The Kobra Manifesto

Told in a startlingly dispassionate tone, this is a spy book worthy of Ian Fleming. Quiller is in a lot of ways more of a British Ninja than a Bond, though, as almost the whole focus of the book is on his physical capabilities and analysis of other characters' capabilities. The story moves at a nice clip and seems like it has the potential for a top-of-the-line global conspiracy setup, but the climax dwindles to a mano-a-mano confrontation without the global implementations you might expect, and the story ends very abruptly. I might have enjoyed it more if I'd read others in the series, so I'll be keeping an eye out for them.

"The Kobra Manifesto" was part of the Cold-War era first run of Quiller novels by Adam Hall (one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific Elleston Trevor (1920-1995)) from 1965's "The Berlin Memorandum" through to 1981's "The Peking Target." Trevor re-booted the series from 1985-1995 in the Glasnost/post Soviet Union era for a 2nd run when all of the books included the monominal Quiller name in the title. I read almost all of the first run during their original issue but missed most of the second, although I have occasionally found them later in used book stores.

The Quiller/Adam Hall style was completely unique in the way that it portrayed a pseudonymous "shadow executive" who worked for "The Bureau" in London on various espionage show more missions. Although obviously inspired by the James Bond fad of various secret agent films and books at the time of the 1960's, the Quiller character was an anti-hero who was reluctant to take on missions, often debated and mis-trusted his field controllers, did not carry guns or any other flashy devices, and would often go into a self-pitying internal monologue where he would bemoan being sent as the ferret into the hole to bring back a prize for his handlers. He would also often meticulously and lengthily describe aspects of his tradecraft and/or the characteristics of machines or of the human body that would determine their actions or their endurance. All in all, it was as anti-glamorous a portrayal of spy fiction as has been written. Len Deighton's Harry Palmer is probably the closest comparison.

Saying goodbye to several dozen books due to a water damage incident and I thought I'd write at least a little memorial for some of them and about why I kept them around. show less

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