Why are Eric Embler's novels so popular? Why are they timeless and even now, more than half a century after writing, are read with unremitting interest?It's not so much the style of these works as the unusualness of their characters. They are not “James Bonds”, not supermen, not super spies and often not even professional scouts, but ordinary people who happened to live in the era of the pre-war decade. Such as the enterprising London journalist who tried to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a secular beauty and suddenly became a target of terrorists who planned to fan the fire of war in the Middle East.