J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World and Other eBay Delights

I've got a bunch of new eBay auctions up and running, including something quite special:

Volume 4 No. 24 of Science Fiction Adventures, published in January 1962. What's so darn special about it? Well it features the first appearance of J.G. Ballard's dystopian classic The Drowned World, which debuted in this issue of Science Fiction Adventures months before it was published in hardback by Gollancz – making this effectively the true first edition. (See this post for more.) It's a pretty scarce publication, with lovely Brian Lewis cover art illustrating Ballard's tale, and it's got a low starting price, so someone could potentially nab a bargain.


All of my latest eBay offerings can be found here:

Existential Ennui on eBay

Or by clicking on each picture for the individual auctions...

Among them a 1964 first edition (later printing) of The Man Who Sold Death by James Munro (alias Callan creator James Mitchell)...

....a 1989 first edition of Quiller KGB by Adam Hall...

and a 2016 omnibus of Avengers: Time Runs Out, which collects the climax to Jonathan Hickman's brilliant Avengers run. Quite a mix of books, then, plus there are some others I've offered before  – some of them signed – but which now have lower starting prices. Have at it.

Donald E. Westlake, Richard Stark, James Mitchell, Victor Canning, Anthony Price, Cornell Woolrich and Harry Carmichael on eBay

What do Donald E. Westlake, Richard Stark, James Mitchell, Victor Canning, Anthony Price, Cornell Woolrich and Harry Carmichael all have in common? Aside from the fact that they're all blokes... and all crime/thriller writers of one sort or another... and indeed all wrote spy fiction at one time or another... and doubtless there are other commonalities besides, but the one that concerns us here is that presently I have eBay auctions running for books by all six of them (Westlake and Stark of course being the same person).

There are auctions for ten books in total, all of which finish on Sunday, and only one of which, as I type, has a bid in. The books are a mix of British and American first editions, mostly hardbacks (and one paperback), some quite scarce, all plucked from my personal collection (most having appeared previously on this very blog), all listed with relatively low starting prices. They are as follows:

A 1974 American first edition of Donald E. Westlake's Jimmy the Kid, the Dortmunder novel that features  excerpts from the 'missing' Parker novel Child Heist.

A 1974 American first edition of Richard Stark's Butcher's Moon, the sixteenth Parker novel and the explosive finale to the original run of Parkers.

A 1977 American first edition of Donald E. Westlake's Nobody's Perfect, the fourth Dortmunder novel.

A 1971 British first edition of Donald E. Westlake's Adios Scheherazade, his fictionalised account of his time as a sleaze paperback writer.

A 1966 British first edition of Donald E. Westlake's The Fugitive Pigeon, his first 'nephew' caper, featuring a fab Denis McLoughlin dust jacket.

A 1974 British first edition of James Mitchell's Death and Bright Water, the third Callan spy novel.

A 1972 British first edition of Victor Canning's The Rainbird Pattern, second novel in the 'Birdcage' spy series and believed by many to be the author's best book.

A 1974 British first edition of Anthony Price's Other Paths to Glory, the fifth novel in his David Audley spy series.

A 1958 British first edition of Harry Carmichael's A Question of Time, with a great William Randell dust jacket.

And a 1946 first American paperback edition of Cornell Woolrich's classic noir thriller The Black Path of Fear.

Lost Callan Episode and Short Stories by James Mitchell Collected for First Time

Quick bit of news: crime writer and critic Mike Ripley has drawn my attention to Callan Uncovered: The Collected and Missing Files, a newly published – by Mike's Top Notch Thrillers imprint – anthology of long-out-of-print Callan short stories plus a never-before-seen treatment and script by Callan TV show creator and writer James Mitchell. Mike "spent the best part of a year tracking down the stories for the collection" – 24 of which originally ran in the Sunday Express from 1973–1976, with one, the first Callan story, appearing in the TV Times in 1967 – "with the help of the British Library and a network of die-hard Callan fans". In addition, as Mike explains in an article on the Ostara Publishing (TNT's parent publisher) website, Peter Mitchell, the late James Mitchell's son, unearthed "an outline treatment for an episode of Callan and a complete script, originally called The Senator’s Daughter but then changed by James Mitchell to Goodbye Mary Lee. Although Mitchell was credited with writing the scripts for some 30 episodes of the highly successful television show between 1969 and 1972, it seemed that Goodbye Mary Lee was one script which had never been filmed and which could genuinely be called the 'lost Callan episode', not having been read by anyone outside the Mitchell family for more than forty years."

I'm told by Mike there's a copy of Callan Uncovered on its way to me, so I shall be giving it a thorough going over as soon as possible. In the meantime, allow me to point anyone interested in Callan and James Mitchell to these previous posts:

A Magnum for Schneider Book Review

The Callan Spy Thriller Series by James Mitchell

The Man Who Sold Death: James Mitchell alias James Munro

Russian Roulette Book Review

First Editions of Bonfire Night and The Money That Money Can't Buy

James Mitchell, alias James Munro: First Editions of Bonfire Night (Callan Spy Novel #5, 2002) and The Money That Money Can't Buy (John Craig Spy Novel #3, 1967)

Television writer and producer James Mitchell penned two series of spy novels of note in his near-fifty year career. The first, a four-book series starring gunrunner-turned-secret agent John Craig, written under the pen name James Munro, ran from 1964–1969; the second, a five-book series starring British Intelligence assassin David Callan, spinning out of the Mitchell-created Callan TV show, ran from 1969–2002. I profiled both series last year, reviewing the first book in each – respectively The Man Who Sold Death and A Magnum for Schneider, alias A Red File for Callan – and showcasing first editions of almost all of the other novels – almost all, because there were two I hadn't at that point got my clammy hands on. Fortunately, in the interim, I have; and so, seeing as I reviewed the second Callan book, Russian Roulette (1973), last week, I figured now's as good a time as any to showcase them. Oldest first, I think:

The Money That Money Can't Buy by James Munro, published in hardback by Hammond in 1967 (dust jacket design uncredited). The third John Craig spy thriller, Kirkus Reviews describe it as "Just so much spy schmaltz", which seems a little harsh to me; of the Craig novels, I've only read The Man Who Sold Death thus far, and though I wasn't as keen on it as I was A Magnum for Schneider, it wasn't that bad, and given the kind of writer Mitchell was, I can't imagine the quality of the series plummets too dramatically – a supposition supported by Existential Ennui reader Darryl Crawford, who commented on my John Craig post that the later books have "some of the coolest villains this side of Modesty Blaise", and Randall Mastellar at Spy Guys & Gals, for whom "the stories are good reads and the character does come up with a couple of the greatest one-liners I've ever read".

I found this first edition on an all-too-rare-these-days trip up to London (I moved down to Lewes from London nearly six years ago), in the basement of Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road. (On the same trip I also secured a vinyl copy of my album of the year from last year, Everything Everything's Arc, in Sister Ray on Berwick Street, which I was immensely pleased about because it's incredibly hard to come by on vinyl.) I think I paid about a fiver for it, which isn't bad considering the Hammond first isn't exactly in abundant supply – there are at present only half a dozen copies for sale online – and especially not in the UK, where I can currently only see one jacketless (I believe) copy for sale online (offered, coincidentally enough, by fellow Lewes exile, and fellow blogger, Steerforth).

Even scarcer, however, unless you're prepared to put up with an ex-library copy, is the Callan novel I secured:

Bonfire Night by James Mitchell, published by Severn House in 2002 (shortly before Mitchell's death that same year), jacket photograph by Ute Klaphake. The fifth and final Callan novel, there was a near-thirty year gap between this and the previous one, 1975's Smear Job, and according to reports from Existential Ennui commenters it's either "a bit weird" (Stuart Radmore), "confusing, and reads more like a script than a book" (Saz), or is "Mitchell... operating at the very top of his game in this dense narrative" (the aforementioned Darryl Crawford). Given which, the best thing to do, I imagine, is to read the book oneself and make one's own mind up, which ordinarily would mean stumping up at least twenty-five quid for an ex-library copy of the Severn House edition – the sole edition of the novel to date. Seems the vast majority of the print run of the Severn House edition went to public lending libraries, and even my copy, which I won on eBay (in the end for less than twenty quid), while it isn't ex-library, was evidently intended for libraries:

The book's case replicates the jacket front and back as a PLC (printed laminated cover), rather than the more usual Arlin over boards, suggesting it was bound with libraries in mind. Where it actually ended up, though, was with Mitchell's agent, as evidenced by this stamp on the front free endpaper:

All of which makes one wonder if the entire print run was bound for libraries. Anybody own a copy of the Severn House edition which doesn't sport a PLC...?

Russian Roulette (Callan Novel #2) by James Mitchell (Hamish Hamilton, 1973 / Top Notch Thrillers, 2013): Book Review

NB: Linked in Patti Nase Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books, which this week is celebrating its sixth anniversary.

I made a mental note last October, when I finished reading A Magnum for Schneider, the excellent first book in James Mitchell's five-book Callan spy thriller series – which span out of the Mitchell-created Callan TV series – not to leave it too long before trying the second one, Russian Roulette. Mostly that was because I hugely enjoyed A Magnum for Schneider (alias A Red File for Callan) – it wound up taking the number two spot in my 2013 year-end top ten – but also because I knew that Mike Ripley had reissued both books that October under his Top Notch Thrillers imprint, and I like to lend a hand – in however minor a capacity – in Mike's tireless efforts to resurrect overlooked old thrillers whenever I can. In the event, it's taken me five months to get round to Russian Roulette, which probably isn't of much use to Mike in promoting his new edition of the novel – I'd have been better off reviewing the third Callan book, Death and Bright Water, which I believe Mike is reissuing sometime over the next month – but actually isn't bad for me: I've been known to let years elapse between reading instalments in a series of novels.

Russian Roulette was first published in hardback in 1973 – under a dust jacket sporting a gloriously '70s photograph of Edward Woodward as Callan, taken by glamour snapper and one-time Existential Ennui obsession Beverley le Barrow (here credited in the traditional Hamilton fashion as Beverly Lebarrow) – by Hamish Hamilton – a change of publisher from the first book, which was issued by Herbert Jenkins in 1969. Accordingly, Hamilton make very little of this being a sequel – there's a mention of A Red File for Callan on the jacket back flap and under "Other books by James Mitchell" in the prelims, but that's about it. Mind you, neither does Mitchell: as the novel opens, working class assassin David Callan is once more happily ensconced in the bosom of British Intelligence dirty tricks department the Section, with nary a mention of his being temporarily booted out by his boss, the supercilious Hunter, in A Magnum for Schneider.

It's ironic, then, that Russian Roulette once more sees Callan being kicked out of the Section, this time because Hunter has offered him up to the Russians in exchange for British Intelligence's "top man in Russia", who's been nabbed by the Soviets. To compound Callan's problems, not only does he have a specially imported KGB death squad on his tail, and not only has Hunter blocked any means of his obtaining a gun – right down to freezing his current account and even stealing his most valuable model soldiers (Callan is an enthusiastic wargamer) so that he can't sell them – but Callan's eyesight is failing too. All of which means he's forced to turn for assistance to his only friend, the odoriferous thief Lonely.

Whereas in A Magnum for Schneider the relationship between Lonely and Callan was mostly based on the former's fear of the latter, here it seems to have developed into a genuine friendship. Lonely is still scared of Callan, but then Lonely is scared of pretty much everything; he's happy to call Callan a proper mate, which is a change from his professed hatred of his erstwhile prison cellmate in the first book. And that bond is certainly tested in Russian Roulette: Callan asks things of Lonely that even the firmest of friends would balk at, and Lonely pays a terrible price for standing by him, as Callan is beset by a trio of KGB killers and betrayed by Hunter, by his fellow Section assassin Meres – in fact by almost everyone he gets close to.

Mitchell's characterisation is as surefooted as that in A Magnum for Schneider – not just Callan, who remains a convincingly common-as-muck lead, owing a small debt to Len Deighton's nameless operative but otherwise quite an original creation, but also the put-upon Lonely, the various criminals they encounter (some related to Lonely) and Hunter and Meres, representing the Establishment/old boys network, from which Callan will forever be excluded. As in the first book Mitchell grounds the espionage action in a recognisable milieu of London cafes, boozers, building sites and grubby little flats, and if the hunter/hunted story isn't quite as compelling as that in the more confined, more focused, and thus more intense, A Magnum for Schneider, Russian Roulette still rates as a very good vintage spy thriller indeed.

I showcased first editions of almost all of the Callan novels in my series of posts on Mitchell last year, as well as firsts of almost all of the John Craig spy novels Mitchell wrote under the alias James Munro. Back then, however, in both cases I was missing one book from each series. No longer: in the interim I've come into possession of first editions of those absent titles – so I thought I'd take a look at them in the next post.

Darwyn Cooke's Parker: Slayground (IDW, 2013), Stephen King's Doctor Sleep (Hodder, 2013), and Some Notable Comments

I realise certain date-specific salutations are slightly ridiculous in the context of a blog post which might only be chanced upon weeks if not months or even years after after the event in question (if at all), and especially a blog post which itself arrives days after that event, but even so: happy new year.

I shan't be making any resolutions regarding Existential Ennui in 2014, nor any predictions, or forecasts, or – God forbid – formulating any kind of manifesto for the year ahead; any past such attempts have at best turned out to be only partially correct, and in any case, who (other than me... maybe) really cares what one insignificant books-related blog among so many thousands has planned for the next twelve months? (Not that there is much of a plan beyond the next week or so.) Instead I thought I'd ease myself into the new blogging year in (arguably untypically) unostentatious fashion by posting some thoughts on the two books I managed to polish off over the festive period (not bad going, considering the various demands of fatherhood and home life and travelling to see family over Christmas and whatnot), and drawing attention to a couple of comments which have appeared since I last posted, plus a few more from earlier in December and November.

Books first, beginning with this:

Richard Stark's Parker: Slayground by Darwyn Cooke. When The Violent World of Parker (where I'm co-blogger) supremo Trent and I interviewed Darwyn back in the summer of 2012 (Christ, was it really that long ago...?), Cooke's intention had been to adapt the eighth in Donald "Richard Stark" Westlake's series of Parker novels, The Handle, as his next full-length Parker graphic novel, and after that do "a 48-page real boiled down version of Slayground", the fourteenth Parker outing. Evidently those plans changed, because instead of The Handle – of which there's been nary a sign – Slayground arrived as a 96-page graphic novel in December.

Of those 96 pages, Slayground itself takes up roughly 80, many of them, as the opening spread above demonstrates, as stylish and formally inventive as we've come to expect; there's even a foldout map of Fun Island, the closed-for-the-winter amusement park in which Parker becomes trapped. That the story lacks substance is less a fault of the adaptation than of the source novel – for me one of the slighter Parkers – but it's still an effective manhunt thriller, and in adapting it Cooke makes some intriguing storytelling choices, especially as regards the structure – swapping parts two and three and lopping off the ending where Parker tells Claire he'll go back for the stashed loot some day – and the character of Caliato, the local mob second-in-command, who in Cooke's hands becomes instead Benito, the son of mob boss Lozini. Presumably that change was made in order to give Lozini more of a personal beef with Parker for Cooke's final adaptation, Butcher's Moon, although if so, given that Lozini already regarded Caliato almost as a son, I wonder whether that was really necessary. I guess we'll find out in 2015.
 
Also included is Cooke's short adaptation of the seventh Parker novel, The Seventh (alias The Split). As I've mentioned before, The Seventh is one of my favourite Parkers, and consequently I'd been wanting to read Cooke's version ever since I learned that it was an extra in Parker: The Martini Edition, which I was reluctant to buy as I already owned Cooke's adaptations of The Hunter and The Outfit (which The Martini Edition collected). In the event I'm glad I held out, because Cooke summarily dispenses with the meat of The Seventh across a single spread and concentrates instead on Parker's climactic pursuit of his nameless nemesis, which, the payoff aside – which in any case is diluted by the abbreviating of the glorious madness which precedes it – is probably the least interesting part of the story. Still, it all looks lovely.

Incidentally, I expect there'll be a review of Slayground over at The Violent World of Parker before long, but if Trent doesn't have one lined up, I might end up posting a version of the above over there.

Anyway, the other book I finished was this:

Doctor Sleep, Stephen King's belated sequel to The Shining, published September 2013 and seen here in its British WHSmith limited edition. The phrase 'return to form' must have been applied to every Stephen King novel of the last twenty years, but in this case it's apt: Doctor Sleep is the best King book I've read since Cell – not quite up there with The Dark Half or Needful Things (and certainly not The Stand), but not far off. I think the reason for that is that Dan – formerly Danny in The Shining – Torrance is one of King's more convincing leads, an alcoholic like his father – and indeed like King himself – whose efforts to carve out some kind of life after a drink-sodden decade or so are at least as, if not more, compelling than the paranormal plot in which he becomes embroiled.

As for those comments, a Tehanu left a comment on my interview with spy novelist Anthony Price drawing my attention to the third novel in Charles Stross's series of "Laundry" occult spy thrillers, The Fuller Memorandum, which I'd not come across before but which apparently is an homage to Price's work. And on a similarly supernatural tip, an anonymous commenter left a message on this post on Andrew MacKenzie, confirming that as well as novels, MacKenzie did indeed pen a good number of occult works. And while we're on the subject of comments and updates, earlier in December a Saz left an enlightening pair of comments on this post on James Mitchell's Callan spy series which are well worth reading; "Going on Ninety" expressed thanks for reminding him about John le Carré; and in November a former associate of Dr. Strangelove writer Peter George's, Madeline Weston, emailed me with her recollections of George's suicide, and granted me permission to update this post on George accordingly.

Thank you to all of those folks, and to everyone else who's commented and emailed; when – as is its occasional wont – the Black Dog pays a visit and I feel like abandoning Existential Ennui altogether, messages like these act as a useful reminder of why I persist in this foolish endeavour.

The Existential Ennui Review of the Year: the 10 Best Books I Read in 2013

And so we reach the not-especially-grand finale not only of the Existential Ennui Review of the Year, but of Existential Ennui for the year. And on both counts, all I can say is, thank fuck for that. On reflection, five end-of-year posts (five! What on earth was I thinking?) was at least two posts too many (if not five posts too many), and as for the year in general, while it's been wonderfully life-changing in at least one respect, it's also been bloody long and in places bloody hard, and I'm kind of glad it's almost over.

But let that not deter us from finishing the year chez Louis XIV in traditional fashion with my ten best books of the year, as picked from the big long list of the books I read in 2013. As usual, and unlike with my newly-instituted-and-unlikely-to-be-repeated ten best comics (linked by The Comics Reporter, no less) and ten best albums posts, few of these books actually date from 2013 – just one, in fact, although another one was published into paperback in 2013 having been published in hardback in 2012, so it's still reasonably 'new'. The rest date from much earlier than 2013 – decades earlier, making the top ten as comically arbitrary – and thus of no use to anyone – as previous years' efforts. (Equally arbitrarily, I've once again discounted any novels I'd read before, of which there were four this year – see the aforementioned big long list.)

Since I've already reviewed all of these books – you can click through to each review via the titles – I'll be keeping additional commentary to a minimum. Let the countdown... commence!

10. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, 2013)

I'm still not sure if the denouement of Atkinson's device of having a character live their life over and over again in order to avoid a succession of untimely deaths quite, um, lived up to the journey there, but in any case the journey there was well worth taking.

9. Deep Water Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann, 1958)

Highsmith preferred to tell a story from the perspectives of two protagonists (usually opponents, usually men), but Ripley's Game aside, arguably her most powerful novels adhere to a singular viewpoint, Deep Water being an early example.

8. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (Gollancz, 1963)

Widely recognised as a classic not only of the spy fiction genre but of twentieth century fiction in general. And yet... while I admired it, and it is evidently a great novel, for me it's not up there with Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, or indeed that novel's two sequels. Perversely, perhaps, I also preferred the two less-acclaimed novels which preceded The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, namely:

7. Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962) in The le Carré Omnibus by John le Carré (Gollancz, 1964)

Obviously I'm cheating here... or am I? After all, these are the ten best books I read in 2013, not the ten best novels, and I read le Carré's first and second novels, Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, together in The le Carré Omnibus. Ergo I'm not so much cheating as... not being completely honest. Ahem.

6. Alys, Always by Harriet Lane (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012)

A The Talented Mr. Ripley for the 21st century? Not quite – for one thing, Frances Thorpe, the star of this novel, isn't as murderous as Tom Ripley – but Lane shares Highsmith's cool detachment, steady pace and sly psychological depth. Advance word on Lane's second novel, Her, is very good.

5. The Sandbaggers by Ian Mackintosh (Corgi, 1978)

What's this? A novelisation? Ah, but what a novelisation. Mackintosh's take on his own espionage TV show packs more in, and in a more convincing manner, than many more celebrated spy novels manage.

4. Swag (1976) and The Hunted (1977) in Elmore Leonard's Dutch Treat by Elmore Leonard (Viking, 1987)

Yes, yes, I'm sort of cheating again – see The le Carré Omnibus above – but I did genuinely read Swag and The Hunted in the Dutch Treat omnibus (later securing a scarce first hardback edition of The Hunted). And anyway, who'll begrudge me a minor con in the year that Elmore Leonard died? Incidentally, the third novel in this collection, Mr. Majestyk, is almost as good as the two I've highlighted, but I read it last year (as a paperback original).

3. LaBrava by Elmore Leonard (Viking, 1984)

In previous years I've limited myself to one appearance per author in my top tens, but under the circumstances, this year I think I'm justified (arf) in dispensing with that rule. Besides, Leonard's novels were some of the best things I read in 2013 – were this a top twenty rather than a top ten, he'd be filling most of the positions from 11 to 20 – and LaBrava was one of the best of that best.

2. A Magnum for Schneider by James Mitchell (Herbert Jenkins, 1969)

Is this, like The Sandbaggers, a novelisation? After all, Mitchell adapted it from his own own screenplay – for an Armchair Theatre production which acted as the pilot to the subsequent Callan TV series – so I suppose in that sense it is. But then really, who cares? What matters is that it's a brilliantly grubby spy story, economically and unfussily told, and all the better for it.

1. Unknown Man No. 89 by Elmore Leonard (Secker & Warburg, 1977)

It couldn't really be anyone else at number one, could it? But even if Leonard hadn't passed away in August, this novel would have still nabbed the top spot. Follow the link in the title to find out why.

And with that, my work here is done for the year. A very merry Christmas to you all, and see you in 2014.

The Man Who Sold Death: James Munro, alias James Mitchell, and the '60s John Craig Spy Novels Series

NB: Linked in this Friday's Forgotten Books roundup.

By the time he came to create the TV espionage series Callan in 1967 and write the subsequent series of spin-off novels – beginning with 1969's A Magnum for Schneider – James Mitchell already had plenty of form with spy fiction. Three years before Callan made his television debut, Mitchell, writing under the alias James Munro (not his first nom de plume; he began his career as a novelist in 1955 as Patrick O McGuire), published the first of what would become a four-book series of spy novels:

The Man Who Sold Death, published by Hammond in October 1964 (dust jacket design uncredited). It was an instant hit, tearing through at least three printings in the month of publication alone and garnering rave reviews from Violet Gray of The Daily Telegraph, Frances Iles of The Guardian, Peter Phillips of The Sun, Julian Symons of The Sunday Times, John Weir of The Sunday Express and Anthony Boucher of The New York Times.

The novel's lead is John Craig, a Tyneside shipping manager whose lucrative sideline as a gunrunner comes to a violent end when agents of the French Society for the Solution of the Algerian Problem, enraged by Craig's role in supplying the Algerian Arab rebels with firearms, explode a bomb under his car. On the run and with his wife in a coma and his associates being picked off one by one, Craig is approached by Loomis, head of Department K of MI6, with a proposal: with the assistance of an agent Grierson, go to Nice and assassinate the head of the Society, Colonel Pierre-Auguste Lucien de St. Briac.

Fifty years on from publication the qualities which so enraptured the critics are still evident. The pace is brisk; the background of Algerian unrest, which at the time would have been zeitgeisty, helps to ground the more outlandish aspects of the story; there's international intrigue and even that staple of the spy novel (since Casino Royale anyway), the torture scene; and Craig is an appealing lead – a working class rough diamond made good (Mitchell/Munro had a thing for working class heroes; see also David Callan and, from the Mitchell written-and-created When the Boat Comes In, Jack Ford) whose rugged looks and expertise in gunplay and hand-to-hand combat make him, inevitably, irresistible to the opposite sex.

That the novel strives hard to tick all the espionage boxes, and that these elements don't quite hang together (the narrative links are uncoupled in a bizarre midpoint interlude where, with Department K's help, Craig tracks down a man he met in the war in order to find out if he's a failure... er, or something) – and that Craig isn't as interesting a creation as David Callan (see the aforementioned bizarre interlude, an abortive attempt to add depth to the character) – is why, for me, The Man Who Sold Death isn't as successful a spy novel as A Magnum for Schneider. Like most spy novels of the period it owes a debt to Ian Fleming's Bond novels, but though it's well-written, it rarely rises above its influences. Desmond Cory, whose Johnny Fedora debuted two years before 007, was doing something similar around this period, but to my mind much better; see my review of the 1962 Fedora adventure par excellence, Undertow.

All of which mean that, unlike the Callan novels, where I fully intend to explore the entire five-book series, I'm not sure I'll venture much beyond The Man Who Sold Death, despite the similarly excellent titles of its sequels – Die Rich Die Happy (1965), The Money That Money Can't Buy (1967) and The Innocent Bystanders (1969). Of course, that hasn't stopped me picking up a few John Craig first editions. The copy of The Man Who Sold Death seen above is a first impression (you can also see, alongside the back cover, the back of a third impression too, which carries reviews of the novel), but first printings are so scarce the only affordable copy I could find once resided in the officers mess of the Royal Air Force base at Hack Green:

a base which in 1976, appropriately enough given our Cold War context, was turned into a secret nuclear bunker. First editions of the later novels are slightly easier to come by, but even with these you can come a cropper and wind up with a second impression, as I did with this:

Die Rich Die Happy, the second Craig outing, published by Hammond in 1965, cover design by Roger Harris. I bought it dead cheap on eBay, deciding to take a chance on it being a first impression, which, as it turned out, and as evidenced by the "2nd Impression" on the dust jacket front flap:

it isn't. The copy of the other Craig novel I own in first is a first impression, though:

The Innocent Bystanders, the fourth book in the series, published by Herbert Jenkins in 1969. Though this would be the final John Craig novel, Craig was destined to live on – for a little while longer – in a different medium when The Innocent Bystanders was adapted for the big screen in 1972, written by Mitchell (using his own name rather than that of Munro), directed by Peter Collinson and starring Stanley Baker as John Craig. Sadly, the film wasn't terribly well received upon release and isn't held in terribly high regard now; an ignominious end for Mr. Craig, at least until, a la Mike Ripley's Top Notch Thrillers imprint with the Callan novels, some enterprising soul elects to bring the series back into print.

I'll be blogging about another TV spy writer with a sideline in novels before too long, but ahead of that, I have another Existential Ennui permanent page to unveil, one which incorporates some of the covers to James Mitchell's books...