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.

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 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.

Dark Deeds

Dark Deeds is an obscure 1982 thriller that I picked up on a whim because it ticked three of my favorite shadow-fiction boxes. It: 1) was published in the early 1980s; 2) features an assassin main character; 3) has mind control as a key plot element. The author, Ken Welsh, doesn't appear to have published much else so the book must not have been too successful--which is unfortunate, because it's a rather interesting and entertaining read.

The story's initial protagonist is a mysterious young man with flowing blonde hair known only as Hailey. He's an assassin who travels around the globe doing wet-work for an even more mysterious and sinister individual known as Zeller. We're introduced to Hailey as he arrives in Malaga to arrange an arms deal for his boss. After arranging the delivery, he calmly disposes of the go-between--in the process making it clear that he is: 1) an emotionless, psychopathic killer; 2) a schizophrenic who struggles to suppress a second personality; and 3) slavishly dedicated to obeying Zeller's orders.

Hailey's next task is to find a fast boat which he and a fellow Zeller operative can hijack in international waters and use to complete the arms transaction. They find a nice yacht in possession of a rich kid name Quinn, who is sailing the Mediterranean with his girlfriend and a tough captain named Teal. The subsequent hijacking results in the death of Quinn's girlfriend, but he and Teal miraculously survive. Having lost their beloved woman and ship, and realizing that no government is particularly interested in solving a crime committed in international waters, both men vow to track down the pirates themselves and administer rough justice.

As the story unfolds, we learn more about Zeller: he's a very rich arms dealer who lives aboard a black yacht called Shadow so he is perpetually in international waters and out of reach of normal law enforcement. We also learn more about Hailey, how he receives periodic hypnotic brainwashing aboard Zeller's ship to keep his other personality at bay and his assassin personality focused and effective.

The drama gets much more epic when Quinn is put in contact with a man named Sanderson--mercenary extraordinaire and veteran of a dozen wars in the world's worst conflict zones. It seems that Sanderson has an old score to settle with Zeller and a detailed plan to do so, but it will require a paramilitary force and lots of money, which Quinn is able rustle up. Sanderson also has a beautiful young daughter named Lena who soon becomes Quinn's new love interest. What follows is an exciting build-up to the climactic confrontation at sea between Sanderson's army and Zeller's well-guarded little armada of yachts. Things are complicated by Hailey's unravelling psyche, Quinn and Lena's relationship, the increasing senility of Zeller, and the mad ambition of Zeller's right-hand man, Tristan.

The action was very good, but the most interesting aspect of this story for me was the mind control angle. Tristan, a genius psychiatrist who survived a concentration camp with Zeller, has developed a technique that combines sensory deprivation tanks with hypnosis to create reliable programmed assassins and terrorists. And he has a big vision, worthy of any supervillain, to use these programmed "psychotrons" to spread chaos in order to grow the Zeller arms business and expand its power. He plans to start in Italy:

Initially I shall build a group of twenty. After psychotronization they will be the deadliest force of urban guerrillas in the world. I shall set them loose in Italian cities to recruit and control terrorist cells. The most susceptible recruit in each cell will, in turn, be reconstructed and he will be sent forth to create his own cell. Within a year I estimate I can have one hundred cells operating throughout six or eight major Italian cities ... When each group is fully armed and correctly motivated by its psychotronized leader--half of the groups motivated toward the far left, the other half toward the far right--I shall launch them against each other. ... Now, also, I shall be seeking to enlist military men, civil servants, extremist politicians, et cetera. They will be programmed to cause further trouble within the rank and file of their fellows ... No matter whether left or right gains control I should have representatives among them, albeit on the first rungs of the ladder of power. This could come to pass within five years. I should have my first psychotrons at cabinet level in government and at board level in defence within ten years. I shall, in effect, be a controlling member of the Italian government. The business possibilities in the arms trade at this point are staggering.

Dark Deeds was a surprisingly enjoyable read, given its total obscurity. It combines the action and fast pace of a Jack Higgins novel with the intriguing ideas of a Len Deighton novel (e.g. The Ipcress File). Highly recommended.

Get a copy of Dark Deeds here. It can be read for free here.

Renegade Agent

Renegade Agent, published in 1982, was the 47^th installment of the legendary Executioner men's adventure series, featuring the ultimate commando-vigilante tough guy, Mack Bolan. It's the 9^th installment of Bolan's "New War" against international terrorism and espionage that began in issue #39. Before that, Bolan had been fighting a one-man vigilante holy war against the mafia, who were responsible for killing his family. Now, with the covert backing of the U.S. government and the Stony Man black agency, he is bringing his brutal skills to bear on even more dangerous and depraved enemies around the world.

As the story opens, Bolan, clad in his trademark "blacksuit", is breaking into the offices of a technology company with his tech wizard assistant, "Gadgets" Schwarz. They have come to gather intel from the personal computers of the company's boss, a dude named Charon who is suspected of selling classified info to the Kremlin. With the data they collect, they learn that Charon is also selling state-of-the-art technology to a renegade CIA agent named Edwards, who is running an organization Bolan sums up this way:

An international underground intelligence network ... a "black" CIA, run by men trained by the top legit agencies in the world, serving the needs of the terrorist network. With state-of-the-art technology provided by traitors like Charon.

What a fascinating concept!

After raiding Edwards's Swiss chalet and taking out the whole place in classic Bolan fashion, Mack learns that Edwards has fled to his headquarters in Tripoli, Libya, where his black agency has the backing of Muammar Gaddafi--the leading sponsor of international terrorism in those days. He also learns that an old flame and assistant from his mafia-fighting days is working undercover to infiltrate Edwards' organization, and her cover may be blown. This means Mack has to use disguise and deception rather than brute force to take down Edwards, and his task is made more difficult by a gunshot wound he suffers in the shoulder that limits his use of one arm. There follows more set-piece commando raids on the black CIA's "hardsites" that meet the quota of gory killings and explosions for an Executioner novel.

This was a pretty typical Executioner novel, which means it had some great commando action, black ops intrigue, enemy infiltrations, forgettable characters and internal monologues to justify his vigilante war on evil-doers. Mack is more James Bond than John Rambo in this one, which was a nice change of pace.

I really liked author Steven Krauzer's concept of a "black" CIA or mercenary spy agency, which was no doubt inspired by the real case of Edwin Wilson. Wilson was a rogue CIA agent who sold arms to Libya used by terrorist groups (including 20 tons of C-4 plastic explosive!), recruited retired Green Berets to train Libyan special forces, and was in it strictly for the money. This realistic detail, along with some interesting rants from Bolan, made this a worthwhile read and more than just a mindless men's adventure novel.

Get a copy of Renegade Agent here.

Maxwell's Train

One of the fascinating things about reading espionage and crime thrillers from several decades ago is how prescient they can be about real-world shadow war. The recently reviewed Black Heart and Quiller Solitaire are cases in point, in the way they uncannily foreshadowed aspects of the 9/11 attacks. This was the idea behind the Department 17 project—to study shadow-fiction for its intelligence insights—and it remains a work in progress. It's easy to forget that before the 1990s there had never been a major terrorist attack on North American soil, and Americans were still rather innocent to the threat. The 1984 thriller Maxwell's Train, by Christopher Hyde, is another older novel that anticipates this possibility and serves up a scary scenario that could yet prove prophetic.

The narrative begins as a heist story. Harry Maxwell, once a bright, idealistic young man with big dreams from a good family, fell in with the wrong crowd and spent 7 years trafficking drugs, only getting out when he and his partner in crime Daniel were nearly killed in a rip-off. At age 35, he finds himself working as a lowly Amtrak car cleaner, with no prospects and not much to live for. Then one day he notices a strange car attached to a train and learns that it transports freshly printed bills from the Federal Reserve—some thirty-five million dollars worth, to be exact. This is enough to get Harry excited about life again, so he assembles a crew with his buddy Daniel and two other under-achievers with nothing to lose, and they begin planning the heist of the century.

The planning stage of the heist seemed rather rushed for a job of this magnitude, but there is enough descriptive detail to keep things plausible. The plan is rather ingenious, as it entails using a coffin to bring one of the men and supplies onto the train and to offload the loot, and the gassing of the security guards in the money car through a ventilation shaft. I don't want to spoil things for you, but let's just say the thieves get quite a shock when they force open the car door and see what's inside.

At this point the novel transitions to the main plot: a hijacking by seven of the nastiest international terrorists in the business—veterans of the European Baader-Meinhof group, Libyan special forces and the Japanese Red Army Faction, among others. The leader of the crew, and the most lethal of them all, is the beautiful blonde German, Annalise Shenker. In addition to the huge cash haul, the train is carrying five international VIPs and is rigged with enough weapons of mass destruction to ensure that no one does anything rash.

About halfway through the story shifts gears again, as we are introduced to several new characters, including an elderly German World War II veteran visiting the country where he was kept as a POW, an old heiress who spends her time travelling North America by rail, and a spunky 15 year old runaway, all of whom are boarding an ill-fated train for Montreal. This is where I started to roll my eyes a bit, as it started to feel like one of those corny old "Poseidon Adventure"  disaster movies where we are introduced to a variety of quirky characters before catastrophe brings them together. But it actually turned out to be very entertaining, as the heist team and a motley crew of clever amateurs devise tactics, improvise weapons and muster up the courage to fight the terrorists. The last 50 or 60 pages were particularly riveting, as the protagonists make their move against the terrorists, the terrorists make their move against the passengers and threaten to unleash mass terror, government forces make their move against both, and the train rolls toward a hellish climax in the remote northern Canadian wilderness.

I was very impressed by Christopher Hyde's smooth story-telling and technical knowledge; he knows the layouts of trains, the workings of the rail system and Canadian geography in intricate detail, and makes them integral to the story. By novel's end I felt like I'd ridden along with the passengers on their terrifying adventure and was totally absorbed. I also liked how the heroes of this story weren't some all-powerful government agents, but ordinary people who realized that no one was going to save them and decided to take matters into their own hands—a good reminder in this age of learned helplessness and creeping totalitarianism. All in all, an outstanding thriller, up there with the best in the genre. This was my first book by Mr. Hyde, but it definitely won't be the last.

Get a copy of Maxwell's Train here.

Quiller Solitaire

The early 1990s was a challenging time for espionage thriller writers. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, it was difficult to find adversaries that were both convincing and menacing enough to make dramatic villains. China was not yet ready for prime-time as the West's new arch-rival, drug lords weren't sufficiently organized or ideological, Third Reich holdovers were too long in the tooth, KGB-sponsored terrorism of previous decades had died down, Islamic terrorists hadn't yet struck hard, Russian gangsters hadn't yet emerged as a new bogeyman, and sinister corporate overlords struck too close to home. Was the era of the super-spy over?

Apparently not. In Quiller Solitaire, the 16th installment of the Quiller series published in 1992, author Elleston Trevor (aka Adam Hall) manages to weave a compelling mission for Quiller in the post-Cold War era that involves a Red Army Faction splinter group, ex-Stasi officers, Islamists and a terrorist plot that looks rather prescient given the Bojinka plot and the 9/11 attacks of the decade to come.

As the novel opens, Quiller is being debriefed about the death of a fellow Bureau agent who was incinerated when his car was run off the road and exploded. Quiller, who was following the agent to his rendezvous, witnessed the crash and now feels guilty about the death and obligated to avenge it. The agent had been investigating the murder of a diplomat in Berlin by suspected terrorists of the German Red Army Faction, and now Quiller is sent in to investigate both murders. Quiller learns that a group called "Nemesis" is planning a imminent terrorist attack using a commercial airliner, possibly inspired by the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, where a bomb aboard a Pan Am flight exploded over Scotland, killing 270 people. Desperate to stop the plot, Quiller goes in alone, posing as an international arms dealer and dangling a deadly carrot in front of the Nemesis leader in hopes of luring him out and destroying the organization.

Like most novels in this series, a large chunk of the narrative consists of Quiller attempting to surveil and avoid surveillance by enemy operatives, both on foot and in automobiles (he's an expert driver), his stream-of-consciousness calculations punctuated by short, sharp hand-to-hand encounters (he's also a lethal martial artist). Quiller novels are "spy procedurals" in much the same way Parker novels are "thief procedurals": we get a detailed look inside the world of a very focused and disciplined shadow operator, see how he plans his operations, seizes opportunities, neutralizes threats and moves relentlessly forward to complete his missions despite the inevitable f*k-ups, plot twists and enemy actions.

Also typical for this series, in the last third of the book the action really heats up, as Quiller learns more details about the plot and takes desperate measures to stop it. Operating deep undercover, cut off from Bureau directors, he has to fly by the seat of his pants and gamble his life on an apparently suicidal mission. Things get increasingly eerie as the enemy plot begins to resemble 9/11; was Kalid Sheikh Mohammed a fan of the series? The highlight of the story for me was an airdrop into the depths of the Sahara desert by an exhausted Quiller, as he penetrates to the heart of the Nemesis operation and moves toward the cliff-hanging airborne climax.

Quiller Solitaire is one of my favorite entries in a series that is one of the masterworks of the spy fiction genre. 27 years and 16 books into the series, there is no sign of any decline in quality and the stories remain as riveting as ever, even as the Cold War that spawned Quiller is history.

Get a copy of Quiller Solitaire here.