Neither Five Nor Three

When Pat Haydn returns to New York after the war he discovers that someone is trying to discredit the woman he once loved, and that several of his friends have dangerous political sympathies. Gradually he begins to realise why there so much interest in his counter-propaganda skills.

Helen Clark MacInnes (October 7, 1907, Glasgow – September 30, 1985, New York City) was a Scottish-American author of espionage novels.

She graduated from the University of Glasgow in Scotland in 1928 with a degree in French and German. Working as a librarian, she married the classicist Gilbert Highet in 1932 and moved with her husband to New York in 1937.

Among her works are:

• Above Suspicion (1941) made into a film of the same name.
• Assignment in Brittany (1942) made into a film of the same name
• The Unconquerable (1944), also called While Still We Live
• Horizon (1945)
• Friends and Lovers (1947)
• Rest and Be Thankful (1949)
• Neither Five Nor Three (1951)
• I and My True Love (1953)
• Pray for a Brave Heart (1955)
• North from Rome (1958)
• Decision at Delphi (1960)
• The Venetian Affair (1963), made into a film of the same name
• Double Image (1966)
• The Salzburg Connection (1968), made into a film of the same name
• Message from Malaga (1971)
• Snare of the Hunter (1974)
• Agent in Place (1976)
• Home Is the Hunter (1976)
• Prelude to Terror (1978)
• The Hidden Target (1980)
• Cloak of Darkness (1982)
• Ride a Pale Horse (1984)

In 1966 she won the Columba Prize for Literature.