Murder on the Dishes

Agatha Christie and her novels

“During domestic chores I could always relax my mind completely.  Robert Graves once said to me that washing up was one of the best aids to creative thought. I think he is quite right. There is a monotony about domestic duties — sufficient activity for the physical side, so that it releases your mental side, allowing it to take off into space and make its own thoughts and inventions. That doesn’t apply to cooking, of course. Cooking demands all your creative abilities and complete attention.”

— Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Another British novelist, Elleston Trevor, told me essentially the same thing, and I’ve found it to be true myself. 

Your unconscious mind does more than half the heavy lifting in good writing, and bland, simple physical activities can be useful in getting the conscious mind out of its way.

Prescient Dialogue from Alec Gunness

George Segal and Alec Guinness in "The Quiller Memorandum"

Watching The Quiller Memorandum from 1966. 

“We’ve been engaged in some rather tough work here,” says Alec Guinness, in low, ominous tones. “Nazis, from top to toe, in the classic tradition. Not just the remains of the old lot, oh no. There’s quite a bit of new blood. Youth. Firm believers, very dangerous. It wouldn’t do to underestimate them.”

Yeah, tell me about it, Alec.

Elleston Trevor — Bishop Exposed

The film was retitled for U.S. release

My great friend and mentor Elleston Trevor wrote novels that were made (and remade) into major Hollywood movies — The Flight of the Phoenix and The Quiller Memorandum. But after his stint fixing the Spitfires on World War II airfields and before his move to Phoenix in the 1960s, he wrote novels that were made into movies in England. He never liked to talk about them much, regarding them as inferior to Hollywood’s product.

I ran across this, Elleston’s 1952 novel Queen in Danger made into a 1953 movie called Mantrap and starring, of all people, Paul Henreid (of Casablanca), Hugh Sinclair (one of the Saints) and Lois Maxwell (of the James Bond films). It was directed by Hammer Films’ Terence Fisher. The whole movie’s here. Henreid stars as Hugo Bishop, Elleston’s amateur detective hero who studies humanity under stress. The Bishop novels all had chess references in the titles, and at the time Elleston was still writing under his original name, Trevor Dudley-Smith. After his Quiller novels became famous, the Bishop novels were reissued under his spy novelist pen name, Adam Hall.

Paul Henreid as Hugo Bishop

The Quiller Memorabilia

Here’s John Barry, the composer, and George Segal, the star, on The Quiller Memorandum, the film made from my friend and mentor’s Elleston Trevor's novel (written under his pen name, Adam Hall). Elleston never liked the movie much, but I certainly did, and we would argue about it in a friendly way. Here’s Matt Monro singing John Barry’s haunting theme. And below is a chance meeting of spies in June 1966. Michael Caine bumped into George Segal on location in Berlin when Caine was reprising his Harry Palmer role in Funeral in Berlin while Segal was shooting The Quiller Memorandum.

The Voice of the Crowds

At yesterday’s Mattoon Library book sale, I picked up a half-dozen hardcover novels, including Felice Picano’s “The Lure,” two by Simenon, a Hornblower omnibus, 1960s book club editions of “Casino Royale” and “Moonraker” and a pristine volume of my late friend Elleston Trevor’s 1970 World War I novel, “Bury Him Among Kings.”

That one was special to the British novelist among his many books, and I’ve always particularly liked his last, chilly paragraph: “She turned, pressed against him, and he tried to shut out of his mind the voice of the crowds; but it was insistent, surging among the buildings and rising to the dismal sky, where it lost all meaning. He’d heard this voice crying in joy for war; now it cried in joy for peace. It was a voice to beware of, wherever it was heard.”

Books: Ten I Retain

Here my thoughts on 10 books that have stayed with me ever since I read them, in no particular order:

—   Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith. The canny creator of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” wrote a book that is equal parts inspirational, autobiographical and advisory. I read an Effingham library copy when I was in high school and it took me decades to track down a hardcover copy of my own.

—   Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The stoic emperor’s own advice to himself. He was perhaps the only real “philosopher-king” humanity ever saw. “Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts,” he wrote. The Buddhists would have agreed. He also said, “The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.” And that may just about the best advice anybody ever gave anybody

—   The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber. Whenever you’d like to make people laugh, just start reading aloud from the great New Yorker writer and cartoonist’s short stories “The Night the Bed Fell,” “The Breaking Up of the Winships” or, my favorite, “A Couple of Hamburgers.”

—   The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I have escaped its Neptune-like gravitational pull, but I will never forget it. Rand’s philosophy offers useful hymns to individualism — particularly for the young, when they most need to hear them. But unfortunately, despite her self-congratulatory trumpeting of reason, Rand confused her own whims and passions with facts, much to the detriment of the political economy of the U.S., as it turned out.

—   Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming. The second of the James Bond novels remains the most vivid in my mind, with its evocation of New York circa 1953, with its tough heroic action, with its vulnerable, clairvoyant heroine, with its Freudian-daddy villain’s horrifying schemes of vengeance, with its lyric Silver Meteor train ride from Manhattan to St. Petersburg and those offhanded observations of Bond’s that seemed to express the height of sophistication when you were a teenage boy. The problem isn’t getting the caviar you want, you know. It’s getting the proper amount of buttered toast to spread it on. Ian Fleming took an eager sensual pleasure in life that ended his life early, but that can still sweep us along with its zest.

—   The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer. Back in 1965, the famed New Yorker cartoonist wrote the first hardcover book about the first comic-book superheroes, managing to be serious, light-hearted, witty and insightful, all at the same time. Look closely, and you can even see some problematic American cultural patterns laid bare there. “A sissy wanted girls who scorned him; a man scorned girls who wanted him,” wrote Feiffer, recalling the attitudes of the superheroes' first fanboys in the 1930s and 1940s. “Our cultural opposite of the man who didn’t make out with women has never been the man who did — but rather the man who could if he wanted to, but still didn't. The ideal of masculine strength, whether Gary Cooper's, L'il Abner’s, or Superman's, was for one to be so virile and handsome, to be in such a position of strength, that he need never go near girls. Except to help them. And then get the hell out ... Real rapport was not for women. It was for villains. That's why they got hit so hard.”

—   Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Early in the history of the novel, Austen performed at least three neat tricks at once. She created a credible romance between intelligent, charismatic characters. She perfected the practice of letting characters damn themselves out of their own mouths to great comic effect. And she explored proto-feminist territory by presenting the dilemma facing women who must make a match that will determine the course of their lives, taking into account both love and money yet taking care not to be overwhelmed by either, and all the while keeping up the “well-bred” pretense that they’re not interested in anything of the sort. A high-wire act would be a walk in the park by comparison.

—   Reason and Belief by Brand Blanshard. With careful and kindly analysis, giving religion every benefit of the doubt, the great Yale philosopher disposes of the supernatural claims of faith finally and, for a fair-minded reader, irrefutably, I’d say. An intellectual tour de force.

—   The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor). My friend and mentor Elleston Trevor split the difference between the thrills of Ian Fleming and the verisimilitude of John Le Carre in his novels about the tense, terse British “shadow executive” code-named Quiller. Trevor convincingly portrayed the way a competent professional loner operates, and something in Quiller’s edgy, first-person, adrendaline-tinged self-control rang true psychologically with readers worldwide. “I’m frightened of pushing things to the point where they might blow up,” Quiller reflects. “So that’s what I go on doing, to prove I’m not frightened.’

—   Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. One of my top-three science fiction authors, Zelazny here posits a colony of humans from long-forgotten “Urath” who are so advanced that they have been able to effectively transform themselves into the Hindu pantheon of gods in order to dominate the population of a planet. Whic means that one of their number, fed up with their stultifying injustice, must effectively become the Buddha. But we only learn all that gradually, lyrically. “His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam.”

The Shadow Executive in Berlin

“The Quiller Memorandum” (1966) is an excellent, low-key spy film.

Morally ironic, almost eerie at times, this film’s protagonist splits the difference between James Bond and Alec Leamus. Quiller is the ultimate professional, a “shadow executive” featured in a series of top-rank thrillers by Elleston Trevor (a/k/a Adam Hall).

George Segal plays an Americanized Quiller here, with Max von Sydow as his perfectly chilling neo-Nazi “German gentleman” adversary. Alec Guinness didn’t think much of the film, but he’s good in it as Quiller's sinister contact Pol (watch the scene in which he uses a raisin to describe Quiller’s ambiguous position, and then pops it in his mouth). The John Barry score is icing on the thrill cake.

Elleston himself, who was my late friend and mentor, didn’t like the film, and we argued about that. He said George Segal was “for the girls and comedies and so on,” and that screenwriter Harold Pinter was “obviously a very fine writer” but “hadn’t got the knack of adapting.” Specifically, Elleston thought Pinter had changed the character of the main female character too much.

I argued that the movie retained much of the book’s suspense and innovation, including the fact that Quiller is presented as a secret agent who thinks carrying a gun is a mistake. Seeing Quiller invade the enemy headquarters unarmed impressed me with his courage, even when I was 12.

I always thought that the box office had something to do with Elleston’s opinion of the film. He had a much higher opinion of the 1965 film adaptation of his novel “The Flight of the Phoenix,” which was a hit.

However, the star of “Quiller Memorandum,” George Segal, noted that the film had been lavishly praised by director Quentin Tarantino as one of the best spy films of the era.

Scenes from 'The Quiller Memorandum' (1966)

A Hero Is a Rare Thing

Editor’s note: This column about my late friend and mentor Elleston Trevor originally appeared in the July 26, 1995, edition of the Sullivan, IL, News-Progress.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

— Henry David Thoreau

By Dan Hagen

Elleston Trevor was transacting some business one day when his banker, making small talk, asked him what he was learning in his new martial art of aikido.

Elleston Trevor (r) with his son Jean-Pierre

    Without hesitation, this man in his late 60s proceeded to show the banker what he'd learned—by doing a flying roll there in a bank lobby full of people. Trevor enjoyed the moment immensely.

     That was Trevor for you. He always said that if he found himself standing in a queue waiting for a bus, his impulse was to face away from the bus stop—in the opposite direction as everybody else—as if to pretend he wasn't waiting.

     Mining his character, you'd find a rich, deep vein of individualism. In his earliest days, he learned that one must find and live by one's own principles. From the first, Thoreau's different drummer was clearly audible to Trevor.

     An Englishman born in Bromley, Kent, he grew up under the care of parents who loved him, but warred constantly with each other. He found no refuge in his English public school, where thin chains played regularly on the backs of boys who had committed such crimes as receiving bad marks in Latin. The undisguised sadism soured him on formal education. A reporter from the Manchester Guardian once asked Trevor if he'd be afraid to return to that school for a visit. Trevor—who had started studying karate at age 58 and swiftly earned his black belt—said oh, no. He smiled and told the reporter that if they tried it on him again, he'd kill them.

    Imperiled on all sides as a boy, he found a "safe house" in his own resilient character, and his ability to write. A boy named Trevor Dudley-Smith became Elleston Trevor, his own man and the first of his many creations.

    Seeking to test himself against challenge and adventure, the young Trevor apprenticed as a race driver. Then World War II descended, and the swift and deadly Spitfires caught his eye. Unfortunately, that eye was extremely light-sensitive, so he was forbidden to fly them. He got as close to the beguiling beauties as he could, working as an airfield mechanic.

     In his off-hours, as the pilots flew their missions against the Nazis, Trevor began writing novels and never stopped. Some 100 books would be published under his name, and his various pen names, as the decades rolled by.

     Several of the novels caught Hollywood's attention, and his The Flight of the Phoenix and The Quiller Memorandum became major motion pictures in the 1960s. During the filming of the former, Trevor listened with politely disguised disinterest as actor Richard Attenborough described his dream of someday making a film about Gandhi. "Poverty and celibacy are not my sort of thing," Trevor explained later.

     His Quiller series of espionage novels, written under the pen name of Adam Hall, inspired a film, a BBC TV series, undiluted praise from the New York Times and earned him the highest honor in the suspense novel field — the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The novels starring his tense, terse "shadow executive" also won him a cult following among fans, which he wasn't quite sure how to explain. "I think I hit people's funny bone in terms of their inner drives, motivations, neuroses," Trevor said. "I think they see in Quiller something that is in themselves."

The English spy novelist in Arizona

     Trevor married a former beauty queen who'd worked for Royal Air Force Intelligence during the war. They courted in cars parked in war-ravaged London, steaming privacy onto the windows. "It was the wickedest winter, but we had our love to keep us warm," Trevor recalled. He and Jonquil raised a son, Jean-Pierre, a super-realistic painter who has done matte work for films such as the Stars Wars series.

     Disenchanted with the socialist tide in England, which they believed had destroyed the work ethic there and the sense of life's challenges, the Trevors set out for "somewhere civilized and in the sun"—the South of France during the '50s and '60s, then Phoenix, Arizona. They loved the openness of America, where everyone seemed to wear their hearts on their bumpers. Jonquil served informally as Trevor's business manager, and in the U.S. began studying for her Ph.D. in English. In a mock-rueful tone, but secretly proud, Trevor dryly noted that their mail would be addressed to "Dr. and Mr. Elleston Trevor."

     Like other strong and generous individuals, Trevor had spent his time and energy figuring out how to ease his loved one's lot, financially and emotionally, after his death. But when a brain tumor felled Jonquil unexpectedly a few years ago, he was left in a situation for which he was unprepared, and which nearly destroyed him with grief. A young family friend, Chaille, gave him his life back, or perhaps a second life. They married. With her, the cool and deadly secret agent Quiller was as dewy-eyed as a sophomore in love, as courtly as the finest English gentleman stepped straight from the pages of Jane Austen.

     Trevor's self-taught writing style included numerous incisive innovations which betrayed a touch of genius. He brushed away all such "literary" praise, though, taking pride in his professionalism as a writer. His attitude to readers was, "Hey, kids, I think I've just cooked you a nice meal here. What do you think?" Trevor also wielded that rarest of the novelist's talents, and the one without which the others pale: he created characters who lived in the mind.

     And they will continue to live, though he will not. Trevor died last week, following an operation for stomach cancer. His death was a shock. Though well into his 70s, Trevor remained fit through daily exercise, as thin and supple as a whip.

     A prized discovery of my early teenage years, Trevor remained one of my favorite writers, and an inspiration. His work was a major influence on my decision to make writing my career. Meeting and becoming friends with him as an adult, I learned he was more than a great writer. He was kind and witty and generous, with a capacity for life as large as his considerable talent. He searched seriously for the joy of life, and found it often—in stargazing, in horseback riding, in good food and wine, in fine cars, in meticulously built model aircraft, in the rigor of the martial arts, in friends and fans, in J.P., Jonquil and Chaille and at his well-worn typewriter.

     And beyond life? Trevor knew that all we are began as part of the same undifferentiated energy source within the Big Bang, and reasoned that we are all therefore a part of the same mysterious and profound cosmic process, and each other.

     It's a cold comfort, at this moment. His death is one of those events that leave you wincing afterward, at odd moments—as if something had been at you with a baseball bat, and you were expecting it to try again.

     A hero is a rare thing — rarer than love, as rare as genius, as a piercingly lovely song or one perfect spring day or happiness without a shadow. I knew a hero. He has passed away from me, leaving a cold ache behind, and yet strangely he somehow remains with me, as well.

     A moment of silence, then, from the different drummer, please.