Earlier threat to Mountbatten

Press, 27 November 1982, Page 16

Earlier threat to Mountbatten

A Kind of Treason. By George Macbeth, Hodder and Stoughton. 239 pp. $21.50. The murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten by I.R.A.'s terrorists reminds an elderly British former Intelligence officer of an earlier attempt on Mountbatten’s life.— by the Japanese, in

1944, at Kandy in Ceylon. He remembers, because he was in' charge -of protecting the war leader. He was also in charge of the m'an whom the Japanese chose to kill Mountbatten, for that man,' infiltrated into the Japanese Security Service, was a British agent. So it seems at the start, but all is not as it seems. The suspicion grows that the vastly successful British agent, the partEnglish part-Chinese Major Strand, may be a double agent. If he is, then Mountbatten’s life is in real danger. Worse, yet another unknown agent of the Japanese may also be on the hunt for the British leader, and there seems no way that Mountbatten’s protectors can identify the "back-up” killer in time. Macbeth, who says the book is based on fact, builds the tension and mystery to the last, shocking revelation on the last pages. He has produced an unusual spy' thriller, but one that is vivid and gripping.-A. J. Petre.