Mike Ripley's Not Single Spies, a Readers' History of Thrillers, Published 2017

Now this is rather exciting. Crime writer and thriller aficionado Mike Ripley has announced the publication next year of "a readers' history", as Mike himself puts it, of "the boom in British thrillers" from 1953–1975. Titled Not Single Spies, the book takes as its starting point Ian Fleming's debut Bond novel Casino Royale (1953) and its end point Jack Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed (1975), featuring along the way the likes of Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, John le Carre and Frederick Forsyth, and drawing on discussions Mike has had over the years with such luminaries as Len Deighton, Anthony Price, Alan Williams and Gavin Lyall.

Set to be published by Harper Collins on 18 May 2017, Not Single Spies also boasts a foreword by Lee Child, who, when approached to write the foreword, apparently noted that he knew: "It would be a book I would want to read – maybe even pay for!" I couldn't agree more.

Yet More Beautiful British Book Covers: Harry Carmichael's A Question of Time (a Lewes Book Bargain) and Alistair MacLean's H.M.S. Ulysses and The Golden Rendezvous

Before we get stuck in to the signed editions again, and having added another fabulous Denis McLoughlin dust jacket – this time wrapping the 1962 T. V. Boardman edition of Donald E. Westlake's 361 – to the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s page, I thought I'd update the Beautiful Book Jackets page further with a few more covers, bringing the total in the gallery up to 85. All of the books in this batch were published by Collins in the UK, and two of the wrappers were provided by crime writer and critic Mike Ripley, who's now contributed a creditable eight covers to the gallery (and whose latest "Getting Away With Murder" column for Shots is up now).

Let's take a look at my offering first, which I picked up just the other day in a Lewes charity shop:

A Question of Time by Harry Carmichael, published in hardback in the UK by Collins in 1958. I'm not familiar with Carmichael's work, but he had a heck of a lot of crime fiction published from 1951 to 1979, both under his Carmichael alias (his real name was Leopold Horace Ognall) and the nom de plume Hartley Howard – getting on for a hundred books in total. There's certainly a demand for Carmichael first editions: a copy of the Collins first of A Question of Time recently sold on eBay for over forty quid, which is rather more than the £3.95 I paid for my one. Mind you, the Collins edition appears to have been the only printing of the novel, so it's no wonder it's sought after by collectors.

The wrapper design is uncredited, but there's a signature at top right of the front cover: William Randell (I originally thought it was "Kandell", but book dealer and crime fiction aficionado Jamie Sturgeon put me right – thanks, Jamie!), who illustrated the wrappers for a run of Collins-published Carmichael novels from the mid-1950s onwards, among them Put Out That Star (1957), James Knowland: Deceased (1958) and, I believe, Of Unsound Mind (1962), which deploys a telephone receiver design device similar to that of A Question of Time. (The symbiotic relationship between writers and cover artists is a theme I'm planning on returning to next week.)

Turning to the two covers sent to me by Mike Ripley, and both of those are from Alistair MacLean novels, as it was my posts on Where Eagles Dare and Ice Station Zebra that inspired Mike to scan his MacLean jackets:

That's the 1955 Collins first of MacLean's debut novel, H.M.S. Ulysses, cover design by John Rose, and the 1962 Collins first of The Golden Rendezvous, cover design by John Heseltine. I already had Rose and Heseltine in the Beautiful British Book Jackets gallery, the former with his design for the 1960 Collins first of Geoffrey Jenkins's The Watering Place of Good Peace – which again was supplied by Mike – the latter with his design for the aforementioned Ice Station Zebra (Collins, 1963), but it's nice to be able to include a couple more.

Incidentally, veering off-topic momentarily, Mike mentioned that he's encountered problems commenting on Existential Ennui recently, something that a few other folk have said as well. I did, as a result, experiment with removing the captcha word recognition step for a day or two (still leaving comment approval on), but my email in-box started filling up with spam comments again, so I've re-enabled word recognition. Apologies if that means your comments go astray on occasion, but don't blame me, blame the annoying bastards attempting to advertise shoes and portrait oil paintings and electricians and, most bizarrely of all, the services of convicted felons. The mind boggles, it really does.

Anyway, it's back to the signed editions next, with an obscure science fiction first edition which I again found in a Lewes establishment...

Click here to visit Existential Ennui's Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s page.

Further Beautiful British Book Covers: Alistair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra, Clement Richer's Ti-Coyo and His Shark, and Rosemary Timperley's A Dread of Burning

Before we get into those promised signed editions – and let me tell you I have all manner of intriguing signed books lined up, from non-fiction to fiction to graphic novels – I thought I'd take the opportunity to add some more covers to the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery. Almost all of the books in this batch were bought either in or near Lewes, with the exception of a lovely Val Biro wrapper, which was scanned and sent to me by Mike Ripley, who, you'll no doubt recall, kindly supplied a number of other splendid book jackets back in April.

Let's take a look at my most recent acquisition first:

A 1963 Collins hardback first edition/first impression of Alistair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra, which I found in the Lewes branch of Oxfam just the other day (note price sticker still affixed to back). I wrote about MacLean over three weeks ago, when I posted the first missive in my just-completed series on books which begat perhaps more famous films – that post being on Where Eagles Dare, the Ian Robertson-designed wrapper of which has also now joined the Beautiful British Book Jacket gallery. Ice Station Zebra was itself turned into a film – which I don't believe I've seen – directed by John Sturges, who himself cropped up at the end of the books-which-begat-perhaps-more-famous-films series in relation to The Eagle Has Landed (and who, as I mentioned then, also directed one of my favourite-ever films, Hour of the Gun). The jacket of the Collins edition was designed by John Heseltine, an artist and illustrator known for his royal portraits.

Then there's this book, which I came across in one of Lewes' many and varied antique shops:

Ti-Coyo and His Shark, by French writer Clement Richer, published by Rupert Hart-Davis in 1951. The jacket on this one was designed by Evadne Rowan, who also illustrated wrappers for James Leasor's The Monday Story and Nikolay Gogol's Dead Souls, among many other books. I haven't read Ti-Coyo yet, and I may not even keep it, but I liked the cover enough to put down a couple of quid so I could add it to the Beautiful British Book Jackets. There's a review of the novella on the Time Magazine site, the full version of which I can't access because I'm not a subscriber, but handily this copy of the book came with its own contemporaneous review enclosed, clipped from The Times:

I've also added to the gallery two dust jackets for Graham Greene novels: Lacey Everett's wrapper for the 1961 Heinemann first of A Burnt-Out Case – rephotographed from its original appearance as a Lewes Book Fair find back in January of last year – and the wrapper of the 1955 Heinemann first of The Quiet American, also rephotographed from its original appearance as a Lewes Bookshop Bargain in March of last year. The jacket design of the latter is uncredited, but it bears the signature BGS at bottom right of the front cover; I've not been able to determine who that is, so I've placed the wrapper with the designers whose surnames begin with "S", on the assumption that the "S" denotes a surname (if you know who BGS is/was, do please leave a comment). And of course there's this, courtesy of Mike Ripley:

Val Biro's exquisite wrapper for Rosemary Timperley's A Dread of Burning, published by James Barrie in 1956. Timperley's debut novel, this is really rather a scarce book: there's currently only one copy on AbeBooks, and that's lacking its dust jacket.

All of those, plus the S. R. Boldero jacket for Donald E. "Tucker Coe" Westlake's Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death that I added on Monday, bring the total number of covers on the page up to 80. And there are plenty more to come, both from Val Biro, from Westlake (two very nice, little-seen wrappers from his books), and from others besides. Before those, though, let's get stuck into the signed editions, with a book in which I personally had a hand, and which has just been nominated for a Harvey Award...

Book Review: Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean; the Original Novel (Collins, 1967), Basis for the 1968 Movie

Behind every great man, or so the old saying goes, there's a great woman – and I'd suggest you could make a similar claim for great films: often as not, the movies that live longest in the memory have their basis in a brilliant book. So, with the summer blockbuster season well underway, I thought I'd embark on an extended series of posts on novels which begat perhaps more famous films. Some of the films to be featured in this run will be of the big budget, big box office returns variety; others more obscure or cult; and still others staples of the afternoon television schedules; but all share in common a terrific source novel, and over the coming weeks I'll be showcasing some of the first (and other) editions of those novels from my collection – beginning with a classic World War II action-adventure-spy thriller:

First published in hardback in the UK by Collins in 1967, under a dust jacket designed by Ian Robertson, Where Eagles Dare was Alistair MacLean's tenth novel (under his own name; he had a couple of others published under the nom de plume of Ian Stuart), and is the story of a daring raid by a squad of specialist British troops – plus one American – on the remote Alpine castle of Schloss Adler – headquarters of the German Gestapo. I bought this first edition/first impression in Dim and Distant in Heathfield, East Sussex, but there are plenty of firsts available on AbeBooks, although be aware that the Collins edition did go through a few printings, so many of the listings may well be for later impressions.

Now, I think I'm safe in saying that, for an entire generation, the movie adaptation of Where Eagles Dare has gone beyond cult status to become a totemic cinematic icon. Originally released in 1968, directed by Brian G. Hutton and starring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, Where Eagles Dare always seemed to be on telly on a Saturday afternoon when I was a kid (see also The Eagle Has Landed, The Magnificent Seven, etc.) – which, I suspect, is part of the reason for its popularity. But it's also a tremendous film in its own right, stuffed with perilous action sequences, quotable lines and a showstopping cross-and-double-cross scene set deep within Schloss Adler. Both Quentin Tarantino and comics writer Garth Ennis cite it as one of their favourite films, and it even has its own dedicated website.

What's interesting is how so much of what's great about Where Eagles Dare the movie has its genesis in Where Eagles Dare the novel. All of the major beats are present and correct – the initial parachute jump into the Alps; the cable car set-pieces; the aforementioned double-bluff (or possibly triple-bluff) scene – while Richard Burton is the novel's Major John Smith personified, from his stoic cynicism to his legendary callsign to HQ ("Broadsword calling Danny Boy, come in, Danny Boy") – which, given that MacLean effectively wrote the novel for Burton, and actually penned the film's screenplay before the book (big thanks to both Paul Simpson and Jeremy Duns for pointing that out to me), I guess isn't so surprising. The only real differences centre on the character of Lieutenant Schaffer, played in the film by Clint Eastwood. Schaffer is rather more gabby in the novel than the taciturn Eastwood, and a lot less murderous: where Clint merrily machine-guns his way around the castle, the original Schaffer barely harms a soul.

Indeed, and as the Where Eagles Dare website notes in its introduction to the novel, the level of violence in the book is considerably lower than that of the movie. Smith and Schaffer actively go out of their way to avoid killing anyone in the book – the exceptions being the traitorous double-agents who meet their doom atop the cable car. It's an altogether jollier affair than the film, although no less tense and gripping.

That said, I think I still prefer the film to the novel, if only because it was the film I fell for all those years ago. And the same is probably true of the next book I'll be showcasing – the similarly totemic motion picture adaptation of which is currently on re-release in cinemas in the UK...

Lewes Book Bargain: The Way to Dusty Death by Alistair MacLean

Right then. Time to try and clear the decks a bit, because next week Existential Ennui will be dedicated to two authors; one of them because his new novel is published next week, and the other because... well, he's got links to the first one and I've got a couple of recently bought books of his to blog about, and that's reason enough round these here parts. Yes, looming large in your future it's Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos Week, as Tuesday sees the arrival of Lehane's latest book, Moonlight Mile – at least, in the States, anyway; here in the UK it's not published till bloody February – and also I've got a stack of rather special recent Lehane acquisitions burning a hole in, er, the shelf, or whatever the literary equivalent of burning a hole in one's pocket is, and they're directly related to Moonlight Mile; plus I've got those Pelecanos ones I mentioned. So next week it's ahoy Lehane! And, er, put 'er there, Pelecanos! And beyond that, there's more to come on Donald Westlake (as ever), Ross Thomas (some crackers there), and some more small press comics stuff too.

But first, I've got a clutch of recent Lewes Book Bargains to catch up on, all bagged in various Lewes charity shops, mostly dating from the 1970s (the books, not the shops, although the interiors of the shops might suggest otherwise...), and including a couple of real doozies. Not sure this one qualifies as one of those, however:

A UK hardback first edition of The Way to Dusty Death by Alistair MacLean, published by Collins in 1973. Now, I'm not necessarily saying it's rubbish – I haven't, after all, even read it yet – but I was thoroughly amused by this string of posts on a motoring message board, which I stumbled across when researching the book. It's always fascinating to read the thoughts of specialist nerds when a writer or filmmaker or whoever dares to venture into their particular area of expertise; I've been guilty of this kind of picky response myself, I'm sure, but hopefully I've never got quite so irate as some of these silly sods. Opinions on MacLean's novel from message board regulars range from exasperation that the author made the apparently fundamental error of believing that "GP cars were fitted both with speedometers and headlights" (er...) to an artistic appraisal of the book as being "TOTAL KRAPPP!!!!" A nice, balanced assessment there.

And actually that's fairly representative of message boards in general. Almost invariably they're forums for backbiting and bitching and nastiness, and when they're not they're either so over-moderated that any potentially constructive criticism is effectively neutered, or so bland and nice it's like wandering into a Hare Krishna AGM. But anyway, The Way to Dusty Death may not be one of MacLean's better-liked books – even one of the main fan sites only scores it six out of ten – but I think we can hazard it's a bit better than the exhaust fume-addled folk on that message board maintain. It's about skullduggery in the world of Grand Prix motor racing, which, being a sometime fan of Formula One, doesn't sound too bad to me.

There's no credit on the dustjacket for the design or image, but there is a signature on the back flap: John Constable. Which, I'm sure you can imagine, makes researching it pretty much impossible. But no matter; with my ongoing interest in British thriller writers, Alistair MacLean is an author I've been wanting to check out for a while (I have an abiding love of Where Eagles Dare, the film he wrote the screenplay for and the novel of simultaneously), and a Formula One-focused thriller seems as good a place as any to do just that.