Like most of the authors just mentioned, Egleton served in World War II, and this experience gave his writing a realistic edge that few peacetime writers can match. No doubt it was this shared wartime background, along with the high English literary standard and cultural affinity for spycraft, that produced a golden age of British espionage fiction in the post-war era. Egleton actually served in the army for thirty years, until retiring to become a full-time writer in the mid-1970s. His debut novel, published in 1973 and titled Seven Days to a Killing, was made into a movie called The Black Windmill starring Michael Caine the following year. The movie trailer looked interesting enough that I decided to track down the novel and give it a read.
As the story opens, a man named Andrew McKee, dressed in a paratrooper uniform, confronts two boys who are playing at an abandoned military airfield. Using a ruse, the boys are quickly knocked out, bound, gagged, put in crates and taken away in a Land Rover with military precision. A little later, as two of his hired heavies are driving away with their payments, McKee calmly presses a button on a radio transmitter, detonating a bomb in their vehicle and blowing them to smithereens. It's a chilling and well-done opening sequence that lets us know what kind of ruthlessly efficient villains we'll be dealing with.
One of the boys is soon released, but the other, named David, who is the son of an MI6 officer named John Tarrant, is held in captivity at a farmhouse. The kidnapper, who goes by the name "Drabble", calls Tarrant with a simple demand: deliver 500,000 pounds worth of uncut diamonds in two days time, or his son will come to harm. Tarrant must deliver them himself to an address in Paris according to Drabble's instructions. To show that he means business, he plays a recording of Tarrant's screaming son being tortured.
Drabble's demands bring in an intelligence officer named Cedric Harper, whose title is "Director of Subversive Warfare". Harper is highly suspicious by nature, and he wants to know why a man with Tarrant's modest resources would be the target of such a high-priced kidnapping plot. Tarrant seems to be an upstanding officer with a clean record, but is he somehow involved in the plot? Is it just a criminal extortion scheme, or is the KGB or other enemy agency involved? Harper agrees to provide the diamonds for delivery, but in return he puts Tarrant under close surveillance and a background investigation in hopes of finding out the answers.
What follows is part crime/espionage procedural, part race against time, and part the psychological struggles of Tarrant, his estranged wife, Harper and the kidnappers. The narrative got a little confusing at times, as so many characters were introduced that it became difficult to keep track of them, and the procedural parts of the story dragged a bit. But the final stretch of the book made up for all that, as the diamonds are en route for delivery, the kidnappers prepare to make their exchange and getaway, Harper prepares a team for a raid, and Tarrant desperately races to find his son, not trusting Harper to have his best interests at heart. The suspenseful and violent climax was absolutely riveting, one of the best I can remember in an espionage thriller.
The writing style and plotting of Seven Days brought to mind the classic work of Frederick Forsyth, particularly The Day of the Jackal. It has that sophisticated, sinister edge and realistic detail about espionage procedures that he and other British spy-fi greats excel at. The detailed backstories of the kidnappers, their operations and motivations, were quite plausible and very well done. This is apparently the first of a four book series featuring the cynical counter-intelligence man Cedric Harper. Based on the quality of this book, I will definitely be checking out further installments of the series and other novels by Clive Egleton. Highly recommended.
Get a copy of Seven Days to a Killing here.
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