To Dusty Death by Hugh McCutcheon

After chancing upon this rare book in a used book shop, my friend bought it for me because she knew I was a sucker for thrillers. Little did she expect that I would enjoy it tremendously.

To Dusty Death is the story of Richard Logan who came out of a nightmare of blackness to find himself lying on a patch of waste ground with a lump on his head and no memory of what happened to him during the past three weeks.

Logan designs safes and could open them too, and upon returning home to his wife he found to his horror that in his pocket was the business card of a private detective whom his wife had hired to look for him and who had been murdered a few days before.

When further attempts are made on his life, Logan tries to retrace his movements during those lost 3 weeks. With the help of his wife he comes very close indeed to dusty death in a finish of almost unbearable suspense in Hugh McCutcheon's fast-moving action-packed thriller.

Don't let this book's thin and unassuming form fool you. The plot is fast paced, without a dull moment, and comparable to Bourne Identity and the action thriller film Unknown starring Liam Neason.

Richard Logan's character is brave and respectable, while the other characters are well developed as well.

The book is well-written and builds up to an exciting climax. It makes several references to literary authors and their works such as Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.   The title itself comes from a quotation from a famous passage in Shakespeare s Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5.

Its surprising why it was published only by an obscure publisher from Israel in 1960. There is also very little information about Hugh McCutcheon available except that he wrote the script for the film adaptation of the book entitled Pit of Darkness in 1961.  He did write more than a dozen action novels before and after To Dusty Death, some also by the same publisher.

To Hugh McCutcheon, wherever you are, i hope to someday read the rest of your novels!