The Francis Blake Affair is the ninth in the Blake and Mortimer series.
As the heads of British intelligence meet to discuss how to deal with an enormous, well-organized spyring revealed by a caught spy, Blake's Number Two claims his agents have taken surveillance pictures of a dead drop which could identify the mole. The pictures are shown... clearly showing Captain Blake dropping off a message. He goes on the run with the spy, while it's up to Mortimer to find out the truth.
The Comic Book contains the following tropes:
- Ask a Stupid Question...: The postal van driver, being asked what he's carrying (Blake and Jennings inside postal bags), answers "What do you think a postal van carries, sergeant? Tomatoes?"
- Big Damn Heroes: The SAS, called by Honeychurch.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Olrik demands Blake shoot another MI6 agent... and leaves the two in the cell, allowing Blake to shoot the ceiling and Fielding to fake being dead, letting them escape.
- Call-Back: Olrik's henchman Jack is the same as the one who tried to kill him the "The Mystery of the Great Pyramid".
- Clear My Name: Blake's only chance at public recognition of his mole status is the Home Secretary. Unfortunately, he's been put in a coma by a car "accident".
- Crazy Homeless People: Entirely averted by the hobo Mortimer encounters, Arnold Willoughby III. He helps Mortimer get where needs to go, and his only vice is to drain a flask of twelve-year whiskey in one go.
- Drives Like Crazy: Blake's "cousin" (actually the widow of one of his agents) claims she got into the habit while driving an ambulance during World War Three (the Yellow Empire invasion).
- Eagle Land: A Type 2 makes an appearance as Blake is hiding in a postal van, loudly protesting that he doesn't need to show the (British) cops his papers, making himself enough of a nuisance that the van goes through unsearched.
- Evil Plan: Invite the coutry's leading scientists to a seminar in a rich philanthropist's castle, drug them and kidnap them aboard a submarine, delivering them to a foreign power.
- Elaborate Underground Base: The castle has an underground cavern big enough to serve as a submarine dock.
- Mole in Charge: Harold Doyle-Smith, who's part of the council coordinating the efforts of the police, MI5, MI6,and the Intelligence Service.
- No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: The cover shows a (mirrored) panel in which Olrik and Blake have dinner and discuss the latter's betrayal (Olrik doesn't buy it).
- Red Right Hand: Blake is told to be wary of a six-fingered man. When he sees Deloraine has one, he figures out his position as the Big Bad.
- Shoot Your Mate: As proof of his actually having betrayed MI5, Olrik demands that Blake shoot his agent they captured.
- Stuff Blowing Up: As they're pinned by gunfire, Mortimer considers using dynamite as grenades.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Olrik coldly executes Jennings after he brings Blake to the hideout as he'd been compromised and thus of no use... with Blake's gun, making him a traitor and a murderer.
