Blindfold

First book of Melville-Ross series character Trelawney
Two hundred and forty shells of nerve gas, stolen from the British Army, are on their way to Egypt. Colonel Barry, of Special Branch, knows which enemy agents are master-minding the transport, but he needs to know how and when the shells will be smuggled in. And he has to uncover the man at the top—the British official who arranged for the theft to take place.
Trelawney is Barry’s man for the job. An ex-submariner, contemptuous of the top brass and easily aroused to violence, he's new to Special Branch and unaware of Barry’s tricks. Without his knowledge, Trelawney will become the Colonel’s pawn, sent out on a fake mission, a wild-goose chase to help confuse the enemy and corner them into making a mistake.
It’s a brilliant plan. Except Trelawney doesn’t know that he’s not supposed to succeed at his assignment—that it’s all just part of the game. And when he arrives in Tripoli, he takes his search for the beautiful, seductive Egyptian agent seriously—dead seriously.
In this fast-paced novel of suspense and intrigue, a new author takes his place in the front rank of the spy story.
ANTONY MELVILLE ROSS was a thriller writer of unusual quality. He was an excellent craftsman who constructed his stories with skill and wrote clear uncluttered prose, and his work has a ring of authenticity which in fact owed as much to personal experience as to the liveliness of his imagination and to his gifts as a storyteller.
The six novels that he published between 1978 and 1985 arise equally from his service as a sub- mariner in the Second World War, in which he was awarded the DSC and rose to command his own boat, and the Cold War world of the Secret Service into which he transferred soon after the end of the war. He wrote them in inverse order, beginning with the spy novels and then going on to submarines. His first book, Blindfold (1978), was at once recognised by such discriminating critics as TJ Binyon and Sheridan Morley, who compared it to Ian Fleming's debut with Casino Royale. Like Fleming, Melville Ross made good use of exotic backgrounds - the Libyan desert, the Colombian jungle - as well as the familiar thriller territory of London and New York. But he made less use of, indeed was not so much at home in, the world of beautiful people, of the best clubs, the best restaurants. There is perhaps less glamour but there is no less excitement. Two Faces of Nemesis (1979) consolidated the reputation established by Blindfold but it is Tightrope (1981) that shows his complete mastery of complicated plotting and a compulsive narrative power.