Slow Burner is a 1958 suspense novel by the British author William Haggard published in England by Cassell and in the United States by Little Brown.
A Colonel Charles Russell of the Security Executive, a not entirely imaginary British counter-espionage organization, while not a protagonist in the technical sense, holds the story line together in the background by his operations, while the characters in the foreground carry the action.
It has, nevertheless, recently been successfully installed in a number of English factories and is now considered by the British Government to be a vital part of the country's future.
Nichol and Colonel Russell of the Security Executive are surprised and upset to be informed by Sir Jeremy Bates, a very senior Permanent Secretary, that intermittent readings of epsilon rays are being detected as coming from a modest private home in the London suburb of Dipley.
In the end, however, he cheerfully concludes that he himself was wrong and that Mortimer was right—an important indication of just why Charles Russell is the perfect man to be holding down his key position in the government.