Adrian Messenger, a famous writer, asks his friend Anthony Gethryn, a former British agent, to help him investigate the whereabouts of the people who appear on a list, without asking him the reason why he should do so.
Saddled with an incredibly creaky whodunit plot, this thriller should really have been set in Victorian times to accommodate its villain with a passion for disguises, its Holmesian detective in a bowler hat, its murder in a fog-bound Limehouse.
– Tom Milne,
Time Out,
9 Feb 2006
rotten:
An even more damaging miscue is the utilization of stars who are hidden behind facial disguises in fundamentally inconsequential roles.