''Dark Duet'' is a 1942

spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ''e ...

thriller novel Thriller is a genre of fiction with numerous, often overlapping, subgenres, including crime, horror, and detective fiction. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving their audiences heightened feelings of suspe ...

by the British writer

Peter Cheyney Reginald Evelyn Peter Southouse-Cheyney (22 February 1896 – 26 June 1951) was a British crime fiction writer who flourished between 1936 and 1951. Cheyney is perhaps best known for his short stories and novels about agent/detective Lemmy C ...

. Cheyney had become known for his

hardboiled Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...

crime thrillers featuring

Lemmy Caution Lemmy Caution is a fictional character created by British writer Peter Cheyney (1896–1951). Caution was first portrayed as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, and in later stories as a private detective. History Cheyney's first book ...

and

Slim Callaghan Slim Callaghan is a fictional London-based private detective created by the writer Peter Cheyney. Like another of Cheyney's characters, the FBI agent Lemmy Caution, he was constructed as a British response to the more hardboiled detectives of Ameri ...

, but this novel was his first fully-fledged espionage novel. The novel is set in wartime

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

and

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

. It was published in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

with the

alternative title An alternative title is a media sales device most prominently used in film distribution. Books and films are commonly released under a different title when they are screened or sold in a different country. This can vary from small change to the ...

''The Counterspy Murders''.

Synopsis

Two British

counter-intelligence Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting ac ...

officers track a network of German agents which they learn is based out of

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

.Wark p.97

References

Bibliography

* Panek, LeRoy. ''The Special Branch: The British Spy Novel, 1890-1980''. Popular Press, 1981. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. * Wark, Wesley K. ''Spy Fiction, Spy Films and Real Intelligence''. Routledge, 2013. 1942 British novels Novels by Peter Cheyney British thriller novels British spy novels Novels set in London Novels set in Lisbon Novels set in Ireland William Collins, Sons books Novels set during World War II {{1940s-WWII-novel-stub