From the Lewes Book Fair (Slight Return): Gavin Lyall's The Secret Servant

I realise haven't done a Lewes Book Fair blog post in bloody ages – or indeed hardly any blogging at all – but I was just at the latest Lewes fair chatting to my friend, the book dealer Jamie Sturgeon, who asked me, as he usually does, whether I'll ever get back to blogging about books again. And having actually bought a book this time (not a guarantee these days), and taken a few pictures, I thought to myself, well, why the devil not? Hence this resurrection of the From the Lewes Book Fair format, which I have largely composed whilst sitting on the grass at Lewes Athletics track watching Edie (remember her...?) doing her pole vault training (don't ask).

The book wot I bought is in fact one I already own, in exactly the same edition (along with an uncorrected proof): a 1980 Hodder first of Gavin Lyall's excellent espionage novel The Secret Servant, the first in the author's short Harry Maxim spy thriller series:

I, ahem, spied it in amongst Mark Skipper of Cheltenham Rare Books' reduced-to-four-quid offerings and, as is my wont, and being a big fan of the book, decided to have a quick shufty inside, only to discover that, lo and behold, it was signed and inscribed, to a Tim Morris in thanks for "a marvellous lunch and occasion generally":

No idea who Tim Morris is or was – perhaps he's this one – but it was a nice find nonetheless. Also of interest at the fair, to me if nobody else, was this lovely signed photo I spotted hanging on the stand next to Jamie's table:

Yes, that's Ben Affleck in all his be-muscled glory (although not as buff as he would later be in 2016's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) as the eponymous lead of 2003's Daredevil film. I can't say I'm overly fond of the film (unlike the aforementioned Batman v. Superman, at least in its extended Ultimate Edition), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. And to answer Jamie's question about which Morgan Freeman film the signed photo above it is taken from:

I can confirm that it's another Ben Affleck flick from the year before, 2002's The Sum of All Fears, based of course on a book hailing from Tom Clancy's imperial doorstopper period.

The Conduct of Major Maxim by Gavin Lyall (Hodder & Stoughton, 1982): Book Review

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

From 1961–1975, British writer Gavin Lyall published seven first-person thrillers. Those that I've read – The Wrong Side of the Sky (1961), The Most Dangerous Game (1963), Blame the Dead (1972) – are stylishly written, gripping affairs, and I like them a lot. Even better though, for my money, are the four third-person spy thrillers Lyall published in the 1980s: the Harry Maxim series. I took a look at the first of those, The Secret Servant (Hodder, 1980), all the way back in 2010; five years on, I think it's long past time I turned to the second one.

Published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton in 1982 – under a dust jacket designed by Melvyn Gill, based on an original concept by Gavin Lyall himself (who had form with the design of the wrappers of his novels: he painted the jacket artwork for his debut, the aforementioned The Wrong Side of the Sky) – The Conduct of Major Maxim was originally titled A Slightly Private War, something I revealed last week in this post on my collection of uncorrected proofs of the Harry Maxim novels. It's an apt alternative title, as the plot sees Maxim, 10 Downing Street's ex-SAS troubleshooter, going ever-so-slightly rogue in order to help out a younger SAS man, one Corporal Blagg, who's on the run following a fatal balls-up during a mission in Germany.

As in The Secret Servant, Maxim is once again alternately aided and frustrated by the Prime Minister's private secretary, George Harbinger, and by Agnes Algar of MI5; and also as in The Secret Servant, Lyall laces the narrative of The Conduct of Major Maxim with plausible-seeming snippets of 'info' about the workings of British state security – for instance that military personnel do SAS tours rather than being on permanent secondment to the service; that the nickname for the SAS is "Sass"; and that MI5 and MI6 derive their names from their original location: "Long ago, the legend said, the security (or spy-catching) service and the espionage (or spy-hiring) service had been born next door to each other in rooms 5 and 6 of the corridor where Military Intelligence first nested in Whitehall."

All this is delivered in Lyall's elegantly unfussy and quietly ironic prose – which isn't to say the narrative lacks thrills, either of the violent kind – notably a climactic gun battle in the port of Goole – or of the internecine political variety, as the long-suffering Harbinger, hobbled by an ailing PM, tries to keep the peace between his errant troubleshooter and the warring factions of MI5 and 6.

Gavin Lyall's Harry Maxim / Secret Servant Spy Series: Uncorrected Proof Editions

A big part of the appeal of book collecting for me is the pursuit and acquisition of that which is rare. Sometimes that can mean first editions; sometimes it can mean little-seen later editions or scarce paperback editions; sometimes it can mean signed or, better yet, inscribed editions; and sometimes, on occasion, it can mean uncorrected proofs.

Uncorrected proofs, for the uninitiated, are advanced copies of books, printed and bound with paper or card covers bearing bibliographic details and/or blurbs, which are sent out to proofreaders, authors, reviewers and, increasingly, bloggers, for a variety of purposes. That purpose initially, as the name suggests, was for authors and proofreaders to spot and mark up any typos that had slipped through the net, but in more recent years uncorrected proofs, or advance review copies (ARCs) as they're also referred to, have been used primarily to drum up publicity.

You could argue that uncorrected proofs are the true first state of any printed book, preceding, as they do, the first edition. But even if you accept that, I think it's fair to say that most book collectors, myself included, would still prefer the first edition; apart from anything else, uncorrected proofs are frequently unlovely and, by nature, unfinished things, whereas firsts benefit from designed dust jackets and hardback binding. Still, uncorrected proofs can be scarce things, and as such can sometimes be of interest to me – say, for example, if a novel has a certain significance, and a first edition isn't quite enough, and a signed edition isn't available, as with Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Under Ground; or to give another, more recent, example, if an entire series, one which I enjoy and admire, suddenly becomes available in its entirety in uncorrected proof – well, that would be very hard to pass up indeed.

So it proved when the latter three of Gavin Lyall's four Harry Maxim spy novels popped up on eBay a few months back – The Conduct of Major Maxim, The Crocus List and Uncle Target. Despite owning entirely serviceable first editions of all three, I was sorely tempted even so; and when I then noticed an inexpensive uncorrected proof of the first Harry Maxim novel, The Secret Servant (which I also own in first), elsewhere online, the notion of nabbing the whole series in uncorrected proof proved irresistible. Individually they're quite uncommon things – at present I can see online one other uncorrected proof of The Secret Servant, one of The Crocus List, two of Uncle Target, and none of The Conduct of Major Maxim – but taken together they are, I'd venture, quite a unique and potentially intriguing collection. Well, I reckon so anyway; whether anyone else will think so too is debatable, but here they are anyway.

The Secret Servant (Hodder & Stoughton, 1980)
The first Harry Maxim novel – which I reviewed here – this proof of The Secret Servant comes with a dust jacket (designed by none other than Raymond Hawkey, utilising a photograph by Peter Williams), something which in my experience is atypical for an uncorrected proof, although not unheard of. (At least in the 1980s and earlier; nowadays uncorrected proofs frequently have full colour covers.) The inner card cover, meanwhile – which the jacket has been trimmed to fit – bears no text at all – again, atypical for a proof, but not unheard of. What is really unusual is the width of the thing: the pages are a lot wider than those of the finished book, and on some of the later pages in the proof– which looks to me to have been photocopied rather than printed – the edges of the original pages can be seen.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Conduct of Major Maxim (Hodder & Stoughton, 1982)
No dust jacket here, and a printed card cover, bearing publication info, which is more typical of an uncorrected proof. The interesting thing with this proof is the copyright page, which bears one notable difference from that in the finished, printed book, which can be seen below:

Evidently The Conduct of Major Maxim was titled A Slightly Private War until shortly before publication.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Crocus List (Hodder & Stoughton, 1985)
It's possible sometimes to spot typos and errors in uncorrected proofs – they are, after all, uncorrected – especially if one compares them to the finished first editions. And then there are those errors that can be spotted without comparison, like the one on page 6 of The Crocus List proof:

I can confirm that that was caught and fixed for the finished book.

. . . . . . . . . .

Uncle Target (Hodder & Stoughton, 1988)
As with the first Harry Maxim spy thriller, the uncorrected proof of the final one also comes with a dust jacket, although the inner card cover is printed too, more in line with the proofs of The Conduct of Major Maxim and The Crocus List – more so, in fact: the front of the inner cover replicates the jacket front in black and white, while the back cover copy features details of the promotional plans for the book, including a "Powerful Saatchi and Saatchi national advertising campaign", no less. Unlike The Secret Servant, however, the jacket on the proof of Uncle Target isn't final. Colour scheme apart – presumably that's a proof placeholder – though the various elements of the design remained the same for the final (uncredited) version, they were rearranged thusly:

The Secret Servant by Gavin Lyall: Book Review (Hodder & Stoughton, 1980)

Hodder & Stoughton 1980

British thriller writer Gavin Lyall may not be completely forgotten, but he is sadly – and unjustly – increasingly overlooked. Most (possibly all now) of his books are out of print, a turn of events that's all the more striking when you consider that from the 1960s to the 1980s he was one of Britain's foremost action and suspense authors, with bestsellers on both sides of the pond. For the first fifteen years of his career he crafted a string of first-person novels often featuring hard-bitten pilots caught up in international treasure hunts and the like, but after the publication of Judas Country in 1975 Lyall was beset by writer's block, and his next novel, The Secret Servant, didn't appear until 1980.

The Secret Servant actually began life as a proposal for a BBC TV series, eventually broadcast in 1984 with Charles Dance in the role of Harry Maxim. Lyall went on to write a further three books starring Maxim, an ex-soldier and former member of the SAS seconded to 10 Downing Street as a troubleshooter. Major Maxim is damaged goods as The Secret Servant opens; the first scene in the book has Harry witnessing the death of his wife, as the plane she's in disintegrates while he watches helplessly from the ground. Lyall's elegant prose is evident from the off; it's what marks him out from other thriller writers, a wry, sometimes world-weary tone that acts as a lens through which events are viewed. In lesser hands that might diminish the action, but Lyall's understatement conversely lends certain scenes a greater impact – the old maxim (pardon the pun) of less is more. Take the first paragraph or so of the book, particularly the part where Lyall plays on the relative speeds of light and sound:

To Harry Maxim it seemed as if his wife died twice. He was watching the boxy little Skyvan climbing slowly away up the white-hot desert sky when it suddenly shuddered. A puff of smoke flicked out behind and immediately dissolved. Then one wing twisted gently off and fluttered away and the aeroplane was just a thing tumbling down towards the plain.

And all the time he could hear the distant whine of the Skyvan when it was still flying smoothly and Jennifer was still living...

Pan 1982

That final line, matter-of-fact as it is, only increases the horror of the situation. Lyall deploys this understatement throughout the book (and indeed throughout all of his books), sometimes mixed with a sardonic wit, either in the descriptions or in the gallows humour of some of the characters. And the characters, in particular the supporting ones, are the real gems here. Maxim himself is fine – a solid, flawed hero type – but his main co-stars, George Harbinger and Agnes Algar, are sublime.

Harbinger is a private secretary to the Prime Minister (who he calls Headmaster) and Maxim's direct boss at Number 10. He's akin to Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister, except perhaps even more cynical and with more of a taste for the booze. He forms a kind of double-act with Agnes Algar from Box 500 – a.k.a. MI5, the domestic security service – who for her part takes endless pleasure in needling Harbinger. The two of them pop up throughout the novel, offering commentary on Maxim's exploits and a guiding hand when needed, and they're invariably thoroughly entertaining.

Coronet 1991

As to the plot, Lyall does a decent job of keeping us guessing right up till the end, as a fake terrorist incident, an Eastern Bloc defection and the direction of Britain's nuclear deterrent policy become linked via a mysterious letter. There are some good action sequences, in particular when Maxim decamps to Ireland and tangles with a Soviet agent (whom he later meets for a drink), but it's the scenes depicting the inner workings of Whitehall and the shady world of espionage and counter-espionage that are the most compelling, and which don't come across as dated as you might think: the British Civil Service is much as it ever was, and while the USSR may be gone the Great Game goes on even today. The climax of the book involves a flashback to World War II and a suitably shocking skeleton in a closet, as the contents of the wayward letter are finally revealed.

As for Harry, he's like a blunt instrument, ruffling feathers and raising eyebrows wherever he goes, much to the amusement of Agnes and the exasperation of George. And with Maxim's card now marked by the KGB (or Greyfriars, as George calls them), it's a safe bet he'll be butting heads with his shadowy Soviet nemesis again in subsequent books in the series.

Harry Maxim versus the Book Clubs

NB: This post was written before I became aware of "export editions", which the below copy of The Conduct of Major Maxim probably is, rather than a book club edition.

This turned up over the weekend:

A UK hardback first edition of The Conduct of Major Maxim by Gavin Lyall, published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1982, dustjacket design and photography by Melvyn Gill, based on a concept by Mr. Lyall himself... Except it's almost certainly not a true first edition: there's no price on the jacket front flap, which means it's more than likely a book club run-on from the first edition, even though there's nothing else on the jacket or in the book to suggest that – no "BCA" in sight. The book merely states it's a first printing. (I've got a Hutchinson copy of Kingsley Amis' Russian Hide and Seek that's like this too – exactly the same as the regular first edition, except no price on the front flap.) So it was wrongly listed as a proper first by the seller.

Then again, it was cheap, and it's in good nick, and it's effectively a first, so what the hell. But it does illustrate one of the problems of buying books online, particularly books by popular-at-the-time authors from the 1970s and '80s, when BCA – Book Club Associates – was at its peak. For the uninitiated, BCA were/are a mail order club whereby members purchase cheap versions of current novels, specially printed by the publisher of the book for the club. Sometimes BCA editions would have different covers to the regular editions, but more often they'd carry the same cover. I don't know if BCA still works like this, but it used to be that subscribers or members of book clubs got an initial number of books for literally pennies, but then had to commit to buy a certain number of books from BCA's regular mail-outs for at least a year thereafter at higher – although still reduced – prices.

Book club printings of books can come some time – years even – after the first hardback printing, but they can also be run-ons of the first printing; the publisher will increase the initial print run of the book to include however many copies BCA expects to sell to its members. Book clubs buy these books from publishers at a knock-down rate, often not much more than the cost of the printing. The benefit to the book club is obvious – they can sell books to their members cheaper – but the benefit to the publisher perhaps isn't so clear. In fact what the publisher gets by increasing their print run to account for a BCA order – which is 'firm sale', so there'll be no returns (unsold copies, which are the bane of publishers' existences) from the book club – is a better deal from the printer: the more books you print, the better price you get per unit, thus hopefully increasing the publisher's profit margin on their portion of the print run.

For most book collectors, BCA editions are pretty much a no-no. What a book collector is generally looking for is a first edition/first impression (printing) of a book. (I'm not going to get into why this matters to collectors, 'cos that'll open up a whole other can o' worms; just take it as read that it does.) Unfortunately, there are so many book club editions out there, particularly with books from that '70s/'80s period, that there's bound to be some confusion. A lot of the time you can spot a BCA edition fairly easily: they may be a slightly smaller size than the original if they're a subsequent book club printing, or on slightly cheaper paper; they may have 'BCA' on the jacket spine instead of the publisher name, or on the spine of the case (or both); they may have "Book Club Edition" printed on the copyright page. But these signs aren't necessarily always present, especially if the book club edition is a run-on – i.e. extension of – the first printing.

Take my copy of The Conduct of Major Maxim. To all intents and purposes, it's exactly the same as the first printing: printed by the same publisher at exactly the same time, on exactly the same paper stock and at exactly the same size, bearing the publisher's name on the jacket spine and case spine, and with the same 'first printing' information in the indicia. No mention of book clubs at all – except there's no price on the jacket front flap, because of course the book club sets its own price, not the publisher. So you can see how there might problems identifying it as a book club edition.

Despite all the words expended above, I'm actually fairly relaxed about first printing book club run-ons like this. As I say, there's virtually no difference from the regular first edition. But other collectors are less relaxed, and it's a minefield out there on Amazon Marketplace and AbeBooks and eBay and the rest. Some dealers know what they're talking about and will state if a book's BCA; plenty more neither know nor particularly care, and might even purposely withhold the information if they do know. I'm inclined to give the dealer in this instance the benefit of the doubt – it is only some missing price info, after all – but then I'm a forgiving sort. Sometimes.

Anyway, all that aside, the arrival of The Conduct of Major Maxim – the second in Gavin Lyall's 1980s series about British spy Harry Maxim – does mean I now have all four Harry Maxim books:

Yay for that, at least.

Unlikely Authors to Bump Into at Homebase, #532: Gavin Lyall and Duncan Kyle

Of all the places you might expect to chance across second hand books, DIY emporium Homebase wouldn't be an obvious location. But the Lewes branch of Homebase was indeed where I stumbled upon three books by deceased and increasingly forgotten British thriller writers Gavin Lyall and Duncan Kyle, on a small shelf of books donated for charity, just next to the checkout tills. From Mr. Lyall, there was this:

A 1989 UK Coronet first paperback edition of Uncle Target, originally published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1988. This is the fourth and final of Lyall's series starring super spy Harry Maxim. I've already got the first and third ones – The Secret Servant and The Crocus List – in hardback first editions, so only the second one, The Conduct of Major Maxim, to find now. I haven't actually read any of them yet, mind; I'm working my way through the 1960s Lyalls first, which are top notch. I may skip ahead to The Secret Servant soon though.

And from Mr. Kyle – real name John Franklin Broxholme – there were these:

Up top there is a 1983 UK Fontana first paperback edition of Stalking Point (originally published by William Collins Sons & Co. in 1981), and underneath is a 1976 Book Club Associates hardback edition of Terror's Cradle (originally published by Saint Martin's Press in 1974), jacket illustration by Paul Wright. I usually steer away from BCA editions, but this copy of Terror's Cradle was dead cheap, and also I have a feeling that jacket's different to the Saint Martin's one. In any case, I've been meaning to read some Kyle for a while, and these two – one, Stalking Point, a World War II thriller, the other a tale of a journalist up against the CIA and the KGB, set partly in the Shetlands – seem as good a place as any to dive in.

As ever with these Brit thriller writers, if you want to know more you can do a lot worse than visiting my learned friend and colleague Steve Holland at his excellent Bear Alley site. Steve's Gavin Lyall bio and cover gallery is here, and his Duncan Kyle bio and gallery is here.

Gavin Lyall Book Bonanza

And what a bonanza it was. The girlf and I took a trip over to Camilla's bookshop in Eastbourne at the weekend, going further along the coast to Hastings first to check out a couple of bookshops there. One of those was heaving with tatty paperbacks but not really anything of interest, and the other was shut. Well, the lights were on, and the owner was drifting about inside with a glass of wine in his hand, but when I tried to go in he shook his head solemnly. Bernard Black is alive and well and living in Hastings it seems. What's the point of having a bookshop if you're not gonna let people in to have a look? No wonder second hand bookshops are dying on their arses. Silly old prick.

Anyway, after that we headed back to Eastbourne and spent a happy hour in Camilla's. If you've never been there it has to be seen to be believed. Three or so floors absolutely crammed with old books, on shelves, piled on the floor, everywhere. In fact on the ground floor there's a pile of books taller than me and almost as wide again, with notes stuck on it not to touch in case it collapses. It's almost like an art installation. Here's a photo of the place off the web:










Suffice it to say it's even more crammed with books now. But unlike a lot of ramshackle bookshops (and the book/art installation on the ground floor aside), you can actually see most of the books, even if it means moving the odd pile out of the way. Also the staff are usually quite friendly, which isn't always (often?) the case in this type of over-filled bookshop. Rachel was initially disappointed that the only Agatha Christie books on offer, down in the basement, were all sans jackets, but I moved aside some books on the shelves running up the staircase up to the first floor and found a load more there, so she came away with a bag full of firsts.

I spotted various interesting things on the shelves up the stairs, which house the fiction. And then down in the basement, where there's even more fiction, I came across a couple of Gavin Lyall first editions. Then a second look at the stairs shelves turned up some more Lyalls I'd missed first time round. So I grabbed the lot.

Gavin Lyall, for those who don't know, was a British thriller writer (and former RAF pilot), active from the 1960s to the end of the century. Like a lot of 20th Century thriller writers he's largely forgotten these days, which is a shame, as his books are cracking reads – among his fans could be counted the likes of Kingsley Amis and P. G. Wodehouse (and possibly my mum; when she saw one of his books on my shelf recently on a visit she was pleasantly surprised). Lyall's early novels were aviation thrillers for the most part, written in the first person and featuring hard-bitten pilot tough guys as their 'heroes'. Later, into the 1980s, Lyall started writing in the third person and created the character Harry Maxim for a series of espionage thrillers, the first book of which, The Secret Servant, was initially written as a pilot for a TV series starring Charles Dance (which I don't think I've seen).

So what did I get at Camilla's? I done got these:













A 1965 hardback first edition of Lyall's third novel, Midnight Plus One, published by Hodder and Stoughton;













A 1966 first edition hardback of his fourth novel, Shooting Script, again published by Hodder (looking forward to reading this one, as it shakes up the aviation action with the addition of a plot about making a movie; also, I'd like to find out who did the killer jacket designs for these two, as it doesn't say in the books);













A 1972 first hardback edition of Lyall's sixth novel, Blame the Dead, Hodder again, and with a photographic jacket by Clive Andrews;













A 1980 first edition hardback of the debut Harry Maxim novel, The Secret Servant, Hodder once more, with a jacket design by Raymond Hawkey/photography by Peter Williams (I've wanted to get this one for a while, but despite it being tied to a TV series, you don't see proper first editions around that much; usually they're Book Club editions, which, as we all know, just Ain't the Same Thing);













And a 1985 first edition hardback of the third Harry Maxim novel, The Crocus List. So, a nice bunch of additions to the Lyall books I already own, namely:













A 1961 first hardback edition of his debut novel, The Wrong Side of Sky (Hodder once again – and I'd love to know who painted that cover; it's a neat summation of Lyall's early oeuvre);













A 1965 Pan paperback edition of his second novel, The Most Dangerous Game (first published by Hodder in 1964);













And a 1971 Pan paperback of Lyall's fifth novel, Venus with Pistols (originally published by Hodder in 1969). I like the design of these Lyall Pan editions, but I'll doubtless keep my eye out for first editions. And having acquired five Lyalls in Eastbourne, that doesn't leave an awful lot left from his backlist for me to track down: only 1975's Judas Country, the two other Harry Maxim books, and his four later historical thrillers. Mind you, I'm still working my way through Richard Stark's Parker novels at the moment (currently on Parker #8, The Handle), and I've got a good number of Patricia Highsmith books to read yet too, so I've got quite enough to be getting on with.

Maybe just a quick look on AbeBooks though... Can't hurt, can it?