According to Kirkus Review: "this outlines the main principles of a secret agent's painstaking to exciting work. Buttressing his healthy supply of information with many anecdotes of case work, Col. Pinto, a well known British intelligence man himself, speaks knowingly of the process of becoming an agent, qualifications, communications, dealing with captured suspects, war time activity and so forth. It is all very urgent and exact and free from illusions of high adventure and romance. Yet one detects a certain emotionalism in Pinto as he boasts of the secret service men who do such superlative jobs for so little pay, while he seems to look askance, and with some disdain, at ordinary people. It gives the book a certain aura of setting secret agents apart, which may stimulate interest but makes one question the objectivity of his approach."