Secret Errand by Norman Deane Pseudonym of John Creasey First Edition Hurst & Blackett 1939. No inscriptions, lightly foxed edges. Light toning to endpapers. Lightly marked covers are VG.

In the fog-shrouded streets of wartime London, ace SOE agent Tony Forsyte receives a cryptic directive: infiltrate occupied France to extract a vital scientist defecting with blueprints for a revolutionary weapon. Posed as a Vichy collaborator, Forsyte navigates treacherous Parisian salons, Gestapo safehouses, and rural safe-conducts, dodging double agents and Luftwaffe patrols. When his cover frays amid a midnight rendezvous gone awry, he races across the Pyrenees with pursuers hot on his heels, his loyalties tested by a enigmatic female operative harboring her own agenda. Deane's thriller pulses with clandestine tension, patriotic grit, and pulse-quickening escapes, embodying the era's espionage fervor in a riveting saga of shadows and sacrifice.

Secret Errand enthralls collectors as a wartime rarity under Deane's pseudonym, its SOE authenticity a hidden facet of Creasey's sprawling Department Z canon. Readers plunge into its high-stakes chases and Forsyte's steely resolve, akin to Dennis Wheatley's occult ops or Eric Ambler's shadowed betrayals. Its cultural urgency captures 1940s resistance myths and invasion fears, beguiling spy fiction aficionados. Collectors prize its scarcity in Creasey's pseudonymic works, while readers navigate the blackout perils and border dashes, deeming it a covert essential for devotees of WWII thrillers and clandestine capers alike.