The Tango Briefing - A Quiller Mystery

The Tango Briefing: A Quiller Mystery by Adam Hall, published by Fontana in 1975, is a proper Cold War espionage thriller from the days when spies smoked too much, telephones had wires, and intelligence officers could apparently cross half of Europe without once being asked to update an app.

This is one of Adam Hall’s Quiller novels, featuring the famously hard-edged intelligence operative who specialises in being sent into situations where the briefing is incomplete, the opposition is unpleasant, and there is every chance that somebody has neglected to mention the most important part.

Which is generally how thrillers get going.

Quiller is not the sort of spy who spends much time admiring gadgets.

He relies on nerve, observation, instinct and the useful ability to remain functional when everybody else would quite reasonably prefer to go home.

The world around him is one of double meanings, uncertain loyalties, surveillance, coded instructions and people who rarely introduce themselves by saying what they actually do for a living.

In other words, classic 1970s espionage territory.

The Tango Briefing throws Quiller into another dangerous assignment where the truth has to be assembled from fragments and nobody can be trusted simply because they have a convincing accent and an expensive coat.

The pleasure of Hall’s Quiller books lies in their tension.

The action is often psychological as much as physical.

What does Quiller know?

What does the other side think he knows?

Who is watching?

Who is lying?

And why has the apparently innocent man in the corner been reading the same newspaper for forty minutes?

This was the great age of the paperback spy thriller.

Cold War paranoia was still current affairs rather than historical atmosphere, and authors had access to an extremely convenient world of embassies, defectors, secret services and governments pretending not to know what their own agents were doing.

No need to invent dystopia.

The newspapers were already helping.

Published in 1975, this Fontana edition has exactly the appeal collectors like in vintage thrillers: compact format, proper period design and the sense that it belongs in the pocket of somebody boarding a train with a briefcase they absolutely do not wish to discuss.

It is also the kind of novel designed to move quickly.

No enormous family trees.

No fifty-page explanation of the spy agency’s procurement policy.

Just danger, deception, movement and the growing suspicion that the briefing did not quite cover everything.

For fans of Quiller, Cold War fiction, vintage espionage novels or 1970s thrillers generally, this is a thoroughly enjoyable period paperback.

It also works nicely for readers who like spies who do not spend half the book explaining their childhood.

Quiller has more immediate problems.

Condition: Fair. This is a used vintage paperback with normal signs of age and handling, and the spine is noticeably slanted. The book remains intact and perfectly readable, but it has clearly developed a slight directional preference over the years.

The slant does not affect the plot.

Quiller is still going where he is supposed to.

ISBN: 0006139094.

A tense and atmospheric Quiller thriller from the height of the Cold War paperback era, full of secrets, surveillance, danger and the reassuring knowledge that absolutely nobody is telling the whole truth.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where even the spine is leaning suspiciously to one side.

Keep browsing: See more Thrillers books Other books by Adam Hall