Fear is the Key

The sleepy calm of Marble Springs, Florida, is shattered when an unknown Englishman ruthlessly shoots his way out of the courtroom, abducting the lovely Mary Ruthven at gun-point and tearing out of town in a stolen car. Who is he? What is his concern with the girl, with the General's secluded house and with the great oil-rig twelve miles out in the Gulf of Mexico? Who are his three enemies? Set against a Sub-tropical background, this is a novel of revenge. From the opening of sudden disaster to the final reckoning — on a dusty high road at noon, in a garden by night, in the steel jungle of the oil-rig and on the sea-bed below it — the tension mounts inexorably. Alistair MacLean's story-telling has never been more brilliants or his grip on the reader more cruelly exciting.