Prolific English thriller and mystery writer, who also published plays, juvenile novels, and short stories. Trevor's best-known characters are the indestructible British agent Quiller from his novels as Adam Hall, and Hugo Bishop from novels as Simon Rattray. Among Trevor's most powerful novels is  The Flight of the Phoenix (1964), a study of men driven to breaking point in their struggle to survive.

"Quite clear," Moran said, impatient with Towns, with Stringer, with himself, with all of them—they stood here squabbling like spoiled kids just because there'd been some water to drink and they could brush up their sensitive egos again. Here was a plane half built and it could save their lives; but they stood bickering. This was the desert, out to kill in one of its countless ways: reducing a man in its heat, shriveling him and taking away his dignity, giving him water again to send him in search of what he had lost: his pride." (from The Flight of the Phoenix by Elleston Trevor, Harper & Row, 1964, pp. 147-148)

After the book was reviewed in Life, several agents tried to buy it. The director Robert Aldrich was in the bidding very early, and signed the contract. James Stewart's agent then called and said that he had tried to buy it for the actor. Stewart decided to take the role he was offered and the book was made into a film in 1965. In the story a plane crash leaves a group of men stranded in the Libyan desert. Soon the water runs out, but refusing to die, the men began to build from the wreckage an aircraft that could fly them out.

Hardy Kruger, a pilot himself, who was cast in the role of Heinrich Dorfmann, a young aeronautical engineer, later recalled that he and Stewart had long discussions whether somebody might actually fly the kind of craft. Their conclusion was that "it was theoretically possible as long as there was use of ramp to take off, that there was no way that wheels would be enough. We also agreed that, even with a ramp, neither one of us wanted to be the one to attempt it." (James Stewart: A Biography by Donald Dewey, Turner Pub., 1996, p. 432) Critics praised Stewart and Kruger but commercially, the film failed to fly high. The second adaptation from 2004, set somewhere in the Gobi desert with Mongolian bandits, was directed by John Moore.

Elleston Trevor was born Trevor-Dudley Smith in Bromley, Kent. Trevor's childhood was miserable, though his parents loved him. His father, a stockbroker, was an alcoholic, as was Trevor's mother, who died when he was 30.

Trevor was educated at Yardley Court Preparatory School, where he was beaten every Monday morning for bad Latin, and Sevenoaks School (1932-38). His biggest dream was to write and distribute his own magazine. Upon leaving the school, he was apprenticed as a racing driver, but when World War II broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force, serving as a flight engineer. Mostly he worked on Spitfires.

During the war, Trevor wrote under the name T. Dudley-Smith juvenile stories and novels, which were published by Swan. In 1947 he married Jonquil Burgess, an author of children's books; they had one son, Peregrine Scott (Jean-Pierre), who become a painter. From 1958 to 1973 they lived in France, where Trevor made his own wine, and then in the United States, settling in Phoenix, Arizona. There they built a Spanish-style house with a mountain view. Trevor had first visited the Arizona desert while the shooting of The Flight of the Phoenix.

After the death of his wife in 1986, Trevor married Chaille Anne Groom, an artist and horse-trainer. He never gave up his British citizenship. Elleston Trevor died of cancer on July 21, 1995, in Cave Creek, Arizona.

Trevor began to write professionally after the war was over. In 1965 he received the Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America for The Quiller Memorandum. It also won the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in the U.S., and a Book Club choice in England. Anthony Boucher praised it in the New York Times Book Review as "a grand exercise in ambivalence and intricacy, tense and suspenseful at every moment". Later Trevor said that he decided to write his own spy story after reading John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963).

Several of Trevor's books have been filmed. The Big Pick-Up (1955), his first best seller, takes a less sentimental view of the Dunkirk evacuation than Paul Gallico did in The Snow Goose (1941). Trevor's novel was made into a film by the Ealing Studios under the title Dunkirk (1958). This docudrama also drew material from Keep the Memory Green (1950) by Maj. J. Selby Bradford and Lt. Col. Ewan Butler. John Mills played a corporal who must lead his squad to the coast to be rescued by a small boat captained by John Holden (Richard Attenborough).

The movie version of The Quiller Memorandum, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, starring George Segal as Quiller and Alec Guinness as his supervisor, was produced in 1966. Richard Schickel said in his review, that "George Segal's Quiller, although a likable performance in a smart-alecky vein, lacks the hard center that should be at the spy's core." (Life, January 27, 1967) As a result of Pinter's verbally economic screenplay, Trevor sharpened the narrative and adopted a streak of Pinteresque menace in the subsequent books. Quiller's character and his supersecret organization served in 1975 as the basis for a British television mini-series, Michael Jayston in the title role.

The Flight of the Phoenix, in which a cargo passenger plane full of date plums crashes in the desert, was filmed by Robert Aldrich, starring James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Hardy Kruger, Ernest Borgine, Peter Finch, George Kennedy. The plot focused on the tension between the survivors and their project to construct a new plane and escape from the disaster. "It's much more than an adventure story," said Aldrich later, "but it has all the wonderful entertainment ingredients of an adventure story; superimposed on that is the survival dilemma of what men will and will not do to stay alive under pressurized conditions; third is the twist that I don't think has ever been done in film before, which makes the surprise ending not just a gimmick. It makes it a whole, almost reasonable, ending. There are no parallels. You can't say it's like some other kind of picture, and you hope it isn't." (Robert Aldrich in Who the Devil Made It by Peter Bogdanovich, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, p. 783)

In The Warsaw Document (1970) Trevor moved the events of the 'Prague Spring' to Poland – Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968 by the Warsaw Pact troops to crush the liberals. Now Quiller wrecks a Soviet plot to invade Warsaw and saves East-West détente from explosion. "'These people would be all right, you know, if they'd only get down to their work and show a bit of faith in those who are trying to create the new world. But they're too proud of their past, warrior nation and all that, it's old hat these days. Things have changed, and they're going to change a lot more. The past's all right but you won't get far if you spend your life in a museum.' He turned his face to me. 'There's such a lot of good in them, though, just as there is in everyone, and it's a shame to see it go to waste.'" (Ibid., New English Library, 1972, p. 103)

Trevor's first books appeared under the name T. Dudley-Smith in the 1940s. He created the pseudonym Elleston Trevor in 1946 for a non-mystery book, and later adopted it as his legal name. His style varied depending on the pen name: Simon Rattray writes classic mystery novels, and Adam Hall fast moving, action-filled spy thrillers.

In all Rattray novels the hero was Hugo Bishop. Nobody knows what he does for a living. He is not a private investigator or police detective, but more of a Hercule Poirot type thinker. Bishop solves crimes because they offer him an intellectual challenge. His secretary is Vera J. Corringe, M.A. from Oxford. Hugo Bishop appeared for the first time in Knight Sinister (1951), which was followed by other works involving chess, including Bishop in Check (1953) and Queen in Danger  (1952), in which Bishop helps an artist, who has escaped from Broadmoor, an asylum for the criminally insane. The surname of hero and the titles in the series referred to chess game, also the chapters were the named "First Move," "Second Move," etc.

Among Trevor's later works were The Sibling and its sequel The Sister (1993), in which the author broke away from his Quiller spy novels. In these books Trevor created a nightmarish story about two teenaged sisters, Madlen and Debra. They hope to find sanctuary from their abusive parents when they enter the convent. Instead they discover horror. The Flycatcher (1994) was a novel about the hunt for a serial killer.

Quiller is man with no real name, who works for a London Bureau that "doesn't exist". Like Len Deighton's unnamed protagonist in The Ipcress File (1962) and its sequels, he has not much private life outside his intelligence missions. This antisocial operative was described once by its creator as an alley cat, "his whole makeup is tense, edgy, and bitten-cared. He needs to live close to the crunch. Like billfighters and racing drivers, he is a professional neurotic, half in love with death." (quited in 'Introduction' by Otto Penzler, The Quiller Memorandum, A Forge Book, 2004, p.6)

Despite all his complaining, in which Quiller is also similar to Deighton's hero (named Harry Palmer in the films), he remains loyal to his country, to the Bureau, and is reliable even under torture. He is a martial arts expert, with knowledge of languages, skills at flying, driving, and diving. (Trevor himself earned his black belt in Shotokan karate at the age of sixty-four.) Differing from the gun fetishism of James Bond books, Quiller refuses to carry a firearm – even Le Carré's meek-mannered George Smiley occasionally arms himself with a pistol.  And Quiller doesn't drink or smoke. Quiller was introduced in The Berlin Memorandum (1965, U.S. title The Quiller Memorandum), in which he fought against a lethal ring of Nazis determined to revive the Third Reich. Quiller novels take the reader all over the world, from Peking to the Sahara Desert, whereas with a few eceptions, John Le Carré and Len Deighton preferred such commonplace European settings as London, Berlin, Bonn, and Warsaw.

Sometimes Quiller's missions keep him busy in Europe, as in the novel The Scorpion Signal (1979). This time Quiller travels from a clinic in Berlin to the heart of Lubyanka Prison to track down the British agent who has vanished from Moscow. Euro-terrorism is the subject in The Quiller Solitaire (1992). But mostly, according to the tradition of the genre, starting from James Bond, top intelligent agents fight against evil powers in carefully depicted exotic locations. In The Mandarin Cypher (1975), the Bureau's top intelligence agent prowls the streets of Hong Kong, The Cobra Manifesto (1976) takes him from the French Riviera to Rome, Cambodia, New York, and Brazil. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union are seen in the novels Quiller K.G.B. (1989), in which the lonely agent joins forces with the Soviet to stop the plan to assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev, and in Quiller Meridian (1993), also set in Russia. Now Quiller's mission is to stop a member of Podpolia, the hard-line underground, determined to seize control of the former Soviet Union. Quiller Salamander (1994) was sequel to Quiller Meridien and followed the agent into the Cambodian jungle as he attempts to prevent the notorious Pol Pot from maneuvering the dreaded Khmer Rouge back into power. Quiller's work is further complicated by an inexperienced young field director. Quiller Balalaika (1995) was Trevor's farewell to his character, after after over 30 years of service. The story was again set in Russia. This time Quiller fought against corruption and the mafia. Trevor's son Jean-Pierre helped his father to complete the book.

For further reading: 'Hall, Adam', in Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, edited by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler (1976); 'Quiller by Adam Hall,' in The Great Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler (1978); 'Trevor, Elleston' by R. Gordon Kelly, in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, edited John M. Reilly (1985); 'Profile: Adam Hall,' in Espionage Magazine, September (1987); 'Hall, Adam,' in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa by William L. DeAndrea (1997); Quiller: A Profile and Bury Him Among Kings: Intimate Glimpses of the Life and Work of Elleston Trevor by Chaille Trevor (2012); 'Contextualizing Adam Hall’s Fiction: Liminality, Nihilism, and Pathogenic History in The Quiller Memorandum' by Robert L. Snyder, in Études anglaises, Volume 70, Issue 4 (2017)

Selected works as Adam Hall:

• The Volcanoes of San Domingo, 1963
  - Liikennekoneen arvoitus (suom. Aaro Vuoristo, 1964)
• The Berlin Memorandum, 1965 (U.S. title: The Quiller Memorandum, 1965)
  - Berliinin muistio (suom. Aaro Vuoristo, 1966)
  - Film: The Quiller Memorandum, 1966, directed by Michael Anderson, script Harold Pinter, starring George Segal (as Quiller), Alec Guinness (as Pol), Max von Sydow (as Oktober), Senta Berger, Georg Sanders. "'In disposing of most of the storyline Pinter has virtually thrown out the baby with the bathwater; all that remains is s skeleton plot which barely makes sense and is totally lacking in excitement.' - Brenda Davies" (Halliwell's Film Guide by Leslie Halliwell, Paladin, sixth edition, 1988, p. 842)
• The 9th Directive, 1966
  - Yhdestoista hetki (suom. Anne-Eva Tiililä, 1968)
• The Striker Portfolio, 1969
  - Tuomitut lennot (suom. Erkki Ihanainen, 1969)
• The Warsaw Document, 1970
  - Salainen tehtävä Varsovassa (suom. Eero Mänttäri, 1971)
• The Tango Briefing, 1973
  - Surmantango Saharassa (suom. Eero Mänttäri, 1979)
• The Mandarin Cypher, 1975
  - Tappajakala (suom. Eero Mänttäri, 1978)
• The Kobra Manifesto, 1976
  - Kobrat kohtaavat (suom. Eero Mänttäri, 1977)
• The Sinkiang Executive, 1978
• The Scorpion Signal, 1979
  - Skorpionin hetki (suom. Eero Mänttäri)
• The Sibling, 1979
• The Pekin Target, 1981 (US title: The Peking Target, 1982)
• Northlight, 1985 (US title: Quiller, 1985)
  - Revontulet (suom. Heikki Sarkkila, 1987)
• Quiller's Run, 1988
  - Surmantanssi Singaporessa (suom. Heikki Sarkkila, 1989)
• Quiller K.G.B., 1989
• Quiller Barracuda, 1990
• Quiller Bamboo, 1991
• Quiller Solitaire, 1992
• Quiller Meridian, 1993
• Quiller Salamander, 1994
• Quiller Balalaika, 1995

Selected works as Simon Rattray:

• Knight Sinister, 1951
  - Punainen ratsastaja (suom. Matti Karjalainen, 1963)
• Queen in Danger, 1952
  - Kuningatar vaarassa (suom. Olli Nuorto, 1953)
  - Film: Mantrap / Man in Hiding, 1953, dir. Terence Fisher, written by Terence Fisher and Paul Tabori, starring Paul Henreid, Lois Maxwell, Kieron Moore, Hugh Sinclair. 
• Bishop in Check, 1953
  - Sääli mukavaa miestä (suom. Olli Nuorto, 1954)
• Dead Silence, 1954 (US title: Pawn in Jeopardy, 1971)
  - Uraanikentän salaisuus (suom. Mirjan Ikonen, T.O. Ikonen, 1955)
• Dead Circuit, 1955 (US title: Rook's Gambit, 1972)
  - Kuoleman ympyrä (suom. Arto Tuovinen, 1962)
• Dead Sequence, 1957

Selected other works under various names:

• Over the Wall, 1943 (as T. Dudley-Smith)
• Into the Happy Glade, 1943 (for children)
• Animal Life Stories, 1943-45 (3 vols.)
• Double Who Double Crossed, 1944 (as T. Dudley-Smith)
• Elleston Trevor Micellany, 1944
• By a Silver Stream, 1944 (for children)
• Wumpus, 1945 (for children)
• Deep Wood, 1945 (for children)
• Heather Hill, 1946 (for children)
• The Immortal Error, 1946
• More about Wumpus, 1947 (for children)
• Escape to Fear, 1948 (as T. Dudley-Smith)
• Now Try the Morgue, 1948 (as T. Dudley-Smith)
• The Island of the Pines, 1948 (for children)
• The Secret Travellers, 1948 (for children)
• Where's Wumpus?, 1948 (for children)
• Badger's Beech, 1948 (for children)
• The Wizard of the Wood, 1948 (for children)
• Badger's Moon, 1949 (for children)
• A Spy at Monk's Court, 1949 (for children)
• Ant's Castle, 1949 (for children)
• Mystery of the Missing Book, 1950
• Chorus of Echoes, 1950
• Redfern's Miracle, 1951
• Tiger Street, 1951
• Dead on Course, 1951 (as Mansell Black; filmed under the title Wings of Danger, 1952)
• Sinister Cargo, 1951 (as Mansell Black)
• Image in the Dust, 1951 (as Warwick Scott; US title: Cockpit, 1953)
• Mole's Castle, 1951 (for children)
• Sweethallow Valley, 1951 (for children)
• Challenge of the Firebrand, 1951 (for children)
• Secret Arena, 1951 (for children)
• The Domesday Story, 1952 (as Warwick Scott; US title: Doomsday, 1953)
• A Blaze of Roses, 1952 (US title: The Fire Riser, 1952)
• Wings of Danger, 1952 (screenplay, with John Gilling and Packham Webb)
  - Film: Wings of Danger / Dead on Course, 1952, prod. Hammer Film Productions, Lippert Films, directed by Terence Fisher, starring Zachary Scott, Robert Beatty, Kay Kendall, Naomi Chance.
• The Passion and the Pity, 1953
• Shadow of Evil, 1953 (as Mansell Black)
• The Racing Wraith, 1953 (for children)
• Steps in the Dark , 1954 (as Mansell Black)
• Naked Canvas, 1954 (as Warwick Scott)
• The Big Pick-Up, 1955
  - Film: Dunkirk, 1958, prod. Ealing Studios, dir. Leslie Norman, starring John Mills, Richard Attenborough, Robert Urquhart, Meredith Edwards. "Sober, small-scale apptoch to an epic subject; interesting but not inspiring, with performances to match." (Halliwell's Film Guide by Leslie Halliwell, Paladin, sixth edition, 1988, p. 295)
• Squadron Airborne, 1955
  - "So skilfully does Mr Trevor recapture the tense and sometimes tragic atmosphere of life on the war-time fighter stations that I found myself re-living some of the most exciting and trying events of my life." (Wing-Commander R. Stanford Tuck, D.S.O., D.F.C., and two bars).
• Forbidden Kingdom, 1955 (for children)
• The Killing Ground, 1956
• Gale Force, 1956
• The Pillars of Midnight, 1957
  - Keskiyön pilarit (suom. Kaija Kauppi, 1958)
  - "Mr Elleston Trevor is a professional novelist of the Nevil Shute School, a kind of mathematician of the novel." (In The Times Literary Supplement.) Films: The Pillars of Midnight, 1958, TV film, in Armchair Theatre, dir. George More O'Ferrall, with George Baker, Susan Stephen and Noel Willman; 80,000 Suspects, dir. by Val Guest, starring Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Yolande Donlan, Cyril Cusack. "A smallpox epidemic terrorizes the city of Bath. Predictable melodrama which adequately passes the time." (Halliwell's Film & Video Guide 2001, edited by John Walker, 2000)
• Heat Wave, 1957 (as Cesar Smith; as Heatwave, 1958)
• Dream of Death, 1958
• Badger's Wood, 1958 (for children)
• Silhouette, 1959
• The Last of the Daylight, 1959 (play)
• The V.I.P., 1959
• The Crystal City, 1959 (for children)
• Green Glade, 1959 (for children)
• The Billboard Madonna, 1960
• The Mind of Max Duvine, 1960
• Murder by All Means, 1960 (play)
• The Burning Shore, 1961 (US title: The Pasang Run, 1962)
• Squirrel's Island, 1963 (for children)
• The Flight of the Phoenix, 1964
  - Aavikkolento (suom. Seppo Heikinheimo, 1965)
  - Films: 1965, dir. by Robert Aldrich, screenplay by Lukas Heller, starring James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Hardy Kruger, Ernest Borgine, Peter Finch, George Kennedy (see also Five Came Back, screenplay by Nathanael West, J. Cody and Dalton Trumbo); 2004, dir. by John Moore, screenplay by Scott Frank and Edward Burns, starring Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson, Giovanni Ribisi, Miranda Otto.
• The Second Chance, 1965
• Weave a Rope of Sand, 1965
• The Shoot, 1966
• The Freebooters, 1967
• A Blaze of Arms, 1967
• A Place for the Wicked, 1968
• Bury Him Among Kings, 1970
• A Pinch of Purple, 1971 (play)
• A Touch of Purple, 1972 (play)
• Just Before Dawn, 1972 (play)
• Expressway, 1973
  - TV movie 1976, prod. Filmways Television, dir. John Llewellyn Moxey, with Sian Barbara Allen, Jeff Chamberlain, Robert Conrad, Cindy Daly.
• The Paragon, 1975 (US title: Night Stop, 1975)
• The Theta Syndrome , 1977
• Blue Jay Summer, 1977
• Seven Witnesses, 1977
• The Damocles Sword, 1982
• The Penthouse, 1983
  - TV movie 1989, teleplay William Wood, Frank De Felitta, dir. David Greene, with Robin Givens, David Hewlett, Cedric Smith, Donnelly Rhodes.
• Death Watch , 1984
  - Kuolinkellot (suom. Heikki Sarkkila, 1987)
• Siren Song, 1985 (as Lesley Stone)
• Riviera Story , 1987 (as Lesley Stone)
• The Sister, 1993 (sequel to The Sibling)
• Flycatcher, 1994