Czech Republic edition

Bagley’s novel was published in the Czech Republic under the title Běh Naslepo, a literal translation of ‘Running Blind’. The novel was translated into Czech by Karel Šmejkal. The ‘Knižní klub’ (Book club) hardback edition shown above (ISBN 80-242-0407-X / 9-788024-204079) was published in 2000 by Českého vydání © Euromedia Group, k.s.
The translation of the dust jacket text reads:

To be encumbered with a corpse is to be in a difficult position, especially when the corpse is without benefit of death certificate. True, any doctor, even one just hatched from medical school, would have been able to diagnose the cause of death. The man had died of heart failure or what the medical boys pompously call cardiac arrest.

The proximate cause of his pumper having stopped pumping was that someone had slid a sharp sliver of steel between his ribs just far enough to penetrate the great muscle of the heart and to cause a serious and irreversible leakage of blood so that it stopped beating. Cardiac arrest, as I said.

I wasn’t too anxious to find a doctor because the knife was mine and the hilt had been in my hand when the point pricked out his life.

Desmond Bagley’s novel Running Blind is another suspenseful detective story from the pen of the famous author. Following the novel Bahama crisis, which took place in the exotic location of the Bahamian islands, this time we move to rugged Iceland.
A former agent of the British Secret Service, Alan Stewart, arrives in Keflavik to undertake a seemingly simple task. Right from the start, however, he faces obstacles and finds himself in the middle of a strange game in which people’s lives have no value. Alan refuses to blindly follow orders and is targeted by unknown assailants. He decides to discover the truth and becomes a hunted man, his life threatened not only by Russian intelligence agents but his former colleagues as well. Together with his girlfriend Elin, Alan Stewart embarks on a journey across Iceland and gradually begins to understand the meaning of the intelligence game.

In this book the overall tension of the whole story adds to the attractiveness of the rugged Icelandic landscape, which the author describes with unprecedented knowledge.