The Balkan Theme in The Secret of Chimneys by Graham St. John Stott, Aysar Yaseen

“…The Foreign Office’s interest in the Balkans might not have surprised Christie’s readers. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had held a monopoly on the extraction, refining and sale of Iranian oil since 1901, and a similar monopoly on reserves in south-eastern Europe would have been welcome at time when large profits were to be made from investment in Romanian oil (Benson 55, 267-68; in the years after the War, British investments in the Romanian oil industry were the largest of any foreign country: Hichens 428). …”
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