Mercer was the ruthless protagonist of three connected, and rather grim, stories that appeared in ''
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'' in the issues of April, May, and June of 1979. They were called "The Man at the Bottom," "The Man in the Middle," and "The Man at the Top." Mercer's precise status in the three stories is murky. He is living an apparently hand-to-mouth existence in a bare flat in London and goes to work, at the bottom, for what is obviously a gang of highly organized and highly dangerous criminals. As the head criminal, a Mr. Henderson, sums up Mercer's two previous years when he is first being taken in on probation: He was dismissed from the Metropolitan Police for assault on a prisoner; he was allowed to join the police force of the Ruler of Bahrain but soon dismissed for bribery and corruption; returned to England and worked as a laborer but was dismissed for assaulting a foreman; and finally worked as a protector for criminals smuggling hard pornography into England. By the end of the three stories, it is still impossible to tell what his motivating force has been throughout the series and whether or he has been successfully infiltrated into Henderson's gang as a long-term mole by
New Scotland Yard's tough, ruthless, and cunning
Chief Superintendent Morrissey. In the final story he is definitely working in coordination with the police, but in the first two this is far from clear. ==References==