Bagley's international settings are enriched by vivid and pertinent descriptions of place, custom, and local interest; his technical information is vital to the plot and is carefully researched and detailed. He depicts natural disasters, political and economic sabotage, third-world revolutions, sea and air adventures, and treasure hunts. His themes range from the incompetence and inhumanity of international espionage to the search for personal identity to the danger of wounded vanity to tribal Africa.
Born in Kendal, Westmorland, England, the son of John Bagley, a miner, Desmond Bagley was brought up in Blackpool in a theatrical boardinghouse. He began work at age fourteen as a printer's devil and tried a variety of jobs until transferring to an aircraft factory at the start of World War II. After the war he traveled to South Africa, working his way south through Europe and the Sahara, stopping for a year each in Uganda (1947), Kenya (1948), and Rhodesia (1949), finally reaching Durban, South Africa, in 1951, having covered territory from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope. In Durban he wrote radio programs on scientific subjects for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (1951-1952). He was editor of the house magazine for Masonite in 1953.
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