Seizing the opportunity, Quive-Smith finds his quarry's underground hiding place and blocks the exit, leaving only a single hole for breathing.

The protagonist reflects on his predicament and confesses to himself that he would in fact have pulled the trigger, as revenge for the execution of his fiancée by the dictator's totalitarian régime.

The book influenced David Morrell's first novel, the 1972 "hunted man" action thriller First Blood, which spawned the Rambo film series.

Morrell has acknowledged the debt in several interviews, including: "When I started First Blood, back in 1968, I was deeply influenced by Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male.

Deakin writes of it in his posthumously published diaries Notes from Walnut Farm, and Macfarlane in his introduction to a reissue of Rogue Male[5] and his own book Holloway (2013).