Bored with retirement, an ex-spy embarks on a dangerous game, in this Edgar Award winner from a crime writer who is "one of the best" (The New York Times). Miles Kendig is one of the CIA's top deep-cover agents, until an injury ruins him for active duty. Rather than take a desk job, he retires. But the tawdry thrills of civilian life--gambling, drinking, sex--offer none of the pleasures of the intelligence game. Even a Russian agent's offer to go to work against his old employers seems dull. Without the thrill of unpredictable conflict, Kendig skulks through Paris like the walking dead. To revive himself, he begins writing a tell-all memoir, divulging every secret he accumulated in his long career. Neither CIA nor KGB can afford to have it in print, and so he challenges them both: Until they catch him, a chapter will go to the publisher every week. Kendig's life is fun again, with survival on the line.

The Mystery Fancier, Volume 2 Number 1, January 1978, contains: "The Professorial Sleuth of Roy Winsor," by Larry L. French, "The Vengeance Novels of Brian Garfield," by George Kelley, "Miscellaneous Mystery Mis-Mash," by Marvin Lachman, "Chance and Illogic and The Black Box Murder," by E. F. Bleiler, "An Index of Books Reviewed in TMF Volume 1 (Including the Preview Issue)," compiled by Jeff Meyerson, and "The Nero Wolfe Saga, Part V," by Guy M. Townsend.

Tall, handsome, charming Col. Richard Meinertzhagen (1878-1967) was an acclaimed British war hero, a secret agent, and a dean of international ornithology. His exploits inspired three biographies, movies have been based on his life, and a square in Jerusalem is dedicated to his memory. Meinertzhagen was trusted by Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, T. E. Lawrence, Elspeth Huxley, and a great many others.He bamboozled them all. Meinertzhagen was a fraud. Many of the adventures recorded in his celebrated diaries were imaginary, including a meeting with Hitler while he had a loaded pistol in his pocket, an attempt to rescue the Russian royal family in 1918, and a shoot-out with Arabs in Haifa when he was seventy years old. True, he was a key player in Middle Eastern events after World War I, and during the 1930s he represented Zionism's interests in negotiations with Germany. But he also set up Nazi front organizations in England, committed a half-century of major and costly scientific fraud, and -- oddly -- may have been innocent of many killings to which he confessed (e.g., the murder of his own polo groom -- a crime of which he cheerfully boasted, although the evidence suggests it never occurred at all). Further, he may have been guilty of at least one homicide of which he professed innocence. A compelling read about a flamboyant rogue, "The Meinertzhagen Mystery" shows how recorded history reflects not what happened, but what we believe happened.