Running Blind

Desmond Bagley

Having read it

★★★☆☆

A decent thriller (of its time) with a not too bad ending. However, overall, it seemed to me, a bit ‘lost’ in its descriptions of characters and Iceland at the expense of a narrative which may have benefited from a swifter pace to increase its page-turning abilities.

A good passage

I took off the top and looked inside and saw a piece of brown, shiny plastic with a somewhat electrical look about it – you can see bits of it in any radio repair shop. I tipped the contents of the box into the palm of my hand and looked at the gadget speculatively and somewhat hopelessly.
The piece of brown plastic was the base plate for an electronic circuit, a very complex one. I recognized resistors and transistors but most of it was incomprehensible. It had been a long time since I had studied radio and the technological avalanche of advances had long since passed me by. In my day a component was a component, but the microcircuitry boys are now putting an entire and complicated circuit with dozens of components on to a chip of silicon you’d need a microscope to see.
‘What is it?’ asked Elin with sublime faith that I would know the answer.
‘I’m damned if I know,’ I admitted.