SSG: Spy/Spec-Ops Group discussion

So far I've swallered down...

The Quiller Memorandum
Ninth Directive
The Sinkiang Executive
Tango Briefing
The Striker Portfolio

Since I'm classics-only, I'm only intending to read the first nine or so Quillers.

the remaining ones under consideration:
The Mandarin Cypher
The Kobra Manifesto
The Warsaw Document
The Scorpion Signal

Any opinions?


By the way, Adam Hall also wrote the wonderful 'Flight of the Phoenix' just FYI

Feliks wrote: "So far I've swallered down...

The Quiller Memorandum
Ninth Directive
The Sinkiang Executive
Tango Briefing
[book:The Striker Portfolio|1..."

That Kobra Manifesto sounds delightful and interesting, particularly the subject matter of a sophisticated terrorist campaign.

I'm leaning that way too. My reasoning is that I'm not a fan of dreary, slushy, overcast, miserable Poland. Meanwhile, 'Scorpion Signal' is set in Moscow--another pitiable, dismal, burg.
'Mandarin Cypher' is set in ...Hong Kong so that's a strong argument. But 'Kobra Manifesto' is set in Rome, France and finally Cambodia so this looks slightly more awezome.

One can arguably label Quiller an early 'MacGuyver' for the way he goes into missions with no firearms. He wings it; he uses whatever he finds ready to hand.

Nicolai Hel does this too, but Hel is an assassin and Quiller is usually just trying to survive.

In 'Tango Briefing' Quiller is pulled over to the side of a road in the desert and held there for pickup by three tough arabs with machine pistols. He is entirely unarmed. Yet ...he escapes. Its more Bond-like than Bond was!

Reminds me a bit of the contemporary assassin John Rain. The character happens to be a lousy shot with a pistol, so instead he uses strategic sabotage and his martial arts skills to kill those trying to kill him.

Quiller continues to demolish. I've finished two more for my list.

The Quiller Memorandum
The Ninth Directive
The Sinkiang Executive
The Tango Briefing
The Striker Portfolio
The Mandarin Cypher
The Kobra Manifesto

I can vouch for all of these. Each one kicks major ass. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend any particular series unless I was truly walloped. Quiller does that.

The dude is just zany. Almost psychotic. He'll go to any length to succeed in a mission. He an 'extraction specialist', in that he will enter any country, and bring anyone out, whether willing or not.

He truly makes James Bond look asleep.

I've figured out that 'Peking Target' is my next Quiller read and maybe my last one :(

If you ever decide to continue with Quiller past The Peking Target (#10, 1981), I think the best of the later series (11-19) are:

Quiller (#11, 1985, featuring Thatcher and Reagan, who didn't fit easily into Adam Hall's worldview and threatened to upend it)

Quiller's Run (#12, 1988. in which Quiller resigns the Bureau, sort of like Patrick McGoohan's cult TV series, "The Prisoner")

Quiller Solitaire (#16, 1992, which predicts a surprising major world event, years before it happened)

Although not as good as the above, Quiller Balalaika (#19, 1996) is a wistful finale, finished on Adam Hall's deathbed with his son's assistance. It is a fitting conclusion to the series.

Yo Breeze

'ppreciate the recs. Someone on another forum also suggested 'Quiller KGB' to me.

I generally trust savvy readers in my acquaintance but in this area I'm convinced to swim against the stream.

'Topicality' and 'name-dropping' ruins so many thrillers. Look what happened to Freddie Forsythe, re: 'The Fourth Protocol'. Limp.

Maybe its just the rise of newsmedia which cuts the legs out from under so many potentially great reads.

To my way of thinking, a good thriller should be set in a nearly 'abstract' world, such as what Morrell did with The Brotherhood of the Rose series or what Saunders did with 'The Loves of Harry Dancer.

These are books you can pick up at any date long past their publication year, and they still ring true, with no anachronisms.

Foreign nations are always the bad guys, period. Your bosses in Whitehall are always risking your neck, not their necks. Period.

Simplicity. No 'snags'. For example, what if you hate Thatcher? What if you want her slain? 'Targets' in a thriller should always be faceless and nameless.

Memorable scenes from 'The Mandarin Cypher'



First, Quiller lands in Hong Kong and he goes to a pet store to meet his controller. The shop specializes in snakes. Reptile-filled terrariums line the store windows and all the shelves inside. As soon as he gets in the door, a Chinese agent springs on him from behind. The attack would have broken his neck if he hadn't dodged it. But now its hand-to-hand combat in a very small room and the two men are shattering the cases as they roll around on the floor with hissing snakes all around them.

Next: Quiller's car is halted at a traffic signal. Two Chinese thugs car-jack him, climbing in the back seat; holding a pistol to his skull. Quiller drives around for a while, trying to get information from them. Then, he speeds up and races the car off the end of a pier into the harbor.

Finally: Quiller is in scuba gear hoping to infiltrate a state oil rig in the South China Sea. The platform isn't being used to drill oil. The Chinese are guarding it with multi-layered security because there's a Brit egghead held on board. Quiller doesn't realize the danger as he descends on his night-dive. He finds enemy divers patrolling the legs of the structure. Blunders right into one, and then must kill the opponent in pitch-black darkness.

When he descends further, to the correct depth where he can enter one of the legs and get inside, there's something even worse waiting in store. Harrowing.

The Sinkiang Executive is nuts. May be the single-best Quiller episode.



I forget where the romp begins. Somewhere in West Germany, maybe. It doesn't matter.

The situation is: Quiller is in an RAF aerodrome somewhere, spending day after day in a hangar. He's on a literal 'crash-course'. He spends hour after hour in a flight simulator. The simulator mimics a MIG-28 which a Soviet pilot has recently defected with, to the West. Sometime before the novel begins.

The Brits ordinarily would simply study the 'gifted' MIG, salt it away for the purpose of analysis and intel.

Instead, they're putting it right back into action. They're training Quiller to fly it.

Why: the Russkies have a new ICBM missile silo built, all-the-way-the-under-the-ball-sack-of-Siberia. Satellites can't make out the details. They need someone on-the-ground to scout out the info.

There's a contact at the base willing to divulge the info. But how to get at him?

Quiller is a penetration specialist, an extraction specialist. He can get across any frontier. And he has basic piloting skills.

So. They assign him to this fighter-jet and he's got to fly it straight into the Iron Curtain air-defense systems, mimicking a MIG fighter returning to base, and slip past the Red Air Force all the way across their airspace to the little town of Sinkiang on the border of Mongolia.

It's nuts. Quiller not only has to learn how to fly the unfamiliar jet, but then he has to deliberately let the Reds shoot him down somewhere nearby the destination, so that he can innocently parachute down, and complete the rendezvous with the local contact.

Insane! The mission only starts once he lands in Siberia!

Uh, I already see a big bone obstructing this scenario, Feliks. That 'Mig-28' was flown out of Russia many days ago, according to the scenario you read. And now Quiller will pretend to be a Russian pilot flying back to his base, days after it had to be declared 'missing'?. That will be an immediate red warning to any Russian air controller who is not terminally retarded! As for parachuting out after he is shot down, how can he even hope to be able to survive that shootdown? That plot gets a 10 from me on sheer idiocy.

Elleston Trevor was an RAF flight engineer, I'm pretty sure he got all the details correct despite my paraphrase.

The scenario was probably that the Mig was tinkered with to make it look like an ordinary jet in their system. You know. "Having difficulty with my radio" kind of thing. "Sorry, transponder broken". Or, "we're transporting this unit back from East Germany to your airspace". Taking advantage of some administrative disjunct between the two systems and the two airspaces. Trevor certainly didn't let any loophole crop up like the one you mention, it's just a matter of my recap.

So, scrap this from my summary above:
"mimicking a MIG fighter returning to base"

What he probably does is mimic a random, normal Mig in their system, not specifically the one which the defector took with him.

As for how he parachutes to safety: I seem to remember that was part of the training he got in the pre-mission simulator. He learned how to ditch out of the jet before the heat-seeking air-to-air missiles closed within range of his exhaust. And I think the missiles which nail his Mig, were probably not from another fighter but ground-launched SAM.

That being the case: since Gary Powers survived being shot down IRL, I see no reason why Quiller couldn't....

Remember too that Craig Thomas' novel "Firefox" is essentially the same story; and that was a huge success. No one complained about loopholes in that yarn

about this phenomenal yarn, I maintain: it's one of the most perfect action-espionage novels ever penned. Why: it's almost non-stop action. There are no 'chats', no 'briefings', no 'conferences'. Every chapter races to meet a tight deadline.

This is the stamp of all the first dozen Quiller episodes, save for the first (Nazi-oriented) one where the author was apparently feeling his way along to themes he would later develop/discard(?)

And even then: that book has one of the single-best ever penned car chases.

Ultimately, Quiller hates pointless talk and chat. He's an adrenalin junkie in the way that Fleming 'hinted at' with Bond but never came right out and admitted.