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Adam Hall : Quiller Salamander

Otto Penzler Books, New York, 1994

ISBN 1883402409

8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. P2 - A first edition (complete numberline) hardcover book SIGNED by Adam Hall on the title page in very good condition in very good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has some wrinkling, chipping and crease on the edges and corners, tanning and light shelf wear. Book lightly cocked, some bumped corners, wrinkling on the spine edges, significant bug damage/chipping and some stains on the right side page edges and a few on the top and bottom page edges, light discoloration and shelf wear. Includes a laid in "Q" with author's name bookmark. Adam Hall is the pseudonym of Elleston Trevor. For the first time, Quiller, the seasoned shadow executive of the anonymous Bureau in London, takes on a mission kept secret even from the head of the Bureau himself. Its code name is Salamander, its theater of operations Cambodia, its target Pol Pot, the architect of the infamous Killing Fields. Even as he arrives in the steaming heat of Phnom Penh, Quiller knows that he can trust neither Flockhart, his control in London, nor Pringler, his director in the field. His only ally is Gabrielle Bouchard, a young Eurasian photojournalist, who is waging her private vendetta against the murderous guerrillas of the Khmer Rouge. Endangered at every turn by Flockhart's reticence and the treacherous jungle, Quiller undertakes a suicide mission in the hope of saving Phnom Penh from an eleventh-hour attack by the Khmer Rouge intended to reinstate its bloody rule in Cambodia. 9.5"x6.5", 247 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Elleston Trevor was a British novelist and playwright who wrote under several pseudonyms. Born Trevor Dudley-Smith, he eventually changed his name to Elleston Trevor. Trevor worked in many genres, but is principally remembered for his 1964 adventure story The Flight of the Phoenix, written as Elleston Trevor, and for a series of Cold War thrillers featuring the British secret agent Quiller, written under the pseudonym Adam Hall. In all, Trevor wrote over 100 books. He also wrote as Simon Rattray, Howard North, Roger Fitzalan, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith and Lesley Stone. The Quiller series focuses on a solitary, highly capable "shadow executive" (named after Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) who works (generally alone) for a British agency in Whitehall called "the Bureau". Officially the organization doesn't exist, which allows a greater latitude to the sometimes-questionable and always hazardous operations it conducts. He narrates his own adventures. Quiller (not his real name) occupies a literary middle ground between James Bond and John le Carré. He is a skilled driver, pilot, diver, martial artist, and linguist, but he does not carry a gun. Regarded by his superiors as "reliable under torture", Quiller is sometimes captured, then interrogated or tortured without giving away vital information. The series is very stylized, featuring intense depictions of spy tradecraft (especially "shadowing," the techniques of tailing and evading surveillance) and professional relationships, surprising jump cuts between chapters, and deep, self-critical, incisive, practically stream-of-consciousness, interior monologues highlighting Quiller's mental self-discipline. Most of the novels feature a high-speed car chase, with Quiller as pursuer or pursued, and an extended, detailed scene of hand-to-hand combat. The first of the Quiller novels, The Berlin Memorandum (1965) (retitled The Quiller Memorandum in the US) won an Edgar Award, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Novel. It was filmed in 1966 under its US title with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and starred George Segal and Alec Guinness. It was also adapted into a 1975 British television series, featuring Michael Jayston. As "Simon Rattray," he wrote mystery novels featuring Hugo Bishop, a brilliant man who, like Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, solved crimes as a kind of mental challenge. The first Bishop novel, Knight Sinister, appeared in 1951; five more followed, the last appearing in 1957. (These have later been republished under the Adam Hall byline.) That Trevor could also be very effective in the straight, non-mystery genre is shown by The Billboard Madonna (1961): the protagonist accidentally kills a beautiful woman in a car crash, and is obsessively compelled to memorialize her. Under the name "Adam Hall," he also wrote The Volcanoes of San Domingo about a mysterious plane crash off the coast of San Domingo and the efforts to uncover what really happened. When alerted by a report indicating that one of the crew members had been seen alive, "Rayner," an employee of the airline, is sent to investigate. He also wrote children's books about the character "Wumpus", a koala, and his friends, including Flip Flap, the penguin. Titles included Wumpus (published 1945, by Gerald G. Swan), and More about Wumpus (published 1947). Other children's books include Scamper-Foot the Pine Marten, Ripple-Swim the Otter, and the Woodlander series (Deep Wood, Green Glade, Sweethallow Valley, Badger's Moon, Badger's Beech, Badger's Wood, Mole's Castle and Panic in the Woodland). His book The Big Pick-Up was one of the stories on which the 1958 film Dunkirk was based. Trevor also wrote radio plays for the BBC.. Book Condition: Very Good. Binding: Hardcover. Jacket: Very Good

First Edition
Signed by Author

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