The Dead-End Gang

'The Dead-End Gang' is a fast-paced World War II thriller set in Egypt and Libya. An audacious gang of deserters have to be stopped before a top-secret weapon they have stolen is sold to the Nazis. It is November 1941. The Eighth Army is forging west to push the Germans back and relieve the besieged port of Tobruk. Captain Strickland arrives in Egypt from the Metropolitan Police to bring the gang to justice. With his Military Police Sergeant, Osborn, they pursue the gang in Tobruk, through the souks and fleshpots of Cairo and finally across the forbidding Qattara Depression in a frantic race to stop the weapon getting into the hands of an SS Colonel. This is HD Joslin's first published novel, a fictional account based on the story of his Uncle Frank, then Lieutenant Elliott, who arrived in Cairo to join the Special Investigation Branch of the Military Police to bring down a gang of deserters called the Dead-End Kids.