JOHN MURPHY – Pay on the Way Out. Scribner, hardcover, 1975. Ballantine, paperback, 1976.

   As if the CIA didn’t have enough trouble after Watergate. Young trainee James Hagen is assigned to investigate the strange assassination of a bullfighter in Spain, and all his clues lead straight to a plot inside the Agency, and worse, by his immediate superiors.

   Good detective work early on, but both it and Hagen are caught up in the wheels of intrigue as they grind slowly but surely down. His choice is to run for cover until he can make a stand. A tale put nicely together, but the twists take it away subtly from the reader, who feels nearly as helpless as Hagen does, before the dawn.

Rating:  B

– Slightly revised from The MYSTERY FANcier, January 1977 (Vol. 1, No. 1)

   

UPDATE. John Murphy was the pen name of R. C. Grady, Jr. As Murphy he was the author of three other titles in Hubin, all of which also appear to be thrillers of one form or another.