Vintage Books - The Pinned Man by George Griswold

"The Pinned Man, as chessplayers know, is the man who shields the King. Pepper, the American Intelligence man, who has worked closely with Mr. Groode before, notably in Red Pawns, is sent to Switzerland to follow a man named Cord who is thought to be a courier with instructions to contact a special unit of Russian Intelligence that has its headquarters in Switzerland. This unit is known to have been organized about ten months before, soon after Donald Stirling, a British Foreign Office man, fled from London to Moscow. Under the nose of American and British agents, his fiancée, Lydia Talbott, had managed to join him.

As Cord is presumably unknown to his Russian contact, it is arranged that he should be captured and impersonated by Pepper, a substitution which reveals unexpected ramifications of the Stirling case, and abounds in thrills and surprises in Mr. Griswold's best manner."

Book written by George Griswold

Originally published in 1956