I was born in 1968, fifty years after the end of the Great War. At that time, veterans of World War I were younger than WWII veterans are today. But as this excellent essay in The Economist notes, with the passing of the last two British combat veterans, that war has passed from living memory into the pages of history.
I think that WWI is notable because it was the first war of a recognizably modern age. Sure, most transport was still by horse, but there were trucks and airplanes as well. Machine guns, fast-firing artillery, and poison gas – all the modern conveniences of killing.
WWI is also notable for its indescribable futility. Though I have obviously only read about it, it’s clear that nothing was gained by the fighting; the late Harry Patch (111 years old) and Henry Allingham (113) both saw action at Passchendaele, where it took three months and 300,000 lives to capture five miles. When it was over, the captured land had been reduced to a sea of mud. If you slipped off the duckboards that crisscrossed it, you could literally drown, and many did. The greatest of the war poems was written about this battle.
The was swept away the old imperial era, replacing dynasties with progressive governments that promised modernity, but the instability resulted in WWII just twenty years later.
I believe that wars can be necessary and even moral, but we should never forget that, no matter its outcome, was produces misery, suffering and death. It kills many fine young men, and should never be entered into lightly. Even in a push-button age, we must count the costs, and never forget.
So last night I finished Quiller Balalaika, the 19th and final novel about British superspy Quiller by Elleston Trevor (under his pen name “Adam Hall”). It was written in 1995, and deals with the rise of organized crime is post-Soviet Russia. It’s an above average entry in the series, and seemed especially good after the disjointed Kobra Manifesto. I intentionally saved Balalaika until then end, and not just because it was the last in the series. I read it last because, as he wrote it, Trevor was dying from cancer.
If the reality of his daily life affected the story, I didn’t notice it much. Perhaps in Quiller’s gambit to bring home the big prize, in which he risks more than he ever has before, and even admits to it, or in his open spirituality, but even these are not out of character with the rest of the books. And this is no “last episode”; unlike “M*A*S*H” or “Cheers”, for example, this is just one more adventure in a string of them. Trevor had said what he wanted, and didn’t have anything to add.
More remarkable is the fact that this book includes afterwords by Trevor’s wife and his adult son, in which they describe the last months and even days of his life. The writer loved life, wanted more, and keenly felt the loss of things he would never do. One thing he was damned sure he would do: finish his final work, dictating the last few pages as he was too weak to type.
Then the book was done, and so was he.
I wish I had met him. He was attending conventions as late as 1995, when he was already quite ill, and if I had been involved at all in mystery fandom then, we might have met. He sounds like such an interesting man, a proper gentleman, but engaging rather than reserved.
I wonder if we can see reflections of him in Quiller, his greatest creation. Quiller’s passion, his compassion, his discipline and neuroticism. Quiller could be fatalistic, could see that there may be no way out, could know that one day there would be no way out, and yet he always tried to pull one last rabbit out of the hat…
When I finish up a series like this and know that I’ll never read another Quiller book, I always feel a sense of loss. I always want more. But in this case it’s not just the books I’ll miss. I could have met him if I’d only known, and now, it’s too late.
In the past year I’ve become a big fan of the Quiller novels of Adam Hall, a pseudonym of English novelist Elleston Trevor (most famous for The Flight of the Phoenix).
Quiller is unusual for a fictional spy. He’s extremely taciturn, with no personal relationships outside of work, and no real friends in it – only people he respects. Despite this, he frequently shows compassion to those wounded, physically or emotionally. When in the field he’s all business. He never engages in casual conversation, he probes for information. He seems to be an expert on just about every subject, especially martial arts, and has such a complete knowledge and mastery of his own physiology that he can, for example, make himself faint it required.
Now, none of that is really so unusual, but Quiller is also deeply neurotic. He loves living on the brink, but at the same time it wears away at his nerves so that he’s always at the breaking point. He frequently lies to himself or ignores his own better judgement to find the guts to continue. And there’s not a speck of humour to be found in these books, only grim irony.
Physically he’s left undefined but I always pictured him as slightly built but wiry, blonde, and generally nondescript.
Contrast that to Bond, the philandering clubman, always quick with a quip (moreso in the movies). Bond certainly sees to his business but, compared to the aescetic Quller, he certainly indulges his vices, with considerable relish.
While watching the cheesy early-80s Bond flick Octopussy the other day, it occurred to me that there’s a spy out there right now who matches up to my image of Quiller in just about every way: James Bond. The “rebooted” franchise, with its darker tone, its emphasis on skill instead of seduction, and, most of all, its Bond in Danial Craig, is just about exactly the way I’d pictured Quiller.
Go read the books, though, they’re really unique, and with the “Harry Palmer” novels of Len Deighton, really make up a sort of alternative universe of spies to the one we normally think of.
