Desmond Bagley WINDFALL First Edition Signed
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Desmond Bagley WINDFALL First Edition Signed
First edition, first print hardback of WINDFALL, by Desmond Bagley and published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London in 1982. Signed by Bagley on the title page.The book is in very good condition (Clean black cloth boards with silver lettering on the spine), with only minor wear to the illustrated dust jacket which is price clipped (minor creasing to the edges). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions.
Desmond Bagley wrote 16 novels, becoming one of the world's top-selling authors, with his books translated into more than 30 languages. He was born in 1923 in Kendal and brought up in Blackpool, beginning his working life, aged 14, in the printing industry.
After working in an aircraft factory during the Second World War, he decided to travel, working his way through Europe and southern Africa, and in 1951 joined the gold mining industry before becoming a freelance journalist in Johannesburg, where he wrote his first novel, The Golden Keel, in 1962.
The success of The Golden Keel led Bagley to turn full time to novel writing by the mid-1960s. He published a total of sixteen thrillers, all craftsmanlike and nearly all best-sellers. Typical of British thriller writers of the era, he rarely used recurring characters whose adventures unfolded over multiple books. Max Stafford, the security consultant featured in Flyaway and Windfall, is a notable exception.
The Freedom Trap (1971) was turned into a film in 1973 as The Mackintosh Man by Warner Brothers, starring Paul Newman and Dominique Sanda; and Running Blind was adapted for television by the BBC in 1979. In 1964 he returned to England, finally settling in Guernsey, where he died in 1983. His last two novels Night of Error and Juggernaut were published posthumously after completion by his wife.
"Jan Willem Hendrykxx's legacy amounted to a staggering ?40 million; ?34 million to go to an agricultural college in Kenya's Rift Valley, and the remaining ?6 million to be divided equally between the mysterious benefactor's only discoverable living descendants: Dirk Hendrix, a South African, and Henry Hendrix, a young drop-out living in California.
Max Stafford, head of Stafford Security Consultants in London, gets involved in the ensuing events for two reasons: one is that Dirk Hendriks happens to be the husband of a dear friend; the other is the sudden appearance in London of Ben Hardin, an American detective, whose account of his assignment to track down Henry Hendrix and deliver him to his recent employer arouses Stafford's suspicion. The trail leads to Kenya and the obscure agricultural college at Ol Njorowa which has benefitted from old Hendrykxx's millions. What is the source of those millions? ..."
'As long as meticulous craftsmanship and honest entertainment are valued, and as long as action, authenticity, and expertise still make up the strong framework of the good adventure/thriller, Desmond Bagley's books will surely be read.' REGINALD HILL, Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers
'Bagley is a master storyteller.' DAILY MIRROR
'From word one, you're off. Bagley's one of the best.' THE TIMES
320 pages.
ISBN: 0 00 222349 X
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Desmond Bagley WINDFALL First Edition Signed