Above is an uncredited 1961 cover from Corgi Books for Lucille Fletcher’s Blindfold. If her name sounds familiar it may because she also wrote the classic Sorry, Wrong Number. Her main character here isn’t kidnapped. He’s a psychiatrist who’s flown top secret to treat a patient whose identity and location he’s not allowed to learn. It’s actually the patient who may be the kidnapping victim, though the doc is in danger too, from mere association. When events force him to try locating his mystery patient again, despite having been blindfolded each time he was taken to see him, the doc’s keen senses come into play—everything from his internal clock to the feel of the ground beneath his shoes to his sense of smell.
Is he able to locate a distant place he’s never seen with his own eyes? Well, it wouldn’t much of a thriller if he couldn’t. We don’t know if this is the first time this gimmick was used in a novel, but it’s a pretty cool plot contrivance. Interestingly, despite the Cold War seriousness of the novel and the intense menace of the paperback’s cover art, the story was transformed into one of those insouciant little thrillers peculiar to the 1960s, along the lines of Charade or Arabesque. It was also called Blindfold and it starred Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale. In fact, see below…
