It's Tommy Hambledon, of course, and this time on the track of a counterfeiting ring which keeps him racing from London to Brussels to France, with way stops for every kind of action in the book.

It all started when Tommy observed some curious byplay in a café called the Taverne Gruber in Brussels. The restaurant provided cardboard circular mats, and one of these was carefully inspected by a solitary patron, then pocketed. Whereupon the patron left hurriedly and was promptly followed by another man who had been looking through the window.

Tommy, intrigued by this, made a third in this procession and, unknown to him, was himself followed by a fourth person. The first man was murdered. The fourth turned out to be an agent of the Paris Sûreté. Tommy and the agent joined forces and became involved in a series of adventures which included a hair-pulling contest between two volatile Frenchwomen and the hijacking of a police car. They eventually nailed the expert engravers who were churning out bills by the thousands in a nefarious scheme to debase the currency of the Allied countries.

Tommy has never been in better form than in this fast-moving, adventure-packed thriller.