Book review - Quiller: A profile and Bury Him Among Kings

Chaille Trevor’s part memoire and part appraisal of her late husband Elleston Trevor’s books is subtitled ‘intimate glimpses into his life and work’ (e-book, 2012).  The profile on Quiller, his shadowy secret agent, is written by Elleston Trevor (Adam Hall) and is only three pages, though enlightening.

Elleston Trevor was a prolific author, first published in 1943 under his own name of Trevor Dudley Smith; he used at least eight other pen-names. A good number of his books were re-issued either as by Elleston Trevor or by Adam Hall. He wrote in several genres – mainstream, children’s, thrillers, espionage, mysteries and plays – until his death in 1995.

The recent sad death of author Philip Kerr brings Elleston Trevor to mind. Kerr bravely fought cancer, determined to deliver his last manuscript, Metropolis (his fourteenth Bernie Gunther novel) to his publisher.

Elleston Trevor had shown similar determination when working on his nineteenth Quiller novel, Balalaika. He dictated the final paragraphs to his son, Jean Pierre. As Chaille says, ‘Inside Quiller’s head we live the close of a novel, and of a master’s life, with a breath of poetry.’ When the inevitability of death sank in, he had chosen not to fight it but to go forward to meet it. ‘Elleston moved on with Quiller-like mettle toward his last challenges: finishing Balalaika, dying gracefully, and beginning a new life. As he saw it, consciousness continues; an ending is a beginning.’

Chaille and Jean Pierre took Elleston’s ashes to the top a mountain that overlooks the family ranch in Show Low, Arizona…

Throughout, Chaille uses quotes and references from many of his twenty-one children’s books, where he could employ his poetic muse. His Hugo Bishop mysteries, each with a chess title (published in the 1950s) were re-issued under his Adam Hall name when the Quiller books became best-sellers.  There’s a lengthy appraisal of his 1970 novel Bury Him Among Kings, which is about a family in the First World War and a lot besides.

Elleston Trevor had a great thirst for knowledge and believed that life was to be lived, yet surprisingly managed to write so many books! 

Chaille Trevor has produced a moving memoire.

Book review - Kingdom Lock

Debut novel Kingdom Lock from I.D. Roberts harks back to the old-fashioned adventure yarn and reminded me slightly of the early Sharpe novels in its evocation of a bold new fighting man, though perhaps not as well written as Bernard Cornwell’s novels.

It’s 1914 and when we first meet Australian Kingdom Lock he is in the Hindu Kush rescuing Amy Townshend, daughter of a general serving in India. She’s no wilting violet, either; there’s unexpected affection between them, but nothing untoward.

Shortly afterwards, Lock is assigned by British Intelligence to undergo a mission in Mesopotamia. Apparently, a German spy is intent on fomenting rebellion in order to seize the precious oilfields. As it happens, Amy has joined the nursing corps against her father’s wishes and is to serve in Basra…

Lock is not only up against a cunning adversary, a master of disguise, but he has to compete for the affections of Amy against an obnoxious fellow officer, Captain Bingham-Smith. Lock is given charge of a few surviving Indian soldiers and quickly impresses them with his sense of fairness and within a short time he is aided by Siddhartha Singh. He also has to contend with the unpleasant and possibly treacherous sergeant major Underhill.

The characters come alive enough to care about them and there’s humour, with certain pompous characters being put in their place; and the final battle scenes are well described and exciting. I feel Roberts captured the period, too.

Overall, I enjoyed the adventure very much and intend buying the second book, For Kingdom and Country where I can reacquaint myself with the above protagonists. 

Editorial comment

The book would have benefited from tighter editing. Word repetition is one of the biggest faults, but the overuse of Lock’s name is another. The book was good, but it could have been very good.

Ashenden

In the preface to his third volume of Collected Stories (1951), Somerset Maugham stipulated, ‘I wrote a batch of stories dealing with the adventures of an agent in the Intelligence Department during the First World War. I gave him the name of Ashenden. They are founded on experience of my own during that war, but I should like to impress upon the reader that they are not what the French call reportage, but works of fiction. Fact is a poor story-teller. It starts a story at haphazard long before the beginning, rambles on inconsequently, and tails off, leaving loose ends hanging about, without a conclusion. The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless. The material it offers for stories is scrappy and pointless; the author has himself to make it coherent, dramatic and probable. That is what I have tried to do in this particular series.’

I first read these stories in the early 1960s and was impressed even then. As far as spy fiction goes, they are dated, and Maugham offends those editors and writers who decry long paragraphs and author intrusion; they are of their time, and none the worse for that. Maugham had the knack to write so that it seemed to the reader to be effortless; he mastered narrative flow. The late Martin Seymour-Smith observes that Maugham ‘was very prolific, and all his novels are readable and intelligent…’ while ‘his short stories are economical and superbly capture the sense of place, and always seem credible.’

Ashenden was an author recruited by a Colonel in the Intelligence Department known by the letter ‘R’. The mysterious ‘R’ is described as a man of ‘somewhat above the middle height, lean, with a yellow deeply-lined face, thin grey hair, and a toothbrush moustache. The thing immediately noticeable about him was the closeness with which his blue eyes were set. He only just escaped a squint. They were hard and cruel eyes, and very wary; and they gave him a cunning, shifty look. He was a man that you could neither like nor trust at first sight. His manner was pleasant and cordial.’

In the much published short story ‘The Hairless Mexican’ Ashenden accompanies the titular character under the cover name of Mr Somerville – which in fact is an alias Maugham used when secretly dealing with the Russian PM Alexander Kerensky in 1917, in the hope of keeping Russia in the war.

This collection consists of seven stories; there were thirty altogether; though fourteen were burned by Maugham as they infringed the Official Secrets Act: published under the title Ashenden, 1928. The stories in this collection are:

Miss King;

The Hairless Mexican;

Giulia Lazzari;

The traitor;

His Excellency;

Mr Harrington’s washing;

Sanatorium.

The Times Literary Supplement said in its review of the Ashenden stories: ‘counter-intelligence work consists often of morally indefensible jobs not to be undertaken by the squeamish or the conscience-stricken.’ Yes, that about sums up a secret agent.

Le Carré called Maugham ‘the first person to write about espionage in a mood of disenchantment and almost prosaic reality.’