Ill Met by Moonlight

Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe is a non-fiction partly-autobiographical book written by W. Stanley Moss, a British soldier, writer and traveller. It describes an operation in Crete during World War II to capture German general Heinrich Kreipe. The 2014 edition includes an Introduction by one of Moss's children and an afterword by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

The story was made into a 1957 film with the same title starring Dirk Bogarde by the British writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Moss recounted his and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s activities during World War II as agents in Crete of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), notably their extraordinary kidnapping of Heinrich Kreipe, Commander of the 22nd Air Landing Infantry Division that was occupying Crete, and abduction of Kreipe to Cairo (and British war forces) in 1944. The manuscript was written in early 1945 but was censored by the Head of SOE, Major-General Sir Colin McVean Gubbins (CD), by instruction to Colin Hercules Mackenzie (BB100), Head of Force 136. When the book was finally published in 1950, it was selected by W. Somerset Maugham as one of the best three books of that year writing,"more thrilling than any detective story I can remember, and written in a modest and most engaging manner". The book was chosen to lead the BBC's famous radio series Now it can be told of 1950. It has been republished many times since and remains in print.