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Title details for The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall - Available

The Quiller Memorandum

by Adam Hall
ebook
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Published as The Berlin Memorandum, the superb, Edgar Award-winning thriller by Adam Hall that appeared in 1965 became known as The Quiller Memorandum after the 1966 film version appeared under that title. The hero, whose name is Quiller, was a perfect spy-hero for the 1960s, not unlike Ian Fleming's James Bond or Len Deighton's Harry Palmer. Virtually in a class with the novels of John LeCarré, The Quiller Memorandum endures as a terrific cold-war thriller -- written by the English writer Elleston Trevor, under the pseudonym Adam Hall -- and the Mystery Writers of America awarded it the 1965 Edgar for Best Mystery Novel. The setting is the divided city of Berlin, some 15 years after the end of World War II. Quiller is an enigmatic (and unarmed) agent working in Berlin for an elusive intelligence agency. Besides the nature of his job, Quiller knows little about his employers, and he himself is something of a mystery, a haunted man whose past included courageous but unfulfilled efforts to thwart the Nazis' Final Solution. Quiller's assignment is to penetrate a neo-Nazi organization called Phönix, which has its secret headquarters in Berlin. Phönix is run by a former SS officer named Heinrich Zossen, and Quiller knows him from the war. He witnessed Zossen blithely signal the murder of 300 Jewish men, refusing to allow them to hear Kaddish because it would have made him late for lunch. In an assignment that becomes a personal quest, Quiller wants to find Zossen and destroy him, though one agent has already died trying. Like the best cold-war thrillers -- it appeared shortly after John LeCarré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold -- The Quiller Memorandum has a world-weariness, a sense of unease that deepens its characters and heightens the stakes in the suspense. Trevor, as Hall, evokes the energy and tension of divided Berlin, and the deadly danger that lurks beneath the ruins of the Third Reich. He is a Kafkaesque hero in a Kafkaesque situation, not quite sure who he works for, not terribly certain where his dreaded enemy is. The New York Times hailed the book as "1965's leading spy novel," and English writer Kingsley Amis called it "the best espionage novel I have read in 1965." Life magazine called it "the best of the new-style spy thrillers."
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Publisher: RosettaBooks Edition: ebook

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 0795301529
  • Release date: January 29, 2002

PDF ebook

  • ISBN: 0795301529
  • File size: 819 KB
  • Release date: January 29, 2002
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OverDrive Read
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subjects

Fiction Mystery Thriller

Languages

English

Published as The Berlin Memorandum, the superb, Edgar Award-winning thriller by Adam Hall that appeared in 1965 became known as The Quiller Memorandum after the 1966 film version appeared under that title. The hero, whose name is Quiller, was a perfect spy-hero for the 1960s, not unlike Ian Fleming's James Bond or Len Deighton's Harry Palmer. Virtually in a class with the novels of John LeCarré, The Quiller Memorandum endures as a terrific cold-war thriller -- written by the English writer Elleston Trevor, under the pseudonym Adam Hall -- and the Mystery Writers of America awarded it the 1965 Edgar for Best Mystery Novel. The setting is the divided city of Berlin, some 15 years after the end of World War II. Quiller is an enigmatic (and unarmed) agent working in Berlin for an elusive intelligence agency. Besides the nature of his job, Quiller knows little about his employers, and he himself is something of a mystery, a haunted man whose past included courageous but unfulfilled efforts to thwart the Nazis' Final Solution. Quiller's assignment is to penetrate a neo-Nazi organization called Phönix, which has its secret headquarters in Berlin. Phönix is run by a former SS officer named Heinrich Zossen, and Quiller knows him from the war. He witnessed Zossen blithely signal the murder of 300 Jewish men, refusing to allow them to hear Kaddish because it would have made him late for lunch. In an assignment that becomes a personal quest, Quiller wants to find Zossen and destroy him, though one agent has already died trying. Like the best cold-war thrillers -- it appeared shortly after John LeCarré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold -- The Quiller Memorandum has a world-weariness, a sense of unease that deepens its characters and heightens the stakes in the suspense. Trevor, as Hall, evokes the energy and tension of divided Berlin, and the deadly danger that lurks beneath the ruins of the Third Reich. He is a Kafkaesque hero in a Kafkaesque situation, not quite sure who he works for, not terribly certain where his dreaded enemy is. The New York Times hailed the book as "1965's leading spy novel," and English writer Kingsley Amis called it "the best espionage novel I have read in 1965." Life magazine called it "the best of the new-style spy thrillers."
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Fiction Mystery Thriller
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