The Spy In The Java Sea (Joaquin Hawks #5)

The Spy In The Java Sea, by Bill S. Ballinger
November, 1966  Signet Books

The Joaquin Hawks series comes to a close with this fifth installment, which is a shame as Bill Ballinger turns in an entertaining, fast-moving yarn that’s a big improvement over the somewhat-ponderous earlier volumes. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed every volume of this series, but truth be told the “exotic travelogue” of some of them got to be a drag. With The Spy In The Java Sea, Ballinger dispenses with that and instead goes for more of a pulpy flair; in other words, exactly what you want from ‘60s spy-pulp. 

Interestingly, another ‘60s spy series experienced this sort of “fifth volume renovation:” Mark Hood, the first four installments of which suffered from a sluggish pace before going for more of a fast-moving vibe in the fifth volume. But whereas Mark Hood lasted for several more installments, Joaquin Hawks ended here. It seems clear though that Ballinger envisioned more adventures, or at least left the book open-ended enough for one, so I’d imagine low sales killed the series. In fact Hawks has the chance to settle down with an exotic native woman at novel’s end, but regretfully tells her so long; but then, I seem to recall similar finales in the previous books. Hawks certainly isn’t a “love ‘em and leave ‘em” type, and Ballinger makes it clear that it’s hard for him to leave these exotic women when the assignment’s complete.

Well anyway as mentioned this one moves at a much snappier pace than previous. Hawks is in Djakarta when we meet him, already on his mission; there’s a reference later that he was just returning home from Singapore when he was contacted for this job, which implies that the novel might take place directly after the previous volume. Hawks is here to find the Manta Ray, a nuclear sub that’s hiding somewhere in the Java Sea; as we’ll eventually learn, something when wrong with the radar and the crew needs a new “SMS card” for the computer – or “CPU,” as Ballinger refers to is, making for one of the earliest usages of this term I’ve seen in a pulp novel. Ballinger here develops a subplot, one that’s never actually resolved, that Hawks’s cover is already blown, and he’s just started the job. 

The novel features a memorable opening; Hawks is in his hotel room when a German guy comes in and pulls a gun on him. The German is himself a spy and claims to know who Hawks really is, despite his current disguise and cover name; he also mentions Hawks is notorious on the other side for ruining a bunch of Commie plots in the past. The German and the local Indonesian Communist chapter are trying to find the nuclear sub, and the German wants all of the info Hawks has about it. Our hero pretends to be innocent, then finally drops the pretense when he sees the German isn’t buying it. But somehow between volumes Hawks has become a little more gadget-savy, so he manages to get himself out of this situation with a handy explosive lighter. This is a very well-done sequence and nicely sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

Ballinger really brings the pulp spy nature more to the fore this time; Hawks meets with Navy Intelligence who themselves are posing as the crew of a small vessel, where he’s informed that a computer specialist named Housmann has been sent over from England to deliver the SMS card to the missing sub. The belabored setup has it that one crew member left the sub to radio in for help, but the crew member is hiding – and the crew member is the only person who knows where the Manta Ray is berthed. Ballinger brings even more of a spy-pulp vibe to the tale when Hawks goes to collect Housmann – and discovers that it’s a beautiful and well-built blonde. But our author has more up his sleeve, as cagey Hawks figures that there’s something up with “Mrs. Housmann,” and proves her true identity in a memorable sequence which finds the two in a rapidly-sinking boat.

The next action scene has Hawks pretending to be the German spy he killed in the opening of the book, bluffing his way into the lair of some Chinese spies. Here we see more gadgets in play: a suspender and a mechanical pencil which combine into a timed explosive device. Hawks is here to free the real Housmann, who turns out to be a stodgy British man who was quickly captured upon entering Djakarta. But again Ballinger leaves it a little vague how the US intelligence ring has been so quickly outed. Hawks and Housmann even have to go to elaborate lengths to avoid the enemy ship following them when they hitch a ride to Bali; the two get on a small lifeboat and rough it on the open sea for a day or two, eventually landing on a remote isle.

Here, about halfway through, The Spy In The Java Sea begins to more resemble the previous four books. Now it’s totally adventure fiction in an exotic locale, as Hawks must use his strength and cunning to convince the ruling natives that he’s not been sent here as a spy from the Indonesian government, and that he and Housmann need passage to Bali. Of course this entails lots of one-on-one fights between Hawks and the rulers’s various warriors, with Hawks again using his Indian skills to come out the victor. He does take some damage though, thanks to a brutal whipping he endures during one of the combats.

The final third of the novel combines the adventure fiction vibe with the spy-pulp of the opening quarter. The Manta Ray crew member is on an island outside Bali, one ruled by a kindly Raja. Hawks and Housmann have to prove they’re really here to help, and not just some spies sent to uncover the missing sub. Meanwhile Hawks gets friendly with the Raja’s hot daughter, Leyak, who seems to be the perfect woman for him: she’s a mixture of Western culture and old-world attitudes, and she and Hawks have some nicely-handled dialog throughout. But then some “officials” from Indonesia show up, claiming they’re just now here to take the island into official Indonesian protection; Hawks is certain they’re really PKI spooks (aka Indonesia Communist Party) merely posing as government reps.

The climax is tautly-handled suspense, with Hawks soon proven correct: the supposed government reps are really PKI sadists here to torture Hawks and the other two westerners into discovering where the sub is. At least this time we’re given an explanation for how Hawks’s carefully-laid plans have again been spoiled: Kent, the Manta Ray crewman, foolishly used the Raja’s radio to check on Hawks and Housmann and confirm their story. The PKI, monitoring for any radio messages, clearly just put two and two together and realized the nuke sub crewman everyone is searching for is hiding in the Raja’s island.

Actually this one has the best finale in the series. Hawks, his thumbs dislocated from torture, gets hold of an antique bow from the Raja’s museum (the firearms having been confiscated by the PKI), and, armed with arrows made of chicken bone, slips across the darkened palatial grounds and silently takes out PKI guards. It’s pretty brutal, too, as the chicken bone splinters upon impact, causing pretty messy kills. This leads to a tense climax in which Hawks and his comrades, armed only with a few appropriated carbines and pistols, defend themselves in a gazebo from the encroaching PKI troops. But again Ballinger goes for more of a realistic tone, with the heroes prevailing more through Hawks’s painstaking planning and cool-headed reserve.

As mentioned Hawks has a chance for a happily ever after by novel’s end; after some off-page shenanigans with Leyak – who actually drugs Hawks so she can get him in bed! – the beautiful princess has fallen in love with our studly hero, and basically begs him to stay with her on the little island. But Hawks claims his presence will only bring trouble, that it is only a matter of time until the island is ingested into Indonesia, and that he doesn’t want to ruin such a paradise. So off he goes, and we’re told he’s not happy about it, but it’s duty and all; little did he know he’d not be returning! Well anyway maybe we can just pretend that he decided to go back after all, and he and Leyak went on to rule the island together.

Overall I enjoyed the Joaquin Hawks series, with each volume offering a lot of entertainment, but I definitely enjoyed this installment the most. It would’ve been cool to see if Ballinger would’ve retained the more pulpy tone for future volumes, but I guess at this point the spy-pulp market was no longer lucrative and he moved on.

The Spy At Angkor Wat (Joaquin Hawks #4)

The Spy At Angkor Wat, by Bill S. Ballinger
May, 1966  Signet Books

The fourth instalment of Joaquin Hawks is of a piece with the previous three, more of a study of Southeast Asia in the mid-1960s than an outright secret agent thriller. If you want to know what Cambodia was like before the Vietnam war really got raging, The Spy At Angkor Wat will be right up your alley. However I’ve gotta say I enjoyed this one, mostly because I put myself in the right frame of mind before I read it – I didn’t go in expecting any action or thrills or whatnot, just a slow-going Cold War thriller in the Asia theater.

I’m still having a hard time with Hawks himself, as he’s too much of a cipher for the reader to identify with. I mean don’t get me wrong, all these sub-Bonds of the ‘60s were ciphers, even Nick Carter, but at least they had modicums of personalities. Hawks just doesn’t. On the one hand he’s a swinging ‘60s type whose code name is, preposterously enough, “Swinger,” but on the other he’s a total chameleon who can slip into Southeast Asian countries and go around undetected, posing as a “Cham-Malay.” Plus he can play a mean acoustic guitar. Perhaps if more time were spent on the “swinging ‘60s” aspect of his personality he might be more relatable, but so far Ballinger has denied us this; Hawks’s intros in the Western world are over and done with in mere pages – usually rendered via flashback, as is the case here – and the novels play out entirely in Asia, with Hawks in disguise.

As ever Ballinger opens up on a nice setpiece; Hawks, newly arrived in Phnom Penh, finds his sole contact in Cambodia dead – and recently murdered at that. Hawks starts a fire in the man’s store to camouflage his escape, and later takes out a tail in a tense scene. Here Hawks employs his karate skills, quickly breaking the dude’s neck. Later he takes out another tail, this time killing with a knife. But that’s it so far as the action goes in The Spy At Angkor Wat, with the rest of the novel playing out more on a suspense angle. Until the very end, where Hawks’s belt-gun is once again employed. Wait, there is one arbitrary action scene, early on, but it’s just setup for what comes later: in Phnom Penh Hawks beats up two guys who are chasing a pretty young Chinese woman, but she hops in her car and takes off before he can learn who she is.

But why is Hawks in Cambodia? In the flashback briefing sequence he’s told of young Prince Thom, whose “pro-West” father was recently killed by Commie dissidents. Poor little Thom’s entire family was wiped out, and now the prepubescent prince is hiding somewhere in Cambodia. Hawks’s assignment is to find him and somehow sneak the kid out of Cambodia with absolutely no help from any in-country contacts. Essentially it’s a kidnapping venture, and Hawks is none too enthused about it. So what does he do, folks? He goes over to Phnom Penh, finds his sole contact there already dead…and then buys the restaurant of some expat Frenchman, disguises himself as a “Cham-Malay,” buys a fighting cock and a guitar(!), and begins to bicycle across Cambodia.

I mean friends this is really what Joaquin Hawks does. You have to wonder what the hell secret agent training school he went to. “No, don’t go in with guns blazing – buy a fighting cock and a bicycle and go deep in-country!” It’s all just so absurd, but as ever Ballinger delivers it with a dry, matter-of-fact narrative style so that the reader can only go along for the ride (as slow-going as the ride is). What’s most humorous is that Hawks’s “strategy” relies solely on luck; he comes across the fighting cock apropos of nothing, buys it (with no explanation given the reader why he’d do such a thing), then uses it as an “in” with the various villages he travels to.

Gradually it becomes clear to the reader that Hawks is planning to immerse himself in the country in the hopes that he’ll magically come across the hiding prince. After some interminable journeying deep into Cambodia, occasionally tending to his cock (I mean the fighting bird!!!), Hawks finally arrives in the village which Prince Thom came from and is most likely hiding in. Here he encounters a local who turns out to be a Malay, so Hawks quickly drops his Cham-Malay guise. I don’t even know what the hell a Cham-Malay is; my wife’s actually from Malaysia so maybe she knows. I doubt I’ll ask her, though. Some things are better kept a mystery.

Now posing as a Moro, same as he did last volume, Hawks befriends the dude and proclaims himself as “Yusef.” He plays the guitar for the townspeople, gaining fame, and eventually is admitted into the royal palace to play for the guards. Clearly Hawks is not working on a tight timetable. The next day Hawks is summoned again and told that he is to give a performance for the young prince, who as Hawks suspected is hiding out in his royal chambers. But when Hawks goes there that night he finds an attractive young Chinese woman acting as the little boy’s guardian, and it’s the same Chinese babe Hawks saved back in Phnom Penh. He hopes she doesn’t recognize him. 

Ballinger delivers an effectively-rendered scene in which Hawks is summoned, late that night, to an empty wat, and there the Chinese babe waits by a statue of the Sleeping Buddha. Her name is Shara Da and she knows “Yusef” as the same karate-fighting man who saved her life. First she confirms he’s not a Commie, then she asks for his help – she needs someone strong to help her and Prince Thom escape the palace, as the boy’s life is in danger. Along with his Malay buddy, Hawks initiates the escape that very night, the group of four slipping out into the dense jungle and narrowly avoiding various search parties.

Once they get in the jungle the novel settles back to the customary long-simmer. It takes weeks for them to make it through the dense sprawl; again Hawks’s “strategy” relies on luck. Originally he had no idea how to get Prince Thom out of the country, as they’d be surrounded by enemies or danger – one dangling threat Ballinger unfortunately doesn’t exploit is that if they’d taken the Vietnam route they’d go right through dense Viet Cong territory – but thanks to an off-hand comment from Shara Da, Hawks learns that Prince Thom’s dad had a private plane, stored over near Angkor Wat.

Ballinger doesn’t bring Angkor Wat to life as much as you’d expect he would; the travelers arrive after their long journey, rent rooms in a nearby hotel, and get some rest. And meanwhile Hawks gets lucky with Shara Da; it’s nothing explicit but slightly more risque than previous books. The commandeering of the airplane is where the real climax occurs; the fighting cock serves as a distraction while Hawks gets everyone on board, then his belt-gun is used in a memorable moment. But after this we’re treated to an overlong plane chase, as Hawks must fly them to safety while the enemy closes in. Our hero for once gets hurt, taking a shard of glass from the busted windshield in his leg.

The relationship between Hawks and Prince Thom is one of the highlights of the book. Ballinger, true to his era, doesn’t treat it with the maudlin gravitas you’d find in today’s dreck. I mean keep in mind, little Thom’s lost his entire family and is now all alone, and clearly this stranger “Yusef” is becoming a father figure for him, giving him lessons on bravery, temperance, and survival. So too is Shara Da falling in love with Hawks, but while Ballinger doesn’t go out of his way to bang us over the head with it, we do see at novel’s end how worn and lonely Hawks is at the completion of this particular assignment. Having gotten Thom and Shara Da out of danger and into friendly hands, he knows he’ll never see them again.

But then as I was griping before, it’s like we’ve never even got to meet Joaquin Hawks. The brief intros in California aren’t enough, with him trading glib dialog with his CIA boss. His in-country escapades have him practicing role camouflage to the extent that even the briefest flashes of “the true Hawks” come off like revelations. There is only one more volume to go, so my suspicion is readers of the day weren’t latching onto the series because they felt the same – your hero needs to have at least something memorable about him.

The Spy In Bangkok (Joaquin Hawks #3)

The Spy In Bangkok, by Bill S. Ballinger
December, 1965  Signet Books

The third volume of Joaquin Hawks is an exercise in patience, a galacially-paced “thriller” in which hardly anything at all happens. When you consider that the book is 142 pages of incredibly small, dense print, this makes for one hell of an uphill struggle for the reader – unless that is you want to read an interminable travelogue about Thailand, circa 1965. While the previous two volumes were methodically-paced at best, this one makes them seem like rollercoaster thrill-rides.

It starts off memorably, at least; Ballinger dispenses with the formula of the previous two books, of “intrepid agent” Joaquin Hawks (codename “Swinger!!) getting briefed by his CIA boss on the latest assignent. Ballinger instead starts the book with a sort of “cold open:” Hawks, sitting in some desolate jail on an Indonesian island, awaiting his execution. It won’t be for many pages until we even learn why Hawks is here, but ultimately we’ll find out that his assignment has him trailing US millionaire Eli Turlock, who is plying across the Pacific in his large yacht, perhaps to sell some old atomic warheads to the Reds.

But we don’t know any of that for the time being. Ballinger throws us in cold and we’re left trying to figure out what the hell is going on as Hawks wonders if his time is really up; in an effective scene he’s led out before the firing line. But he’s saved by the last-second arrival of his comrades, a group of “Moros,” ie Muslim pirates; they’re led by Dak, who drinks wine and calls it “grape juice” so as to fool Allah. Here Ballinger makes a curious mistake, claiming that Hawks first retained the services of Dak “several years ago” during another assignment here in the east, whereas the first volume stated, I’m pretty certain, that Hawks had never worked in Asia before.

Dak and his pirates live on a converted US PT boat, and the novel is filled with lots of “maritime adventures” stuff, as Hawks basically uses Dak as his chaffeur. Upon being freed Hawks directs them to Bangkok, where it appears Eli Turlock has temporarily docked. Hawks has chased him across the Pacific, trying to figure out his destination and where the atomic missiles are. Turlock made his fortunes after the war buying up military surplus, and now has a greater arsenal than many countries. He even retains two henchmen and a sexpot babe (Theda Ray), but while he sounds like your standard Bond villain, don’t get your hopes up; as ever Ballinger is unwilling to exploit his villains (or is just incapable of it), thus Eli Turlock remains off-page for the majority of the text – and indeed even meets his expected fate off-page.

The focus is instead on rampant travelogue and detail about Thailand, rather than the spy fiction you might be expecting. Also the chameleon-like gift for disguise Hawks has; upon arrival in Bangkok he assumes not one but two identities: a sandy-haired American professor who stays at a swank hotel, and a poor Mexican guitar player. The latter identity is practically thrust on us with no setup or explanation; only later do we understand that Hawks has opted for this guise because he’s learned that Turlock frequents one particular nightclub in Bangkok; otherwise he’s always on his yacht. So the “Mexican guitar player” identity is to give Hawks a cover for being in this club.

Really though it’s just a means to an end – namely, material that Ballinger can pad out the pages with. Indeed, this ruse leads to a major early subplot (that ultimately goes nowhere); Hawks gets the guitar-playing job at the club because the sexy Eurasian dancer there, Maggi, takes a shine to him. She invites him back to her place and even asks him to live with her, mostly so as to ward off the advances of a local Chinese stalker. Hawks goes along with it, of course having the (off-page) sex with Maggi the genre demands. But man this stuff has nothing to do with anything; lots of tedious description of Maggi’s apartment and her life, culminating in a brutal scuffle with the Chinese stalker and his pal. Even the end of the subplot is clumsy; Hawks’s guise is compromised, and last he sees Maggi she thinks he’s being taken off to be arrested. Instead Hawks gets the drop on the cops and escapes.

Hawks has already compromised his disguise in another fashion; the nightclub band has been invited to perform at a party on Turlock’s yacht, and Hawks uses the opportunity to snoop around. He discovers the mold of an ancient Chinese cannon in a locked storage area, but no missiles. He’s discovered snooping and beats up the guy who found him, after which upon his arrival at Maggi’s place he gets in the fight with the Chinese stalker and the cops. So his cover is doubly blown on the same night, and what’s more he learns next morning that Turlock’s yacht has left port, no doubt because Turlock realizes someone is snooping on him. As fr that cannon mold, gradually we’ll learn that Turlock has used it to create fake antique cannons which really disguise the gold he’s been paid for the atomic missiles.

We come now to the most grueling part of the novel; pages 71-89 are comrpised of an endless trek Hawks makes across Thailand, trying to get to the next dock not too long after Turlock will. Boy does it go on and on, just copious, overwhelming description of flora, fauna, and various peasants and farmers Hawks encounters. This sort of stuff occurs throughout the novel; when Hawks gets to his destination, which turns out to be a little island wholly owned by Turlock himself, he scuba dives in the ocean to figure out what Turlock’s hidden down there. Even in this part, which should be tense and dramatic, we get several paragraphs about the various fish and reefs Hawks sees underwater. I mean the book is almost deadening in how static it is.

Joaquin Hawks is constantly coming up with convoluted plans, and here he hires the services of corrupt local cop Racon, telling him to round up a few thugs. The plan is to hijack Turlock’s yacht in the dead of night. Hawks has reservations about Racon from the beginning, but decides to go through with it; unsurprisingly, Racon doesn’t follow orders and attacks the yacht before he’s supposed to. This leads to what will turn out to be the “climactic action scene,” as Hawks grabs a .45 revolver and leads Dak and crew on an assault; Hawks only kills one guy here, one of Turlock’s two henchmen. The fight’s already ended, for the most part, and arriving on the yacht Hawks finds that Eli Turlock is dead, killed by an increasingly-crazy Racon.

So basically, we’ve just read like several pages of planning on this whole hijack scenario, and none of it even happens. Racon goes rogue just as Hawks figured he would, but at least we get another memorable appearance of Hawks’s belt buckle gun. Saving Theda Ray from the yacht – the clear implication that she’ll be Hawks’s next sexual conquest, shortly after novel’s end – Hawks next aims to take out the Chinese junk which is carrying the missiles; it seems that Turlock sold the atomic weapons to North Korea, as that’s where the junk hails from.

The cover incident occurs on page 134, just as depicted; Hawks gears up and swims across the murky depths to plant a few bombs on the junk. Speaking of which, I think this volume has the best cover of the series; I just wish the contents of the book lived up to it. But Hawks plants his bombs and then the finale continues on the bland vibe with Hawks waiting on Dak’s boat for the junk to explode, after which he sends a few messages to his CIA control via shortwave radio. And mercifully we come to the end of this staggeringly-boring novel.

I think I’m starting to see why Joaquin Hawks only lasted five volumes; while Ballinger’s writing is good, he really needs to cut back on the arbitrary travelogue stuff and feature some actual pulp espionage thrills. Because I’ve gotta say, such thrills are few and far between in this series in general and The Spy In Bangkok in particular.

The Chinese Mask (Joaquin Hawks #2)

The Chinese Mask, by Bill S. Ballinger
June, 1965  Signet Books

The Joaquin Hawks spy series continues with a second installment that has our “interpid agent” heading deep into China in a sort of Mission: Impossible-esque plot. Whereas the previous volume was sort of a jungle adventure, The Chinese Mask is almost a heist or caper, with Hawks tasked with breaking three Western scientists out of a prison near Peking and getting them to safety.

In the previous book it was made clear that Hawks, a tall, rangy, rakishly-handsome CIA agent, rarely went into “the Orient” on assignment. Now we’re informed that he is getting more missions there – indeed, the entire Joaquin Hawks series takes place in Asian locations – and thus he has increased his already-robust knowledge of languages. Now he’s nearly fluent in Mandarin and other Chinese dialects. I have a hard time relating to Hawks. It would appear that between assignments he’s like the movie Bond, virile and popular with the ladies, yet when on a mission he’s a chameleon who can blend into any surrounding and speak any language. You get the impression that between missions Hawks is more likely to be found in a book-lined study, surrounded by his legion of cats.

At any rate he’s called away from his latest good time by Berke, his CIA handler in Los Angeles. Berke’s all riled up about Sensor, a “psycho gas” that can turn people into veritable zombies. Three top nerve gas specialists were working on Sensor in West Germany when they abruptly disappeared behind the Iron Curtain; intel has it that they were recently transferred from Moscow to Peking, where they are kept in a fortress-like prison. Hawks is to spring them or kill them if necessary so that the secrets of the nerve gas cannot be used by the Reds.

Thus Hawks becomes a Swiss jewelry dealer, speaking only French and pretending to be older and in worse shape than he really is, and flies to China. As before Ballinger works in a lot of travelogue and topical detail about China, with characters often relating arcane info via expository dialog. In other words one can tell where Ballinger was certainly influenced by Ian Fleming. However one big difference I’ve noticed about these Paperback Bonds of the ‘60s is that none of them have the personality of the real thing; they are all for the most part ciphers, whereas James Bond lives on the page.

Rather than focus on character, the Paperback Bonds are more about the plot; for example Joaquin Hawks is presented to us as the hero, and he is given a mission, and we read as he pursues that mission at the cost of all else. There are no perodic asides or ruminations about this or that. We do get a bit more detail on Hawks’s past, though, courtesy an arbitrary dream/flashback where he remembers an incident in his youth on the “Lapwai Reservation.” Here it’s noted that Hawks’s father, William, was apparently a tribal leader of the Nez Perce Indians, and instilled in Hawks all sorts of arcane Indian lore. But that’s about it.

After losing Fung, his China-appointed “little yellow shadow,” Hawks escapes into Peking and hides with his Berke-appointed contact, a Russian circus performer named Vassili Vazov, who wants to defect but must grant the American government a favor first. As expected, Vazov has a hot young blonde who lives with him – his neice, Laryssa – who is all-too-eager to hop in bed with studly Hawks. But Ballinger leaves all such naughtiness off-page; we’re only informed Laryssa is insatiable (as all hot ‘60s spy-babes are). Vazov is an old drunk given to sad-sack stories, and in his own minor way brings to mind some of Fleming’s supporting characters. So too does Neih, a Tong member who also helps out Hawks; our hero has brought along real diamonds to hire the Chinese underworld into helping him fight the Communist government it hates.

Now disguised as a Mongol, Hawks stays with Vazov and Laryssa and puts together his plan to free the three scientists. This he does with Neih, cornering the car that escorts the three on their daily ride from the prison to a laboratory; Hawks uses a tranquilizer gun on the guards and driver. Now the book takes on a Mission: Impossible feel. Hawks deems that the only way to get the three scientists across China is to pose as a Russian circus troupe! Given that Vazov is already a bear-handler and Laryssa a wire-walker, Hawks decides to pose as a knife thrower and tries to flesh out whatever skills the scientists have – ie juggling, etc. But they need another girl, so Neih brings in the gorgeous young Meng, who is a Shan “slave” of the tong – a willing slave, at that.

When none other than Fung shows up as the Government rep who will escort the circus across the country, Hawks knocks him out and decides to keep him tranquilized and comatose, posing as the “freak” Vazov’s old circus troupe once featured. Perhaps this is where the title comes into play, as they deem a mask will be necessary for Fung, as the troupe is supposed to be from Russia. At length a “mourning hood” is decided on, dyed red, with a green turban on top, with the story being that Fung is a Moslem who has made his pilgrimage to Mecca and has not moved since. Meanwhile Neih will pose as the real Fung.

We get the entire circus routine in detail, from Vazov boxing with his bear (which has become irritable and prone to violence in its old age) to Hawks throwing knives. The scientists juggle and play marching songs on harmonicas. It sort of goes on for a while. But at least it works, and the troupe moves on, everyone becoming more confident. But on the last performance complications ensue, leading us into some long-awaited action. After making a break for it to their escape vessel on the coast, our heroes realize that poor little Meng was left behind.

Hawks and Neih head back into town, which is covered with Security Police. Hawks here employs that belt buckle-gun of his, the sole Bond-esque gadget he uses, to kill a guard. He and Neih scout out the government building where Meng is kept, and given the amount of armed soldiers there, Hawks deems there’s only one option: to unleash mean old Ivan the Bear! In a climax that could come out of a men’s adventure magazine of the day, Hawks and Neih slam their truck into the place, let Ivan loose, and gun down what few soldiers the animal doesn’t behead or eviscerate. After a boat chase at sea that comes off as anticlimactic given the preceeding bear attack, our heroes make it to safety – and Ballinger ends his tale.

The curious thing about The Chinese Mask is how dissimilar it is from typical spy fiction. As mentioned it’s more of a caper. Given that Ballinger was a hardboiled writer and published a few heist novels, I’m wondering if he just recycled an old or unused plot. It would be easy to believe that The Chinese Mask started life as a hardboiled heist yarn set in the US in which the protagonists, after pulling a job, had to disguise themselves as circus performers for their escape; all Ballinger would’ve had to do was change the locale and the nationality of a few of the characters.

But it must be said that it’s still an enjoyable book – Ballinger is a fine writer and I was really caught up in the plot. This is a good series.

The Spy In The Jungle (Joaquin Hawks #1)

The Spy In The Jungle, by Bill S. Ballinger
May, 1965  Signet Books

A hardboiled author in the ‘50s, Bill S. Ballinger turned his hand like so many other pulp writers to spy fiction in the ‘60s, no doubt due to the overwhelming popularity of James Bond. However Ballinger’s series protagonist, Joaquin Hawks, is nothing like Bond, and at least judging from this first volume the series is more atmosphere-heavy suspense than pulp action. The back cover even refers to it as “an adroit novel of espionage.”

The series ran for five volumes, from 1965 to 1966. This first volume hits the ground running with precious little background detail on our hero Joaquin Hawks, an American agent briefly described as being 32 years old, six feet tall, with “ebony hair” and “obsidian eyes.” He has a “sinewy” build and “a bronze lean face;” his mother was Spanish and his father was a Nez Perce Indian. He has previous Intelligence experience and now reports to Horace Burke, CIA Director of Operations in Los Angeles. With Hawks’s Indian heritage and the adventure fiction vibe, the series is almost a precursor to John Eagle Expeditor.

The back cover describes Hawks as “the world’s most subtle and lethal agent,” and while the second element isn’t much explored in this first volume, we do see how “subtle” Hawks can be on his assignments. Basically he goes about in a variety of disguises and assumed identities, painstakingly building cover stories and covering up his trail. Every volume of the series takes place in Asia, which makes it interesting that, juding from vague dialog early in The Spy In The Jungle, Asia isn’t one of Hawks’s normal stomping grounds.

Like Bond though Hawks is successful with the ladies, and is called away from vacation with his latest conquest to hear all about Project Prometheus. This top-secret US affair concerns nuclear warheads that can be called back after launch; the idea is for “fifty megatons” to hover over an enemy city to make it see the error of its ways. However while the experiment worked fine when tested in Florida, now that it’s moved to Vandenberg Air Force base in California the test missiles are disappearing. The trajectory goes from California into the China Sea or somesuch, but the missiles are vanishing in the vicinity of Vietnam and Laos. We learn all about it in a too-long sequence where Hawks monitors a test firing.

With absolutely nothing to go on, Hawks is sent in – Burke doesn’t want one of his field operatives in Asia to handle it, as he wants to keep the entire afair hush-hush or something. So Hawks grows a pencil-thin moustache, speaks in French (he’s the Jimi Hendrix of foreign languages), and travels to Saigon as a dinnerware salesman from Paris. No doubt written in 1964 before US intervention, The Spy In The Jungle is filled with topical details about pre-war Vietnam that were likely outdated even by the time of publication. But there are no US soldiers here, this early in the ‘60s, and Saigon still hangs on to its French history.

Even in disguise Hawks manages to score, thanks to a busty blonde from Sweden named Anna, who happens to be a reporter. Ballinger by the way is very much in the “fade to black” aspect of the sex scenes, and indeed doesn’t even much exploit the ample charms of the two female characters in the book. But Anna is burnin’ for some good stuff and Hawks complies. She’s here, she tells him, on nothing more than a hunch – in Stockholm she was contacted by a Soviet scientist who was travelling through Sweden into the free world. The man called her newspaper’s office looking to sell his story for some much-needed cash. It was a mysterious tale of an ancient temple deep in the jungle heavily guarded by Chinese forces.

Thanks to this complete deus ex machina of a lead, Hawks figures the mysterious temple might be behind the vanishing US missiles! He checks out of his hotel, doffs the Frenchman getup, disguises himself as “Ali,” a Moslem from the Philipines, and checks into a squalid hovel. More elaborate scene-setting ensues as Hawks goes to great lenghts to set up a past for “Ali,” with the story that he’s a merchant seaman wanted for murder. Hawks wants the Viet Cong to contact him, though we are left in the dark why. To build up “Ali’s” legend Hawks even engages in a kung-fu fight, easily besting the native champion.

Ballinger by the way is also quick and dirty with the action scenes. We’ll get a couple sentences of fast action and it’s back to the atmospheric stuff; the book is very descriptive of flora and fauna and Ballinger has that old pulp writer knack for quickly bringing exotic lands to life. Did I mention that Hawks carries a throwing knife and has a belt that fires two .22-caliber bullets? Otherwise he tries not to kill and indeed is more so concerned with melting into the shadows. But when it gets down to it karate is his main weapon, and in that regard Hawks is similar to another ‘60s spy: Mark Hood. 

Eventually Hawks goes deep into the jungle, heading on motorcycle and foot for Hanoi. We get some mystical stuff as he hangs out in a Buddhist temple and, still as “Ali,” hobknobs with a monk who may know of the mysterious ancient temple in Laos. We will learn that this is a pre-Buddhist temple devoted to “The Tree of Life.” There’s another long sequence where Hawks comes to a Montagnard village in the jungle mountains and lives with its people for a few weeks. In many ways The Spy In The Jungle is like an anthropology textbook with a minor spy-pulp overlay.

The highlight is Hawks’s scouting of the ancient temple, a ruins deep in Laos that has a destroyed exterior but a high-tech interior. Snooping around, evading the many guards in the place, Hawks discovers that the ancient temple has all sorts of gizmos in it; we’ll learn in the end that it is basically a maser station, and it is indeed here that the Chinese are diverting the US missiles. But Hawks is caught and, breaking a guard’s neck (his first kill in the book, over a hundred pages in), he escapes into the jungle.

Those hoping for a rousing climax will be disappointed. Instead Hawks is caught while attempting to cross through Hanoi and spends weeks in prison. Here we finally learn why he went to such trouble establishing a story for “Ali” in Saigon – through the VC who approached him, his story bears out, thus the sadist in charge of the prison doesn’t have an excuse to kill him. In other words they never put it together that he’s also the man who just broke into the high-security temple in Laos. But, several weeks after he’s been in capitivity, Hawks is presented with a surprise – the Vietnamese have also captured the lovely Swede Anna.

Hawks makes his second and final kill, blasting a dude with the belt buckle gun and making off with Anna. More adventure-fiction stuff ensues as they race along the jungle in an appropriated jeep. But that’s that; we’re given a long bit of exposition for the finale, in which Hawks, two weeks later and back in Los Angeles, is briefed by Burke on what the temple was and how it was working. Including even parts where he reads verbatim from various reports. It’s a bit underwhelming to say the least. But we do at least learn that the busty blonde he was vacationing with at the beginning of the novel has come here to LA looking for more of that good stuff.

I wasn’t blown away by The Spy In The Jungle but I enjoyed it enough that I hunted down the only volume of the series I was missing (the second one, The Chinese Mask). I really enjoy these ‘60s spy series and Ballinger’s writing is capable and assured to the point that the 125 pages elapse before you even realize it.

And is it just me or does anyone else think that’s Ian Fleming’s eye on the cover? Signet retained the rights to Fleming’s paperback reprints at the time and I’m betting they just lifted a photograph of him in a sort of subliminal gambit for the cover.