Desmond Bagley

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The cover of the Fontana 1982 paperback edition of Bagley's The Snow Tiger

Desmond Bagley (October 29, 1923 -April 12, 1983), was a UK journalist and novelist principally known for a series of best-selling thrillers. Along with fellow UK writers such as Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean, Bagley established the basic conventions of the genre: a tough, resourceful, but essentially ordinary hero pitted against villains determined to sow destruction and chaos in order to advance their agenda.

[edit] Biography

Bagley was born at Kendal, Cumbria (then Westmorland), England, the son of John and Hannah Bagley. His family moved to the resort town of Blackpool in the summer of 1935, when Bagley was 14. Leaving school not long after the relocation, Bagley worked in a variety of jobs (printer's assistant, factory worker, mechanic), first in England and later in Africa. Emigrating in 1947, he settled in South Africa by 1951, becoming a free-lance writer for newspapers and magazines. His first published short story appeared in the English magazine Argosy in 1957, and his first novel, The Golden Keel in 1962. In the interval, he met (1959) and married (1960) bookstore owner Joan Brown.

The success of The Golden Keel led Bagley to turn full-time to novel-writing by the mid-1960s. He published a total of 16 thrillers, all craftsmanlike and nearly all best-sellers. Typical of UK 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. Also typically, his work has received little attention from filmmakers, yielding only a few, unremarkable adaptations. Bagley and his wife left South Africa for Italy and then England in 1965. They settled for a time in Totnes, Devon, then moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands in 1976.

Desmond Bagley died of complications resulting from a stroke. He was fifty-nine. His last two novels were published posthumously.