New releases from
TOP NOTCH THRILLERS
Third in the best-selling ‘Quiller’ series, The Striker Portfolio is Adam Hall (the pen-name of novelist Elleston Trevor) on absolutely top form.
Before there was Jason Bourne or Jack Reacher, ‘Quiller’ set the standard for tough, resourceful heroes who always took the most dangerous assignments unarmed and alone. In Striker, Quiller is in West Germany investigating the crashes of 36 military aircraft patrolling NATO’s front line. The state-of-the-art British-designed Striker SK-6 swing-wing fighter is falling out of the skies with such regularity their German pilots have christened it ‘The Widowmaker’.
Setting himself up as a target on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Quiller attempts to uncover the conspiracy behind the fatal air ‘accidents’ and survives one of the most detailed car chase sequences in spy fiction as well as proving why his code name comes with the suffix “9” – which means “reliable under torture”.
First published in 1969, the TNT edition comes with a previously unpublished essay (Life Like Quiller Part II) by Jean-Pierre Trevor, the son of Adam Hall. ISBN: 7981906288556.
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Described on first publication as “a high tension shocker”, Andrew York’s The Eliminator introduced the character Jonas Wilde, who could pass for “a gentleman-yachtsman and slightly seedy playboy” but is really an ice-cold assassin. In fact he is by default the official assassin of the British Security Service, working for an organisation known as The Route based on the island of Guernsey.
The Eliminator was instantly snapped up by the movies and filmed as Danger Route in 1967, starring Richard Johnson, Gordon Jackson and Diana Dors. In 2010 the film was showcased at a university symposium on ‘Forgotten Spy Films of Cold War Europe’ and the book spawned seven further adventures for Jonas Wilde, the series coming to a close in 1975.
The yachting background and the island of Guernsey could hardly be more accurately described, as ‘Andrew York’ is the pen-name of prolific author Christopher Nicole who ‘discovered’ Guernsey whilst sailing his yacht Rose of Arden from England to France in 1957. He liked what he found and has lived there ever since, writing over 200 books of popular fiction and non-fiction, with two new novels published in 2010. Also in The Eliminator, Jonas Wilde’s private yacht Regina A is closely modelled on Chris Nicole’s Rose of Arden on which he first arrived in Guernsey.
First published in 1966.
ISBN: 9781906288563.
Top Notch Thrillers aim to revive Great British thrillers which do not deserve to be forgotten. Each title has been carefully selected not just for its plot or sense of adventure but for the distinctiveness and sheer quality of its writing. The Series Editor is Mike Ripley, the award-winning crime-writer and former crime critic of the Daily Telegraph who currently writes the ‘Getting Away With Murder’ column on www.shotsmag.co.uk.
Top Notch Thrillers can be ordered through all good bookshops or on Amazon or via Ostara Publishing.
April 2011
1 comment:
I read an interesting essay once about the Quiller series and the author but never got around to reading one of the novels.
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