A William Haggard / Colonel Charles Russell Spy Novel First Edition Gallery

For this third and final post on British author William Haggard's Colonel Charles Russell spy series – introduction and bibliography here, review of the debut Russell outing (also Haggard's debut novel, natch), Slow Burner, here – I've a selection of Haggard/Russell first editions from across the series, which I picked up in various places and by various methods over the past few months. Beginning with this:

Slow Burner was first published in hardback in the UK by Cassell in 1958, under a vibrant but sadly uncredited painted dustjacket. As already mentioned, I reviewed the novel itself yesterday, the story of which involves skullduggery surrounding a top secret nuclear fission process. Haggard's early novels can usually be found fairly easily in paperback, but hardback first editions are sometimes not so common; AbeBooks, for example, currently has just five copies of the Cassell first listed, but of those, three are sans jacket, another is ex-library and in New Zealand, and the last is also in New Zealand. You might have a bit more luck on Amazon Marketplace... but then again, you might not.

Next:

The UK hardback first edition of the second Colonel Russell thriller – and Haggard's third novel overall, following 1958's The Telemann Touch – Venetian Blind, published by Cassell in 1959. Once again the dustjacket illustration is uncredited, but at least copies of the first edition are a bit more readily available than Slow Burner: there are currently twelve of 'em on AbeBooks, in various states of disrepair. The story this time centres on Negative Gravity; check out the Charles Russell dedicated page on Spy Guys & Gals for more on Venetian Blind, and indeed on all of Haggard's Russell novels.

Moving swiftly on:

This is the UK hardback first edition of The Unquiet Sleep, the fourth Russell novel, published by Cassell in 1962; I'm currently missing the third Russell outing, The Arena (1961), but I expect I'll secure a first of that at some point. Just for a change, this one sports a photographic wrapper, but again, Cassell have let me down by neglecting to credit the photographer and the jacket designer. Unlike Slow Burner and Venetian Blind, both of which I purchased online, I found this copy of The Unquiet Sleep in the excellent Books by the Sea in Bude, Cornwall, during my summer holidays. Mind you, it's not exactly hard to find in first: presently AbeBooks has fourteen copies listed, many for less than a tenner. The story revolves around a relaxation pill called Mecron. I could do with a dose of that myself...

Next:

The UK hardback first edition of A Cool Day for Killing, published by Cassell in 1968. Quite a minimalistic dustjacket design on this one, and for a change it's credited, to one Brian Roll. The twelfth Charles Russell thriller, this one sees Colonel Russell protecting the daughter of a Malaysian Sultan, and is notable for being the final novel with Russell as head of the Security Executive; he was destined to retire in the next book, The Doubtful Disciple (1969), but would continue to assist the Executive in an unofficial capacity. Interestingly (er, possibly), by this point in the series (nearly midway), Cassell no longer felt the need to have the author's first name on the cover; he'd simply become Haggard (so to speak). Plenty of copies of the Cassell first of A Cool Day for Killing on AbeBooks: over twenty at present.

Forging ahead:

This is the UK hardback first edition of Bitter Harvest, published by Cassell in 1971. The fourteenth Charles Russell adventure, this one sees the good Colonel brought out of retirement to tackle rising political temperatures in the Middle East. The jacket design is by Brian Hampton, and once again there's a plentiful supply of first editions on AbeBooks. Bitter Harvest was retitled for its US publication – by Walker, in 1971 – and was known instead as Too Many Enemies; the subsequent Russell novel, The Old Masters (1973), was also retitled by Walker in the States, this time as The Notch on the Knife. Fascinating stuff, eh?

And finally:

The UK hardback first edition of Yesterday's Enemy, published by Cassell in 1976. I bought this for a few quid in the Albion Bookshop in Broadstairs, Kent, again during my summer holiday, but it's readily available on AbeBooks for around a fiver. In this one, Colonel Russell has to deal with a vanished nuclear physicist and the threat of a secret nuclear weapon. The front cover photo is by Mick Wells, and is a fine example of the kind of Raymond Hawkey-esque "artfully arranged weapons" photographs prevalent on British dustjackets in the 1970s. Great shot of Haggard on the back there, too.

And that, I think we'll all be elated to learn, is yer lot from William Haggard. I'll have further spy fiction posts for you shortly, more than likely on espionage series by Len Deighton – featuring the aforementioned Mr. Hawkey – and Adam Hall. Plus there'll be a Violent World of Parker cross-post or two before we head into Christmas/the New Year and my traditional end-of-year round-up posts. (Traditional as in, I did them once before, last Christmas.) But next on Existential Ennui, something rather exciting: a guest post by entertainment journalist Paul Simpson on a clutch of newly released Sherlock Holmes audio adventures. That's right: audio...

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)