Forgotten Book: The Man Above Suspicion by James Mayo

Joanna Dunlop reaches London from Paris with her father. The two had gone to France as Joanna’s father who is in the Ministry of Agriculture had a seminar to attend. The plane makes a hard landing and London’s weather is gloomy. However, soon after checking into a hotel, Joanna is on her way to have dinner with a man she has barely met. She drops her father at his club and goes for the dinner. When she returns to pick him up (after a dinner that went off well) she is shocked when she is told that her father never turned up at the club. Frantic she goes back to the hotel and is relieved when she is told that her father is in his room. Only, the man in her father’s room is not her father and before she can protest she is made unconscious.

This is the bumper opening of James Mayo’s The Man above Suspicion. Unfortunately, the opening is the only good thing about the novel which features a James Bond kind of character by the name of Charles Hood. {Not surprising, since Stephen Coulter (James Mayo) was a friend of Ian Fleming}. But how many times are we to read about the plans to take over the world by a group of people, some of whom are really idealistic and some who are extremely power-hungry? This plot is so yawn-inducing that it was a chore to finish this novel which features females often in an undressed state. In fact, my copy stated that it is an unabridged version so I guess that Hood’s adventures (with the women) were censored in some of the editions.

First Line: THE CONVAIR overshot the runaway at eighty knots.

Title: The Man above Suspicion
Author: James Mayo
Publication Details: London: Pan Books, 1970
First Published: 1969
Pages: 191
Source: H.M. Library [F.M.A 105]

Other books read of the same author: None

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Entry for FFB @ Pattinase.