Dead or Alive

It’s a race against time to rescue a kidnapped scientist in this suspenseful tale by an Edgar Award–winning author.

The world is under threat of destruction. As the politicians hedge their bets with atomic weapons, it seems no one is safe.

The only hope? A brilliant professor who knows how to make nations and people invulnerable to atomic attack. The only problem? Professor Julian Conway has been kidnapped by power-hungry men wishing to use his expertise for themselves.

At British intelligence’s top-secret Department Z, Gordon Craigie assigns agent Peter Ross to get the professor back: dead or alive. Complicating the case, though, is the fact that Ross is in love with two beautiful women: one of them the professor's daughter, and the other a possible key to the whole mystery . . .

John Creasey, born in 1908, was a paramount English crime and science fiction writer who used myriad pseudonyms for more than six hundred novels. He founded the UK Crime Writers’ Association in 1953. In 1962, his book Gideon’s Fire received the Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. Many of the characters featured in Creasey’s titles became popular, including George Gideon of Scotland Yard, who was the basis for a subsequent television series and film. Creasey died in Salisbury, UK, in 1973.