the world as he returns to his home opposite their temporary hideout. The two, captain and sergeant, make their plans and the captive family is powerless to do anything. Father and captain argue, humanitarian against ruthless killer, the east of the Iron Curtain against the west. With the maddening leisureliness proper to such a situation, we wait until the plot fails and both killers are dead. Then comes the twist, which could not be disclosed were this a film or a play for the stage. This is not London but Moscow; without knowing it, we have all along been on the wrong side of world politics.

'Whether this proves anything or not, it is at least liberally humane; political assassins are deplorable but heroic whatever they serve, and ordinary people, pretty much the same everywhere, naturally dislike bloodshed. As a thesis, this may not be startling; as a surprise ending to a thriller, it has a splendid effectiveness.'

Source:

'Skilful Exercise in Suspense', The Times, 5 December 1960, p.16.

In a review titled 'Victorian View of Empire', The Times provided this summary of the plot:

Mrs. Sweeney has an absent son busy prosecuting the course of Irish unity by blowing up bridges in his native land; she has also three lodgers, an Indian, an African student eager for the sake of his political future to reach an English prison, and a young pole [sic] who takes seriously the doctrines of an anarchist orator at Speakers' Corner and attempts to blow up the Home Secretary with a ridiculously inefficient home-made bomb. No harm is done, and English tolerance and humour (displayed by an Irish policeman) make all well.

Source:

'Victorian View of Empire', The Times, 1 July 1963, p.14.