Jack Sharkey 3 hr 21 min read

Jery Delvin can spot the flaw in any scheme on sight, so when World Security picks him to solve the Solar System's greatest mystery, he assumes it's for his wits.

Jack Sharkey's 1960 novel is a fast, clever first-contact space-opera thriller. Sharp, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a rousing tale where an ad-man with an infallible eye for flaws is thrown into a maze of interplanetary double-dealing to solve the vanishing of fifteen boys, and the secret of the Martians.

In its time

Published in 1960, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

3 hr 21 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).