When Mark Trevelyan dies on a journey to a remote Pacific atoll, the verdict that it was natural causes doesn’t convince his brother, Mike. The series of violent attacks that follows only adds to his suspicions. Just two clues – a notebook in code and a lump of rock – are enough to trigger off a hazardous expedition, and a violent confrontation far from civilization …

‘The detail is immaculately researched – the action has the skill to grab your heart or your bowels.’

Daily Mirror

DESMOND BAGLEY

‘Unbeatable for sheer gripping excitement.’

Daily Telegraph

RUNNING BLIND

The assignment begins with a simple errand – a parcel to deliver. But to Alan Stewart, standing on a deserted road in Iceland with a murdered man at his feet, it looks anything but simple. The desolate terrain is obstacle enough. But when Stewart realises he has been double-crossed and that the opposition is gaining ground, his simple mission seems impossible …

THE FREEDOM TRAP

The Scarperers, a brilliantly organised gang which gets long-term inmates out of prison, spring a notorious Russian double agent. The trail leads Owen Stannard to Malta, and to the suave killer masterminding the gang. Face to face at last with his opponents, Stannard must try to outwit both men – who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by his death …

‘Literate, exciting, knowledgeable adventure stories – Desmond Bagley is incomparable.’

Sunday Mirror

DESMOND BAGLEY

Desmond Bagley was born in 1923 in Kendal, Westmorland, and brought up in Blackpool. He began his working life, aged 14, in the printing industry and then did a variety of jobs until going into an aircraft factory at the start of the Second World War.

When the war ended, he decided to travel to southern Africa, going overland through Europe and the Sahara. He worked en route, reaching South Africa in 1951.

Bagley became a freelance journalist in Johannesburg and wrote his first published novel, The Golden Keel, in 1962. In 1964 he returned to England and lived in Totnes, Devon, for twelve years. He and his wife Joan then moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Here he found the ideal place for combining his writing and his other interests, which included computers, mathematics, military history, and entertaining friends from all over the world.

Desmond Bagley died in April 1983, having become one of the world’s top-selling authors, with his 16 books – two of them published after his death – translated into more than 30 languages. In 2018 a blue plaque commemorating Desmond and Joan Bagley was unveiled at their former home in Guernsey, coinciding with the discovery of a complete unpublished novel written in 1972, Domino Island, published in 2019.

MICHAEL DAVIES