The Quiller Memorandum

If you are looking for a good spy series that isn't the camp of Bond, then the Quiller series is for you. I am not hesitating myself to gather the digital versions of this series, even as I have the hard copies, because it is that good of a collection. The best bit of this book: When you realize he was being deceptive in why he fainted and again when he has to seriously consider that he might not have set the bomb properly and would actually have to check on its progress. Get the whole series. Amazon: Insure that ALL the Quiller novels are in Kindle.

A spy working for a shadow government agency, Quiller is about to depart for London from Berlin. However, a fellow undercover agent has been killed, and Quiller is asked to take his place. Twenty years after World War II, a group of unrepentant Nazis lie beneath the shadows in the form of a group known as Phonix, as if it is rising from the ashes. Free to accept or decline the assignment, Quiller takes on the responsibility. Chief among the goals is finding a General Zossen, the former Commandant of a concentration camp, known to Quiller from twenty years before due to his undercover work in attempting to aid Jewish prisoners. Quiller, after insisting that he work alone, meets and beds a somewhat unattractive, sharply angular woman, Inga, who as a child spent time in Hitler's bunker, and may be a defector from the organization, or alternatively, a double agent. His longtime friend, Rothstein, working on a secret project, is killed after contact with him, leaving Quiller with a sense of guilt. Exposed for what he is, Quiller is captured, drugged and interrogated by Oktober, but purposely kept alive and released. Adam Hall is quite deft at explaining Quiller's thought processes, as well as some of the inner workings of intelligence. There is also a noirish quality to the book, a continuous, strange foreboding, made more prominent because the intentions of Phonix are not understood or revealed until near the end of the book. Otto Penzler, in his Introduction, writes that of 18 Quiller novels, only one other is in print. That is too bad, for this working spy, a loner by necessity and inclination, should be known the way George Smiley and James Bond are known.

I have read every one of the Quiller spy series. They are all believable, action-packed and thrilling to the end. I highly recommend this series to the serious spy novel devotee.

I bought this book based on positive reviews , I Have to say I'm disappointed ! Very slow , very dated . Maybe was better when first published . Won't be reading any others

Well written and plotted.

I came to "The Quiller Memorandum" straight from John Le Carre's "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," and that is more or less my only reference point since I'm generally new to the genre. "The Quiller Memorandum," set in 1960's Berlin, puts the reader on a chase for ex- and neo-Nazis who have evaded justice and remained hidden in everyday German life. Hall lets Quiller take over most of the storytelling, and he frequently goes into detail when explaining to the reader how the tricks of the trade are implemented. This makes the reader feel like they're sitting at the dinner table with Quiller over after-dinner drinks while the former spy recounts tales of his time in the field, and the effect is satisfying. If Le Carre excels at setting a scene and drawing the reader right into the setting, Hall responds by creating colorful characters that you can imagine sitting right next to you as you read. More importantly, he allows the reader to "feel" the characters, allowing the reader to feel the same emotions and suspicions as Quiller when interacting with the novel's cast. A quick, entertaining read that is perfect for a Sunday afternoon.

great book cold war novel.

Satisfactory

The Quiller Memorandum was published during the cold war at a time when film and literature were either having fun with the world of espionage (James Bond) or taking it quite seriously (The Spy who came in from the Cold). Though spy stories go well back (Check out Riddle of the Sands) this was peak period. Like the best of them Quiller is well written; the language is gritty, cold and engaging. Quiller is an interesting guy; he has a conscience but can perform as if he doesn't. The plot, one exposed, is a little ridiculous but it doesn't matter. The paranoid cat and mouse game played between Quiller and a gang of old Nazi's is tense and exciting. My only quibble is that Quiller really is a loner. Most good spy novels are seasoned with with either a bit of humour (Dickey Cruyer in Mexico Set) or a friend for the spy (Felix Leiter for Bond). It rests on Quiller's shoulders to carry the novel. I will read more but mainly because I am curious about where they go from here.

A classic of it; time.

I give the novel 4+. Being the first Quiller novel, Adam Hall hadn't developed his thriller style and "the Quiller psychology" fully yet. Already in his next novel, the Ninth Directive, this is almost fully completed, making the whole Quiller series, in general, a masterpiece. Far better than Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, in my view. It's a string of intense thrillers. I read several of the books in the late 1970th and 1980th, and knew then that I someday would read them again. As I expected, and hoped, the books (the early ones I have reread to date) have easily survived the decades since they were written. They aren't dated at all. This first book is far better than the quite well known 1966 movie, starring George Segal and Alec Guinness. Not surprising, since a main quality of the Quiller novels is the inner mental state of the super-agent. You can't make good movies out of the "Quiller concept". Super-agent aficionados: Enjoy!

I feel ashamed that I hadn't read this earlier, nor heard of it until Charlie Stross namechecked it for his third Laundry novel, The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry 3) . It's a tightly written thriller, set in Berlin twenty years after the close of the Second World War, with Quiller following the orders of the eponymous memorandum to hunt down a Nazi war criminal. The book starts with a lovely piece of misdirection, and with every page I just feel more in awe at how elegantly and efficiently the picture of Quiller and Berlin is built up. It's also a very short book, a different experience to the monolith of, say, The Good German . That was good, but harder to grip, both physically and also in terms of the more complex plot. There's no flab to Quiller; it's not even particularly clear to me what he looks like, or why he bears the scars that he does, but that's part of the joy of this; what Quiller looks like is fairly irrelevant to the plot. This isn't going to be the happiest book most people will ever read. Nazi war criminals are not exactly quaint now, but with sixty-five years since the war, there's a certain distance from them. They're either still wearing black uniforms and stalking across Europe with the Wehrmacht, or they're crazed dentists running through Central Park (or being hunted down while they try to clone Hitler). Laurence Olivier was at least avoiding being typecast by appearing in both Marathon Man and The Boys From Brazil, I suppose. But for a book written in the 1960s, when the wounds were still fresh but I suppose for many people the horrors of the Final Solution were not as clearly described as they have been by more recent historians, some of the crimes described in the book must have been more visceral than they feel today. It's strange to think that when we think of British espionage in fiction, James Bond seems to stand tall above everyone else, when Adam Hall, Len Deighton and John le Carre have produced so much more that has more structure, depth and shock value to it. Then again, I'm rereading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold concurrently with Quiller, and that reminds me that le Carre does seem to stick to a certain formula. It's like a cynical version of Chekhov's maxim; if there's a person introduced to you in the first chapter, they're going to be shot in the last one. Or something bad will happen, somehow. But James Bond, with his cartoonish appetites for stimulants, whisky, slapping women and smoking endless handrolled cigarettes, translates to a more pleasureable movie-going experience than Quiller or Smiley. Even if you were to decry the films as failing to be faithful to at source material, you'd have to admit that the source material wasn't so brilliant. It's still a shame that there isn't more of le Carre's work on the large screen, although again I suppose the complexity of it maybe lends itself better to television serials. Anyhow, this is short, tightly plotted and has a lovely ending to tie things together. Thoroughly recommended.

A bit dated due to the lack of sophistication in that era so basically a lot of dangerous hide and seek around Berlin. Very atmospheric but feels a bit minds in to me reading it in 2024