Although he is perhaps best known for his historical novels, particularly the popular BBC television Poldark series, Winston Graham has brought to the mystery and the spy story a versatility and variety that breaks the formulaic modes and mixes history, romance, adventure, and intrigue. To blackmail, murder, fraud, and theft, Graham has added the mystery of the mind, the exploration of motives and deeds that lie rooted in the past and produce the conflicts, doubts, hesitations, and eccentricities of the present. His power lies in his ability to provide a sense of ordinary people menaced by the sort of trauma and violence that could well occur in the daily lives of his readers. His heroes are not blameless supermen, but guilt-ridden humans touched by the lives of others and forced to make personal decisions about loyalties and values. His mysteries have been translated into fifteen languages, and several...