Brussels Sprout

1975. The Secretary of the EEC Commission asks Nick and Rosemary Storey to investigate a discrepancy of nearly 10 million in EEC money used to rationalise coal and steel production in EEC countries. They quickly identify transactions where the Commission has been defrauded and how it was carried out. But the fraudsters seem cautious and cunning, leaving few traces except the involvement of a small man wearing glasses with very thick lenses and a Chinese pistol in the cupboard of a French-Vietnamese woman working in the area of the Commission where the fraud took place and who has since disappeared. Various leads and assumptions lead them to Vietnamese bankers and a Dutchman working in the Commission, all of whom may be spies. But who the fraudster is and what happens to him are completely unexpected. Brussels Sprout is the ninth book published in a series of detective stories mostly set in Customs & Excise by Richard Hernaman Allen, a former Commissioner.