The Quiller memorandum

The first of Adam Hall's Quiller novels is a tough espionage thriller set in mid-60s Berlin. Quiller, a British agent working for a branch of British Intelligence called The Bureau, is tracking down Nazi war criminals (twenty years before he'd posed as a concentration camp guard and helped Jews escape the gas chambers) and is on the point of a well earned rest in London when he's contacted by a man called Pol and set on the trail of an old enemy - Obergruppenfuhrer Heinrich Zossen. What follows is a lesson in tradecraft by a lone agent working the streets of Berlin, tracking a neo-Nazi organisation called Phönix.

Quiller refuses cover, contacts and back-up, preferring to work his own way without interference from Local Control. He's a world weary man who's whole world is his work. He's tough, methodical and relentless. Along the way he meets the femme fatale Inga, who has apparently defected from Phönix. Quiller isn't infallible. He makes mistakes, sometimes fatal ones. Is Inga a mistake?

Hall's prose is spare and to the point. He keeps the action moving nicely, with some detailed explanations by Quiller of various aspects of his trade - from code-breaking to shadowing to how to induce a faint. There's none of Deighton's sardonic humour here, but neither is there the invincibility of Bond. The dourness is closer to early LeCarré, perhaps.

Berlin is described well and the villains, especially the emotionless Oktober, make your skin crawl. There are some nice twists in the plot and Hall keeps you guessing until the end as to whether Quiller will save the day.

A good read (and eighteen other novels to read too!).