''Dragon's Claw'' is the title of an action-adventure novel by

Peter O'Donnell Peter O'Donnell (11 April 1920 – 3 May 2010) was an English writer of mysteries and of comic strips, best known as the creator of ''Modesty Blaise'', an action heroine/undercover trouble-shooter. He was also an award-winning gothic hi ...

which was first published in 1978, featuring the character

Modesty Blaise ''Modesty Blaise'' is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by author Peter O'Donnell and illustrator Jim Holdaway in 1963. The strip follows Modesty Blaise, an exceptional young woman with many talent ...

which O'Donnell had created for a

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

in the early 1960s. It was the ninth book to feature the character.

Plot summary

While sailing a small yacht single-handedly from Australia to New Zealand, Modesty Blaise rescues Luke Fletcher, the world-renowned painter, from drowning. But how in the world did Luke Fletcher end up adrift in the

Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea (Māori: ''Te Tai-o-Rēhua'', ) is a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean, situated between Australia and New Zealand. It measures about across and about from north to south. The sea was named after the Dutch explorer Abe ...

, after having disappeared in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

two months earlier? Luke Fletcher is not the only person from the world of the arts who has disappeared in the last couple of years, but he is the only one who has turned up alive later. Back in England, Modesty and her good friend Willie Garvin refuse to get involved in trying to unravel the mystery, preferring to leave well enough alone. But then Luke Fletcher is killed, and Modesty and Willie make it their goal to find out who is behind it all and bring him/her down. The trail leads back to the Tasman Sea, to Dragon's Claw Island, but Modesty and Willie make a mistake and find themselves in captivity. They've solved the puzzle of why certain people with artistic flair have disappeared, but will they live long enough to make use of this knowledge? Willie, ever the resourceful one, manages to break out of his cell, but then he's recaptured. After that the bad guys don't intend to give Modesty or Willie another chance to escape. They force Modesty to fight a gun duel against the Reverend Uriah Crisp, the gun-toting minister who has proven that he is faster on the draw than Modesty. Modesty is given her own gun and holster, her gun loaded with one bullet. She waits calmly as the crazy priest advances, a prayer book in one hand and a six-shooter on his hip. 1978 British novels Modesty Blaise books Souvenir Press books Novels by Peter O'Donnell {{1970s-spy-novel-stub