It Won't Get You Anywhere

It Won't Get You Anywhere, published in 1966, is the first of three thrillers by the English novelist Desmond Skirrow about John Brock, an irreverent advertising executive who is also a sometime undercover agent. Published in England by The Bodley Head and in the United States by Lippincott, it is a little under 80,000 words in length and almost certainly the best of the Brock novels. Published in today's market, it might be classified as a techno thriller, as it does contain a few elements of that genre. More likely, however, it simply falls into that category of spy thrillers that contain some elements of science fiction such as the near contemporaneous books by Ian Fleming, Moonraker and Thunderball and going as far back as The Dark Frontier, the 1936, first novel by Eric Ambler.

The plot is simple, with no complications or side stories. A rich, powerful, titled Welsh madman, Lord Llewellyn, who believes himself to be the direct descendant of Henry VII and hence the legitimate ruler of Great Britain, has hatched a scheme to destroy, in a single moment, the entire