Elleston Trevor Biography and List of Works

Prolific English thriller and mystery writer, who also published plays, juvenile novels and short stories. Trevor's best-known characters are the indestructible British agent Quiller from his novels written under the pseudonym Adam Hall, and Hugo Bishop from the novels written under the pseudonym Simon Rattray. Among Trevor's most powerful work is THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1964), a study of men driven to breaking point in their struggle to survive. The book was reviewed in Life after which several agents tried to buy it. The director Robert Aldrich was in the bidding very early. After he had signed the contact, James Stewart's agent called and revealed that he had tried to buy it for the actor. Stewart decided to take the role he was offered and the book was made into a film in 1965. In the story a plane crash leaves a group of men stranded in the Libyan desert. The water soon runs out, but refusing to die, the men began to build from the wreckage an aircraft that could fly them to safety.

"Here was a plane half-built and it could save their lives; but they stood bickering. This was the desert, out to kill in one of its countless ways: reducing a man in its heat, shrivelling him and taking away his dignity, giving him water again to send him in search of what he had lost: his pride."
(from The Flight of the Phoenix)

Elleston Trevor was born in Bromley, Kent, and educated at Yardley Court Preparatory School and Sevenoaks School (1932-38). He was apprenticed as a racecar driver on leaving school, but when World War II broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force serving as a flight engineer. In 1947 he married Jonquil Burgess; she died in 1986. In 1987 Trevor married Anne Groom.

Trevor lived in France from 1958 to 1973 and then in the United States. In 1965 he received the Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America for THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM. It also won the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. In THE WARSAW DOCUMENT (1970) Trevor moved the events of the Prague Spring to Poland - Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968 by the Warsaw Pact troops to crush the liberals. Now Quiller wrecks a Soviet plot to invade Warsaw and saves East-West détente from explosion.

"'These people would be all right, you know, if they'd only get down to their work and show a bit of faith in those who are trying to create the new world. But they're too proud of their past, warrior nation and all that, it's old hat these days. Things have changed, and they're going to change a lot more. The past's all right but you won't get far if you spend your life in a museum.' He turned his face to me. 'There's such a lot of good in them, though, just as there is in everyone, and it's a shame to see it go to waste.'"
(from The Warsaw Document, 1970)

Trevor's first books appeared under the name T. Dudley-Smith in the 1940s. In 1946 he created the pseudonym Elleston Trevor for a non-mystery book, and later adopted it as his legal name. His style varied depending on the pen name: Simo Rattray writes classic mystery novels, and Adam Hall fast moving, action-filled spy thrillers. Among his later works are THE SIBLING and its sequel THE SISTER (1993), in which the author broke from his Quiller spy novels. In these books Trevor creates a nightmarish story about two teenaged sisters, Madlen and Debra, who hope to find sanctuary from their abusive parents when they enter the convent, but they discover horror instead. THE FLYCATHER (1994) is a novel about a hunt for a serial killer.

QUILLER: A man with no real name, who works for a London Bureau that "doesn't exist". Quiller has no emotional or intellectual life independent of his intelligence missions, and despite all his complaining he remains loyal to his country and to the Bureau. He is a martial arts expertise, with knowledge of languages, skilled at flying, driving, diving, but refuses to carry a gun. He first appears in THE BERLIN MEMORANDUM (1965, U.S. title THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM). The book was adapted onto the screen in 1967, directed by Michael Anderson and starring George Segal, Alec Guinness, and Max von Sydow. In this pilot adventure Quiller fights against a lethal ring of Nazis determined to revive the Third Reich.

Hall's novels take the reader all over the world, from Peking to the Sahara Desert. Among the few spy novelists, who prefer such commonplace European settings as London, Berlin or Warsaw, are John Le Carré and Len Deighton. Sometimes Quiller's missions keep him busy in Europe, as in the novel THE SCORPION SIGNAL (1979), in which Quiller travels from a clinic in Berlin to the heart of Lubyanka Prison to track down the British agent who has vanished from Moscow. Euro-terrorism is the subject for THE QUILLER SOLITAIRE (1992). In THE MANDARIN CYPHER (1975), the Bureau's top intelligence agent prowls the streets of Hong Kong, THE COBRA MANIFESTO (1976) takes him from the French Riviera, to Rome, Cambodia, New York, and Brazil. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union are reflected in the novels QUILLER K.G.B. (1989), in which the lonely agent joins forces with the Soviets to stop a plan to assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev, and in THE QUILLER MERIDIEN (1993), also set in Russia. Now Quiller's mission is to stop a member of Podpolia, the hard-line underground, determined to seize control of the former Soviet Union.

The 16th Quiller novel, QUILLER SALAMANDER, appeared in 1994. It was a sequel to Quiller Meridien and follows the agent into the Cambodian jungle as he attempts to prevent the notorious Pol Pot from manoeuvring the dreaded Khmer Rouge back into power. An inexperienced young field director further complicates quiller's work. After serving England and world peace over 30 years, is a honourable retirement waiting for this super spy?

HUGO BISHOP: Nobody knows what he does for a living accept solves mysteries. He is not a private investigator or police detective, but more like a Hercule Poirot -type universal problem solver, who does not work for the money but is attracted to crimes because of the intellectual challenge they offer. His confidential secretary is Vera J. Corringe, M.A. from Oxford. Hugo Bishop first appeared in KNIGHT SINISTER (1951), which was followed by other works involving chess, including BISHOP IN CHECK (1953) and QUEEN IN DANGER (1952)

Other famous spys: Ian Fleming's James Bond, Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm, John Le Carre's George Smiley, Len Deighton's Harry Palmer - For further reading: Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, ed. John M. Reilly, 1985; Encyclopaedia Mysteriosa by William L. DeAndrea (1997)

as Simon Rattray:

• KNIGHT SINISTER, 1951
• QUEEN IN DANGER, 1952
• BISHOP IN CHECK, 1953
• DEATH SILENCE, 1954
• DEAD CIRCUIT, 1955
• DEAD SEQUENCE, 1957

Selected other works under various names:

• OVER THE WALL, 1943
• INTO THE HAPPY GLADE, 1943 (for children)
• ANIMAL LIFE STORIES, 1943-45 (3 vols.)
• DOUBLE WHO DOUBLE CROSSED, 1944
• ELLESTON TREVOR MISCELLANY, 1944
• BUY A SILVER STREAM, 1944 (for children)
• WUMPUS, 1945 (for children)
• DEEP WOOD, 1945 (for children)
• HEATHER HILL, 1946 (for children)
• THE IMMORTAL ERROR, 1946
• MOREA BAOUT WUMPUS, 1947 (for children)
• ESCAPE TO FEAR, 1948
• NOW TRY THE MORGUE, 1948
• THE ISLAND OF THE PINES, 1948 (for children)
• THE SECRET TRAVELLERS, 1948 (for children)
• WHERE'S WUMPUS? 1948 (for children)
• BADGER'S BEECH, 1948 (for children)
• THE WIZARD OF THE WOOD, 1948 (for children)
• BADGER'S MOON, 1949 (for children)
• A SPY AT MONK'S COURT, 1949 (for children)
• ANTS' CASTLE, 1949 (for children)
• THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING BOOK, 1950
• CHORUS OF ECHOES, 1950
• REDFERN'S MIRACLE, 1951
• TIGER STREET, 1951
• DEAD ON COURSE, 1951
• SINISTER CARGO, 1951
• IMAGE IN THE DUST, 1951
• MOLE'S CASTLE, 1951 (for children)
• SWEETHALLOW VALLEY, 1951 (for children)
• CHALLENGE OF THE FIREBRAND, 1951 (for children)
• SECRET ARENA, 1951 (for children)
• THE DOMESDAY STORY, 1952
• A BLAZE OF ROSES, 1952
• Screenplay: WINGS OF DANGER, 1952 (with John Gilling and Packham Webb)
• THE PASSION AND THE PITY, 1953
• SHADOW OF EVIL, 1953
• THE RACING WRAITH, 1953 (for children)
• STEPS IN THE DARK, 1954
• NAKED CANVAS, 1954
• THE BIG PIC-UP, 1955
• SQUADRON AIRBORNE, 1955- "So skilfully does Mr Trevor recapture the tense and sometimes tragic atmosphere of life on the war-time fighter stations that I found myself re-living some of the most exciting and trying events of my life." Wing-Commander R. Stanford Tuck, D.S.O., D.F.C., and two bars
• FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, 1955 (for children)
• THE KILLING GROUND, 1956
• GALE FORCE, 1956
• THE PILLARS OF MIDNIGHT, 1957 - "Mr Elleston Trevor is a professional novelist of the Nevil Shute School, a kind of mathematician of the novel." (From The Times Literary Supplement)
• HEAT WAVE, 1957
• DREAM OF DEATH, 1958
• BADGER'S WOOD, 1958 (for children)
• SILHOUETTE, 1959
• THE LAST OF THE DAYLIGHT, 1959 (play)
• THE V.I.P., 1959
• THE CHYSTAL CITY, 1959 (for children)
• GREEN GLADES, 1959 (for children)
• THE BILLBOARD MADONNA, 1960
• THE MIDS OF MAX DUVINE, 1960
• MURDER BY ALL MEANS, 1960 (play)
• THE BURNING SHORE, 1961
• SQUIRREL'S ISLAND, 1963 (for children)
• THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, 1964 - film 1965, dir. by Robert Aldrich, starring James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgine, Peter Finch, George Kennedy - a cargo passenger plane full of date plums crashes in the desert, but the survivors construct a new plane and escape from the disaster - see also Five Came Back (screenplay by Nathanael West, J. Cody and Dalton Trumbo) - "It's much more than an adventure story, but it has all the wonderful entertainment ingredients of an adventure story; superimposed on that is the survival dilemma of what men will and will not do to stay alive under pressurized conditions; third is the twist that I don't think has ever been done in film before, which makes the surprise ending not just a gimmick. It makes it a whole, almost reasonable, ending. There are no parallels. You can't say it's like some other kind of picture, and you hope it isn't." Aldrich in Who the Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovich, 1998
• THE SECOND CHANGE, 1965
• WEAVE A ROPE OF SAND, 1965
• THE SHOOT, 1966
• THE FREEBOOTERS, 1967
• A BLAZE FOR ARMS, 1967
• A PLACE FOR THE WICKED, 1968
• BURY HIM ALONG KINGS, 1970
• A PINCH OF PURPLE, 1971 (play)
• A TOUCH OF PURPLE, 1972 (play)
• JUST BEFORE DAWN, 1972 (play)
• EXPRESSWAY, 1973
• THE PARAGON, 1975
• THE THETA SYNDROME, 1977
• BLUE JAY SUMMER, 1977
• SEVEN WITNESSES, 1977
• THE DAMOCLES SWORD, 1982
• THE PENTHOUSE, 1983
• DEATH WATCH, 1984
• SIREN SONG, 1985
• RIVIERA STORY, 1987
• THE SISTER, 1993
• THE FLYCATHER, 1994

THE VOLCANOES OF SAN DOMINGO, (1963)
KNIGHT SINISTER, (1951)
OVER THE WALL, (1943)