EDWARD D. HOCH “The Spy Who Knew Too A lot.” Jeffrey Rand #19. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Thriller Journal, August 1971, Reprinted in Adam (Australia; March 1973).
In accordance with the blurb introducing this story in EQMM, Rand is a “code and cipher specialist, detective by necessity, and now troubleshooter-at giant,” assigned as he’s to a case with roots starting again within the days on the finish of World Warfare II. For causes of essential wartime significance, a airplane containing a German normal and the top of the French resistance was shot down whereas heading for Berlin, with each males reported killed.
This entails a little bit of hand-waving on the creator’s half, or a minimum of it was for me, as I didn’t fairly perceive. However irrespective of. The sentence above is all of the reader actually must know.
Returning to the current day, a Main Gregory Subic, now dwelling in Toronto, is planning to jot down a e-book of his memoirs, and it’s rumored to disclose the reality concerning the affair above. If secrets and techniques are revealed, it could be bombshell of a revelation in world affairs, even twenty-five years later.
Rand is shipped to be taught extra, and if potential be certain that the main points aren’t revealed. When Subic’s literary agent is discovered useless with the manuscript lacking, the case turns into one in every of homicide as properly.
As is common within the Rand tales, codes and ciphers are concerned, and I’m joyful to report that I caught on to the one on this one nearly instantly.
Not that I obtained any farther than that with it – however I ought to have. Mr. Hoch is as clear and exact as he all the time was in any of the tales of thriller and deduction he wrote, and he outsmarted me as soon as once more, despite the fact that I believed I used to be studying as clearly and concisely as I might.
I find it irresistible when that occurs.
