Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes (Fontana, 1974)

I bought this in what you might call a charity stall clearance sale--the sellers were losing their storage space and were offering their books at "$10 for all you can carry!" just to get rid of them.  I went around filling a shopping bag with everything and anything that looked remotely interesting.

Von Aschenhausen sat on the edge of a large desk.  His eyes were fixed on the man standing over the girl roped to a chair.  He spoke again: "You fool.  You stupid little fool.  Can't you see I must, I will find out?  Kurt, try some more of your persuasion..."

The girl felt a hand of iron on her aching shoulder.  She tried to turn her face away from the glare of the powerful lamp, but it still pierced her eyelids  with a dull-red burning.  She struggled weakly against the ropes that held her, but they only cut deeper into her breast and thigh...

What is it with cover blurbs and ellipses? 

Above Suspicion was Helen MacInnes' first book and was originally published in 1941.  The villains of this story are (not surprisingly) Nazis.  Interestingly, these fictional Nazis actually seem a bit less evil than their real-life counterparts--probably because in 1941 the full extent of the Nazis' crimes were not known.

There's a sprinkling of propaganda throughout this story (again not surprisingly--1941!)  Most of it is of the "this is what we're fighting for/against" variety as the very English hero and heroine are chased around pre-war Europe:

"You believe you have not changed.  And yet under the leadership which you praise so much you may only read certain books, listen to certain music, look at certain pictures, make friends with certain people.  Isn't that limiting yourself?"

"Oh well, limiting yourself to the good, eliminating the bad--all that is better in the end."

"But who is to say what is good for you or bad for you?  Is it to be your own judgement ... or is it to be some self-appointed leader who can't even speak grammatical German?"

(Page 21) 

There's also a sympathetic American journalist who comes to the aid of our beleaguered heroes--surely a shout out to the United States which in 1941 was not in the War exactly, but certainly coming to the aid of those who were. 

Sadly, Fontana decided to package this book in an ugly seventies photo-cover, with anachronistic models posed in a vaguely dramatic manner.  It's horribly generic, and only gives the loosest idea of what the book is actually about.