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Rupert Quinn #1
Long Run South
By the time Quinn learns that his new job in Algeria involves much more than simply guiding tourists he's inextricably entangled with the beautiful and deadly dangerous Leila.
If he has a hope in hell of surviving this job Quinn going to have to be quick and ruthless and pray that nobody is faster.
If he has a hope in hell of surviving this job Quinn going to have to be quick and ruthless and pray that nobody is faster.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
About the author
Alan Williams
253 books9 followersAlan Emlyn Williams was a journalist and foreign correspondent, reporting from notable hotspots worldwide including Hungary in 1956, Algeria, Vietnam and Northern Ireland. In 1962 he started writing thrillers which brought him the accolade "the natural heir to Ian Fleming" but it was his well-researched spy stories such as The Beria Papers and Gentleman Traitor (which featured real life traitor Kim Philby) which brought him international success.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 24, 2013
I had high hopes for this novel, but I found myself very disappointed by it. Written in the early sixties the plot is about a young British national who gets involved with an operation smuggling weapons into French Algeria from Morocco for the FLN (the political organization of the Algerian rebels). Naturally things go wrong. Part travel log and part adventure novel it started off like a Hammond Innes or Desmond Bagley novel, but quickly slid downwards from a strong start. None of the characters are likable - especially the so called hero.
The protagonist, Quinn, is an idiot. He's whiny, drinks too much and seems to have no idea about what he's gotten involved with. As long as the money is good he'll spend it freely and not consider what is happening. As soon as things get difficult he turns into a petulant drunk who makes idiotic demands of anyone with some authority and sulks when they don't do what he wants them to do.
In addition to displaying bad judgement and being a borderline alcoholic he is also a slimy individual in other respects. He visits a whorehouse and has no difficulty with getting a twelve year old female. Nothing happens, but it isn't because he has any moral disgust at the prospect of being with her. He treats an (adult) woman who wants to be with him very shabbily at the end of the novel. He takes some type of moral high-ground when he has to actually use one of the rifles that he is smuggling into Algeria. Refers to the rifle as an "evil thing" but evidently he has no compunction about smuggling the rifles to others who will use them. It goes on and one, but the highlights are enough.
Strangely enough the only time the novel really takes off is when we spend some time with the French soldiers. Those men aren't very pleasant either, but at least they know what they are and understand that their business is killing. No hypocrisy there.In a perverse way I actually found myself liking the French soldiers. They spend their time killing, fighting, interrogating/torturing prisoners and smoking cigarettes. The main characters just drink, have sex and waste their money on expensive restaurants.
Mr. Williams went on to write several more novels. "Long Run South" was his first book and I haven't been able to read any of his other novels. There is a strong possibility that part of the problem is it was his first. Regardless of that I strongly recommend that you skip this one. Yuch.
The protagonist, Quinn, is an idiot. He's whiny, drinks too much and seems to have no idea about what he's gotten involved with. As long as the money is good he'll spend it freely and not consider what is happening. As soon as things get difficult he turns into a petulant drunk who makes idiotic demands of anyone with some authority and sulks when they don't do what he wants them to do.
In addition to displaying bad judgement and being a borderline alcoholic he is also a slimy individual in other respects. He visits a whorehouse and has no difficulty with getting a twelve year old female. Nothing happens, but it isn't because he has any moral disgust at the prospect of being with her. He treats an (adult) woman who wants to be with him very shabbily at the end of the novel. He takes some type of moral high-ground when he has to actually use one of the rifles that he is smuggling into Algeria. Refers to the rifle as an "evil thing" but evidently he has no compunction about smuggling the rifles to others who will use them. It goes on and one, but the highlights are enough.
Strangely enough the only time the novel really takes off is when we spend some time with the French soldiers. Those men aren't very pleasant either, but at least they know what they are and understand that their business is killing. No hypocrisy there.In a perverse way I actually found myself liking the French soldiers. They spend their time killing, fighting, interrogating/torturing prisoners and smoking cigarettes. The main characters just drink, have sex and waste their money on expensive restaurants.
Mr. Williams went on to write several more novels. "Long Run South" was his first book and I haven't been able to read any of his other novels. There is a strong possibility that part of the problem is it was his first. Regardless of that I strongly recommend that you skip this one. Yuch.
November 30, 2024
After completing Williams' Charles Pol series and his last ever novel, I knew I finally had to go back to the first one. I expected some disappointment for a first time novelist's work. But I was wrong. Wrong as could be. It's first rate. Never mind that I saw the giant "reveal" at the end just as soon as it was set up (and if I can see it, that means everyone can see it, because I'm a highly gullible mystery reader). It doesn't matter. What Williams does in all these books, which I've mostly given the highest ratings to, is explore people's reactions to situations. Abnormal, unexpected, unbelievable situations. How does he do it here?
Drawing upon his background as a journalist who covered the war, Williams places Rupert Quinn, his hero (always a problematic term in regards to Williams' books), in Morocco, in Casablanca no less right in the midst of the Algerian revolution against the French in that neighboring country. Put a novel in Casablanca and you get all sorts of iconic and conventional associations because of the movie of the same name. Maybe even more in 1962, when Long Run South was published. Bogart and Bergman standing in the rain as the plane is about to depart, while all around them the French Resistance works to fight the Germans during World War II. Heroic France, full of democracy, idealism, and justice! Williams flips all that on its head. The French Legionnaires and especially the French paras are cruel, sadistic torturers and killers. Everything the Nazis were supposed to be in Casablanca. But neither is the "Resistance" so romanticized here either. The Algerian FLN are a grimy, dirty bunch, treacherous, equally murderous whose sponsors are making out quite well financially in Morocco.
Looking for adventure, Rupert has come to Morocco to escape the humdrum nature of life in northern England. This is a constant theme in Williams' novels. It's something he shares with Eric Ambler: average men, mostly in Ambler's case, and women swept up in events beyond their control. The difference is that Ambler's middle class gentlemen don't usually go looking for adventure in the way Williams' heroes do. So here is Rupert hired as a travel guide for a scenic safari into the south, where the real Morocco lies. His friend Paddy Bates has brought him along to work on the job. Here, Quinn also meets Leila, a beautiful enchantress working for the FLN. I see, looking it up, that the name Leila is Arabic and Hebrew in origin, meaning dark and given to girls born at night. I'm sure Williams was aware, and the name fits the girl perfectly.
Other themes emerge here for the first time: Williams' settings in exotic locales, with a preference for North Africa and the Middle East, his insight into how little are the differences separating the "civilized" world from the "barbaric" one, and of course his creation of exasperating heroes and heroines. In this case, Rupert provides a template for many novels that follow. He's hotheaded, impulsive, easily distracted, gullible, fooled into chasing easy money, and repeatedly tricked by treacherous women. Nobody, surely, can be this much of a naif incapable of learning from his mistakes. But that's the thing, deep down we know we all can, do, and have been just as foolish. Maybe not putting ourselves in such danger. But falling time and time again for the same tricks. Knowing, too, that barring a slide into pure cynicism, we'll likely fall for something similar again. You want to scream at Rupert's stupidity, because you realize you're yelling at your own at the same time.
Oh, and about the title. At first you might think it applies just to trips to the south of Morocco and Algeria. But once the action moves to Italy, it takes on an entirely new reference "running south." To say much else would spoil one of the great chase passages in adventure spy history.
Drawing upon his background as a journalist who covered the war, Williams places Rupert Quinn, his hero (always a problematic term in regards to Williams' books), in Morocco, in Casablanca no less right in the midst of the Algerian revolution against the French in that neighboring country. Put a novel in Casablanca and you get all sorts of iconic and conventional associations because of the movie of the same name. Maybe even more in 1962, when Long Run South was published. Bogart and Bergman standing in the rain as the plane is about to depart, while all around them the French Resistance works to fight the Germans during World War II. Heroic France, full of democracy, idealism, and justice! Williams flips all that on its head. The French Legionnaires and especially the French paras are cruel, sadistic torturers and killers. Everything the Nazis were supposed to be in Casablanca. But neither is the "Resistance" so romanticized here either. The Algerian FLN are a grimy, dirty bunch, treacherous, equally murderous whose sponsors are making out quite well financially in Morocco.
Looking for adventure, Rupert has come to Morocco to escape the humdrum nature of life in northern England. This is a constant theme in Williams' novels. It's something he shares with Eric Ambler: average men, mostly in Ambler's case, and women swept up in events beyond their control. The difference is that Ambler's middle class gentlemen don't usually go looking for adventure in the way Williams' heroes do. So here is Rupert hired as a travel guide for a scenic safari into the south, where the real Morocco lies. His friend Paddy Bates has brought him along to work on the job. Here, Quinn also meets Leila, a beautiful enchantress working for the FLN. I see, looking it up, that the name Leila is Arabic and Hebrew in origin, meaning dark and given to girls born at night. I'm sure Williams was aware, and the name fits the girl perfectly.
Other themes emerge here for the first time: Williams' settings in exotic locales, with a preference for North Africa and the Middle East, his insight into how little are the differences separating the "civilized" world from the "barbaric" one, and of course his creation of exasperating heroes and heroines. In this case, Rupert provides a template for many novels that follow. He's hotheaded, impulsive, easily distracted, gullible, fooled into chasing easy money, and repeatedly tricked by treacherous women. Nobody, surely, can be this much of a naif incapable of learning from his mistakes. But that's the thing, deep down we know we all can, do, and have been just as foolish. Maybe not putting ourselves in such danger. But falling time and time again for the same tricks. Knowing, too, that barring a slide into pure cynicism, we'll likely fall for something similar again. You want to scream at Rupert's stupidity, because you realize you're yelling at your own at the same time.
Oh, and about the title. At first you might think it applies just to trips to the south of Morocco and Algeria. But once the action moves to Italy, it takes on an entirely new reference "running south." To say much else would spoil one of the great chase passages in adventure spy history.
August 28, 2017
An excellent thriller written by former Western Mail Journalist and the son of Emlyn Williams. The story focuses on the travails of Rupert Quinn, an adventure-seeking bored Northern England journalist who, in 1962, tags along as a tourist guide on a coach taking visitors south of the Atlas Mountains from Marrakesh and into the borders of the Sahara. The combination of easy money, boredom, curiosity, vague thoughts of heading further south deeper into Africa and an attractive female fellow guide make the decision simple. Quinn's suspicions about his shady fellow travellers are quickly confirmed when the guides bribe their way through routine police patrols. The fact that neighbouring Algeria is undergoing civil war with terror groups fighting the colonial French is no coincidence.
The trip rapidly descends into conflict and murder with Quinn, as scapegoat, fleeing across the lone and level sands in a purloined taxi while suffering from the debilitating effects of dysentery. Nursed back to health in a remote village he hooks back up with his colleagues whose nefarious activities are revealed. Quinn, in love, joins them in their scheme and for a while life goes swimmingly. This obviously cannot last and as things spiral out of control Quinn faces torture and sudden violent death for which he seeks revenge as the action switches from southern Algeria to Casablanca, Tangier, Rome and finally (and surprisingly) the edge of the erupting crater of Mount Etna.
The trip rapidly descends into conflict and murder with Quinn, as scapegoat, fleeing across the lone and level sands in a purloined taxi while suffering from the debilitating effects of dysentery. Nursed back to health in a remote village he hooks back up with his colleagues whose nefarious activities are revealed. Quinn, in love, joins them in their scheme and for a while life goes swimmingly. This obviously cannot last and as things spiral out of control Quinn faces torture and sudden violent death for which he seeks revenge as the action switches from southern Algeria to Casablanca, Tangier, Rome and finally (and surprisingly) the edge of the erupting crater of Mount Etna.
February 24, 2025
Bizarre thriller of three parts, the first part following Brit Rupert Quinn as he joins a group of gun-runners smuggling arms to rebels in French Algeria. The gun-runners are all to type, including the beautiful and sensual Leila, with whom Quinn forges a passionate relationship. Part two sees them captured by the French, following a fairly thrilling battle in the desert. The book becomes serious then, its best stretch depicting their torture and treatment by the French. Quinn and Leila escape, but because she has talked under torture, she is now wanted by both sides. At Part three the book loses the run of itself and its characters and becomes simply a high-speed chase between a Porsche and a Ferrari across Italy to Mount Etna, where the plot is thrown into a volcano.
Not recommended, but the author's attempt at a modernist thriller is appeciated and the writing style is unfussy enough to have aged well.
Not recommended, but the author's attempt at a modernist thriller is appeciated and the writing style is unfussy enough to have aged well.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 4, 2017
I found a first edition 1962 hardcover of this book and thought it looked interesting. It isn't the most refined thriller I've ever read, but it's also not a bad book.
The writing style is detailed enough whilst still being succinct and fast paced. The fact it is about a world that no longer exists adds an additional charm that it may not have had when first published 55 years ago. I found it to be a very exciting read that I stayed up late to finish.
If I came across another old Alan Williams book, I wouldn't hesitate to buy it.
The writing style is detailed enough whilst still being succinct and fast paced. The fact it is about a world that no longer exists adds an additional charm that it may not have had when first published 55 years ago. I found it to be a very exciting read that I stayed up late to finish.
If I came across another old Alan Williams book, I wouldn't hesitate to buy it.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews