title: Castle Minerva
text: # Castle Minerva
  
  Castle Minerva is a 1954 spy thriller novel by the British writer Victor Canning. It was published in the United States under the alternative title of A Handful of Silver. A contemporary review in The Sunday Times concluded "Castle Minerva not only brilliantly entertains; it satisfies".
  
  ## Synopsis
  
  While taking a climbing holiday in North Wales, David Fraser encounters his old wartime comrade Colonel Drexel. Drexel wants him to go to Southern France for him to protect a young Arab prince whose country has valuable oil reserves and will sign a treaty once he comes of age. However only a few days after arriving in Banyuls-sur-Mer in the Pyrenees, the prince goes missing and Fraser is blamed.
  
  ## Film adaptation
  
  It was adapted into the British film Masquerade directed by Basil Dearden and starring Cliff Robertson, Jack Hawkins and Marisa Mell.
  
  