The Mandarin Cypher in Espionage Aficionados

Nov 20, 2018 Feliks rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-thrillers

A more succinct Quiller adventure than what I am used to; a briefer Quiller read than I desired; a more compact packaging of Quiller thrills than I expected. The writing--as usual--as consistently taut and frantic as ever; but as Quiller journeys to Hong Kong this time (only two books ago he was in Bangkok) the locale doesn't demand that Hall go to great feats of description. Only one book ago Quiller was in the deserts of Tunisia and Hall was hugely evocative. Here, just a few lines of attentio A more succinct Quiller adventure than what I am used to; a briefer Quiller read than I desired; a more compact packaging of Quiller thrills than I expected. The writing--as usual--as consistently taut and frantic as ever; but as Quiller journeys to Hong Kong this time (only two books ago he was in Bangkok) the locale doesn't demand that Hall go to great feats of description. Only one book ago Quiller was in the deserts of Tunisia and Hall was hugely evocative. Here, just a few lines of attention is paid to setting in each chapter. This makes the lean read.

Nevertheless there is a heaping handful of psychological insights, cunning strategies, flairful touches of action and pacing. Still; left me wanting a bit more. Each of the two previous Quillers I enjoyed kept me on a knife-edge for almost two weeks each. I finished this romp in little more than two days.

There's a total of three very fine scenes of hand-to-hand combat. One of them, in SCUBA gear. That was indeed nifty. Freaky underwater fighting.

The usually strong sense of 'satisfaction' and 'fulfillment' at the end of any Quiller yarn: definitely present in this one. Ingenious and audacious.

Still, Quiller didn't have to go through quite so much of an ordeal in this tale as he usually does. It was not balls-to-the-wall. An 'easy' Quiller read, if one can say that.

His superiors --his controllers --are relatively benign this time around, instead of 'tossing him to the wolves' as they usually do (something wholly lacking in Fleming's Bond series). But there's only one mystery to solve: an English scientist has been killed and his widow is behaving suspiciously.

Anyway I sure hope Adam Hall (aka Elleston Trevor, the author of this series and many other greats like 'Flight of the Phoenix' ended his days a wealthy man. These books of his are stupendous.

I continue to maintain my opinion that he is the best modern-day writer of action thrillers; carrying on in the tradition of Hammett. There are very few other writers who can make this claim. ...more

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Dec 02, 2021 Philip rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-stars, 1970s, cold-war-fiction, spy-fiction-british, noir, fiction-series, kiss-kiss-bang-bang, first-person, china-communist, mckays

Another great Quiller book, this one kicking off just two months after The Tango Briefing, (the first Quiller I read a few years ago; I'm obviously reading these way out of sequence).

The story is set in 1974-75 Hong Kong, towards the very end of the Mao Tse-tung era, and as such presents a nice time-capsule look at the waning days of "bad China," just before Deng Xiao-ping introduced "good China," (which today is sadly veering back towards the "bad" side again); back when the only way to physica ...more

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Nov 27, 2015 Larry Loftis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Elleston Trevor's (Adam Hall) best. This is my new favorite novel. While you can't really compare books in different genres (which is better, 1984 or The Great Gatsby?), The Mandarin Cypher reigns at the top of the espionage thriller mantle. There is no filler, no wasted prose, only pace, pace, and more pace. Mystery? Check. Danger? Check. Reversals? Check. Tight prose? Check. Spycraft? In spades. Most importantly, it has a terrific ending, so rare and difficult.

You know you have a great book w ...more

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Oct 13, 2015 cool breeze rated it really liked it

Quiller in British controlled Hong Kong on a supposedly routine mission while he waits for the real mission to get going. Considerable underwater action for the first time in a Quiller novel; probably some Bond influence there. Lots of good plot twists and plenty of action, but it’s tough to say more without spoilers.

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