Elleston Trevor

Elleston Trevor (17 February 1920 – 21 July 1995) was a British novelist and playwright who wrote under several pseudonyms. Born Trevor Dudley-Smith, he eventually changed his name to Elleston Trevor. Trevor worked in many genres, but is principally remembered for his 1964 adventure story The Flight of the Phoenix, written as Elleston Trevor, and for a series of Cold War thrillers featuring the British secret agent Quiller, written under the pseudonym Adam Hall.

He also wrote as Simon Rattray, Howard North, Roger Fitzalan, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith and Lesley Stone.

Born Trevor-Dudley Smith in Bromley, Kent, he lived in Spain and France before moving in 1973 to the United States, where he lived in Phoenix, Arizona. He was married twice: in 1947 to Jonquil Burgess (died 1986) by whom he had one son, Jean Pierre Trevor, and in 1987 to Chaille Anne Groom. [1] He was proficient in karate.

The Quiller series focuses on a solitary, highly capable spy (named after Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) who works (generally alone) for a government bureau that "doesn't exist" and narrates his own adventures. Quiller (not his real name) occupies a literary middle ground between James Bond and John le Carré. He is a skilled driver, pilot, diver, and linguist, but does not carry a gun. Regarded by his superiors as "reliable under torture", Quiller is often given dangerous disinformation missions where he is to be captured, tortured by the enemy, then reveal false information that will trick the other side into undermining their own scheme.

The series is very stylized, featuring intense depictions of spy tradecraft and professional relationships, surprising jump cuts between chapters, and deep, sometimes self-pitying interior monologues. The first of the Quiller novels, The Berlin Memorandum (1965) (retitled The Quiller Memorandum in the US) won an Edgar Award, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Novel. It was filmed in 1966 under its US title with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and starred George Segal and Alec Guinness. It was also adapted into a 1975 British television series, featuring Michael Jayston.

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