Desmond Lowden’s first job was as a rewind boy in the projection box of a Rank cinema. From there, he became a runner at Britain’s famous Pinewood film studios, working his way up to writing a screenplay for the great comic actor Terry-Thomas. It was the beginning of a career in writing that saw him pen countless plays, screenplays and books. His novels include the thrillers Sunspot, The Chain, Cry Havoc and – most famously – Bellman & True, which was made into an acclaimed crime movie by George Harrison’s Handmade Films in 1987. Now in his seventies, Desmond leads a five-piece jazz group, and continues to write. In 2012, he signed with Apostrophe Books, with Bellman & True being re-released in digital form.
Desmond Scott Lowden passed away on 19 May 2024, aged 86.
£2 million bank robbery. Technical decoding passages lead up to a fast finish. Told with plenty of imagination and neo-Graham Greene-ish atmosphere.
The Observer
What makes Bellman and True unusual are its accoutrements: the scientist’s strange son; the sophisticated dialogue; the touch of poetry in the scientist’s mind; and Lowden’s assured writing. This bank caper is as cliff-hanging an episode as anybody is going to read this year.
This book provided me with one of the most gratifying reading experiences I’ve had lately. The book is briskly paced, deftly executed, with brilliant dialog and a well-researched and richly detailed high-tech bank heist at its core. But what makes it truly unforgettable is the writing, which accomplishes its effects not with surface pyrotechnics but “writing from the inside”—i.e., developing its depth and richness and texture from fully imagining the characters, the setting, the situation, the action.
Moving, affecting, exciting