Ah. OK. I was going to point out, further to this post from the other day about the death of Patrick McGoohan, that I've actually discovered the second of the Prisoner novels published by Powys Media, Miss Freedom by former Doctor Who scriptwriter and novelist Andrew Cartmel, available at a not particularly steep price just over here.
But, as you can see, it isn't.
Which is a bit disconcerting, because I ordered one as recently as Monday, and now have it quite literally in my possession. It's number 70 of a limited edition run of 100 and is personally autographed, apparently by one "Ann Cxl".
So, er, yes... it looks as if I may have picked up the last one, in fact.
It's a lot shorter than The Prisoner's Dilemma -- just under half the page count, at the same font size -- and I've no idea about the quality, because I haven't read it yet. But it definitely exists, and some of Cartmel's other work (The Wise and Foreign Devils particularly) has been very good. Miss Freedom claims to be a 1960s-style spy thriller "in the tradition of John Le Carre, Adam Hall and Len Deighton". All in all I'm rather looking forward to it.
So, as I was going to say, if you're a Prisoner fan and want to join the elite group of Prisoner fans who actually own the thing...
...erm, you can't. But I have. Sorry about that.
See...I'm not crazy. I have people telling me that this book is available but it isn't!! Why doesn't Powys have copies?? Ugh...I have talked about this on my blog and get people yelling at me that I am the crazy one...
ReplyDeleteI believe what happened was that Powys published a limited publication run for sale at a convention, in advance of a full run which never emerged. Those were all sold, but a handful were bought up by the Portmeirion online shop, which sold them on (rather short-sightedly) at cost price.
ReplyDeleteI never did find out quite why Powys abandoned publishing the Prisoner novels. I wish I had, because I was lined up to write one at one point.