The British thriller, replete with supernatural or science-fictional elements, had its heyday in the years just prior to WWII. In the late 1950s, John F. Blackburn chronicled the adventures of General Kirk of the British Foreign Service in a series of novels that combined the tropes of science fiction, mystery, the occult, and horror. Borrowing from British eco-disaster novels, Blackburn laid bare the terrors of the Cold War.

In this first outing, something is turning people into fungoid monstrosities, driven to kill; is the secret a new technology run amuck, the leftovers of a Nazi experiment, or something else entirely? Kirk and his staff have just a short time to learn the truth and seek a cure, if, in fact, a cure is possible. The plague has already destroyed a Russian village and appears that it is now active in England.