REVIEWED BY BOB ADEY:

   

J. T. McINTOSH – Take a Pair of Private Eyes. Ambrose and Dominique Frayne #1. Frederick Muller, UK, hardcover, 1968. Doubleday, US, hardcover, 1968.

   The most interesting thing about this book is that it’s a novelisation of a television play (BBC, 6 episodes, 1966; much broadcast, apparently, although I certainly never saw it) by Peter O’Donnell, creator of Modesty Blaise.

   The sleuths are the almost omniscient, omnipotent husband and wife team, Ambrose and Dominique Frayne, who together with Frayne senior, a retired master criminal, investigate the theft of the Mineptah Coffin, the biggest single chunk of gold in the world.

   Very much a caper type novel, there’s not a great deal of ratiocination but the action moves along at a fair old pace.

– Reprinted from The Poison Pen, Volume 3, Number 6 (December 1980).

   

UPDATE: There was one followup adventure of the Fraynes, that being A Coat of Blackmail (Muller, 1970; Doubleday, 1971). This second does not seem to have been based on an O’Donnell work. McIntosh himself is much better known as an SF writer. These two books are his only entries in Hubin.