Great sticky slabs of gloom and bewilderment wandered through my mind""-- this is Otley speaking (author Waddell left school at 16). And the reader will also be pretty generally confused after Otley, a hapless bystander, is left with a murdered unknown on his hands, is chased on trains, buses, hearses, by a Syndicate who believes he has something they want. Most of the characters who move (that they do, they lunge) through this nasty business are compared with Tarzan, Victor Mature, Mitchum and Cagney, so you can also make the identification. It's strenuously tedious.