A Talent for Killing

Combine Donald Westlake's Parker, Max Allan Collins's Quarry, and Robert Ludlum's Bourne, and you have a pretty good approximation of Ralph Dennis's Kane.

A Talent for Killing, published in 2019, is a bit disjointed because it's really two books in one, combined and edited by Lee Goldberg decades later from the original manuscripts. The first story, originally published as Deadman's Game in 1976, tells the origin of John Kane, how he became an assassin for the CIA, had his memory wiped out by a suicide bombing in Vietnam, then was given a new identity and placed under surveillance by the Agency to ensure that no inconvenient memories come back to him. Though he has no memory of his assassin past, Kane naturally gravitates toward the same line of work and soon becomes a freelance hitman. The main plot involves Kane taking a contract to whack the killer of a rich man's son, which requires him to infiltrate the local mob and gain their confidence, while avoiding getting taken out by a renegade faction of his own Agency that has decided he is too much of a liability.

The second story was much better, as Kane has to do some detective work to find out who framed a dying man ten years ago for a hideous sexual murder of a child, track him down, infiltrate the military-industrial compound where he works and bring him to justice. This story was never published; it was supposed to have been the second book in a series but it was cancelled. Which is a shame, because Kane is a great character. He has the stoic, hardman personality of Parker, the efficient hitman skills of Quarry and the amnesia and Agency/'Nam backstory of Jason Bourne. I particularly liked how the Agency surveillance angle brought a 1970s paranoia and conspiracy vibe to the stories that you don't find in more conventional crime series like Parker and Quarry.

A Talent for Killing is not brilliant writing, and the two-part story doesn't always flow well, but it's an interesting and entertaining read for fans of 1970s-era hardboiled crime and spy fiction. Get a copy here.

Firewall

I've recently gotten hooked on the brilliant Nick Stone series, so I'm going back and re-reading the early books that I first read 15 or 20 years ago. The third installment, Firewall, was published in 2000, back when the internet was still a wild frontier where new empires were being built and Russian organized crime was the global menace of the day. As a successful but slightly shady internet entrepreneur who travelled through Finland, Eastern Europe, Russia and London during the wild ride of those years, the locations, characters and technologies in this novel stirred up memories of some of the best times of my life.

Anyway, as Firewall opens, Nick Stone is on a job in Helsinki, about to kidnap a Russian mafia boss and escort him across the border to St. Petersburg where he'll receive a cool 300k dollars for his trouble. Unfortunately, his crew consists of some rather effed-up characters, and the op soon goes sideways in a most violent and frenetic manner. Things don't turn out as planned, but Stone does get a new job offer, which involves penetrating a high security home in rural Finland surrounded by a 40 foot high fence where some hacker-types have some data on their computers that Stone's new employers desperately want. This will be a fully criminal job for the Russian mob, but Nick is desperate for money because the bills at the high-priced clinic where his catatonic adopted daughter Kelly is being treated are piling up, so lacking any other options, he quickly accepts.

As the mission is hastily prepared, Nick brings in an associate from Remote Control named Tom to handle the hacker side of things, while Nick will take care of the tough-guy commando stuff. Their handler in Finland is a beautiful and mysterious blonde mafia moll named Liv, who acquires all the equipment Nick requests for the penetration and hacking job. As Nick prepares various special tools and makes his infiltration plan, Tom is busy trying to penetrate the firewall that the Finnish hackers have put around their network at the target home. Unfortunately the mission again goes badly sideways, as Tom is not cut out for the physical side of the op, violent new American players appear on the scene, and Nick has to make a daring escape.

This leads into the novel's second and potentially even more lucrative set-piece mission, which involves the sabotage of another hacker compound way out in the Estonian countryside. Apparently the technology the mafia is after can access the notorious ECHELON global surveillance network run by the NSA, which would give them vast power to expand their criminal empire. Now they want to destroy the whole installation to prevent a rival mafia group from using it against them. But first, Nick has to survive muggings and deal with some nasty Estonian thugs, who are his only contacts for the weapons he needs for the job.This mission was the highlight of the novel for me. McNab, calling on his expertise as a former SAS commando, provides a very detailed and believable account of Stone's preparation of the explosives, his stealth approach to the compound, and his laying of the charges in a precise way so as to maximize damage to the target. Not only was this dramatic reading, but it was like a free course in sabotage by an expert!

As usual with Stone's missions though, this one doesn't go smoothly, and Stone and an associate soon find themselves having to flee cross-country through a snowstorm in brutal winter cold. Here McNab's survival expertise is showcased, as Stone not only has to improvise a compass to hold a direction in the white-out conditions, but keep himself and his partner alive as hypothermia starts to set in. The novel ends with a twist or two that are, as usual, not very happy ones for Nick.

Firewall was another brilliant and exciting adventure in the Nick Stone saga. This installment was particularly action-packed, and the focus on the missions rather than Nick's personal drama with Kelly was a welcome change from other books. I also liked the setting: the decaying, corrupt world of post-Soviet eastern Europe and the bleak northern European winters were familiar from my own travels decades ago, and perfect operational environments for the bleak and cynical Stone.

Now that I've read six or seven of these books, I can confidently say that Nick Stone belongs up there with Quiller and Parker as one of my absolute favorite shadow-fiction series of all time. Nick isn't a particularly likeable character—he's a bit whiny and lacks the stoic appeal of other shadow warriors—but his adventures have such an edge of realism and intensity, so many authentic details from McNab's background as an SAS man, such gripping story-telling and timely plotting, that I find myself wanting to read them one after the other and get lost in Nick Stone's shadowy, action-packed world.

Get a copy of Firewall here.

Centrifuge

J. C. Pollock is a mysterious figure; he published seven special forces/spy thrillers between 1982 and 1993 that are well-regarded by fans of the genre, then disappeared from the scene without a trace. I read his 1985 book, Crossfire, a while back and thought it was very good (note to self: post a review). He brought an insider's technical knowledge of special ops and espionage that strongly suggests he worked in those fields himself then decided to write fiction about it, sort of like an American Andy McNab for the 1980s. As Pollock's goodreads profile puts it:

He is a topic of speculation on the Internet and many suspect that he was a CIA agent attached to the SOG during the Vietnam War, but this has had not been confirmed or denied. It appears that his life is like the novels he wrote.

I decided to try Pollock's 1984 offering, Centrifuge, to see if was of a similar quality. 

As the story opens, Mike Slater is flying his small amphibious plane to a wilderness lake in northern Maine. He has been summoned there by his former special forces commander in Vietnam, colonel Brooks, who Slater hasn't seen since the final days of that war eight years earlier. Slater quickly learns that he was not invited there for the fishing, but to help Brooks with a potentially very serious national security problem. Brooks, who now works as the chief of security for a top secret defense research facility, can't reveal any details to Slater; he simply wants to show him some photographs and ask him if he recognizes the man shown. But just as Slater is about to look at the photos, a hidden assassin shoots the colonel with a sound-suppressed firearm and Slater never gets a look at them. Brooks does warn Slater before he dies that someone will come after him too, along with the other two survivors of his special forces unit in 'Nam. Slater instantly goes into survival mode, using the skills he learned as a Green Beret to evade, track and kill the assassins armed only with his survival knife. He manages to eliminate three of them, but one gets away and takes the photos with him. He finds German passports on the dead men, and as he is flying back to civilization, wonders what kind of dark shadows from his past have come back to stalk him.

It's an exciting start to the novel, suggesting a larger conspiracy and containing a level of detail about special ops procedures that was rare in thrillers of that era. Unfortunately, this opening scene is probably the best part of the book. After that we are introduced to some key players at Chestnut Ridge Farm, the facility where Brooks worked, as they try to discover who killed Brooks and tried to kill Slater, and why. We learn that Slater has retired from special forces and now runs a kennel where he trains attack and guard dogs. We also meet the Soviet mole inside the Farm, learn about his background, his history with SOG ("studies and observations group", a highly classified spec ops unit in Vietnam), his motivations for defecting to the Soviets, and his connection to Slater's last mission in 'Nam.

When one of the two remaining survivors of that mission is killed, Slater has no doubt that the other man, named Perkins, will be targeted soon. So he travels to Mexico to try to persuade him to join forces and fight back. Perkins is very skeptical and doesn't want anything to do with his shadow warrior past, but after they come under attack right on Perkins's boat he agrees to join Slater and leave Mexico immediately. The two men decide to make their stand at a remote cabin Slater owns on a lake in the Quebec wilderness. They stock up on automatic rifles, grenades, claymore mines and survival gear and fly to the lake. This sets up the novel's climactic confrontation between the two Green Berets and whoever is trying to kill them—presumably KGB assassins but possibly hostile elements of their own side as well. We're given a detailed account of how they prep the battlefield by setting booby traps, scouting escape routes and planning ambushes around the lake. 

The action scenes are interspersed with intrigue at the Farm, where the investigators are closing in on the suspected mole, the mole is making emergency contact with his handlers, the mystery of the mole's connection to Slater is being solved, devious schemes are being hatched, and everything hinges on whether or not Slater and Perkins win their war with the assassins. We also meet the elite twelve man Soviet commando team that is assembled to end Slater and Perkins once and for all. The final showdown at the cabin is tense and believable special ops action, with a twist ending that highlights a running theme of the book: when duplicitous spooks get involved in the wars of honorable soldiers, the soldiers usually lose.

This novel was about half special forces action and half espionage tradecraft and intrigue, showcasing Pollock's technical knowledge of both domains. But that was also its main flaw: at times it felt like I was reading a special forces or spycraft manual that had been turned into a novel. It got a little too by-the-numbers, predictable and technical, and lacked drama, personality and surprises. Fans of realistic, technical 1980s-era spec ops, spycraft and survivalism should enjoy the book, as long as you're OK with its limitations.

Get a copy of Centrifuge here.

Dark Winter

Most shadow-fiction (my catch-all term for fiction that features spies, assassins, special forces, terrorists and criminals) is penned by professional writers whose real-life experience with the world of shadow warfare is limited or non-existent. Andy McNab (pen name of Billy Mitchell) is a different story; he actually lived the life of a covert operator as a member of the SAS (elite British Special Forces) in the 1980s and early 90s. His most famous operation is recounted in his book Bravo Two Zero, which tells the story of a daring mission behind enemy lines in Iraq during the first Gulf War to gather intel about Saddam's Scud missile launchers.

In 1998, McNab published the first novel in his popular series about everyman commando Nick Stone. Like McNab, Stone served in the SAS in the 1980s and 90s, before becoming a deniable operator for MI6, known as a "K". Stone's missions range from personal protection and kidnapping to black bag jobs, sabotage and assassination. The level of authentic covert ops knowledge incorporated into the stories and the realism of the action were something exciting and new in the shadow-fiction world, and made them immediate bestsellers. I read the first five books many years ago and remember enjoying them quite a bit; I recently decided to read the next installment and see if I still felt the same.

Dark Winter is the 6^th book in the series, published in 2003, during the early days of the "War on Terror". As the story opens, Stone is in Malaysia with his fellow K operative, Suzy, and they're on the trail of a suspected al Qaeda scientist. The Firm (British Intelligence) has learned of a plot to unleash a bio-terror attack in the West, and Nick and Suzy are tasked with taking out the terrorist. This was an exciting start to the story; in typical McNab style, the first-person narrative is almost real-time, photographically detailed, and puts you right in the shoes of the shadow operator. However, the hit doesn't end the plot, and we soon learn that some bottles of a bio-terror pathogen have arrived in London, and given the code name Dark Winter. Stone, who had recently been working for the CIA and is now a US citizen, is called back into emergency service in the UK by his old boss, a very nasty piece of work he calls "Yes-Man". Stone is given an al Qaeda informant to meet, then an address to investigate where the bottles may be located. These operations are described in excruciating detail, as Stone takes every precaution to prevent being followed, noticed, attacked or infected by the pathogen.

Between the set pieces of Stone and Suzy carefully infiltrating enemy hideouts and taking out members of the  opposition, there are chapters devoted to the ongoing saga of Kelly, a girl Stone adopted after her family was brutally killed in the first book of the series, Remote Control. It seems that Kelly has developed a prescription drug habit and may be bulemic, and she still hasn't gotten over the trauma of her family's deaths. She is further traumatized by Nick always having to leave unexpectantly to go on missions, and this causes Nick a great deal of guilt, especially now as he is called away just when she was making good progress with a new therapist. 

Anyway, just when it seems that Stone and Suzy have delivered a fatal blow to the terrorist cell, the story takes a dark twist and Nick is forced to go to Berlin to deal with another cell. The full extent of the terrorist plot is revealed, and events race to a dramatic climax, which I won't spoil, except to say that it is rather shocking and very gripping reading. While there were several sections in the first few hundred pages that were slow going, the last 100 pages or so were classic Nick Stone action, and the ending was up there with a notorious early scene of Remote Control for it's brutal, realistic violence. McNab, more than any other author I can think of, never sugar coats the nature of real shadow warfare or feels obligated to provide a happy outcome.

As I was reading this book, I had two main criticisms: 1) the excessive level of detail about things that didn't seem very interesting or relevant to the story, and 2) the excessive attention to the personal drama between Nick and Kelly, which seemed like a distraction from the main terrorism thriller story line. But now that I've finished the book, I'm not so critical.

On point 1), the attention to Stone's mundane experiences—buying fast food, the trash on the street, couples shouting at each other in the next flat, etc.—might be dull at times, but the brilliant thing about it is that when Stone does go into action—infiltrating a building, tracking down a terrorist, killing enemy operatives, or what have you—it is much more believable and hard-hitting than the exploits of someone like Mack Bolan, who goes from battle to battle with few real-life details in between. With Stone, you always feel like you're looking through the eyes of a real shadow operator at work, not reading a men's comic book. On point 2), the drama with Kelly gives Stone some personality and something besides himself to care about. Without that, he would be a rather cynical, emotionless, self-centered robot who would be hard to sympathize with. The relationship with Kelly also turns out to be critical to the way this story plays out.

I should also mention that Suzy was a great partner for Nick, and in some ways was the star of the book. She's a special ops veteran with a background similar to Nick's, and her fearless, ultra-confident, adrenaline-junky personality saves his bacon on more than one occasion.

All in all, despite some slow parts in the middle, this is an exciting and intense thriller, highly recommended for fans of realistic shadow-fiction. Get a copy of Dark Winter here.

The Interlopers

After reading the first 11 books of the Matt Helm series, I was starting to lose some of my enthusiasm for the series. It was getting a little too formulaic, too cute, too much of a spy soap opera and not enough of a hard-edged espionage-adventure series. Helm is at his best when he is playing the rugged American outdoorsman and stone-cold killer, not when he is going from hotel room to hotel room engaging in flirty banter with an endless series of attractive young ladies like a lower-class cowboy James Bond. Fortunately the series got back on track with the 12^th installment, The Interlopers, published in 1969.

As the story opens, Helm is making his way down to the Columbia river before dawn, the lights of the Hanford Nuclear Site glowing in the distance, dressed as a fisherman and accompanied by a black lab. He has adopted the identity of a recently deceased Communist courier named Nystrom and is en route to a rendezvous with someone who will be passing him microfilmed documents about a top secret technology called the "Northwest Coastal System". This opening really hooked me, because I've been in a similar spot across from the Hanford site on a stealth mission myself (in fact I've paddled across the river and infiltrated the restricted zone—but the less said about that the better). Anyway, Helm soon encounters a leggy blonde fisherwoman who doesn't quite get the recognition phrase right and doesn't have any documents for him, but she does lure him to a place where he becomes a target for a sniper. Apparently there is a third party, in addition to Helm's side and the Communist spies; unknown interlopers who are also trying to get the secret documents Helm is after.

It turns out the operation to receive the microfilm is actually a gambit; Helm's cover was intentionally made shoddy in order to let the opposition know that Helm is operating as Nystrom. The main mission is to lure a top enemy assassin named Holz onto his trail so Helm can take him out. Helm's agency has learned that Holz is in the states on a deadly mission: to assassinate the winner of the upcoming presidential election with a sniper rifle, thus sowing further chaos in the assassination-plagued USA of the 1960s (recall that in 1968 both presidential candidate Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were shot and killed).

Helm proceeds with his courier mission, travelling west to Seattle, where he has a violent encounter with some of the spies and meets another femme fatale whose motives are unclear (Hamilton has at least one or two of these in every novel). Helm then proceeds north into the interior of British Columbia to make his next pickup of microfilm, has another violent encounter, takes a ferry up the Alaskan coast, makes another pickup, has more violent encounters, meets more attractive women whose motives are unclear, and so on.  Instead of describing the rather complicated plot in detail, let's just say that there is a lot of confusion as to who is working for whom, what their motives are, and which woman is the deceiver and backstabber. There is also more violence and a higher body count than usual. As always, Helm deals with every threat as it comes, relying on his wits and skill with a knife and gun to dispatch them like the cold professional killer he is.

Eventually Holz is lured into Helm's orbit, and the menace and violence ramps up to a crescendo. The climax was especially good, as Helm and Holz hunt each other in the wild Alaskan mountains with rifles. A third party enemy agent from a previous novel even makes a brief appearance, giving this the feel of an episode of an ongoing story arc rather than just a stand-alone adventure.

The Interlopers is one of my favorite installments of the series so far.  I liked seeing Helm back in his truck, travelling across the wide open spaces of the west, hunting and being hunted by spies and assassins, never sure who is a friend and who is a foe. The black labrador "Hank", Helm's trusty companion on this adventure, was a nice addition to the story. Not only did his collar make a convenient hiding place for the microfilm, but he added some comic relief and even some critical assistance during the mission. 

Like most of the books in the series, the plot got a little too clever and convoluted with the schemes and deceptions of various characters, and there were an unrealistic number of attractive women popping up at regular intervals. But this is not meant to be ultra-realistic spy-fiction; it's somewhere between Bond and Quiller or Callan on the realism scale, with romance and style to go with the gritty espionage action. Helm has the personality of a classic hardboiled crime novel tough guy, and there's a strong Western flavor in this one, as Helm drives through small frontier towns in pursuit of a dangerous outlaw, sleeps in his camper, hikes and rides horses in the mountains, carries a high-powered rifle and kills men with his hunting knife. It's a mix of genres that makes Matt Helm unique, and made this a very entertaining read.

Get a copy of The Interlopers here.

Seven Days to a Killing

During the Cold War, Great Britain very much played second fiddle to the USA as a geopolitical power, but in the world of spy-fiction they reigned supreme. From the pulpy adventures of Ian Fleming's Bond to the tense action of Elleston Trevor's Quiller to the cerebral dramas of LeCarre and Deighton, the Brits set the standards for the genre. In addition to such well-remembered authors, there were many more who wrote quality spy-fi that are largely forgotten today—men like James Mitchell, Gavin Lyall, Ted Allbeury, Oliver Jacks (Kenneth Royce), Robert Charles, Desmond Cory, Christopher Nicole (Andrew York), Alan Williams, and the writer I'll be reviewing today: Clive Egleton.

Like most of the authors just mentioned, Egleton served in World War II, and this experience gave his writing a realistic edge that few peacetime writers can match.  No doubt it was this shared wartime background, along with the high English literary standard and cultural affinity for spycraft, that produced a golden age of British espionage fiction in the post-war era. Egleton actually served in the army for thirty years, until retiring to become a full-time writer in  the mid-1970s. His debut novel, published in 1973 and titled Seven Days to a Killing, was made into a movie called The Black Windmill starring Michael Caine the following year. The movie trailer looked interesting enough that I decided to track down the novel and give it a read.

As the story opens, a man named Andrew McKee, dressed in a paratrooper uniform, confronts two boys who are playing at an abandoned military airfield. Using a ruse, the boys are quickly knocked out, bound, gagged, put in crates and taken away in a Land Rover with military precision. A little later, as two of his hired heavies are driving away with their payments, McKee calmly presses a button on a radio transmitter, detonating a bomb in their vehicle and blowing them to smithereens. It's a chilling and well-done opening sequence that lets us know what kind of ruthlessly efficient villains we'll be dealing with.

One of the boys is soon released, but the other, named David, who is the son of an MI6 officer named John Tarrant, is held in captivity at a farmhouse. The kidnapper, who goes by the name "Drabble", calls Tarrant with a simple demand: deliver 500,000 pounds worth of uncut diamonds in two days time, or his son will come to harm. Tarrant must deliver them himself to an address in Paris according to Drabble's instructions. To show that he means business, he plays a recording of Tarrant's screaming son being tortured.

Drabble's demands bring in an intelligence officer named Cedric Harper, whose title is "Director of Subversive Warfare". Harper is highly suspicious by nature, and he wants to know why a man with Tarrant's modest resources would be the target of such a high-priced kidnapping plot. Tarrant seems to be an upstanding officer with a clean record, but is he somehow involved in the plot? Is it just a criminal extortion scheme, or is the KGB or other enemy agency involved? Harper agrees to provide the diamonds for delivery, but in return he puts Tarrant under close surveillance and a background investigation in hopes of finding out the answers.

What follows is part crime/espionage procedural, part race against time, and part the psychological struggles of Tarrant, his estranged wife, Harper and the kidnappers. The narrative got a little confusing at times, as so many characters were introduced that it became difficult to keep track of them, and the procedural parts of the story dragged a bit. But the final stretch of the book made up for all that, as the diamonds are en route for delivery, the kidnappers prepare to make their exchange and getaway, Harper prepares a team for a raid, and Tarrant desperately races to find his son, not trusting Harper to have his best interests at heart. The suspenseful and violent climax was absolutely riveting, one of the best I can remember in an espionage thriller.

The writing style and plotting of Seven Days brought to mind the classic work of Frederick Forsyth, particularly The Day of the Jackal. It has that sophisticated, sinister edge and realistic detail about espionage procedures that he and other British spy-fi greats excel at. The detailed backstories of the kidnappers, their operations and motivations, were quite plausible and very well done. This is apparently the first of a four book series featuring the cynical counter-intelligence man Cedric Harper. Based on the quality of this book, I will definitely be checking out further installments of the series and other novels by Clive Egleton. Highly recommended.

Get a copy of Seven Days to a Killing here.

License Renewed

I first became interested in "shadow-fiction" as a teenager, when I read a few of the original James Bond novels from the 1950s and 1960s. These were very different from the movies: more hard-edged, less cartoonish, featuring more real espionage and adult themes and fewer outrageous chase scenes and goofy gadgets. Ian Fleming's Bond may have been a ladies man who lived in high style, but he was also a very tough, shrewd operative who could hold his own with the Quillers, Callans and Helms of the fictional spy world. I was hooked. I went on to devour all twelve of the original novels, and developed a love for the spy-fi genre that has never gone away.

After Fleming's death in 1964, the Fleming estate commissioned the first Bond "continuation novel", Colonel Sun, authored by Kingsley Amis and published in 1968. Then the literary Bond laid dormant until the series was revived in 1981, when veteran spy novelist John Gardner published the first of his 14 continuation novels, License Renewed. I'd never read any of these books; they get rather mixed reviews, and I knew they could never match the magic of the original Fleming novels. But I'd always been curious to see how the literary Bond might evolve in the 1980s and beyond, so I finally acquired a lot of them and decided to find out.

As License Renewed begins, Bond's romantic weekend is interrupted by an urgent call from his boss M summoning him to the office. Something big is afoot, and Bond's special talents are required. We quickly learn that times have changed at the Service: the double-O section has been abolished and Bond is now an investigator for something called "Special Services". Though Bond's "license to kill" has been revoked, M makes it clear that he still considers Bond his go-to man for wet-work and will look the other way if someone needs to be offed in the line of duty. Also, gadget-master Q has been replaced by a nerdy but attractive woman nicknamed "Q'ute"; Bond has traded his Bentley for a Saab, his Walther PPK 7.65mm for a Browning 9mm, cut back his smoking and drinking habits, taken up jogging and martial arts, and generally seems to be a more well-behaved, health-conscious, politically correct man of the eighties. While this would seem to negate much of Bond's appeal, Gardner also gives Bond more up-to-date knowledge of spycraft, better command of modern technology and stronger physical health. On the whole, I think it's a positive evolution of the character.

M informs bond that Anton Murik, a disgraced but brilliant Scottish nuclear physicist and wealthy lord of a castle, has been seen meeting with an arch-terrorist named Franco—a master of mayhem and disguise surely modelled on the most notorious terrorist of that era, Carlos the Jackal. With reason to believe the two are up to something big and bad, M orders Bond to infiltrate Murik's operations and find out what he can. Using a clever ruse at a racetrack and a well-prepared cover identity as a mercenary, Bond soon gains Murik's confidence, offers his services and gets invited to the lord's castle. There he discovers that Murik wants him to kill Franco for undisclosed reasons, and Bond plays along. He also gets acquainted with Murik's vivacious young ward, Lavender Peacock, his collection of antique weapons and his brutal gang of Highland henchman—most notably the giant Caber. 

Many typical Bond shenanigans follow, as he pokes around the castle, learning things he's not supposed to know, seduces Miss Peacock to his cause, earns the lethal wrath of Caber, makes use of Q'ute's clever gadgets, and attempts a daring escape. In classic Bond villain fashion, Murik eventually informs Bond of his foolproof scheme, which involves terrorist attacks on multiple nuclear plants and extortion that puts SPECTRE to shame. But it's all for a good cause. He also keeps Bond alive far longer than necessary, and as you can probably guess, this doesn't work in his favor. 

There are some exciting action scenes—especially when Bond goes into Jason Bourne-mode to evade pursuers through a crowded European town, and has a climactic fight with Caber aboard a plane. The plot was well thought-out, timely and a even prophetic; at one point Murik essentially predicts the Chernobyl disaster that was five years in the future, and his use of multiple suicide terrorist squads to inflict mass destruction foreshadowed 9-11 two decades early. On the negative side, Murik wasn't the most compelling villain, there wasn't much chemistry between Bond and Peacock, and Gardner's writing lacked Fleming's sinister flair.

All in all though, I thought this was a worthy and entertaining successor to Fleming's Bond novels. Gardner sticks to the Fleming formula, making just enough changes and updates to keep it interesting. While it doesn't match the genius and class of Fleming's novels, with less "sex, sadism and snobbery" (the three keys to Bond stories, according to some critics), License was a fun first adventure for the new Bond. I look forward to seeing where the author takes the series from here.

Get a copy of License Renewed here.

Colorado Kill-Zone

Don Pendleton's Executioner series is without a doubt the most popular and influential men's adventure series of all-time, with hundreds of titles and spin-off books published and hundreds of millions of copies sold since it launched in 1969. Pendleton created a cultural phenomenon when he dreamed up the "dark knight" named Mack Bolan—a one-man army, holy warrior and vigilante fighting endless battles against the forces of organized crime and terror that took the lives of his family.

I've read several Executioners from the early "New War" period in the 1980s, after Bolan had shifted his focus from fighting the mafia to fighting international terrorists and the KGB with the backing of a "black" US government agency, but I'd never actually read any of the original 38 installments authored by Don Pendleton until I picked up a battered copy of Colorado Kill-Zone (Executioner #25, 1976) from a small-town store recently to see what all the fuss was about. I guess I'd assumed that stories about Bolan hunting mafia goons across the USA would be boring and repetitive compared to him hopping around the globe fighting terrorists and enemy agents, so I never tried the early books. Based on the quality of Kill-Zone, I think it's safe to say that this was a bad assumption.

As the book begins, Mack is rolling down a remote road in the Rockies in his "war-wagon", gearing up to do battle with an enemy he can't see but knows in his gut is very close. The battle is soon joined, and to Bolan's shock and dismay, this enemy is using military equipment, tactics and discipline, much unlike the mafia thugs he's used to dealing with. Mack manages to surprise them with the war-wagon's awesome firepower, destroying some and driving the rest away; he wins this round but knows a larger battle is soon to come. Investigating the wreckage and doing some scouting around, he soon discovers that there is a secret base nearby that houses hundreds of what appear to be US military personnel, all focused on trapping Bolan in a Colorado "kill-zone". Further detective work, with assistance from his old friend from the Justice Department, Hal Brognola, and high-ranking mafia informant Leo Turrin, uncovers the identity of the enemy paramilitary's leader and the existence of a conspiracy to take out someone very, very big.

More exciting action soon follows, as Bolan pulls off one of his trademark deceptions to evade the net the enemy forces have drawn around him and makes his way through a snow storm to a deserted ski lodge where the enemy leader supposedly wishes to meet him. There he meets the nordic beauty Giselda, whose brother has been taken hostage by the paramilitary, and together they make a narrow escape by snowmobile and skis but are unable to get off the mountain.

At this point Bolan, realizing that he's trapped on the mountain, surrounded by the paramilitary force, gets philosophical while deciding on the best course of action. He again opts for the strategem of deception from inside the enemy net, impersonating troopers and officers, discovering their radio codes, gathering intel about their larger plot, and sabotaging their operations from within. The enemy objective is revealed to be something worthy of a James Bond novel, the paramilitary commander makes Bolan an impressive offer, and the story moves a little too quickly and smoothly to a satisfying conclusion.

I don't know how typical Kill-Zone is of the Pendleton Executioners, but it was a much bigger plot than I expected, more like something from the New War and Stony Man era where Bolan routinely defeated super-villains and saved America. I certainly enjoyed the book; I liked how Bolan relied on deception and detective work as much as sheer firepower, which made it more realistic. The conclusion felt a bit rushed and inconclusive though, almost like it was the first act of a larger story arc.

There is something brilliantly unhinged about Pendleton's Bolan, the way he fearlessly and obsessively pursues his one-man war, creates his own stateside reality every bit as lethal as his days in 'Nam, obeys his warrior's "gut" like it's a mystical superpower, and justifies his endless spree of murder and terrorism in the name of personal vengeance and protecting society. I love Bolan's high energy and focus on his mission; it reminds me of another favorite fictional character, the super tough armed robber Parker, who is just as obsessive about his own personal war to enrich himself and take revenge upon anyone who crosses him.

Another attractive thing about the early Executioners is the beautiful cover art of Gil Cohen. Here the cover scene is one of the most exciting moments of Kill-Zone, as Mack is skiing away from a squad of snowmobile Bolan-hunters, weapons strapped to his parka, one pursuer being obliterated while another grenade is about to be hurled at the others, the beautiful Giselda by his side. You don't see covers like that any more, in these days of dull, generic, lifeless, photographic cover art that looks like it has been generated by an algorithm.

There is just something addictive and wildly entertaining about these books. Partly I think it's the 1970s setting, when there was a kind of freedom, adventure, creativity and cynicism in paperback fiction that you don't really see today. But more so I think it's the compelling character of Mack Bolan and the genius of Pendleton's world-building and story-telling. The upshot for me is that I will probably have to collect and read the entire run of 38 Pendleton books (and probably many more), just as I have done with other favorite series such as Parker and Quiller. Stay tuned for more reviews of this all-time classic men's adventure series.

Get a copy of Colorado Kill-Zone here.

The Shadow in the Sea

Like the the previous book I reviewed, The Shadow in the Sea is an obscure Cold War spy thriller from the early 1970s about a Soviet super-weapon and a daring mission to infiltrate Soviet territory to investigate and sabotage it. Written by the forgotten Welsh author Owen John and published in 1972, this is the fifth novel in John's series about Scottish super-spy Haggai Godin. No suave James Bond knock-off or grim Quiller-like killer, Godin is a giant oddball of a man who eats to excess, loves brandy, laughs often and possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of everything related to his profession. The son of a Russian émigré, he speaks Russian like a native and is a master of disguise and social manipulation.

The first thing that grabbed me about this book is the cover. The beautiful illustration, of a man dangling from a rope just below the edge of a cliff, a grappling hook barely holding him, rifle strapped across his back, with a huge, menacing submarine lurking in the sea far below, is the kind of classic men's adventure cover art that Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks were famous for. If you like this kind of artwork, browse all the Gold Medal covers by clicking the book numbers on the left side of this page.

As Shadow opens, a lighthouse operator reports seeing a huge black submarine briefly surface off the coast of Wales. Based on the unusual description and the fact that British Intelligence thought they had accounted for the whereabouts of the entire Soviet fleet, this leads to concern that the Soviets have a new sub prowling around U.K. waters of an unknown design. To solve the mystery, the agency's top operative, the ultra-confident and -competent Haggai Godin, volunteers to undertake an infiltration mission into northwest Russia to investigate a submarine base and find out what's going on. Accompanying Godin as usual will be super-spook Colonel Mason of the CIA.

The dynamic duo infiltrates Soviet waters by fishing trawler from Norway, Mason hiding the boat in fjords to avoid Soviet patrols while Godin goes ashore alone to reconnoiter the base. Godin's first challenge is to climb the four hundred foot cliff (!) up from the sea pictured on the cover, which he does by firing a grappling hook attached to very long rope over the cliff edge, then climbing without any special gear—just sheer strength and willpower. It's an exciting scene, but one which let me know early on that this wouldn't be a highly realistic espionage adventure.

Godin dons the winter uniform of a Soviet soldier and proceeds east toward Murmansk by bus, using his genius for disguise and socializing to gain information and blend in with the locals. So bold and confident is Godin that he prefers to draw attention to himself, using his mastery of "yo-nin" overt infiltration to walk right into the base, rather than "in-nin" covert creeping around in the shadows. Without providing any spoilers, let's just say that the way Godin infiltrates the base and gets information about the top secret sub is rather far-fetched, but entertaining. He does manage to discover the nature of the sub and the insidious mission it is embarked on.

The most tense and exciting part of the novel was Godin's escape from the naval base and exfiltration from Soviet territory. Walking many miles cross-country in the bitter cold of a Siberian winter, evading security forces, attacking them only when necessary, using deception to get assistance from local villagers—I like how Godin applies the "make war by way of deception" motto of real spooks and ninjas, rather than taking on large armed forces single-handedly and defeating them without taking a scratch in the manner of Mack Bolan and other over-the-top shadow warriors. While Godin's methods weren't always totally believable, and he was a bit too confident and competent for real life, they didn't quite turn the book into a cartoon for adults like some men's adventure/espionage series.

Meanwhile back in the UK/USA, spooks are working overtime to decode intercepted signals to and from the sub, and a desperate strategem is devised to attempt to avert the dastardly intentions of the vessel. I won't say any more, except that, like The Tashkent Crisis, the climax was a bit of a letdown compared to the infiltration and exfiltration scenes, and the super-weapon seemed a bit science-fictional and far-fetched for 1972.

All in all, this was an entertaining but not stellar read. I may try more Haggai Godin novels if I run across them, but I probably won't go out of my way to acquire them. Recommended for fans of old-school spy/adventure fiction.

Get a copy of The Shadow in the Sea here.

The Tashkent Crisis

The Tashkent Crisis, published in 1971 and written by William Craig, is an obscure Cold War thriller that brings to mind classic Alistair MacLean adventures of the 1960s and Tom Clancy "techno-thrillers" of the 1980s. Based on a few positive online reviews and a cover blurb by Donald Hamilton, I picked up the hardback for six bucks and gave it a quick read.

As the novel opens, an American scholar on his way to the Moscow airport is approached by a Russian journalist, given a package and implored to deliver it to an old friend in the State Department. The American doesn't know it, but the package contains technical documents describing a devastating new Soviet weapon system, the existence of which Washington only dimly suspects. Apparently the Soviets have successfully tested an energy weapon that will enable them to incinerate any city on the planet at will. To make matters worse, a hardline general has covertly seized power in Moscow and is preparing to force America's surrender by demonstrating the awesome power of the new death ray. He soon issues an ultimatum to the President: surrender to Soviet forces in 72 hours, or Washington D. C. will be annihilated.

Desperate for an alternative to surrender or mutual nuclear destruction, the President authorizes a seemingly suicidal sabotage mission into the heart of Soviet Asia to destroy the secret weapon before it destroys them. A four-person team is quickly assembled, consisting of a bad-ass Russian-speaking Green Beret of Czech heritage, a KGB defector who had plastic surgery and is now working for the CIA, an ex-Soviet tank commander with experience running cells behind the iron curtain, and a five foot tall Jewish female assassin who grew up near Tashkent.

The sabotage mission was the heart of the story, and the most exciting part by far. The quick assembling of the team; the stealth, low-altitude insertion by helicopter from Pakistan over the Hindu Kush mountains into Uzbekistan; the tense jeep ride across the steppe, dressed as Soviet soldiers, to the vicinity of the secret base; the hideout at the ruined mosque; the intrigue as a traitor in their midst is revealed; the scouting of the secret base; the desperate attempt to complete the sabotage mission despite heavy security—while it's highly implausible that such a mission would be attempted on such short notice with such a team, it made for a gripping tale.

Meanwhile in D.C., the president masterminds a grand deception that involves setting off natural gas explosions throughout D.C. to provide cover for his emergency evacuation of the city, while Soviet provocateurs manage to convince anti-war protestors that the president is on the verge of launching an all-out nuclear attack on Russia. The ultra-hawk Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is pushing for a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Tashkent base, there is still no word from the sabotage team, and the President, under intense pressure from all sides, holds the fate of America and the world in his hands.

It was fascinating to read how many of the American political divisions described in this book are still going strong after more than 50 years, as well as the international tensions. While this is definitely a snapshot of America in the early 1970s, with an unpopular war winding down, war-hawks rattling sabers and anxious to prove that the military can still win, paranoia about mutually-assured mass destruction, governments deceiving their populations and protestors being manipulated by shadowy powers, in many ways it is still very relevant to our time.

This was a good read, but I think it would've been even better as a more streamlined men's adventure novel focused on the sabotage mission, with less of the political intrigues, drama with the protestors, government cover-ups, etc. Also, the Soviet death ray and the weapon the saboteurs brought to destroy it both seemed rather unrealistic and science-fictional, and took me out of the story a bit.

Apparently Craig only wrote one more novel, which is surprising because this was an entertaining debut effort that, despite some far-fetched elements, had all the ingredients of a successful espionage thriller. Recommended for fans of the genre.

Get a copy of The Tashkent Crisis here.

Russian Roulette

Russian Roulette, authored by James Mitchell and published in 1973, is the second in a series of novels about British government assassin-spy David Callan. Callan works for The Section—a shadowy agency of the UK government responsible for eliminating threats to the nation. He's a working-class answer to James Bond: cynical, streetwise and antagonistic to his upper class bosses. Unglamorous, not a ladies man, he takes his drinks straight without any "shaken, not stirred" nonsense, lives in a modest flat in London with his prized collection of war game miniatures, keeps a passport, gun and cash in a box under a floorboard, and never trusts anyone—least of all his bosses. He's also a master of his trade: lethal with firearms, deadly with karate-trained hands, skilled at lockpicking and adept at disguise. An orphan whose parents died in the London Blitz, veteran of the Malay Uprising guerrilla war, ex-thief, Callan has the kind of backstory that makes him almost ideally suited for the job of gray man government killer.

As the story opens, Callan's ruthless boss, Hunter, informs Callan that he has made a deal with the Russians that will get his most prized agent in that country, who has been captured, returned to the UK. In exchange, he will give them Callan. But to avoid a demoralizing scandal, he won't be apprehending his top operative and handing him over to the Soviets. He'll just be cutting him loose, giving him no support, taking his gun, freezing his bank accounts, and making it almost certain that he'll be taken out by enemy agents in short order. He further informs Callan that three of the KGB's top assassins have been sent to London to do the job, and wishes him good luck. To make Callan's plight even more dire, he suffered an eye injury on his previous mission that causes double vision, and needs special eye drops administered regularly to keep from going semi-blind.

Callan soon learns just how bad his predicament is, as he returns to his flat, pulls up the concealed floorboard and finds his gun, passport and cash gone. He obviously can't stay at his flat, and with no weapons, only a few pounds in his pocket and some spare clothes, he has to face the KGB killers alone, unarmed, homeless and nearly broke. It's a fantastic setup for a cat-and-mouse, assassin vs. assassin thriller that will test Callan's skill, resilience and resourcefulness to their absolute limits.

The loner Callan does have one ally in this awful predicament: an old friend, lovable loser and petty thief called "Lonely". Lonely is absolutely terrified of, yet loyal, to Callan; he provides hideouts, money and contacts in the underworld that prove very useful. He also tries to get Callan a gun, which in firearm-phobic England in those days was apparently very difficult indeed. Unfortunately, the Section has put out word to gun dealers that they are absolutely not to do business with Callan or Lonely, so he has to find some other way to arm himself.

What follows is a fascinating man-on-the run narrative, as Callan moves around London discreetly, trying to obtain a gun, looking out for tails, utilizing disguise, wary of both the KGB men and his own agency—all punctuated by brutal violence as he encounters the assassins or the bodies of those who crossed them. Callan also makes one other contact: a beautiful nurse from Barbados who administers his eyedrops and becomes his romantic interest. There's plenty of action, tradecraft, suspense, twists and personal dramas as Callan navigates the dark underbelly of London and has to kill or be killed.

This was a great read. I absolutely loved this character Callan; he's like a cross between the working class smart-aleck Harry Palmer of Len Deighton's famous novels and the ultra-competent and lethal Quiller of Adam Hall's brilliant series. If you took Quiller and gave him more backstory and personality, along with a firearm, you'd basically get Callan. I also liked the setting: the swinging sixties are over, and it's now the grim world of economically depressed and demoralized 1970s England—a world tailor-made for the cynical tough guy Callan. I will definitely be tracking down the other books in this series, and maybe even watching some episodes of the popular TV show where it all began. Highly recommended.

Get a copy of Russian Roulette here.