It Won't Get You Anywhere

It Won't Get You Anywhere is a 1966 novel by Desmond Skirrow. Published in England by The Bodley Head and in the United States by Lippincott, it is a little under 80,000 words in length. It is the first of three thrillers by the English novelist Desmond Skirrow about John Brock, an irreverent but very, very tough advertising executive who is also a sometime undercover agent. Skirrow, about whom little is known, came relatively late to writing, published only five novels in a three-year span, and died in his early fifties. It might be classified as a techno thriller or a spy thriller.

Plot

Three agents who worked for the fat man, the head of a secretive and deadly undercover agency whose headquarters are on the Addison Road in London, have been killed in automobile accidents in the last few months. After the third death, the fat man coerces John Brock, a reluctant agent who only works for the fat man when he is compelled to, to come to Addison Road and gives him a sketch of the situation. Brock found out that the three agents had been keeping a vague eye on Lord Llewellyn, the most powerful industrialist in Britain and founder of Allied Electrical Industries, or Allelec.

Lord Llewellyn has for two decades conceived and begun to carry out an elaborate scheme to destroy the entire national electrical grid of England and then take over the isles and install himself upon the throne. Brock soon begins to seriously interfere with Llewellyn's plans.

Review

Martin Levin wrote in The New York Times of October 23, 1966:

I can remember when... the hallmark of British adventure fiction was elegant restraint. Ha! Tell that to John Brock, who punches and kicks his way through Desmond Skirrow's "It Won't Get You Anywhere". John, a freelance secret agent called upon for the really tough cases, is out of Dashiell Hammett by way of the comic books—and he is too busy walking his way into cul-de-sacs and kneeing his way out of them to do more than use the brute strength his author has given him.

Mr. Skirrow, who is a nimble and amusing writer, has a lot of fun with the incredible Brock and his stupendous adventures and so will the reader. But this would have been a better book had the author restrained his taste for Captain Marvel and kept matters within reach of a powerful but possible Sam Spadeish operator.