Just When We are Safest-Csd - Hardcover

Gadney, Reg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571173829 ISBN 13: 9780571173822

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1995

Synopsis

A post-Cold War thriller. After they have killed his girlfriend, a Customs officer is seconded to the tracking down of an IRA bombing unit. He discovers corruption within Customs itself, as it battles with MI6 and Scotland Yard for control of its anti- turf.

About this title

About the Author

Reg Gadney was born in Cross Hills, Yorkshire in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Oxford and at Stowe. He studied English, Fine Art and Architecture at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, and whilst there he became the editor of Granta. He won a Theodore von Karman Scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he became an Instructor and Research Fellow. Before going up to Cambridge he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards and served in London, Windsor, Libya, France and in Norway where he qualified as a NATO instructor in Winter Warfare and Arctic Survival. He was then employed in the British Embassy in Oslo as Assistant to the Naval, Military and Air Attache. In 1969 he was appointed Deputy Controller of the National Film Theatre where he organised many film seasons, including the first tribute to the Cinematheque Francaise and Henri Langlois. In 1970 he became a part-time Tutor at the Royal College of Art. He was subsequently made Senior Tutor, Fellow and the youngest Pro-Rector in the history of the College. For several years he was responsible for the Academic Policy, Student Welfare and the Lion and Unicorn. He has also lectured at both Oxford and Cambridge universities, Harvard, MIT, at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and at the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Moscow. In 1984 he became a full-time writer. He has written several screenplays for television, including Last Love for the BBC and the award-winning Kennedy for Central TV and NBC. He has also adapted Iris Murdoch's The Bell for the small screen. He has written for The Spectator, the London Magazine and the Evening Standard. His adaptation of Minette Walters' novel, The Sculptress, was shown on BBC1, and earned Gadney a Bafta nomination. He is the author of eleven novels, including the Alan Rosslyn books - Just When We Are Safest, The Achilles Heel, Mother, Son and Holy Ghost and Strange Police. A fifth case for Rosslyn, Gadney's exhilarating The Scholar of Extortion, was published by Faber in June 2003. Reg Gadney lives in London.

From Publishers Weekly

Interagency rivalries thwart antiterrorist investigations in this jumbled post-Cold War thriller set in contemporary London. Custom & Excise investigator Alan Rosslyn's policewoman fiancee is about to join MI5 intelligence when she stumbles upon a terrorist bombing attempt and is gunned down by a putative IRA assassin. Rosslyn, who has recently apprehended another IRA operative stockpiling dangerous explosives, joins the task force investigating this latest terrorism. Soon two MI5 agents are blown up in a related murder, and back-stabbing among the nominally cooperating services escalates. As Rosslyn digs deeper into the mystery and begins to suspect collaboration between this deadly bomber and ranking government agents, he becomes a target himself. While Gadney's (Nightshade) plot-driven narrative seeks to vilify the dangerous confusion of competing intelligence agencies, the result is even more confusing for the reader. None of these characters emerges as particularly memorable or convincing, episodes of climactic action are difficult to follow and clever plot twists are all but lost in the obscurity.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571173829
• ISBN 13: 9780571173822
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256