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.
Reg Gadney was born in Cross Hills, Yorkshire in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Oxford and at Stowe. He studied English, Fine Art and Architecture at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge, and whilst there he became the editor of Granta. He won a Theodore von Karman Scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he became an Instructor and Research Fellow.
Before going up to Cambridge he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards and served in London, Windsor, Libya, France and in Norway where he qualified as a NATO instructor in Winter Warfare and Arctic Survival. He was then employed in the British Embassy in Oslo as Assistant to the Naval, Military and Air Attache. In 1969 he was appointed Deputy Controller of the National Film Theatre where he organised many film seasons, including the first tribute to the Cinematheque Francaise and Henri Langlois.
In 1970 he became a part-time Tutor at the Royal College of Art. He was subsequently made Senior Tutor, Fellow and the youngest Pro-Rector in the history of the College. For several years he was responsible for the Academic Policy, Student Welfare and the Lion and Unicorn. He has also lectured at both Oxford and Cambridge universities, Harvard, MIT, at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and at the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Moscow.
In 1984 he became a full-time writer. He has written several screenplays for television, including Last Love for the BBC and the award-winning Kennedy for Central TV and NBC. He has also adapted Iris Murdoch's The Bell for the small screen. He has written for The Spectator, the London Magazine and the Evening Standard. His adaptation of Minette Walters' novel, The Sculptress, was shown on BBC1, and earned Gadney a Bafta nomination. He is the author of eleven novels, including the Alan Rosslyn books - Just When We Are Safest, The Achilles Heel, Mother, Son and Holy Ghost and Strange Police. A fifth case for Rosslyn, Gadney's exhilarating The Scholar of Extortion, was published by Faber in June 2003. Reg Gadney lives in London.
