Counterstroke

Life hadn’t held much except the bottle for Robert Farran in the months since his beloved wife had died. Though a once-celebrated actor and impersonator, he didn’t even have a career any more.

Then terrorists kidnapped the young wife of a politician and demanded as ransom the release of one of their number serving a life sentence for killing a security guard. The politician, a wealthy man, offered a quarter of a million as ransom. The gang said they weren’t interested, but Robert Farran was.

Suppose he impersonated the gaoled terrorist long enough to ensure the kidnap victim’s release, couldn’t he be paid the money offered to the terrorists? It was risky – but the prospect of a fortune was tempting, and he had nothing to lose but his life.

Could he manage to convince the politician, the police and the Government that his ploy was worth trying? Could he impersonate a man he did not know well enough to fool those who knew him intimately? Farran was prepared to try, but somewhere along the line things went wrong. He still had his life to lose but he no longer stood to gain a fortune.

Andrew Garve is the pen name of Paul Winterton (1908-2001). He was born in Leicester and educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London University. He was on the staff of The Economist for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London News Chronicle as reporter, leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the BBC’s Overseas Service.

After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized, televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages. He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds – which have included Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry – and for never repeating a plot.

Andrew Garve was a founder member and first joint secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association.