Quiller Bamboo

Quiller #15

by Adam Hall

Summoned late at night to the Bureau, Quiller attends a secret conference with the foreign secretary and a surprise the Chinese ambassador to Britain. Minutes later, shots ring out and the ambassador's body is flung out onto the sidewalk of a deserted London street, riddled with bullets. Searching for clues, Quiller flies to Calcutta to meet Sojourner, a key ally in the plan to bring democracy to China. But Sojourner is killed-thus, two men, both dedicated to bringing freedom to their country, are dead. No wonder Quiller is skeptical about his next to smuggle a Chinese dissident-who might be able to lead an uprising that would topple the despotic Chinese regime-into Tibet. While the first rescue mission succeeds, Quiller and the rather intractable dissident he is guarding encounter enemies-some disguised as friends-after they land in Tibet's high-mountain and desolate capital Llasa. Quiller must use ingenuity as well as his incomparable combat skills to survive this deadly environment.

Genres: Thriller, Espionage, Fiction, Spy Thriller

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Author also wrote as Elleston Trevor.

Author Trevor Dudley-Smith was born in Kent, England on February 17, 1920. He attended Yardley Court Preparatory School and Sevenoaks School. During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer. After the war, he started writing full-time. He lived in Spain and France before moving to the United States and settling in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1946 he used the pseudonym Elleston Trevor for a non-mystery book, and later made it his legal name. He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Adam Hall, Simon Rattray, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Roger Fitzalan, Howard North, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith, and Lesley Stone. Even though he wrote thrillers, mysteries, plays, juvenile novels, and short stories, his best-known works are The Flight of the Phoenix written as Elleston Trevor and the series about British secret agent Quiller written as Adam Hall. In 1965, he received the Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America and the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for The Quiller Memorandum. This book was made into a 1967 movie starring George Segal and Alec Guinness. He died of cancer on July 21, 1995.

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written shortly after the Tienanmen Square massacre, this is an oddly bittersweet story, in that it revolves around a mission to replace the recently-vilified Beijing government with a truly democratic alternative. And then, 3/4s of the way through the book, a third alternative pops up in the form of a more enlightened Communist government led by a Zhao Ziyang-type figure, and promising an almost utopian, enlightened form of Socialism, with true economic equality, Earth-friendly technologies, and genuine social justice that could be achieved in just ten or twenty years...

Well, obviously none of that ever happened...and here we are, twenty years later, and far deeper in the crapper than ever. So...nice story, but don't let it fool you - we are today even more than ever in need of a Thanos-like decision maker, if we are to somehow move the doomsday clock back in the other direction, (which as of January 23, has been reset to just 100 seconds before midnight - its closest ever).

Doom and gloom aside, however, this was a great read. If you've read any other Quillers, you know what to expect - which is to say, a whole lotta this:

I don't like it when a signal hits the board from the field and Croder or Shepley picks up the executive like a bloody pawn and puts him down in another square, when in point of fact the said executive can be working his way through a minefield in the dark with a pack of war-trained dogs on his tracks or cooped up in a plain van with a gun trained on him while he tries to get at his capsule before they put him under the light - I've been in both situations and a dozen like them, dear God, a hundred, and you get to resent those people back there in Whitehall, the red-tabs ensconced comfortably behind the firing line, doing their daily stint and going home to a nice hot shower while you're lying out there in a cellar in Zagreb with four days' filth on you and blood in your shoe.

So, yeah - same old Hall. Unfortunately, this book also brings the same complaint I had with the last one I read, Quiller's Run. Both books are set in exotic locales - Run in Singapore, which I know well, and Bamboo in Tibet, which I've always wanted to visit - but then Hall doesn't really do anything with them. There's no real Tibetan flavor here other than it being cold, dusty and Buddhist; just like there was no real Singapore in the other, aside from it being hot, steamy and generic Southeast Asian. And I realize that's difficult when writing in the first person - it's hard for Quiller to suddenly stop running and get all descriptive...but still, somewhat of a missed opportunity, IMHO.

Also - one other really niggly criticism: Hall includes a lot of verbatim Chinese dialogue, some with translation but much without. And while he gets a lot of it right, he gets a fair amount wrong, too; and so it seems like if you're going to go to all that trouble, you'd double-check it with someone to make sure it was accurate. Even more egregious, he repeatedly refers to Chinese current as yen, when it is in fact - and obviously - yuan; yen is and will always be strictly Japanese.

But that's really about the only think that keeps this from being a real 5-star read. If you're at all a fan of the indestructible Quiller, this is one of his better romps.

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hall is the master of the spy thriller. Somehow, he manages to make every chapter a cliff hanger without resorting to the contrived emergencies of a pot-boiler (such as Clive Cussler). If you want non-stop thrills and tension, Quiller is the man who can deliver.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This entry in the Quiller series was somewhat disappointing, it has a ridiculous and rather hopeless premise, and the preparation for the mission is remarkably slipshod, for example the whole insulin situation. It still has some cleverly plotted tight scrapes and maneuvers but it might have been a two-star book for me except for Chong, who manages to surprise Quiller in a good way and I sincerely hope he survived this mission.

[cool breeze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quiller in China in support of efforts to overthrow the communist regime and replace it with democracy. The novel uses the 1989 events of Tiananmen Square as the jumping off-point for another solid, but largely undistinguished Quiller episode. Some memorable imagery (the sky burial) and a good plot twist near the end enliven the well-worn Quiller formula. Published in 1991 and set in the present, Thatcher is mentioned as being Prime Minister, even though she was ousted by her own party in 1990. Interestingly, there are signs near the end of the book that Hall has soured on some of the politically correct beliefs, particularly watermelon environmentalism (green on the outside, red on the inside), that have infected his writing since 1985. He has the main objective of the mission brainwashed with such environmental beliefs and then has Quiller remark "Poor little bugger, sitting there dreaming about his bloody windmills..."

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiller's mission is the central piece in an attempt to overthrow the Chinese government amid the fallout from the Tianamen Square massacre. Most of the book takes place in Lhasa, Tibet, and Quiller is in the red zone throughout the book as he attempts to safeguard and deliver the most important member of the plot. Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor) was an equal to Len Deighton at the least, and hasn't been surpassed by any recent writers.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating between 3 & 4

My lowest rated Quiller novel which is disappointing as I found all of the other 4+

The writing and pacing of the story were at the usual high standard and really carry the reader along.
However the mission objective/plot fell below those of other Q novels.
More than likely due to the real world history which never really impinges on the Q novels as their what-if moments are always just a side step way and believable I thought.
This is probably the reason for the lower than usual rating. From the unusual briefing location at the start when security is so bad the ambassador is killed through to the insulin problem later in Tibet plus other minor points made it seem a bit like amateur hour compared to previous novels.
The core objective of removing the Chinese government also felt like wish fulfilment on the authors part as opposed to an actually achievable objective for the mission. This story that made the bureau seem like a mercenary output instead of a black ops deniable government at length organisation - not well drawn I thought.
The ending I also thought came very suddenly, as happens in other Q novels but this time just felt too sudden and too convenient in some kind of way.
Overall then well written and a book that drags the reader along with the characters. Not one for a Quiller newbie though , and one with a less satisfactory plot than is usual.

[Dr Susan Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the plot and virtual travel (in this COVID time) with much of the story set in Tibet. Use of pin-yin interesting (with no translation). The story written after Tiananmen was poignant especially as we have seen China moving far right again in recent months - the counterproductive closure of the Tianenmen Square Museum in Hong Kong showing yet another cultural barbaric act - there's no use denying or hiding history - so let's hope there is a Baibing out there one day.

[Nicola · Rating 4 out of 5]

It might not be Quiller’s Run but it’s still enough to have me perched on a wall reading the last few pages in sunlight rather than waste precious minutes going inside and opening my apartment door.

[stormhawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a wonder that I have any fingernails left with reader through nailbiters like Adam Hall's Quiller series. The impossible is just another day of business in the shadow executive's world, and the story, set in China shortly after Tienammin Square brings in elements that were very much s part of the public consciousness of those times.