Are you who you think you are? Desmond Bagley’s The Tightrope Men

Then he looked into the mirror above the basin and, for the first time in his life, experienced sheer terror…

Usually I steer clear of espionage thrillers because if the story is set during the two world wars then one can be sure that Germany would come to a sticky end and if it is a cold war scenario then one can rest assure that it is either Soviet Russia or the East European Communist Bloc getting the short end of the stick.

But when the premise is of a man waking up one morning after a night of drunkenness, in strange surroundings and wearing a face that is not his, than it becomes near about impossible to resist the book. And was I glad that I read Desmond Bagley’s The Tightrope Men! It is a racy thriller depicting the adventures of Giles Denison who wakes up one morning to find that he is wearing the face of a stranger, which turns out {as later developments reveal}  to be that of the eminent science researcher Dr. Henry Meyrick.

Add to the confusion – men from Whitehall, the CIA, the KGB, the Germans, the Czechs; angry red haired ladies who accost our hero on the streets; and the daughter of Meyrick – and you have a lethal cocktail. As Giles Denison gets involved in an adrenalin pumping adventure, he has to answer questions about those around him as well as about his own past, for he is Giles Denison…or is he?

Go ahead and enjoy The Tightrope Men with a steaming cup of tea and a plateful of hot pakoras.

*

The Tightrope Men can be purchased online. I borrowed it from a friend.


14th July, 2011

Submitted for the Book Review Party hosted by Cym Lowell