This is the story of a naval ordinance engineer abroad in Turkey during the early days of WWII who is targeted for assassination so as to delay the rearming of Turkish naval vessels. The Turkish secret police slip him aboard a tramp steamer for safety, only he learns that not all of his fellow passengers are whom the seem and he is in even greater jeopardy than ever. A good suspense thriller in which the hero's reactions are not those of a trained agent, but rather those to be expected from a mathematician and engineer whose 'journey into fear' is deep and traumatic. Our sympathies for the other travelers undergoes dramatic transformations for each as the story progresses, and the ending is deeply satisfying. 
 I learned Orson Welles produced a fairly decent pre-film noire movie of iJourney Into Fear starring Joseph Cotten, at least partly directed by Welles himself, with some of Welles' directorial and cinematic touches in evidence and practically the entire Mercury Company of players among the cast as well. In the book, the engineer was British, but Joseph Cotten portrayed him as an American for the movie.