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Quiller #7
The Kobra Manifesto
Artist is the son of the author.
263 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
17 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
Adam Hall
159 books99 followersAuthor also wrote as Elleston Trevor.
Author Trevor Dudley-Smith was born in Kent, England on February 17, 1920. He attended Yardley Court Preparatory School and Sevenoaks School. During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer. After the war, he started writing full-time. He lived in Spain and France before moving to the United States and settling in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1946 he used the pseudonym Elleston Trevor for a non-mystery book, and later made it his legal name. He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Adam Hall, Simon Rattray, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Roger Fitzalan, Howard North, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith, and Lesley Stone. Even though he wrote thrillers, mysteries, plays, juvenile novels, and short stories, his best-known works are The Flight of the Phoenix written as Elleston Trevor and the series about British secret agent Quiller written as Adam Hall. In 1965, he received the Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America and the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for The Quiller Memorandum. This book was made into a 1967 movie starring George Segal and Alec Guinness. He died of cancer on July 21, 1995.
Author Trevor Dudley-Smith was born in Kent, England on February 17, 1920. He attended Yardley Court Preparatory School and Sevenoaks School. During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer. After the war, he started writing full-time. He lived in Spain and France before moving to the United States and settling in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1946 he used the pseudonym Elleston Trevor for a non-mystery book, and later made it his legal name. He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Adam Hall, Simon Rattray, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Roger Fitzalan, Howard North, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith, and Lesley Stone. Even though he wrote thrillers, mysteries, plays, juvenile novels, and short stories, his best-known works are The Flight of the Phoenix written as Elleston Trevor and the series about British secret agent Quiller written as Adam Hall. In 1965, he received the Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America and the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for The Quiller Memorandum. This book was made into a 1967 movie starring George Segal and Alec Guinness. He died of cancer on July 21, 1995.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 20, 2017
The novel touches down very briefly in half-a-dozen international locales; for this reason it is difficult to discern what kind of Quiller plot this is from the book-jacket blurbs.
Who is he up against? What is this 'manifesto'? Is it a sinister global organization bent on world takeover? How lurid does the scenario get? I could not make sense at all of what I was about-to-get-into from the publisher's teasers. Really, not until about halfway into the story does it start to cohere.
But when it comes to the sheer, mesmerizing discipline of Hall's writing, this doesn't even present the slightest hindrance to one's enjoyment. The more titles I read from him the more unique he seems in fiction.
I'm not hesitant to state at this point that Adam Hall is my #1 favorite thriller author. He even outdoes Frederick Forsythe because whereas Forsythe has 4-5 slick reads; Hall wrote 19 titles ('Kobra' being the 7th) in this same exemplary style of his and he 'gets it right' every time.
These Quiller romps are always crazy good. Hall never lets his standard down; there's never a book where you can say "Oh, he kinda flubbed this one". Nope. The writing is always superior and so it's always merely a matter of debating 'do I prefer this title over the previous one? Or not?' And that's always a great dilemma to be in.
So far my favourite Quiller is #2, (Bangkok) whereas #4 (West Germany) is the only weak sister; but each successive installment seems to warrant the #3 slot. But this bounce-around-the-world 'Kobra' thing has a good shot after all, too. It shouldn't, but it does.
Back to my synopsis of the plot.
At first glance it is a smooth read; and crisp; but somewhat of a 'slow-starter'. There's no chicks upfront, and that seemed odd. Usually, any action-yarn deals with the ladies first and the action last. Combine this with no clearly identifiable 'target' and it means that the first 1/2 of the tale rides on personality alone. It's a very fine line. Is there a story here? I kept asking myself. What's the actual objective? Who is the enemy? Is there a scumbag Russkie or filthy ex-Nazi for Quiller to obliterate? What's driving the story, or is Hall 'coasting on fumes'?
Certainly the exotic destinations help the read a great deal. For the first 3/4 of the tale, Quiller is basically in-the-dark--he doesn't even know what he's playing at; he was yanked out of vacation-time watching Grand Prix in Monaco (that's nearly the extent of the action in Monaco) and for chapter after chapter (London, receiving instructions, whacking a surprise thug in his flat) he's playing catchup to a gang of operators who are already way ahead of him, (Paris, an airport shootout) and they're really good in that they're able to bump off several of his colleagues.
In Cambodia the "big picture" is still not clear. Basically five of the top terrorists in the world are converging somewhere and Quiller's agency must keep track of at least one of them even though they are wily and slippery and shrewd and tough. So all the 'globe-trotting' is, (as the dust-jacket fails to express) a 'chase' rather than 'orchestrated mayhem'.
Question again: is Hall relying on such a rapid-paced travel itinerary to cover-up the lack of any real story? No, because although it unfolds late, it is clever and plausible enough. The villains are menacing enough. The physical stunts Quiller (who does not carry a gun) must accomplish here are as sensational as any of his others.
Anyway. It all comes together in Brazil, of all places. And its great. The femme fatale finally emerges and Hall shows us why he probably writes books at all: because he figures out ways to do things differently. I know of no other author who puts a sex scene into a thriller during the action/climax of the tale!
And now here also (at the same time) is where Hall's fascinating expertise with aircraft comes back in. The author is an ex-RAF fighter-pilot flight engineer so he has information to insert into his stories that no one else can match.
Thankfully, he sure doesn't omit these riveting elements from 'Kobra'. In the last 33 pages the action leads towards a high-tension airport hostage standoff and you really just can't guess what the hell this 'penetration specialist' is gonna do to resolve the mess. Its all completely unpredictable.
So...trying (again) to decide where it falls among the others of Hall's ...in terms of ingenuity, in terms of reader satisfaction, in terms of how 'action-packed' it is...
Too soon to say. Too soon to say. Still basking in the 'rush' and the adenalin.
P.S. Once again the Goodreads system is f*cked up! Please get rid of this stupid 'add date read' tool! I'm still in my first round, no I have not read this book before!
Who is he up against? What is this 'manifesto'? Is it a sinister global organization bent on world takeover? How lurid does the scenario get? I could not make sense at all of what I was about-to-get-into from the publisher's teasers. Really, not until about halfway into the story does it start to cohere.
But when it comes to the sheer, mesmerizing discipline of Hall's writing, this doesn't even present the slightest hindrance to one's enjoyment. The more titles I read from him the more unique he seems in fiction.
I'm not hesitant to state at this point that Adam Hall is my #1 favorite thriller author. He even outdoes Frederick Forsythe because whereas Forsythe has 4-5 slick reads; Hall wrote 19 titles ('Kobra' being the 7th) in this same exemplary style of his and he 'gets it right' every time.
These Quiller romps are always crazy good. Hall never lets his standard down; there's never a book where you can say "Oh, he kinda flubbed this one". Nope. The writing is always superior and so it's always merely a matter of debating 'do I prefer this title over the previous one? Or not?' And that's always a great dilemma to be in.
So far my favourite Quiller is #2, (Bangkok) whereas #4 (West Germany) is the only weak sister; but each successive installment seems to warrant the #3 slot. But this bounce-around-the-world 'Kobra' thing has a good shot after all, too. It shouldn't, but it does.
Back to my synopsis of the plot.
At first glance it is a smooth read; and crisp; but somewhat of a 'slow-starter'. There's no chicks upfront, and that seemed odd. Usually, any action-yarn deals with the ladies first and the action last. Combine this with no clearly identifiable 'target' and it means that the first 1/2 of the tale rides on personality alone. It's a very fine line. Is there a story here? I kept asking myself. What's the actual objective? Who is the enemy? Is there a scumbag Russkie or filthy ex-Nazi for Quiller to obliterate? What's driving the story, or is Hall 'coasting on fumes'?
Certainly the exotic destinations help the read a great deal. For the first 3/4 of the tale, Quiller is basically in-the-dark--he doesn't even know what he's playing at; he was yanked out of vacation-time watching Grand Prix in Monaco (that's nearly the extent of the action in Monaco) and for chapter after chapter (London, receiving instructions, whacking a surprise thug in his flat) he's playing catchup to a gang of operators who are already way ahead of him, (Paris, an airport shootout) and they're really good in that they're able to bump off several of his colleagues.
In Cambodia the "big picture" is still not clear. Basically five of the top terrorists in the world are converging somewhere and Quiller's agency must keep track of at least one of them even though they are wily and slippery and shrewd and tough. So all the 'globe-trotting' is, (as the dust-jacket fails to express) a 'chase' rather than 'orchestrated mayhem'.
Question again: is Hall relying on such a rapid-paced travel itinerary to cover-up the lack of any real story? No, because although it unfolds late, it is clever and plausible enough. The villains are menacing enough. The physical stunts Quiller (who does not carry a gun) must accomplish here are as sensational as any of his others.
Anyway. It all comes together in Brazil, of all places. And its great. The femme fatale finally emerges and Hall shows us why he probably writes books at all: because he figures out ways to do things differently. I know of no other author who puts a sex scene into a thriller during the action/climax of the tale!
And now here also (at the same time) is where Hall's fascinating expertise with aircraft comes back in. The author is an ex-RAF fighter-pilot flight engineer so he has information to insert into his stories that no one else can match.
Thankfully, he sure doesn't omit these riveting elements from 'Kobra'. In the last 33 pages the action leads towards a high-tension airport hostage standoff and you really just can't guess what the hell this 'penetration specialist' is gonna do to resolve the mess. Its all completely unpredictable.
So...trying (again) to decide where it falls among the others of Hall's ...in terms of ingenuity, in terms of reader satisfaction, in terms of how 'action-packed' it is...
Too soon to say. Too soon to say. Still basking in the 'rush' and the adenalin.
P.S. Once again the Goodreads system is f*cked up! Please get rid of this stupid 'add date read' tool! I'm still in my first round, no I have not read this book before!
October 28, 2018
Elleston Trevor (pseud. Adam Hall) is my favorite author, and this book, I believe, is his best. As a thriller writer, Trevor is without peer. His pace is relentless in every novel, and every story is loaded with cliffhangers, twists, mysteries, and espionage spycraft.
What is often overlooked, however, is his amazing writing. I've yet to find anyone who handles dialogue better, and his prose surpasses even Flaubert's (I'll have an article on that soon).
The one thing Trevor lacks, which is true for almost all writers, is the ability to close every book with a bang. The magical ending. The punch. The last line that makes you smile. So many great books have an anticlimactic ending (think of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," for example) that it leaves the reader unsatisfied. The book has kept you up many nights and when you finish you think, "No, it CAN'T end like that!"
The two ways to have a great ending are either a magical closing sentence filled with assonance and consonance (think of the closing line in Silence of the Lambs: “But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.”), or to have an action bang.
The latter--the bang--is how Trevor ends The Kobra Manifesto.
And he nails it.
What is often overlooked, however, is his amazing writing. I've yet to find anyone who handles dialogue better, and his prose surpasses even Flaubert's (I'll have an article on that soon).
The one thing Trevor lacks, which is true for almost all writers, is the ability to close every book with a bang. The magical ending. The punch. The last line that makes you smile. So many great books have an anticlimactic ending (think of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," for example) that it leaves the reader unsatisfied. The book has kept you up many nights and when you finish you think, "No, it CAN'T end like that!"
The two ways to have a great ending are either a magical closing sentence filled with assonance and consonance (think of the closing line in Silence of the Lambs: “But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.”), or to have an action bang.
The latter--the bang--is how Trevor ends The Kobra Manifesto.
And he nails it.
July 24, 2019
The Snivelling Ferret on the Terror Trail
Review of the 1977 Fontana Collins paperback edition
The Kobra Manifesto was part of the Cold-War era first run of Quiller novels by Adam Hall (one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific Elleston Trevor (1920-1995)) from 1965's "The Berlin Memorandum" through to 1981's "The Peking Target." Trevor re-booted the series from 1985-1995 in the Glasnost/post Soviet Union era for a 2nd run when all of the books included the monominal Quiller name in the title. I read almost all of the first run during their original issue but missed most of the second, although I have occasionally found them later in used book stores.
The Quiller/Adam Hall style was completely unique in the way that it portrayed a pseudonymous "shadow executive" who worked for The Bureau in London on various espionage missions. Although obviously inspired by the James Bond fad of various secret agent films and books at the time of the 1960's, the Quiller character was an anti-hero who was reluctant to take on missions, often debated and mis-trusted his field controllers, did not carry guns or any other flashy devices, and would often go into a self-pitying internal monologue where he would bemoan being sent as the ferret into the hole to bring back a prize for his handlers. He would also often meticulously and lengthily describe aspects of his tradecraft and/or the characteristics of machines or of the human body that would determine their actions or their endurance. All in all, it was as anti-glamorous a portrayal of spy fiction as has been written. Len Deighton's Harry Palmer is probably the closest comparison.
Saying goodbye to several dozen books due to a water damage incident and I thought I'd write at least a little memorial for some of them and about why I kept them around.
Review of the 1977 Fontana Collins paperback edition
The Kobra Manifesto was part of the Cold-War era first run of Quiller novels by Adam Hall (one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific Elleston Trevor (1920-1995)) from 1965's "The Berlin Memorandum" through to 1981's "The Peking Target." Trevor re-booted the series from 1985-1995 in the Glasnost/post Soviet Union era for a 2nd run when all of the books included the monominal Quiller name in the title. I read almost all of the first run during their original issue but missed most of the second, although I have occasionally found them later in used book stores.
The Quiller/Adam Hall style was completely unique in the way that it portrayed a pseudonymous "shadow executive" who worked for The Bureau in London on various espionage missions. Although obviously inspired by the James Bond fad of various secret agent films and books at the time of the 1960's, the Quiller character was an anti-hero who was reluctant to take on missions, often debated and mis-trusted his field controllers, did not carry guns or any other flashy devices, and would often go into a self-pitying internal monologue where he would bemoan being sent as the ferret into the hole to bring back a prize for his handlers. He would also often meticulously and lengthily describe aspects of his tradecraft and/or the characteristics of machines or of the human body that would determine their actions or their endurance. All in all, it was as anti-glamorous a portrayal of spy fiction as has been written. Len Deighton's Harry Palmer is probably the closest comparison.
Saying goodbye to several dozen books due to a water damage incident and I thought I'd write at least a little memorial for some of them and about why I kept them around.
April 10, 2020
The "Quiller" series of novels by Adam Hall (the late Elleston Trevor) are noteworthy on many levels...for their sense of place, their sense of realism about how "the spy business" appears to really be and for their almost painful levels of suspense.
Hall was a master (like Alfred Hitchcock) at creating mind-numbing suspense that almost wants to make you scream aloud.
This is another series that I always enjoy revisiting.
Hall was a master (like Alfred Hitchcock) at creating mind-numbing suspense that almost wants to make you scream aloud.
This is another series that I always enjoy revisiting.
March 27, 2013
One of the better early Quillers, this book is well worth reading for two memorable scenes alone. One involves a key in a lock, the other a unique method of air travel p. If you like the series, you'll love this one.
July 22, 2021
Another very good Quiller novel, not be best but it sodoesn't have to since the level of Adam Hall writing is excellent.
October 18, 2022
The Way This Guy Wrote
I’ve been reading for about 60 years. This guy knows how to write complex plots and at the same time keep the action and tension at a fever pitch. One of the best authors I’ve ever read.
I’ve been reading for about 60 years. This guy knows how to write complex plots and at the same time keep the action and tension at a fever pitch. One of the best authors I’ve ever read.
March 28, 2023
Going back through my Quiller novels and I like this one much more the second time around. Quiller works best, in my opinion, when he is in a totalitarian or hostile environment, where he is immediately suspect or at least must act like he is at all times. Putting him in the U.S. doesn't work as well, it seems to me, and I'd held that against "The Kobra Manifesto" all these years - "Quiller Barracuda" suffers from this even more. On rereading, however, "The Kobra Manifesto" has only a short period, rather early on, where Quiller is in the States. And that comes after an exciting time in Penom Penh as it is falling to the Khmer Rouge. He's then off to the Amazon, I believe the only time we see Quiller in that part of the world. Most of the Quiller books have an extravagant, somewhat unbelievable ending - a movie ending, if you will. The Bosch novels are the same way. I love Bosch and I love Quiller, but it's the 190 pages before the last 10 that do it for me. That's the way it is with "Kobra Manifesto," too. There is one funny chapter early on that takes place in the Bureau's nondescript offices in Whitehall which is quite funny, too. All in all a very solid place in the Quiller pantheon. Not "The Tango Briefing" but not "The Quiller Memorandum" either. Recommended for all, but chiefly those who know Quiller and like him.
June 20, 2012
The awesome thing about the Quiller novels is that you often don't know where the story is going until you get there ... not that the plot is disconnected or illogical, but that where things begin (the crash of a military plane), and where they end up (I'm not going to spoil it for you) are worlds apart, and your engagement in the story is directly tied to following the bits and pieces and crumbs that become an exciting conclusion.
November 21, 2015
Quiller globetrots within a single novel for the first time, hitting Monaca, France, Italy, Cambodia, Washington, New York and Brazil. He is in pursuit of a shadowy terrorist organization called Kobra. An average Quiller novel (meaning very good, 4.0). Unfortunately, the main story line (diverse terrorists collaborating as if this were an Ocean’s 11 movie) is not really credible, so 0.2 points deducted for an overall rating of 3.8. There is a very memorable scene involving a key in a lock.
January 14, 2013
Good book, the level of suspense was invigorating, giving much to the plot. I enjoyed the book.
November 28, 2016
Reread of a book from 30 years ago.
Still an excellent spy thriller. Nice tight compact and very first person, Quiller puts you right there with him as he goes undercover.
Still an excellent spy thriller. Nice tight compact and very first person, Quiller puts you right there with him as he goes undercover.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews