Dr David Audley: The Labyrinth Makers & Other Paths to Glory

Two award-winning spy novels featuring intelligence agent Dr David Audley by Anthony Price, dramatised with full casts

Crime novelist and journalist Anthony Price was highly regarded for his 19 espionage thrillers featuring intelligence agents Dr David Audley and Colonel Jack Butler. Here are two of the best books in the series, adapted for radio: the CWA Silver Dagger Award-winning The Labyrinth Makers, and Other Paths to Glory, which won the Gold Dagger and was shortlisted for the 2005 Dagger of Daggers Award for the best crime novel of the past 50 years.

The Labyrinth Makers – The accidental draining of a lake reveals a crashed RAF Dakota, the body of a World War II airman and a cargo of builder’s rubble. A few days later, MOD backroom man David Audley receives an early morning summons to London, where he is instructed to abandon his Middle East research and investigate a Russian agent named Panin. Aided by the dead pilot’s daughter, Audley attempts to find out why the KGB are so interested in the downed plane – and soon uncovers a deadly plot involving smuggling, a ruined Berlin flak tower and the legendary Schliemann Treasure… John Stride stars as Dr David Audley and Paula Wilcox as Faith in this thrilling tale of intrigue, treachery and unexpected romance.

Other Paths to Glory – Writing a book on World War I, Paul Mitchell is surprised to be called away from his studies by Audley and his colleague Jack Butler, asking questions about a German trench map. Returning home from the library, he is attacked and almost drowned – and when his supervisor is killed in a house fire and a Somme veteran dies in a hit-and-run ‘accident’, it becomes clear that anyone with a connection to the fatal 1916 assault on Bouillet Wood and the Prussian Redoubt is being murdered. Can the two MOD men keep Mitchell alive, and discover why the past has returned to take revenge on the present? Starring Martin Jarvis as Paul Mitchell, with Tony Britton as Dr Audley and Ronald Baddiley as Col. Butler.

Cast and credits
Written by Anthony Price

The Labyrinth Makers
Dr David Audley – John Stride
Faith – Paula Wilcox
Tierney – Alan Manson
Sir Frederick – Peter D’Souza
Morrison – Neil Packham
Mr Jones – Ian Sexon
Mrs Harlin – Pat Williams
Jenkins – Mark Coleman
Roskill – Michael MacKenzie
Butler – Raymond Ross
Jake/Panin – Laurance Rudic
Maclean – Sandy Neilson

Dramatised by Nick McCarty
Directed by Hamish Wilson
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 18 January 1992

Other Paths to Glory
Dr Audley – Tony Britton
Paul Mitchell – Martin Jarvis
Col Butler – Ronald Baddiley
Mrs Mitchell – Lorna Rosslyn
Constable Bell/Marcel Jarras – David Graham
Mr Hutchinson/Capt Faversham – Douglas Blackwell
General Leigh-Woodhouse – Jeffrey Segal
Nicole MacMahon – Silvie Dattas
Gatekeeper/Sorel – Steve Hodson
Edouard Olivier – Andre Maranne

Adapted by Alison Plowden
Produced and directed by Harry Catlin
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 15 May 1976

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