Talk:Venetian Blind (novel)

Stuff from the book to eventually put in the article or into the Colonel Charles Russell article

Russell has said he will retire in six months. No one in his department really qualified to succeed him. the Home Secretary (who IS a Minister), Gabriel Palliser, says that Russell "was something special. He had it both ways: he ran the machine, and ran it beautifully -- the files, the dossiers, the interminable cross-checking. All that is essential, it's nine-tenths of the job, and it wouldn't be difficult to find a man to carry it. But it's the other tenth, nowadays, that counts in the pinches, and for that Russell had a flair. A nose. He smelt things...Colonel Russell is... something exceptional. He has a nose for the suspect but he detests suspicion; he's a humanist, a liberal in the oldest, best sense... you can't trust many when it comes to that sort of power." pages 12-13

Russell's room: untidyness; Benares brass and silver trophies; excellent Persian rugs; admirably attended mustache; soldierly but slightly donnish == page 34

Still smokes a pipe (54) and cigarettes when offered (60): champagne didn't agree with him... but he seldom declined it -- page 54

Says he's "an indifferent bridge player" (61)

has sherry and biscuits for lunch when too busy to go out (63)

"He was a churchgoer by mild conviction, but not a moralist." His vicar is a High Churchman. (64)

"A sad falling-off after Mr. Haggard's admirable first attempt with Slow Burner." - Christopher Pym, The Spectator

"(I)ts worst fault is that it is one of those smart thrillers which exude self-satisfcation about their milieu -- in this case cabinet level top-security and milliomaire industrialist high-life -- and treat the reader as a sort of gawking poor relation. The plot is mildly ingenious but highly improbable" - Anthony Cronin, Times Literary Supplement