Дочитал, потому что в свое время очень понравился Rogue Male. Почему-то я думал, что книга про "первобытный ужас, живущий в каждом", что-то в этом роде, но этот ужас там хотя и упоминается, но не является темой. В принципе, это вполне безыскусный "охотничий триллер": кто-то ходит на зверя, изучае...
”I hold no brief for the pre-war spartan training of the english upper class--or middle class as it is now the fashion to call it, leaving the upper to the angels--since in the ordinary affairs of a conventional life it is not of the slightest value to anyone; but it is of use on the admittedly r...
Similar to Rogue in plot, two master hunters--this time from WWII intelligence--go after each other in a duel in the dark English countryside some ten years after VE-Day.
1920s' Eastern Europe. A place of post-war intrigue, crumbling monarchies and Russian refugees. A world fortified by ghettos, brothels, freak shows and cabarets. And within this melting pot of society, Bernardo Brown embarks on a journey across the continent, without passport or money, evading th...
I love the ‘innocent bystander’ type spy story. They are the classic wrong place at the wrong time scenario. It is the innocent person who stumbles in on an incident or who gets caught up in the web of intrigue by accident. The classic example would have to be, The 39 Steps where Richard Hannay b...
Philip’s story and Leopold’s and mine must all agree. These horrible police who will not let us see each other or write to each other know that we couldn’t all have invented it. But they will not tell me what either of them said. I do not even know what I am accused of. They never tell me anythin...
The unexpected release of Mr Howard-Wolferstan, after he had been held for three months in the Tower of London upon a charge of High Treason, gave rise to comment in which the readiness of a healthy democracy to argue from unjustifiable hypotheses was only equalled by the vehemence, no doubt le...
You know how divinely exalted young women can become. Begged for a cyanide pill as though it were her right, as though I should be doing her out of a great spiritual experience if I hesitated. Men don’t behave like that at all. A man accepts the means of death without looking at it, hides it in h...
Excitement of course sharpens the senses. Man is still enough of an animal to be far more keenly observant when he is in danger or engaged in illegalities; but I know that at any time I should have responded to the stillness and colours of the inlet and the strangely decisive shape of the cliff w...
Eudora Hilliard, dated: New York, June 17th 1974 Yes, I agree with you. It is now nearly ten years since my nephew disappeared and we can try to clear his name without either of us having much fear of prosecution. But you should write the story, not I. Your tastes and character will carry convict...
It was separated from The Green Man by only thirty yards of straggling roses and lawn and all the showy annuals which you find in a pub garden. Its other side faced a cart track beyond which was an abandoned yard, grass and nettles growing through the paving, where former stables and a half-roofl...
Yes, of course there was something that didn’t come out in the papers. He died of a fit of laughter. When five of his political opponents escaped from jail and forced a pilot to fly them out of the country with a gun at the back of his neck and then shot him by mistake just as he had taken off, C...
The arc of the mountains encircled him on all sides but one, where shone the deserted sea. There was a fast, clear stream at his feet, and on the further bank a meadow, very green and studded with white boulders and jewelled with low flowers in the short grass. It was spring, and there were child...
It was a commanding little note—in the sense that it showed neither invitation nor interest, but allowed me to join her if I could. Business in Damascus I could always make, and I was eager to entertain her in my own world and to repay her kindness. I suspected that she might be less grave a crea...
When I got up – they had been careful to let me sleep – the council of war was over, but a dozen of them remained round the table and very courteously rose to greet me as I walked into the central hall which, I swear, still held the tenuous ghost of the perfumes of the sweating chorus. This counc...
She was a deep-sea fishing boat of a type used all along the north coast of Spain; an undecked wooden launch, fifty feet long, with the simplest kind of steam engine amidships. These launches looked the most top-heavy craft, for a brightly painted boiler, topped by an unwieldy funnel, stuck up hi...
If there were anyone who was useless, it was El Vicario. But the man had advanced beyond the symmetry of a chess board and laid out in lime and soot a silhouette of Cabo Desierto, at once recognisable from the exaggeration of the tank farm, the refinery and the Three Sentinels. Such humanity disa...
In those first days at Brussels and Valenciennes she had been only an observer, taking on responsibility beyond her orders, but still an observer. Now defence had changed into attack for the sake of Georges, her uncle and his unrevealable club. The impulsive drowning of Rippmann, a terrified reac...
On the other hand it was his duty, as an experienced regular officer, to do the best he could in any situation to which his profession had called him; and one could not, after all, go far wrong if one worked really hard and took pains to obey orders. He found it difficult,...
Now that the forest has again closed over me I feel that I am welcome, that under the dense mysteries of vegetation must be the answer – well, not the answer but a readiness to sense what it should be. One cannot live here without the genes of far-distant ancestors responding. I see in myself som...
So there I was in his flat with a silent, Sunday London outside. I fear I was very smug with self-satisfaction, warmed by the strength of the pink gins before lunch and a pleasurable sense of being wanted by a man who didn’t lightly give his confidence. That I was wanted a deal more elsewhere did...
Meg was scrabbling at the door trying to get out. I opened it for her and followed her to the front door. When I threw it wide and let in the night, I heard what she had heard. I could not tell whether it was played on a pipe or on the single string of hunting man. It was ...
He was aware that he had aroused the fury of a large and nationally important shipping line. And his passport was out-of-date. ‘If you would be so good as to accompany me to my office, sir …’ the Port Security Officer invited. Mr Bernard Vasey came willingly enough, accepting a chair and a cigare...
the consul asked. “Certainly not, Enrique. What I want is to listen to Gil Avellana’s broadcast.” “Has Vidal planted a policeman on you?” “That would be most improper, with two unmarried girls under my roof. But the street crawls with the hyenas of Vidalismo. To their grave embarrassment I send o...
“No!” said Bill. “I was of the public, and I recognize my incompetence. So would you, if you had ever seen a big 4–6–2 Great Western locomotive stopped three yards from the east-bound tunnel in Earl’s Court station.” I did see it. There must have been thousands of Londoner...