Desmond Skirrow
Desmond Skirrow (1923–1976) was a British advertising executive and thriller writer. In the late 1960s he wrote three outstanding spy novels about a fictional British agent named John Brock. Like his creator, Brock works in advertising in London, but is also a part-time agent for an undercover department run by The Fat Man. The three novels are tough, irreverent, and witty. Punch called them "the Chandler formula, basically, but louder and funnier," while a critic for the Sunday Express wrote that "When I opened his first novel, a thriller, I got the impression that the late Raymond Chandler had come back to life, reanimated perhaps by some of the crude vitality of Mr Mickey Spillane." The Guardian said about his next book that it was "Much better written than much of the turgid solemnity that passes for serious fiction. Neat, sharp, well observed, and extremely funny."[1]
Novels
- It Won't Get You Anywhere — The Bodley Head, London, 1966; Lippincott, New York, 1966
- I Was Following This Girl — The Bodley Head, London, 1967; Doubleday, New York, 1966
- I'm Trying to Give It Up — The Bodley Head, London, 1968; Doubleday, New York, 1969
References
- ↑ All critical quotations from the back dust jacket of I'm Trying to Give It up, The Bodley Head, London, 1968