Before [Kennet discovers the swindle that is to change several peoples' lives and lead Kennet himself to his death in "Like Men Betrayed"], Mr. Mortimer has introduced us to a chain-stitched cross-section of contemporary England, embroidered with a score of richly colored and contrasting characters, kind, hateful and indifferent, greedy and generous, fantastic and familiar. He has led us through dingy London boarding-houses, cozy clubrooms, solid, middle-class homes and "sad pubs that smell of the Middle Ages." He has given us a glimpse of a bleak, remote village in the shires, where men ride to hounds three times a week while their wives "try to light, with blue fingers, paraffin lamps in stone-flagged kitchens."

But, since he is a brooding philosopher as well as a magnetic story-teller, the author never for a moment lets us lose sight of Kennet and all he symbolizes as he moves, almost willingly...