Quiller Balalaika - by Adam Hall

Every now and then, I long for something predictable and comforting in a bedtime reading book.

John Le Carré remains the cynosure of all authors in this respect, as far as I'm concerned.

Ted Allbeury and Adam Hall, author of the "Quiller" series of thrillers, stand foremost in the second rank.

So, I was pleased to find "Quiller Balalaika" available a few weeks back, and bought it and, predictably, enjoyed it.

After I finished it last night, I noticed there were two more short sections:

A Coda by Jean-Pierre Trevor, and an Afterword by Chaille Trevor.

What's this, I thought?

I'd been intending to google the author of the Quiller books, Adam Hall, which I knew was a synonym, to find out more about the man who wrote such singular novels, full of fury and drive and power and a unique, beyond-bold attitude on the part of Quiller.

I didn't even have to turn on the computer today to do the search, it turns out, because the Coda and Afterword were by Adam Hall's son and widow.

It turns out that Hall, whose real name was Elleston Trevor, was dying of cancer as he struggled to finish "Quiller Balalaika," the last of his more than 100 novels over a 50-year career, in 1995.

His son and then-wife wrote of his fierce devotion to finishing this last of his books even as he suffered so much pain he had to dictate the final chapter to his son, one painstaking word at a time.

To me, the profound thing is that if you didn't know the back story I've furnished above, you'd never know this book was created under any conditions other than the author's usual.

From the novel:

He is also brilliant, ruthless, and without mercy when the choice is to abandon a mission or the life of its shadow executive in the field, showing compassion only when the cost is nothing. He saved my life once, and that had been the price.

Got his back up, the executive from London turning down his toys, the Heckler and Koch and the SIG and the Smith & Wesson, but I always have trouble going through Clearance when I refuse to draw weapons. What people don't realize is that your hands are always available - you don't have to reach for them in a hurry, and they don't jam.

Head felt like a drum this morning, taut, vibrating, not terribly surprising I suppose. I hoped it would feel normal again soon: I had to be operational as soon as I could manage it, you get trapped on the street by bad luck and you're feeling like a zombie and it's finito, I don't need to tell you that.

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