The Avengers Forever: The GLG Reports

	The GLG Reports Page 1 of 67

Traitor in Zebra
By Grant L. Goggans

"Are you quite sure I'm not wasting my time here?" This is a pretty interesting, if an awfully ordinary bit of spy melodrama. State secrets are being stolen from a naval base by some anonymous foreign power, albeit one with a "central committee," so there's some Eastern bloc hints even if all the spies are very English. There's a bit of counterculture evident in the village's two teenage girls, who are desperate to leave the quiet life behind for the bright lights of London, and one of them's desperate enough to (unwittingly) betray her country for the chance to get out of town. Unfortunately, the script isn't exactly subtle about the characters of Maggie and Linda, and as a result, they're awfully two-dimensional. Their boredom ends up the only true facet of their presence in the script. William Gaunt, some years away from starring in The Champions, looks fresh out of Elementary Acting here and isn't very good. The best part of the production is the villain Rankin, who seems like a retired lay-about who virtually lives in the pub, but who sends classified information (passed to him by darts scores) down the information pipeline via his dog. There are elements of a very good plot here, and for a while it's interesting to speculate who Rankin's fellow spies might be, but overall this is a pretty dull and average adventure.