Review: Slow Burner (Colonel Charles Russell Series #1) by William Haggard (Cassell, 1958)

For this second of three posts on British writer William Haggard's series of spy novels starring Colonel Charles Russell, head of the branch of Intelligence known as the Security Executive – introductory post and bibliography here – we turn to Russell's debut outing – not to mention Haggard's debut novel.

First published in 1958, Slow Burner introduces Colonel Russell; his assistant at the Executive, Major Mortimer; Sir Jeremy Bates, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry; and Dr. William Nichol, eminent scientist and friend of Charles Russell. Nichol is the Administrator General of Nuclear Development, and one of the boffins behind the discovery of the secretive nuclear fission process known as Slow Burner. Thus far Slow Burner is only being tested in a number of factories across the land, but the process has the potential to put Britain way ahead in the nuclear energy race. However, epsilon rays – the signature emission of the Slow Burner process – have been detected emanating from the incongruous environs of Number Twenty-Seven, Chatsworth Road, Dipley, and so Russell and Mortimer must get to the bottom of why – and how – a quantity of the highly dangerous Slow Burner has come to reside in a semi-detached suburban house in Surrey.

As I mentioned in yesterday's introduction, Haggard's novels are characterized by a very British stiff-upper-lipped sense of decorum. As with Anthony Price's later David Audley spy thrillers, many passages in Slow Burner consist of the protagonists turning over the available evidence and discussing ways forward, but unlike Price's books, the dialogue is frequently punctuated by deferential asides, such as this early encounter between Russell and Mortimer: 

Russell smiled disarmingly. 'Major Mortimer,' he said, 'I have known you for a good many years. You haven't by any chance been lunching unwisely? You are not, perhaps, pulling my leg? If you are it is forgotten. But I must know.'

Mortimer, now, was really shocked. 'Good gracious no.' He hesitated uncomfortably. 'I don't think I have the reputation of being an impertinent man. If I may say so,' he added doggedly.

'You may. You do not. And I apologize.'

Haggard's – and therefore his characters' – preoccupation with the right and proper way of doing things is disarmingly charming, and extends to how Russell and Mortimer go about investigating the problem of the epsilon emissions. The resident of Number Twenty-Seven, Chatsworth Road is one Mrs. Tarbat, "A lady of easy virtue," as Mortimer puts it. To which Russell responds, "You mean a tart?" only to be corrected by Mortimer that Mrs. Tarbat is not a "tart", merely a "kept woman". This distinction may be slight, but to Russell it makes all the difference as to how she is handled – i.e., delicately.

Mrs. Tarbat, it transpires, entertains three different male suitors, one of whom may well be responsible for the epsilon rays, so Russell and Mortimer elect to bring in a disavowable third party to investigate: Charlie Percival-Smith, a subordinate of Mortimer's during the war. But when Percival-Smith is discovered by Mrs. Tarbat having broken into her house, he gets rather more than he bargained for...

All of this is wryly amusing, but there's a darker undercurrent to the novel, hinging on the unbalanced Sir Jeremy. His actions very nearly bring disaster on the whole enterprise, and speak to Haggard's willingness to entertain the deficiencies of the Establishment figures he depicts. Russell in particular is far from flawless; he spends much of the novel perplexed, trying to work out what on earth is going on. Evidently there are foreign powers at work, but to what end? The solution to the conundrum perhaps isn't a huge surprise, but as ever it's the journey to the answer which provides the interest, especially the Whitehall politicking that, out of necessity, Russell must negotiate. Haggard said of his books that they were, "basically political novels with more action than in the straight novel", and appropriately Slow Burner ends with a spot of welcome action: a mad dash to prevent a nuclear accident outside Oxford.

Colonel Russell would go on to feature in a further twenty-four novels, and in my third and final Haggard/Russell post, I'll be showcasing some of the British first editions of those novels I've managed to find over the past few months...

William Haggard and the Colonel Charles Russell Spy Thriller Series: an Introduction to the Author and a Bibliography

Returning to my somewhat sporadic series of posts on spy fiction series (which was interrupted by nearly a week's worth of blogging on Richard Stark's Butcher's Moon), next we have a series by a British author who, despite having penned thirty-three thrillers over thirty-plus years, has slipped quietly into semi-obscurity.

As is the way with a lot of thriller writers, William Haggard – real name Richard Henry Michael Clayton, "Haggard" being his mother's maiden name, not to mention the surname of his fifth cousin, H. Rider Haggard (many thanks to Garen Ewing for those nuggets of info) – came to writing relatively late in life. Born in Croydon (not far from Beckenham, where I grew up) to Henry James and Mabel Sarah Clayton in 1907, Haggard was educated at Lancing College and Christ Church, Oxford, after which he embarked on a career as a civil servant, in the first instance in India, where he eventually became a judge. He served in the Indian Army from 1939 to 1946 – undergoing a course at the Staff College, Quetta – and after the war returned to Britain to join the British Civil Service, taking up a position at the Board of Trade, where he worked until 1969 (for a time as Controller of Enemy Property). But parallel to his day job Haggard had begun writing fiction; his debut novel, Slow Burner, was published in 1958 when Haggard was fifty-one, and introduced a character who would go on to appear in a further twenty-four adventures: Colonel Charles Russell.

Colonel Russell is the head of a branch of British Intelligence known as the Security Executive, tasked with defending the realm from any and all foreign threats – many verging on the science fictional in nature. Initially working behind the scenes, by the time Russell is introduced in Slow Burner he has already been serving with the Executive for twenty years, and is in his late fifties and close to retirement. (He would actually retire midway through the series, but would continue to assist the Executive thereafter.) 

Russell is very much a part of the Establishment, and a product of Haggard's own political views, which were firmly to the right of centre; in many ways the series was a precursor to Anthony Price's later David Audley spy novels: both series are set in Whitehall, and are as much political or detective thrillers as they are espionage fiction, although Haggard's books are characterized by an underlying preoccupation with decorum, with the correct way of doing things, whether it be in action or in conversation. Mind you, even compared to the avowedly conservative Price, Haggard was pretty far to the right; as Price himself put it during my interview with the writer in July, "he was more right wing than even me! He made me look like a liberal!"

Haggard's own view of his books, which he shared in a letter to Donald McCormick for McCormick's 1977 survey Who's Who in Spy Fiction, was that they were "basically political novels with more action than in the straight novel". Even so, much of the "action" takes place in offices and consists of clever types reasoning out sticky dilemmas (again, see Anthony Price). McCormick also notes in Haggard's entry in Who's Who in Spy Fiction that Haggard was "associated with Intelligence work during his career", so it seems that, in common with many spy novelists, Haggard knew of what he "spoke".

Haggard came to my attention thanks to Existential Ennui reader Richard, who left a comment on my review of Anthony Price's The Labyrinth Makers directing me to Haggard's work. Haggard died in 1993 and all of his books are long out of print (some have become quite scarce in any edition). There's scant information about him online either; the best resource for the Charles Russell series is this dedicated page on the Spy Guys & Gals site, while The Independent has a decent obituary of the author and an additional entry in the paper's Forgotten Authors series. For my part, I have another couple of posts planned on Haggard and Charles Russell: a review of Slow Burner, which will be up next, and a gallery of some of the Haggard/Russell first editions I've found on my travels. Hopefully all three of these posts will go some way towards raising the profile of William Haggard, a fine writer who's long overdue a reappraisal. 

WILLIAM HAGGARD BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Colonel Charles Russell Series

1. Slow Burner (1958)
2. Venetian Blind (1959)
3. The Arena (1961)
4. The Unquiet Sleep (1962)
5. The High Wire (1963)
6. The Antagonists (1964)
7. The Hard Sell (1965)
8. The Powder Barrel (1965)
9. The Power House (1966)
10. The Conspirators (1967)
11. A Cool Day for Killing (1968)
12. The Doubtful Disciple (1969); features Russell's replacement as head of the Security Executive, Richard Laver
13. The Hardliners (1970)
14. The Bitter Harvest (1971), a.k.a. Too Many Enemies
15. The Old Masters (1973), a.k.a. The Notch on the Knife
16. The Scorpion's Tail (1975)
17. Yesterday's Enemy (1976)
18. The Poison People (1977)
19. Visa to Limbo (1978)
20. The Median Line (1979)
21. The Money Men (1981)
22. The Mischief Makers (1982); features fellow Security Executive operative William Wilberforce Smith
23.  The Heirloom (1983)
24. The Meritocrats (1985)
25. The Vendettists (1990)

Paul Martiny Novels

The Protectors (1972)
The Kinsmen (1974)

William Wilberforce Smith Novels

The Martello Tower (1986)
The Diplomatist (1987) 

Other Novels

The Telemann Touch (1958)
Closed Circuit (1960)
Need To Know (1984); this one may or may not be a part of the Charles Russell series – opinions vary
The Expatriots (1989)

Westlake Score: Butcher's Moon by Richard Stark; 1977 UK Coronet Paperback

(NB: a version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.)

Time for my third and final post on Butcher's Moon, the sixteenth Donald "Richard Stark" Westlake "Parker" thriller. And having eulogised the novel in an enervating fashion and examined the 1974 Random House first edition at laborious length, for this terminal missive I want to take a look at the first – and indeed only – British edition of the book. Fear not, weary reader: I promise this post will be mercifully shorter than its predecessors.

Published in paperback in the UK by Coronet/Hodder & Stoughton (formerly Hodder Fawcett) in 1977, the edition of Butcher's Moon seen above is, as I say, the only edition of the novel ever to make it into print in Britain. And not only that: it's the only printing, too; most of the other Parker novels Coronet published from 1967 onwards went through two or three printings (or impressions), often with different cover treatments, but Butcher's Moon warranted just this one 1977 outing. Ah, but surely, I hear you cry, you're overlooking the fact that the University of Chicago Press issued a new edition of Butcher's Moon this very year, you blithering idiot. And yes, it's true, they did. But not in the UK. Sure, the UCP edition is available over here via the likes of Amazon, but it wasn't actually published here. (Nor indeed were any of the other UCP editions of the Parker novels.)

Consequently, the 1977 Coronet edition remains the only British appearance of Butcher's Moon, and is therefore decidedly uncommon; AbeBooks has just two copies listed at present, both from the kind of bulk-warehouse-style secondhand booksellers it's usually best to avoid. Mine came from a rather more human seller, and is in terrific condition, but unfortunately it doesn't reveal who was responsible for the cover design, which was sort of my reason for getting it. It might have been Raymond Hawkey, the legendary British designer who instigated the famed "bullet hole" covers of the Coronet editions of the Parkers in the early 1970s, like so:

Hawkey was best known for the more photographic approach he deployed on British dustjackets in the 1960s and '70s, notably those wrapping the novels of his friend Len Deighton – see this Existential Ennui post for more on Hawkey and Deighton, and this one and this one for some similar examples to Butcher's Moon – so it could well have been he who created the Coronet cover. As ever, if anyone can shed any light on the true identity of the cover designer, do leave a comment.

And that, you'll be overjoyed to learn, is that for Butcher's Moon. Next from me on The Violent World of Parker blog, I'll probably be returning to Donald E. Westlake's science fiction short stories, with a couple of posts which will afford an insight as to why Westlake wrote SF... and perhaps more intriguingly, why he stopped... Here on Existential Ennui, however, it's back to the spy fiction series, with an extremely stiff-upper-lipped series of books by a writer who these days is virtually forgotten...

Collecting Parker: Richard Stark's Butcher's Moon – How to Identify a True First Edition

(NB: a version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.)

Having expounded at length – and how – on the meat (groan...) of Butcher's Moon – i.e. reviewing the novel itself – I thought I'd ruminate for a while on the American first edition of the book: its collectibility and current value, and how to identify a true first. Those whose interest in tedious matters to do with book collecting is negligible should look away now.

For many years, Butcher's Moon (Parker #16) was the holy grail of Parker novels. Like its predecessor, Plunder Squad (Parker #15, 1972), until this year (when it was reissued by University of Chicago Press) it had only ever been published three times in the English language: by Random House in the US in 1974; by Coronet/Hodder Fawcett in the UK in 1977; and by Avon in the US in 1985. All of the preceding Parker novels to these two had appeared in at least a couple more editions, usually from Berkley in the States and Allison & Busby in Britain. (Arguably, Plunder Squad was just as scarce as Butcher's Moon, but there seems to have been more of a mystique surrounding the latter, probably due to its end-of-an-era status and length.)

Consequently, Butcher's Moon was for a long time bloody difficult to get hold of, and for many Parker enthusiasts and collectors, their journey through the Parker novels came to an abrupt halt with the fourteenth book, Slayground (1971). (Comics writer and Parker fan Ed Brubaker mentions how hard it was to find copies of both Butcher's Moon and Plunder Squad towards the end of this Tom Spurgeon interview with Darwyn Cooke.) With the advent of the internet, eBay and aggregate bookseller sites like AbeBooks, Butcher's Moon became slightly more readily available, but copies of the book still remained out of reach for most folk unless they were prepared to part with a substantial sum, even for a tatty Avon paperback. 

Of course, all that's changed now that the University of Chicago Press edition is out there. And the arrival of a new edition of the novel does appear to have affected prices of older editions – at least the Avon softcover: you can currently find copies of the Avon paperback on AbeBooks for around $20, although there are still some on the site for upwards of $75. The Random House first edition, however, has pretty much held its value: there are a few copies on AbeBooks for under $100, but those will probably be ex-library; you'd still be looking at at least $200 for a very good-to-near fine copy of the first.

I'd already managed to find a lovely example of the Random first of Butcher's Moon – you can see it at the top of this post and in the previous post – but for reasons that still aren't entirely clear to even me (but possibly because it was cheap), I picked up another copy of that edition fairly recently. It's an ex-library copy hailing from the Seattle Public Library:

Generally speaking, ex-library copies are a bit of a no-no in book collecting circles – especially when they've had the front flyleaf (or endpaper) torn out – but for me they hold a strange fascination. I've written about this on Existential Ennui once or twice; there's a provenance to ex-library books that you just don't get with most secondhand books. With an ex-library book, you know exactly where it's been all these years (in a public library, basically). Being a Brit, American ex-library books are of particular interest to me (something to do with my view of the States as an exotic, far-off place, I think), and this one, aside from being in very good condition considering its history (evidently there weren't many Richard Stark fans in Seattle), hasn't been butchered (groan, again) for a change – it still has the library docket attached to the flyleaf:

There's a certain amount of confusion surrounding how to identify a true first – i.e. a first printing (or impression) – of the Random House edition of Butcher's Moon. Identifying true firsts can be a minefield at the best of times, but with Butcher's Moon, matters aren't helped by the way Random House denoted first editions around this period. In many books you'll find what's known as a strike-off line, or number line, on the copyright page. If that line has a "1" in it, that usually means it's a first printing. But in the 1970s, Random House instituted an atypical form of strike-off line, one where, instead of ending on "1", first printings ended on "2" instead. To make things worse, a post-1970 Random House book with a strike-off line that ends in "2" still isn't necessarily a true first; true Random House firsts will also have the words "First Edition" next to the number line, whereas second printings won't, although they will still end with "2". So if you're ever thinking of buying a first of Butcher's Moon, make sure it has the words "First Edition" on the copyright page, like so:

Mind you, I'm not entirely convinced Butcher's Moon ever went into a second printing, so this may all be academic. Oh, and, should you be interested, the dustjacket of the Random edition was designed by Ira Teichberg, other examples of whose work can be found in the AIGA Design Archives.

Anyway, all of that leaves me with just one further Butcher's Moon post (thank the Lord), which will be on the first – and, to date, only – British edition of the novel...