THE MILLS BOMB

Ex-secret agent Edward Mills has just gotten out of a British prison after ten years; he supposedly betrayed a Russian defector to Moscow and stole the defector's million-dollar payoff. But Mills knows he was innocent--and so does the highly-placed ""mole"" in British Intelligence who framed him and is now fully prepared to do it again. So, as Mills bitterly sets out to prove his innocence, he's being followed--by Britain's Special Branch (who have suspicions about that mole in Intelligence); by the regular police (Mills has by now been framed for the murder of his greasy lawyer and two others); and by a pair of IRA gunmen in cahoots with the secret traitor. Egleton graphs all these parallel and converging lines with practiced finesse, though the population does get a bit too dense when he adds in a CIA agent to befriend Mills (his only other ally is an efficient lady lawyer--a nicely understated romance). But the quality that takes this plainly written suspense a cut above the usual man-on-the-run story--almost excusing a frenetic pile-up of last-minute revelations--is Mills' ferret-eyed canniness, his refusal to be taken in intellectually even while he is being physically manipulated. Solid, busy British spy-works, with a thinking creature at the center instead of the usual tough but gullible fall guy.