- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; First Edition edition (3 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571202926
- ISBN-13: 978-0571202928
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,603,146 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Strange Police is a cool and intricately plotted espionage thriller, a synthesis of Ian Fleming and Gerald Seymour. Gadney's hero Rosslyn re-appears, but is now much more a Bond-like blunt instrument, a rough-edged and neutral survivor. Minimum time is spent characterising Rosslyn, in order to get on with the steadily accumulating tension of the plot. And what a plot! This beguiling and highly original narrative deals with nothing less than the theft of the Elgin marbles from the British Museum.
Rosslyn has undertaken some small-scale surveillance work in Greece, when he becomes involved with his client Cleo Apsilantis. But she is brutally murdered, and Rosslyn finds himself facing trumped-up charges. He discovers that Cleo was part of a remarkable conspiracy to return the Elgin marbles to Athens after audaciously stealing them. Rosslyn finds himself not only up against the sinister Dragos but the powerful and corrupt Tunim brothers, along with colleagues in the British security services whose agenda is very different from his.
If fans of Gadney's earlier work need to adjust to his new leaner style, they will find that the dividends are many. The plotting is a model of concision and invention. When Gadney allows his descriptive powers full rein, they are as acute as ever:
There was also something of the unhealthy couch potato bully about him. It showed in the narrow, porcine eyes, which seemed to glint when he jabbed you in the ribs with his fist, a little too sharply for comfort, with his favoured gesture of greeting.--Barry Forshaw
Product Description
A Greek billionaire is in the final stages of planning the greatest and most audacious robbery of modern times - the theft of the Elgin Marbles, known as the Parthenon Marbles, from the British Museum - to be returned to the Parthenon in Athens. No difficulty or expense can stand in his way. Alan Rosslyn, special investigator for the intelligence and security advisors Campbell and Menzies Tumin, is mixing business and pleasure in Mani, where he has fallen in love with his client, Cleo Ipsilantis. On the eve of his reluctant departure to London she is the victim of a murderous attack and Rosslyn finds himself chief suspect. He is spirited out of Greece by the British Special Intelligence Service. He discovers that a powerful clique within SIS is actively encouraging the attempt on the marbles and is even turning a blind eye to it. Why? And what is the reason for bringing Rosslyn into the conspiracy and killing his lover? Reg Gadney's thriller takes us into the heart of Greece, the historical controversy that surrounds the possession of the Elgin Marbles and the endlessly corrupt world of the Intelligence Services.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Take a plot that would stretch credulity in a cartoon strip. Then sketch out a dozen cardboard characters and devise a web of tortuous past relationships between them (start simply with being secret lovers, move on to long lost parents or bastard offspring and season with some double dealing and former treachery). Now add a schoolboy's knowledge of the secret world (sprinkle some gratuitous technical details here and there to show you've done some research) and throw in dialogue driven by cliches as dissonnant and frequent as forks in a tumble drier. Set the whole in equal parts in perfidious drizzly Albion and passionate sun-basted Greece and chuck in some topical references. Oh, and don't forget to structure the thing in pretentiously short chapters, some only as long as a paragraph. (it spins the length of the book out and makes it easier to turn into a film should you be lucky enough to sell it to Hollywood). And Eureka! There you have a thriller that is so formulaic and poorly written that the publishers' PR puff-writer on the back cover can't even get the title right - there the book is entitled "Stealing Greece" which we must presume was an earlier sound bite for this oily stew. If you're fog bound at Carlisle railway station and there's nothing else available, these warmed-up leftovers will pass the time: if it's beautifully written, tense, atmospheric and intelligent thrillers you're after, read Alan Furst.
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