The Friendly Killers

The year is 1971, and Agent Mark Traynor has built his life on a lie. The Kel arrived twenty years ago, bringing technology and alliance, promising humanity a future among the stars. Now Traynor is a man out of time, a Cold War warrior still fighting yesterday's battles while the world celebrates its alien saviors. But something has always bothered him about the Kel, some wrongness he couldn't name. When a routine investigation cracks open a door that should have stayed shut, Traynor discovers the truth: the beings his species has welcomed as friends have been burrowing into human civilization like a virus, occupying positions of power, preparing for a day no one suspects. With every ally potentially compromised, with the Kel watching his every move, Traynor must expose an infiltration so complete that the cure might be worse than the disease. Written in 1959, at the height of Cold War paranoia, Tenneshaw's novel substitutes communism's invisible enemy with something far more alien: the terror of trusting what looks like salvation.