Drawn Blanc

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.