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Philip Quest


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#1 chrisno1

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Posted 01 May 2015 - 12:09 PM

 

Has anyone else read or got memories of this short series of novels by Peter Townend?

I aquired and read them last year. Quest isn't exactly a spy but the adventures are quite diverting.

 

Out of Focus

 

(1971)

 

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Philip Quest is a photo-journalist, half way rich due to an inheritance and half way a playboy due to his good looks, good breeding and remarkably easy way with women. He’s a sort of David Bailey character mixed in with doses of Sam Spade’s cynicism, George Best’s athleticism and Charles Hood’s devil-may-care attitude. He certainly isn’t any kind of spy, although national service has taught him how to fight and shoot guns. Mind he isn’t very good at either. The character Quest most resembles is Raymond Chandler’s weary private investigator Philip Marlowe and I wonder if his creator, Peter Townend, had this in mind when he developed the story Out of Focus.  

 

This is essentially a mystery novel set in the early and still swinging seventies, where free love, or at least free sex, still abounds and Venice and Marbella are still considered exotic unobtainable locations. What Townend does though is offset the exotica by having Quest’s adventure take place in dismal autumn, when the palaces and grand canals are sickly, gloomy cousins of their summer effigies. He may stay in a luxury hotel, make love to a beautiful model and drink in the famous Harry’s bar, but this is no luxury trip for Philip Quest. He’s racked with emotional guilt, bored and, unable to complete his photographic assignment, he passes his days smoking, drinking and making mad love. He’s an out of sorts lotus eater, too wrapped up in his world to understand everyone else’s.

 

Back in grimy London, with his soul mate Sue Faversham, Quest begins to wonder if a photograph he snapped in Venice has secret significance, not just to one of the three men it features, but to himself and Sue. Intrigued by the Argentinian playboy Jay Herrera, Quest travels to Spain and the huge villa La Clavel. Over the course of a few days he attends a party, meets a beautiful American, Anna, gets beaten up, tortured, cross-dressed, takes part in a bizarre kinky gay sex game, steals cars and speedboats and generally makes a nuisance of himself for very little reason. The McGuffin of the piece is the photograph, an insignificant detail to the general plot which actually revolves around Anna Kertecz’s hunt for an escaped Nazi. International blackmail – Herrera’s business of choice – hardly features and the photo hardly matters.

 

For all that, Townend conjures a believable world of cross and double cross. The eventual revelation was a surprise and the twists and turns to get the reader there are rewarding. There is some sporadic violence, but Townend seems more concerned with sexual matters, much like his creation whose whole world seems to revolve around his libido. By the climax [ahem!] he’s learnt his lessons and life has become more brutal and less sensuous.

 

Quest does feel like a real person [Townend himself, perhaps?] and his foibles are easily displayed; for instance, Anna has marked him for seduction from the off and a counter intelligence policeman, Rayas, recognises his nervous desperation. Meanwhile the supporting cast remains too shallow to bear close examination. Once again Townend relies on sexual mores to add character and that doesn’t add up to memorable personalities; all the women seem the same and all the men seem intent on damaging other men where it hurts.

 

Some people might find Out of Focus a little unpleasant, particularly as the lead protagonist seems such an amorist, but I think the wisps of sadism, the casual sex and the sudden swift outbursts of action aid the story, keeping the reader slightly titillated and off balance, unsure exactly what slice of physical arousal will be served next.  There is too a certain pornography to the violence, its vivid colour, its searing pain, its horrific aftermath, which I found startling. This is not unlike Ian Fleming’s writing, and indeed a quote from The Sunday Times refers to Peter Townend as ‘the true inheritor of the mantle’, which maybe stretches the compliment a bit far. Of course there is no grand scheme for the hero to dissolve, but it is perhaps in Philip Quest’s soul searching that Townend most resembles Fleming and Chandler, the passages where he reflects on society and on his place in it keep the story grounded and contemporary, even if free love has finally passed us all by.

 

 



#2 glidrose

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Posted 02 May 2015 - 08:41 PM

Another fantastic piece. I really enjoy your articles about the lesser-known and downright esoteric spy novelists. I'm sure other people here feel as I do about your contributions. So please don't take the lack of any response the wrong way. What more can we say that you haven't already said?

 

I remember Townend's books, but sadly, never read them. Townend is one of those rather strange writers who wrote books between long gaps, then suddenly stopped. Always wonder what happens to writers like that.

 

He apparently was also an actor, but nobody seems to know his credits!



#3 chrisno1

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Posted 03 May 2015 - 01:02 AM

Zoom!

 

1972

 

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At the end of Out of Focus, Peter Townend’s first novel to feature Philip Quest, his hero has an eye removed due to an infection caused by a glass splinter. This leaves our seventies drifter come photo-journalist with a piratical eye patch which seems to enflame the passions even more of the women he meets. Naturally.

 

Zoom is a fairly inconsequential title. I wouldn’t let that spoil my enjoyment of a thriller which, while hardly original, certainly ticks all the prerequisite boxes: murder, theft, kidnapping, blackmail, ransom, rape, a doting patriarch, movie stars, sex, violence, misogyny and racism. In fact Townend almost seems to pack too much into the narrative. He just gets away with it, although about two thirds in the pace drops when it should heat up as Quest takes an unscheduled mountain hike through the Sardinian plateau, an exercise which occupies one torturously slow chapter.

 

Quest is in Sardinia to visit his film star pal Mark Savage, spaghetti western hero and fiancé to Sarah Harrington, heir to a publishing magnate. Unknown to him Savage is at the centre of a blackmail and heist plot that also involves Quest’s new paramour Liz Murray. Townend deftly creates the tension until it rockets into violent take off. Amongst other things are a startling nighttime robbery, an airborne fight and a lot of chasing after a bag full of a million dollars cash. He also throws in plenty of sex and rough talk. This time, rather than concentrating on Quest, he develops all his main characters so they become rounded and believable, if slightly stereotypical. Sarah’s father JB Harrington is particularly successful, a mustachioed pistol shooting whisky drinking old man, short of temper, alternately trusting and suspicious; he reads as if life has become a burden and he only lives it because he has to, seeking enjoyment only in a few nostalgic pleasures. It’s disappointing he takes a back seat, being neither villain nor aide. The lead crook is Simon Moore, a grim individual who meets a fitting end. His sidekick Frank Lester has more conscience, but there’s no place for conscience in Simon’s world, or Quests, or come to that Townend’s.

 

The thriller moves along at a cracking pace. There are plenty of surprises and if most of the action passes fast it isn’t disappointing. There is an unexpected twist or two which holds the reader’s interest.

 

By the end of the novel, Quest’s restlessness leads to tragedy and this seems appropriate for a man who lives life as if it was always the last days, over indulgence and carefree abandon feature high on his list of achievements. Losing an eye hasn’t helped him focus on his own ineptitude.

 

Zoom is a good thriller packed full of blood and sex and exotic locales with model-looks women and gruff vicious men. It’s less complicated than the previous adventure and if it lacks some punch, the more genuine characters prevent it tumbling from a close up to a fade.

 



#4 Blofeld's Cat

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Posted 04 May 2015 - 03:09 AM

Great reviews there.  B)

 

I really love searching through op-shops and secondhand bookshops for these 60's-70's spy pulps!

 

A good little overview of the 4 Quest novels can be found HERE.



#5 DavidJones

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Posted 04 May 2015 - 04:52 PM

Yes, great review, Chris - very professional! Where are your others? I can't seem to find them.



#6 chrisno1

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Posted 04 May 2015 - 06:19 PM

Yes, great review, Chris - very professional! Where are your others? I can't seem to find them.

 

Try These:

 

http://debrief.comma...l +spies +print

 

http://debrief.comma...hl=+jason +love

 

http://debrief.comma...=+charles +hood

 

http://debrief.comma...lldog +drummond

 

Glad you enjoyed my take on Philip Quest - a bit more depth than 'Spy Guys and Gals' :D



#7 chrisno1

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Posted 06 May 2015 - 03:02 PM

Fisheye

 

(1974)

 

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Peter Townend’s Fisheye continues the adventures of Philip Quest, photo journalist and adventurer. This time he’s holed up in Corsica hunting sunken Nazi treasure and crossing the path of the Union Corse and the Washington Narcotics Bureau.

 

It’s the same combustible mix we’ve come across before: sordid murder, sleazy sex and sudden revelations. Rommel’s treasure hardly matters; it’s a McGuffin of the most original kind. Quest’s one good eye is really trained on avenging the death of the heroin addict and nymphomaniac Chantel, a young woman abused by her uncle and used as bait for an undercover American agent. Quest meets her as she tries to get clean in California. Under the lax authority of Nick Russo, Chantel has fallen back into bad habits and Quest, his aces all coming at once, wins a night with her in a poker game. That one night leads to a horrific slaughter. Quest, following up on her life story, turns private investigator and his eye focuses on the slimy Russo, some amateur treasure seekers and the giant Capu, Dominique Sanguinetti.

 

It’s a tough thriller which has a strong storyline and some exciting set pieces. The characters start off being rather stereotypical. Townend’s interpretation of a night’s wild gambling in Hollywood is a dull affair and the meetings with Chantel are basically cod-erotica. The story only livens up when she’s murdered. He’s much better in Corsica, where, as with the previous two episodes, he offers a condensed and virulent description of the location, its atmosphere, its tension, its shifty inhabitants. There’s a brutal fight in a nightclub washroom, a blind cave dive, a vicious torture scene and a climatic shoot out on a smuggler’s yacht. Once again a longwinded hike over a mountain pass does nothing to enhance the suspense.

 

Sanguinetti, the weary villain of the piece, is the most rounded figure in this tale. He lacks egoistic sparkle, which rather sets him apart from your normal villain, but he’s also colourful, sly and has some memorable lines of dialogue. His runt sidekick, Nick Russo, is a selfish dullard enriched and empowered by the poison of criminal wealth. He’s nowhere near as powerful as Sanguinetti, yet he attempts to call the shots and fails miserably at every step. It is the wise Capu who recognizes when a race has run its course. His eventual meeting with Quest is an ironic well structured, but ultimately disappointing tete-a-tete.

 

What draws this confrontation down is the manner of its revelation. Several times during the novel, Townend leaves his hero in a moment of peril or indecision, only to skip the necessary action, which is told in flashback or by proxy. This takes away the element of surprise and kills the suspense as surely as Russo kills Chantel. While sometimes it is better to leave the detail off the page, to leave whole scenes out seems a little remiss. Townend just about gets away with it, but he’s spoilt much of the fun.

 

The women are uninteresting; the nominal heroine Robin Drummond, fights off seduction until the epilogue, unlike the other interchangeable females who seem only available to provide Quest with a sensual conquest, but it can’t save her. She’s a good foil initially, but is too easily uncovered and later does very little, despite being a trained Narcotics Investigator. When Townend writes women’s thoughts [which isn’t often] they all sound like men. They act a lot like them also, being predatory and single minded. Quest meets his match in Robin, for he neither fancies nor hates her; his indifference stymies their relationship, but it also provides the final fulfillment. It is a pity she doesn’t read as very genuine.

 

Overall while I enjoyed Fisheye, it didn’t grasp me as rapidly as Out of Focus or Zoom. It starts very slowly, has plenty of dead ends and red herrings and is tied up neatly with a bow at the end, but the filling of the parcel shows little substance and I really can’t forgive all those tension wrecking flashbacks.  

 



#8 chrisno1

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Posted 09 June 2015 - 03:44 PM

Triple Exposure
(1979)

 

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There’s something terribly wrong with Peter Townend’s Triple Exposure the culmination of his series of adventures starring the one-eyed photo-journalist Philip Quest. It comes five years after the last novel and nothing much has changed for our hero, who is still drinking huge quantities of alcohol and seducing the ladies, or in this case one specific lady only, as if he’s already played all the hands in the last chance saloon. The intervening years haven’t mellowed Philip Quest. If anything he’s more ribald and obnoxious than ever. While the early couple of stories had a certain frisson aided by the bizarre situations and deadly skullduggery, this time Townend is clearly solely in exploitation mode.

 

There is a semblance of a plot, something to do with a coup in Morocco, but it’s hopelessly convoluted and I genuinely had no idea – I should capitalize that phrase – NO IDEA what on earth was going on. This wasn’t helped by a dreadful proof of the novel [an American print which perversely lists the book as ‘Quest #1’] which has numerous grammatical errors and occasionally switches the names of the protagonists so I had to re-read passages as they made no sense. There are so many characters cluttering this narrative that I had difficulty understanding who was responsible for what, who was a good guy and a bad guy. People get killed, there are fights and all the prerequisite supposed tensions, but it’s a very lackluster effort, not even delivering exotic locations: most of the action is located in and around London’s Hammersmith and Kensington; the climax is on a windswept Scottish Isle of unlikely description.

 

This is disappointing as the initial gambit kicks off in the shadow of the Atlas Mountains and involves an intriguing gemstone smuggling plot. For once our libidinous hero fails to seduce the girl and this is when his suspicions are roused – Philip Quest not got his oats? – There must be foul play! Later on, he refuses an offer of free love and is mugged for his gentlemanly conduct. These two little flourishes add some fun to the proceedings, but Quest generally is so laboured and humourless, you wonder why anyone, especially the women, like him. His experiences haven’t made him a more pleasant being, they’ve reinforced his shortcomings.

 

Townend seems to have suffered a similar problem. The prose, while always displaying a touch of verve, is basically unimaginative and it repeats much of what we’ve already seen from the author. Worse, it isn’t clear what the hell’s going on and at times the activities described are impenetrable. The climax is ill-thought and involves a ridiculous near-rape scene in a library that reads as bad is sounds. Even the customary explanatory summary chapter doesn’t help clarity on this one.    

 

Triple Exposure is a very poor snapshot. More negative than finished print.