American CIA agent is sent to Russia to kill a scientist who has been captured and is talking too much. Of course, the scientist has a beautiful wife (in a typically loveless marriage) whom the Russians have invited to visit him at the same time. Despite the cliches and some improbabilities necessary to keep the CIA agent one step ahead of his pursuers, this is a quite well done story. This book was published about the same time as the first Donald Hamilton Matt Helm novel, Death of a Citizen, and the protagonist of Spy Hunt is very much like Helm--fearless, brutal when necessary, and quite accommodating to the ladies, who include a beautiful Russian agent assigned to keep track of him. There's a lot more going on in this book than in the usual single-threaded Helm books, and there is much more of an acknowledgment of the world at large. The author refers to Eisenhower, Khrushchev, summit conferences, and a lot of other events, including those in Cuba. This book was written after the Castro revolution, but before the Cuban Missile Crisis, and its depiction of cold war anxiety is pretty well done, even if our hero, the CIA agent, does make one or two too many speeches about the Soviet menace. At least he doesn't sink to the simplicity of Sergeant Joe Friday.

So, the bottom line is, I picked this one up in the used book store because it has a pretty cool cover, but the story is pretty cool as well. Daniels is a more than competent writer with a huge oeuvre in multiple genres under multiple pseudonyms stretching back to the days of the pulp magazines. I'll be on the lookout for more of his books. www.munseys.com has a few of his short stories. ( )