Drawn Blanc

by Reg Gadney

It is the fag-end of the 1960s and the British Secret Service is still reeling from the betrayals of the Philby era. Espionage is changing, with agents recruited on a freelance basis - small, individual jigsaw pieces in a much larger puzzle. One reluctant recruit is young Czech dissident O.B. Blanc, on the run accused of murdering a KGB officer and his mission to plant listening devices in a select London gentlemen's club is anything but straightforward. Reg Gadney's spare and icily convincing debut thriller, first published in 1970, was greeted with acclaim by critics who suggested comparisons with the work of Graham Greene and Franz Kafka.

186 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1970

About the author

Reginald Bernard John Gadney (20 January 1941 – 1 May 2018) was a painter, thriller-writer and an occasional screenwriter or screenplay adaptor. Gadney was also an officer in the Coldstream Guards in the 1960s and later wrote the biopic screenplay Goldeneye (about author Ian Fleming) which was filmed in 1989, directed by Don Boyd with Charles Dance playing Ian Fleming. Gadney cameoed as the real-life James Bond, the man who lent his name to Fleming's eponymous spy.
Gadney was married twice; firstly to Annette Kobak and secondly to the restaurant critic Fay Maschler, whom he met at a party in 1992. He had two children from his first marriage and three step children from his marriage to Maschler.