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Quiller #9
Scorpion Signal
Quiller, the Bureau's top intelligence agent, travels from a clinic in Berlin to the heart of Lubyanka Prison to track down the British agent who has vanished from Moscow. Reprint. NYT.
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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123 people want to read
About the author
Adam Hall
169 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 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 17, 2021
The Scorpion Signal
, published in 1980, is the ninth entry in the brilliant Quiller spy fiction series by Trevor Elleston (writing as Adam Hall).
In this installment, "shadow executive" Quiller is called back to London after only two weeks of recovery time from his previous mission, due to an international emergency that calls for his special skills. Apparently a fellow Bureau operative named Shapiro was captured in Russia and taken to the notorious Lubyanka KGB headquarters in Moscow, but somehow escaped only to be abducted again in Germany, presumably by the KGB. Shapiro has intimate knowledge of various top secret Western projects, including a highly successful Russian spy network code-named "Leningrad". Quiller's mission is to find Shapiro, rescue him if possible, and if not, make sure he stays silent for good before he is forced to spill the beans.
Quiller at first declines the mission, but as someone who is not motivated by money, power, glory or duty so much as by personal excellence and the challenge of life on the edge, he soon relents. He is infiltrated into Moscow, and quickly finds himself playing tense cat-and-mouse games with enemy forces. Elleston excels at describing the mental side of spycraft; we get a running commentary of Quiller's mental calculations as he tries to avoid being captured or killed by border guards, police, KGB and rogue agents. There are long stretches of very detailed descriptions of Quiller's driving tactics, evasion maneuvers, martial arts strikes, physical condition and thought processes as he tries to stay alive. These stretches are my only real criticism of the series: they sometimes get a bit tedious and you start wishing the super-spy would stop his autistic streams of thought and move the narrative forward.
Elleston also does a great job evoking the paranoia of late Brezhnev-era Moscow, when dissident groups are protesting, police are stopping people randomly, and the KGB are always threatening to break into your safe house or flat and haul you away to Lubyanka. In fact, Quiller finds himself there at one point in the hands of brutal interrogators but manages to get free, then gets to work tracking down the people who turned him in and taking them out of action.
As is usually case in these novels, Quiller is kept half in the dark by his London controllers, which sets up twists and failures that become lethal dangers in the field. After a lot of intrigue where it's not entirely clear what's going on or where things are going, the narrative kicks into overdrive when Quiller finds Shapiro, now half-deranged from his stay in hotel KGB, and discovers what he's really up to. The story then becomes a classic race against time to stop a deadly mission before it sparks a superpower conflagration.
This was another exciting installment in the superior Quiller series. It's basically a series of tense chases, evasions, interrogations, investigations and killings, all with big geopolitical implications--which is what a great spy novel should be. Highly recommended for fans of thinking-man's spy fiction.
In this installment, "shadow executive" Quiller is called back to London after only two weeks of recovery time from his previous mission, due to an international emergency that calls for his special skills. Apparently a fellow Bureau operative named Shapiro was captured in Russia and taken to the notorious Lubyanka KGB headquarters in Moscow, but somehow escaped only to be abducted again in Germany, presumably by the KGB. Shapiro has intimate knowledge of various top secret Western projects, including a highly successful Russian spy network code-named "Leningrad". Quiller's mission is to find Shapiro, rescue him if possible, and if not, make sure he stays silent for good before he is forced to spill the beans.
Quiller at first declines the mission, but as someone who is not motivated by money, power, glory or duty so much as by personal excellence and the challenge of life on the edge, he soon relents. He is infiltrated into Moscow, and quickly finds himself playing tense cat-and-mouse games with enemy forces. Elleston excels at describing the mental side of spycraft; we get a running commentary of Quiller's mental calculations as he tries to avoid being captured or killed by border guards, police, KGB and rogue agents. There are long stretches of very detailed descriptions of Quiller's driving tactics, evasion maneuvers, martial arts strikes, physical condition and thought processes as he tries to stay alive. These stretches are my only real criticism of the series: they sometimes get a bit tedious and you start wishing the super-spy would stop his autistic streams of thought and move the narrative forward.
Elleston also does a great job evoking the paranoia of late Brezhnev-era Moscow, when dissident groups are protesting, police are stopping people randomly, and the KGB are always threatening to break into your safe house or flat and haul you away to Lubyanka. In fact, Quiller finds himself there at one point in the hands of brutal interrogators but manages to get free, then gets to work tracking down the people who turned him in and taking them out of action.
As is usually case in these novels, Quiller is kept half in the dark by his London controllers, which sets up twists and failures that become lethal dangers in the field. After a lot of intrigue where it's not entirely clear what's going on or where things are going, the narrative kicks into overdrive when Quiller finds Shapiro, now half-deranged from his stay in hotel KGB, and discovers what he's really up to. The story then becomes a classic race against time to stop a deadly mission before it sparks a superpower conflagration.
This was another exciting installment in the superior Quiller series. It's basically a series of tense chases, evasions, interrogations, investigations and killings, all with big geopolitical implications--which is what a great spy novel should be. Highly recommended for fans of thinking-man's spy fiction.
April 21, 2008
this is dedicated to me so ought to like it. i like all adam hall (aka elleston trevor) spy novels because his creation Q is a realistic spy. dan craig should play him except he's doing some other espion. actually, tango briefing is the best so i ought to be praising that.
January 27, 2023
4 plus to 4 1/2.
Well done as always. This time Q is really in trouble, ending up inside Lubyanka, interrogated by KGB. Intense spy thriller.
Well done as always. This time Q is really in trouble, ending up inside Lubyanka, interrogated by KGB. Intense spy thriller.
November 4, 2022
As a devoted Quiller fan, I can't believe I'm giving one of the "up to 'Quiller'" novels 4 stars, but "The Scorpion Signal" is a bit thin. The whole thing seems over too quickly.
On the plus side, Quiller is in Moscow, the USSR Moscow, and as always I think Quiller books are best where he's behind the Iron Curtain and in places where he's concerned about *everything.* Of course Quiller never stops thinking about his own safety and the Bureau's security, but in the brief times he spends in South America, or the U.S., and even to a lesser extent parts of Southeast Asia, things aren't ratcheted quite as tight. No one is looking to arrest Quiller every minute in those locales. It's when Quiller can't simply walk or drive about that he's at his best; when his famous survival instincts are at their most honed level.
The best scene in "The Scorpion Signal" happens in Moscow when Quiller is at the apartment of Schrenk, his former Bureau colleague. Quiller's time in the Lubyanka is memorable, to be sure, and ends with the explosion of violence a reader expects, but the deepest psychological aspects of the mission happen when Quiller and Schrenk are face-to-face.
The ending is Hollywood. And Ferris, Quiller's favorite "director in the field," is missed.
So "The Scorpion Signal" gets four stars and the five stars remain with "Quiller," "The Tango Briefing," "The Sianking Executive," "The Mandarin Cypher,"....
On the plus side, Quiller is in Moscow, the USSR Moscow, and as always I think Quiller books are best where he's behind the Iron Curtain and in places where he's concerned about *everything.* Of course Quiller never stops thinking about his own safety and the Bureau's security, but in the brief times he spends in South America, or the U.S., and even to a lesser extent parts of Southeast Asia, things aren't ratcheted quite as tight. No one is looking to arrest Quiller every minute in those locales. It's when Quiller can't simply walk or drive about that he's at his best; when his famous survival instincts are at their most honed level.
The best scene in "The Scorpion Signal" happens in Moscow when Quiller is at the apartment of Schrenk, his former Bureau colleague. Quiller's time in the Lubyanka is memorable, to be sure, and ends with the explosion of violence a reader expects, but the deepest psychological aspects of the mission happen when Quiller and Schrenk are face-to-face.
The ending is Hollywood. And Ferris, Quiller's favorite "director in the field," is missed.
So "The Scorpion Signal" gets four stars and the five stars remain with "Quiller," "The Tango Briefing," "The Sianking Executive," "The Mandarin Cypher,"....
August 23, 2014
Quiller is a field executive for the British hush hush spy agency known as the Bureau; i. e., a ferret. As Quiller says, "The ferret in the field obeys orders and goes down the hole and comes up again, if he's lucky, leaving behind him those unnameable things in the dark that he had to deal with (165)." What he's dealing with this time is ugly: a snatched agent who has knowledge of the Bureau's most valuable and longest running operation within the Soviet Union. It is Quiller's job to find and retrieve, or permanently silent, the agent, who was retrieved and lost again. The entire operation takes place in Moscow, which functionally is a red zone for Quiller from the moment he enters it. Despite the presence of support, Quiller is very much a lone operator. His skills are put to incredible (but believable tests). There are several sequences with cars, and one in an underground garage, that are hair-raising. The 9th of 19 Quiller books is top notch all the way.
Note: Based on this book and 0at least one other, I would judge that the most dangerous place to be as an enemy is in a moving car with Quiller. The most frustrating place is an interrogation session as the interrogater.
Note: Based on this book and 0at least one other, I would judge that the most dangerous place to be as an enemy is in a moving car with Quiller. The most frustrating place is an interrogation session as the interrogater.
June 8, 2023
Gritty and cynical espionage thriller focusing on the internal monologue of Quiller - exhausted from his recent mission - having to go to Moscow and rescue or terminate a colleague who has been subjected to the hospitality that The Lubyanka offers and may have gone rogue as a result. Nobody knows quite where he is but Quiller is the only man likely to be able to find him. Against his better judgment Quiller is emotionally blackmailed into agreeing to a seemingly suicidal quest. Things don’t go well really and Quiller, though quite prepared to commit suicide (if necessary by biting through his own antecubital artery and giving us a running commentary of his thoughts - Yikes!), uses all his carefully practiced fieldwork to repeatedly defy certain death as if challenging us to work how just how he’s supposed to get away.
It lost one star for me as I’m certain that not one but two (count ‘em) bullets in a shoulder couldn’t fail to hit bone. The restorative powers of chicken soup are proved to be wondrous.
It lost one star for me as I’m certain that not one but two (count ‘em) bullets in a shoulder couldn’t fail to hit bone. The restorative powers of chicken soup are proved to be wondrous.
June 29, 2012
There are few locations in Cold War Espionage fact and fiction that hold the power, mystery, and fear-invocation that Moscow does. Even deeper than Moscow itself, is Lubyanka, the cold, faceless place of detention and interrogation, just across the way from the best known department store in the then Soviet Union, the juxtaposition some sort of commentary on the Russian Character ...
A British agent escapes from Lubyanka, and then is abducted from a hospital where he is convalescing. The immeasurable damage he can do to established intelligence networks needs to be contained ...
Like most Quiller novels, this is a tense nailbiter, with the resolution left to the last, critically timed second.
A British agent escapes from Lubyanka, and then is abducted from a hospital where he is convalescing. The immeasurable damage he can do to established intelligence networks needs to be contained ...
Like most Quiller novels, this is a tense nailbiter, with the resolution left to the last, critically timed second.
November 27, 2015
Another excellent book from Elleston Trevor (aka, Adam Hall). Like most of his books, it's fast paced and a fast read. Great cliffhangers, per his style, with short, pithy prose. If you're a Cold War fan, you'll love his descriptions of Quiller's mental games with the KGB. His time as a prisoner in the Lubyanka reminded me of poor Winston in Orwell's 1984. Except that Quiller always wins, of course. :)
November 19, 2015
Quiller in Moscow trying to extract a fellow agent who was captured by the KGB, tortured in Lubyanka, escaped to West Germany and was then snatched again. Adam Hall is back in top form after a mild lapse in the previous novel. A good, credible story line and good plot twists.
I think this novel marks the first use of a named contemporaneous public figure (Leonid Brezhnev) in the Quiller series. There will be more.
I think this novel marks the first use of a named contemporaneous public figure (Leonid Brezhnev) in the Quiller series. There will be more.
January 25, 2016
Another excellent Quiller. A bit of a let down at the end as most of the best bits had already happened, but those earlier parts were humdingers.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews