“James Cross” was the pseudonym of Hugh J. Parry (1916-1997), a career U.S. Information Agency officer who had a PhD in sociology, was fluent in many languages, and wrote novels in multiple genres, as well as book reviews and essays on foreign relations under his own name.
American lawyer Harry Benton, who has been working in post-war West Berlin, is recruited by the secret service to retrieve some important, top secret papers from a high-level Russian that were given to a pastor in East Germany for safe-keeping. But all is not what it seems and Benton is soon plunged into a conspiracy involving smuggled diamonds and the formula for a deadly bacterial weapon.
Jim McCabe was just another ex-GI trying to scribble a living as a writer in Hollywood until he discovers a chest of century-old gold coins buried in his backyard…and decides to keep it, smuggle the coins to Europe, and sell them for a fortune. But there are plenty of people who want to take his treasure from him and are willing to kill the people he loves to do it in this chilling tale of lust, greed and murder.