GAVIN LYALL – Judas Country. Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1975. Viking, US, hardcover, 1975. Ballantine, US, paperback, 1976.

   Planning to meet his partner in the flying business in Cyprus, for a small fee, pilot Roy Case agrees to bring along a planeload of champagne to a hotel there. But the hotel has gone bankrupt, there is no money, and the cases of champagne turn out to be filled with an equal weight of small arms and ammo.

   The good news? His partner, recently released from an Israeli prison, plans to meet a fellow jailmate, a professor of archaeology with a dubious reputation. The latter, as it happens, claims to know where a sword once belonging to Richard the Lion-Hearted may be found. Unfortunately the not-so-good professor seems to have committed suicide before he can reveal what he may or may not know.

   The man’s daughter is staying at the hotel with him, but she claims to know little. Also a major player in this Middle-Eastern drama of a world hidden to ordinary tourists is a representative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both female and very good-looking. One does not need to have a suspicious mind to notice that she seems to arrive on the scene very quickly.

   Lots of murders and attempted murders ensue, and lots of double dealing as well, as the trail leads to Beirut, back to Cyprus, then to Israel again. Lyall tends to tend his story by telling as little as the he thinks the reader needs to know, but that same reader had better pay close attention, or the ending, where all of the players come together again (or at least those who have survived), will become a dizzying swirl of twists and turns and sudden double — if not triple — crosses.

   There’s also a little too much detail about flying small airplanes, especially in bad weather, to suit me, but I can otherwise recommend this novel to fans of adventure fiction, in the good old-fashioned British way, with nary another qualm.