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The Freebooters
In the middle of 100,000 square miles of East African bush, a British regiment hunkers down inside a ring of barbed wire. They are ordered not to respond to provocation. This is a story of fighting men who give up because they are not allowed to fight, a story of mutiny, desertion and escape through hostile territory. These men are freebooters and their inspiration is not hate but love...because one of them has met a girl...and must find her again.
- GenresFiction
Audio Cassette
First published August 25, 1986
About the author
Elleston Trevor
135 books28 followersAuthor has published other books under the names: Adam Hall, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Trevor Dudley-Smith, Roger Fitzalan, Howard North, Simon Rattray, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith, Lesley Stone.
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 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 6, 2022
A solid book by the author better known for spy fiction under the name Adam Hall. On the cover it says another Dirty Dozen...well its not, the action is sparse, more of leading up to combative finale but not what I would call an action filled book. A British army camp is in the African desert with calls from people asking for help but they are under orders not to fight and these innocents keep getting massacred by the Vendettu, a tribe of hunter warriors. A few decided that they couldn't just wait to see more people slaughtered so they went AWOL and set out to a mission that was in line to be took out, to try and protect it.
Highly recommended, again its not an action packed book til the end. It's mostly just a camp life story along with the journey across the desert of a small group of men. Though it is well written with alot of tension replacing action, along with nicely written characters.
Highly recommended, again its not an action packed book til the end. It's mostly just a camp life story along with the journey across the desert of a small group of men. Though it is well written with alot of tension replacing action, along with nicely written characters.
September 6, 2025
‘The Freebooters’ (220 pp) was published by Dell in August 1968. The cover artist is uncredited.
Elleston Trevor (the pseudonym of UK author Trevor Dudley-Smith, 1920 – 1995) was a prolific writer of stage and radio plays, children’s books, mysteries, and thrillers, from the late 1940s up to the early 1990s. He is perhaps best known for his novel ‘The Flight of the Phoenix’, and his spy novels featuring the ‘Quiller’ character.
‘The Freebooters’ is set in East Africa in the mid-1960s in the fictional country of Tamala (a stand-in for Kenya). The UK has granted independence to Tamala, and two tribal chiefs, of questionable moral character, are contesting to rule the country. A coalition of guerilla fighters, known as the Venduttu (the counterparts to the real-life Mau Mau), are conducting terror campaigns throughout the countryside against white-owned farms and missions, with the goal of eradicating the Colonial presence from Tamala.
The UK government has dispatched the 200 men of the British Army’s 4th Royals to Tamala to serve as a peacekeeping force. In reality, this means that the Royals spend their days inside a fortified compound outside the town of Lisolaville, conducting drills and inspections, while powerless to intervene against the atrocities being conducted by the Venduttu.
When a desperate call for help from the White Cross Mission comes in over the radio network, eight men of No. 2 Hut decide they’ve had enough of inertia and mount a covert operation to rescue the farmers.
It’s a dangerous – even foolhardy – action by the eight men of No. 2 Hut, for they are disobeying orders and will have no support from the British army. But for the ‘freebooters’, the opportunity to save their countrymen cannot be ignored…….regardless of the hundreds of Venduttu camped outside the perimeter of the White Cross Mission………..
I found ‘The Freebooters’ to be a disappointment. As an action novel, it’s badly over-written and over-plotted; indeed, our renegades don’t even sneak out of their outpost until page 124, meaning that the first half of the book revolves around documenting – in labored prose – the psychological and emotional travails of British soldiers confined to camp.
(At one point early in the novel, author Trevor treats the reader to an entire paragraph devoted to Captain Jones’s contemplation of a fly floating in his drink, and whether it will cause a future bout of diarrhea; the reader is to understand that the fly in the drink is a potent metaphor for the situation of the penned-in soldiers of the 4th Royals.)
When the confrontation with the dreaded Venduttu finally does take place, it has an almost perfunctory quality that undermines author Trevor’s efforts to portray the Freebooter’s mission as a desperate, do-or-die affair.
During the 1960s and 1970s, there were some memorable novels and films (‘The Dark of the Sun’, ‘The Wild Geese’, ‘The Dogs of War’) produced about mercenaries conducting operations in African territories wracked by violence and disarray. Unfortunately, ‘The Freebooters’ doesn't join this select company. This novel is for Elleston Trevor completists only.
Elleston Trevor (the pseudonym of UK author Trevor Dudley-Smith, 1920 – 1995) was a prolific writer of stage and radio plays, children’s books, mysteries, and thrillers, from the late 1940s up to the early 1990s. He is perhaps best known for his novel ‘The Flight of the Phoenix’, and his spy novels featuring the ‘Quiller’ character.
‘The Freebooters’ is set in East Africa in the mid-1960s in the fictional country of Tamala (a stand-in for Kenya). The UK has granted independence to Tamala, and two tribal chiefs, of questionable moral character, are contesting to rule the country. A coalition of guerilla fighters, known as the Venduttu (the counterparts to the real-life Mau Mau), are conducting terror campaigns throughout the countryside against white-owned farms and missions, with the goal of eradicating the Colonial presence from Tamala.
The UK government has dispatched the 200 men of the British Army’s 4th Royals to Tamala to serve as a peacekeeping force. In reality, this means that the Royals spend their days inside a fortified compound outside the town of Lisolaville, conducting drills and inspections, while powerless to intervene against the atrocities being conducted by the Venduttu.
When a desperate call for help from the White Cross Mission comes in over the radio network, eight men of No. 2 Hut decide they’ve had enough of inertia and mount a covert operation to rescue the farmers.
It’s a dangerous – even foolhardy – action by the eight men of No. 2 Hut, for they are disobeying orders and will have no support from the British army. But for the ‘freebooters’, the opportunity to save their countrymen cannot be ignored…….regardless of the hundreds of Venduttu camped outside the perimeter of the White Cross Mission………..
I found ‘The Freebooters’ to be a disappointment. As an action novel, it’s badly over-written and over-plotted; indeed, our renegades don’t even sneak out of their outpost until page 124, meaning that the first half of the book revolves around documenting – in labored prose – the psychological and emotional travails of British soldiers confined to camp.
(At one point early in the novel, author Trevor treats the reader to an entire paragraph devoted to Captain Jones’s contemplation of a fly floating in his drink, and whether it will cause a future bout of diarrhea; the reader is to understand that the fly in the drink is a potent metaphor for the situation of the penned-in soldiers of the 4th Royals.)
When the confrontation with the dreaded Venduttu finally does take place, it has an almost perfunctory quality that undermines author Trevor’s efforts to portray the Freebooter’s mission as a desperate, do-or-die affair.
During the 1960s and 1970s, there were some memorable novels and films (‘The Dark of the Sun’, ‘The Wild Geese’, ‘The Dogs of War’) produced about mercenaries conducting operations in African territories wracked by violence and disarray. Unfortunately, ‘The Freebooters’ doesn't join this select company. This novel is for Elleston Trevor completists only.
September 28, 2017
this is an unlikely story of a British army force embattled in a violent zone inside Africa with orders not to fight but only to retaliate. A few of them mutiny, walk across 250 miles of enemy territory, arrive at a missionary and fight off the locals. Its a brave story with varied characters and the writer has kept the interest intact.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews