Book review: With a Strange Device

Eric Frank Russell, who I've very vaguely heard of (aah: Wasp). The story starts in a top-secret govt research lab, with a loving description of its many levels of security, and then a fade-out to "but there was a flaw...". Switch to: someone resigning, unexpectedly. Our Hero, discussing this and others who have left recently. And then... Our Hero overhears two worker-types talking, and his repressed memories of killing Arline twenty years ago are triggered. Oh noes, he must run! But he doesn't, quite. In the end (skipping over some tolerably but not very interestingly described detective-y stuff) it turns out that evil Foreigners have devised a machine able to imprint memories, and they have been doing this to knock out govt scientists, thereby crippling the national effort.

Remind you of anything? Yes: The IPCRESS file. Which is 1962. This one is 1964. TIF is also far better written and in all respects superior.

Minor: for most of the book the country it is set in (UK or US) is unclear. Gradually it becomes the US. But it would have been nice and a nod to IPCRESS's unnamed protagonist for it to have remained unclear.