Adam Diment Books In Order

Publication Order of Philip McAlpine Books

Adam Diment
Adam Diment is a spy novelist that only ever published four novels between 1967 and 1971. All four of which are about Philip McAlpine and his adventures.

Adam vanished from public view after his fourth novel was published, which just added to his cult figure status among fans of 1960s spy novels. By 1975, he was living in Zurich, while shunning all publicity, and had zero plans to write further novels, at least according to The Observer.

“The Dolly Dolly Spy” is the first novel in the “Philip McAlpine Mystery” series and was released in 1967. Philip McAlpine, an industrial spy of this parish, is young, with a taste for modern girls and clothes, dab hand at fiddling expense accounts, dirty weekend pilot, gets drafted into some big league intelligence. Press ganged with blackmail by the gnomic boss, Rupert Quine, of some Whitehall department that is intent on stirring up trouble wherever that Union Jack is fluttering. And quite a few places it doesn’t.

He is under threat, infiltrated, into an airline that has a private motto of “We carry anything anywhere”. Including bullion, heroin, and secret agents. It’s an airline that doesn’t employ the bronzed and clean cut immaculately uniformed young pilots of the magazine ads. Special pilots for the incredibly special operations with backgrounds like gun running and the Luftwaffe.

From the burning Texas desert where he’s trained to shoot as well as fly he’s shunted like a crate of petrified kippers to the Aegean where he has the chance to bask in the sea, sun, and his girlfriend in between flights across the Albanian border and into the Southern Rhodesia. He is almost enjoying his work, since the pay isn’t peanuts, like he says.

Then, fracturing his peace of a holiday villa where he’s staying with friends, Quine briefs him for his final job. One incredibly dodgy pack of ex-SS men that Quine wants. And he does not trust Quine any more than soe hungry python. McAlpine is afraid that British Intelligence might pay him off with a bullet once that final job is completed.

So the double-crosses start piling up as quickly as the bodies do while his plane drones on like some frantic insect across Homer’s red sea. Philip’s main job appears to be attempting to keep a jump ahead of the executioners and on the trigger end of his guns.

“The Great Spy Race” is the second novel in the “Philip McAlpine Mystery” series and was released in 1968. Philip’s boss Quine the Swine of 6 (NC/NAC) has got special plans for his unwilling employee. Quine begins mildly enough by assigning Philip the task of bribing a man to find another, who’s got information that is worth £22,000 to British Intelligence.

Philip gets directed to the island of Mali and the Club Oceanic, this paradise for wealthy playboys, and it is the home of Peters, this retired master of spydom. And it’s from Peters that Philip discovers the Great Spy Race, this race to outwit the top agents of all competing foreign countries: winning means a secret micro film and a fortune to Philip. But to lose to be his final disposition at the hands of Quine.

The book begins for Philip with a clue in London, takes him to St. Tropez and Geneva and then back to Mali in a treasure hunt where Philip himself winds up the quarry.

Here is quite the adventurous story that rocks with bullies, beauties, and bullets. It’s a story that confirms that Adam is one of the most electric, sex appealing, and entertaining writers to hit the scene.

“The Bang Bang Birds” is the third novel in the “Philip McAlpine Mystery” series and was released in 1968. Philip gets caught up in the sinister and lush world of the Aviary Clubs.

The Aviary Club members believe in sex being an art form, quotes a grotesque man named Henry de Vitconne, who is a Count by grace of the Bourbons, citizen of France the owner of the chain of spectacularly successful Aviary Clubs, where wealthy males can all relax from the world amid the multi-million pound décor, and are assisted by the hand-picked ‘Birds’.

Marianne, one beautiful yet absent minded woman, asks why a man in the speed boat would be shooting at them. She’s already suffered many fates worse than death at the hands of the hands of our bewildered hero. And where would she be going on the back of some stolen Norton motorcycle burning through some of Stockholm’s back streets?

And just who is General Morton Kodak Eastfeller, this pint-sized Pentagon super hawk, with this eyrie high in a 5th Avenue skyscraper? And what exactly are those ‘tactical maneuvers’ he performs with that young secretary of his? Above all else, just what truly goes on behind the scenes of the Clubs?

With a supporting cast including: Horace Doolittle (a man with this unnaturally strong penchant for taking showers and a cashiered debutante). Add to this all the facts about how to convert a bottle of Scotch into a Molotov cocktail: first lessons in helicopter flying, do it yourself gladiatorial combat and a few thoughts on hallucinogenic drugs (miracle or menace), and you have the most exciting McAlpine adventure to date.

“Think Inc” is the fourth novel in the “Philip McAlpine Mystery” series and was released in 1971. This previously reluctant spy is now out in the cold. Having been sacked by the greatly detested Quine, head of 6, he goes, and quick. Dead, at least that’s what London believes, since they arranged his death. But he returns as Filipe Gonzales Luise Xavier Gonzales de Mendoza by THINK INC., this highly specialized criminal organization master-minded by Faustus the enigmatic with able assistance from his four lieutenants.

Their scheme moves just as fast as the action. A quick snatch of 56 million lire right out from under the noses of the Rome cops and we’re whisked right off to Beirut to plan future activities. Then back to Naples to grab, with her incredibly willing assistance, the gorgeous film star, Solange Dore, and then to the Aegean. Their final plan is to skyjack a Boeing 707 and its cargo of one and a quarter million in gold bullion.