14 APRIL 1961, Page 27

It's a Crime Faith Has No Country. By R. Vernon

&sic. (Hodder and Stoughton, los.) Un-hero with ulcer is parachuted back into Occupied France to find out which member of the ;umiak team he had worked with was betraying plans to the Gestapo. Novel hits off brilliantly the squalor and cold courage, the meticulous planning and the out- rageous chances of behind-the-lines warfare, and draws in three dimensions the mixed hag of toughs. careerists, incompetents. fanatics and

heroes who wage it. Unusually exciting because unusually plausible—not only a first-class thriller, but a very good war novel.