It's a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour Outback by Michael Davies. 'The Desmond Bagley Centenary Thriller by Michael Davies, from an idea by Desmond Bagley.'
About the Author and Desmond Bagley
Michael Davies began his career as a newspaper journalist and editor and a professional theatre critic. Since moving into fiction, his writing has appeared on stage, screen, radio, the printed page and online.
His debut play won a national competition, and subsequent work includes Tess – The Musical, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles. He is a lifelong Desmond Bagley fan, and in 2019 reworked one of Bagley’s abandoned drafts into the highly acclaimed novel Domino Island.
Desmond Bagley was a multi-million-copy selling author of 16 adventure thrillers. Moving to South Africa after WW2, his transition from unskilled printer’s apprentice, aircraft engineer, mine worker, photographer. Follow @mrgdavies on Twitter
About the book
A brand new novel that continues the legacy of ‘Master of the Genre’ Desmond Bagley by the co-author of Domino Island. - The Sequel to Desmond Bagley’s Domino Island.
Insurance investigator Bill Kemp had never wanted to trek deep into Australia’s remote interior. But when his clients Sophie and Adam Church inherit an abandoned opal mine, triggering some explosive long-lost secrets, they – and Kemp – find themselves facing an unknown enemy even more deadly than the vast, forbidding wilderness of the Outback…
The Desmond Bagley centenary novel honours the legacy of the bestselling thriller writer with a new adventure featuring Bill Kemp, described by Jeffrey Deaver as ‘part James Bond, part Philip Marlowe, and all hero’. Writer Michael Davies, who completed the first Kemp novel Domino Island for publication nearly 40 years after the author’s death, now weaves an original tale of danger and death under the blistering Australian sun.
Review
Could anyone else hear the ominous music playing in the background in the first few chapters? It's the outback, the middle of nowhere - the kind of place that will kill you, that's if one of the many lethal creatures doesn't get you first. No matter how interested you are in your heritage and family background, who goes into a dangerous and very unstable cave without having a real plan in case something goes terribly wrong, which of course it inevitably does.
Bill Kemp is a man of instinct, right? I wonder if the same thoughts crossed his mind when the first step in the midst of a well constructed bigger plan is executed. That gut instinct is quickly overshadowed by shock, concern and the feeling of I told you so.
What starts as fulfilling a wish to find out more about family roots, soon ends in a fight for survival for Sophie, Adam and Bill. A tenuous grasp on a thin thread that connects the three of them to the rest of civilisation.
It's an insidious plot wrapped inside the fascinating backdrop of Australia, a remote and often deadly experience. Woven through something deeper and darker, the core essence of the outback becomes a visceral experience for the reader, as a simple excursion becomes a nightmare.
The author certainly does Bagley justice - this sequel is commendable and hopefully there is scope for more.
Buy Outback at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher : Collins Crime Club; pub date 11 May 2023. Buy at Amazon com.
