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FRONTIER INCIDENT by S.B. Hough

FRONTIER INCIDENT

By

Pub Date: Feb. 18th, 1952
Publisher: Crowell

The seizure and arrest of a party of mixed internationals in the Middle East provides not only some moments of terror and tension, but occasions an intellectually sophisticated scrutiny of mixed motives and loyalties, expediency and integrity. Among those involved are Miss Polkington, an acid-tongued archaeologist, who sustains a scientific detachment toward the situation: Mr. and Mrs. Fordyke- Mr. Fordyke is an oil man, --and his technician, Dodo; Mr. and Mrs. Smythe, and Mrs. Smythe is quite pregnant; a Turk, Ahmed, an Indian, a blonde, and a Russian renegade- Nansk. Insidiously interrogated by their Russian captors, each responds differently to the polite pressure which is applied. Dodo, a man of action, tunnels his way out and escapes into the desert with Nansk and Ahmed: but Smythe, at first vulnerable through his wife, is susceptible to the enemy's threats until he reaches an inner decision to hold to his beliefs which an incident of brutality affirms.... Not as intellectualized as Arthur Koestler, this still is a thoughtful, questioning examination of conduct and conscience at a time of crisis.