Anthony Price has been a great find. I had never heard of him because he has slipped out of fashion like so many writers of his generation in his genre.
“Price was born (1928) in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England. He attended The King’s School, Canterbury and served in the British Army from 1947 to 1949, reaching the rank of captain. He read history at Merton College, Oxford, from 1949 to 1952, and was awarded an MA in 1956.
Price was a journalist with the Westminster Press from 1952 to 1988, as well as the editor of the Oxford Times from 1972 to 1988. He was the author of nineteen novels in the Dr David Audley/Colonel Jack Butler series. These books focus on a group of counter-intelligence agents who work for an organisation loosely based on the real MI5.” (Wikipedia)
There are authors in his field that are still read: Ian Fleming, John le Carré foremost. But today a new generation like Terry Hayes (I Am Pilgrim) are in airport bookshops. Never mind, by using ABE I can buy the gone out of fashion stuff. I am supporting independent second hand bookshops (and Amazon), though often the postage costs more than the book. Did you know ABE stands for Amazon Book Exchange?
Contemporary thrillers are fast paced, like the newer Bond films, for a generation with a short attention span wanting quick gratification. The previous generation are better written and have better developed plots and characters. It’s Pride and Prejudice versus Bridget Jones’s Diary. I hope I am not being unfair to Helen Fielding as I have not read BJD and am influenced by the film adaptations. By the way I haven’t mentioned Alistair MacLean because I feel, maybe I’m wrong, he is not worth re-reading.
All the Anthony Price novels I have read start intriguingly leaving more questions than answers. If any of them were on Project Gutenberg I could give you an extract but they are too long for me to type. I have read five with two waiting; then there are another dozen. I don’t like reading them one after another. It would be too much like eating a box of chocolates in one sitting. So I take a break and read something more serious.
In 1983 ITV screened a six part series based on Price’s first three books, starring Terence Stamp as counter-intelligence agent, David Audley.
Price is one of the best, and as you say, his characters, running through all 19 in the series, develop and progress in their lives, wonderfully complex and deep, as are the plots.
At the risk of pedantry, I have to point out ABE stood for Advanced Book Exchange. It was only bought by Amazon 12 years after it was founded.
World of Books is an excellent second-hand book purchasing service. And no postal charges!
Christopher. How splendid to be directed to another, relatively unremarked writer whose catalogue of work clearly deserves attention. I am just embarking on my quinquennial ‘re-read’ of John Masters’ books starting with ‘Bugles and a Tiger’ but ‘ere long moving on to his wonderful saga of the Savage family and, it’s incomparable (in my opinion), description of India during the Raj. If nothing else he writes so succinctly: his explanation of the military art is second to none in its simplicity. Not to mention his forays into pure historical circumstance and, of course, his final ‘ chef d’oeuvre’, the trilogy of the Great War. Enough!