The MacInnes political antennae, always tuned in to the latest international headlines, have proved more reliable than ever.

At the center of ["The Snare of the Hunter"] is writer Jaromir Kusak, a Nobel prize nominee in voluntary exile from Czechoslovakia. An amateurish but valiant Anglo-American quartet resolves to effect the reunion of Kusak with his daughter Irina—without leading the Secret Police (in hot but secretive pursuit) to the writer's Swiss hideway.

Any serious contemplation or extended examination of the mainsprings of this story's narrative would reveal gaping chasms in logic and raise foolish but fundamental questions for which Miss MacInnes furnishes no answers.

Of course, there'd be no story if logic were triumphant and, happily, the pace and rich texture of the MacInnes style leave few moments for question-raising contemplation.

Like its predecessors, "The Snare of the Hunter" is part travelogue. Without even setting off for an airport, we can gawk at Vienna's Opera House, lunch at Grinzing, glance at the grim Czechoslovakian border, and then head west for Italy and Switzerland, where the ultimate in sophisticated tourguides will lend us a green Mercedes and send us off on our own. The terror of the chase only seems to intensify the beauty of the landscape, and none of the characters ever wonders if he'll have enough money to pay the bill.

Beyond vicarious tourism a MacInnes novel offers characters who are decent human beings, with inner thoughts that emerge and recede as the author's stream-of-consciousness roams from mind to mind.

The occasional excesses of this technique generate faint echoes of the Ladies' Home Journal, but enough ironic and hard-edged sentiments keep that impulse in check.

More recklessly, Miss MacInnes allows her mind-excursions to extend to the hidden traitors of the piece, making us aware of their evil intentions too soon, sacrificing possibilities for climactic revelations.

Suspense survives, however, and, as the hunters and the hunted finally converge on a dot on the map, it is almost embarrassing to discover how much we've come to care about Irina and her brigade.

And there is strong satisfaction in knowing, without the ambiguities fostered in recent novels of political intrigue, the heroes from the villains—and in witnessing their just deserts.