Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic is one of the most important works of Soviet science fiction.

It’s a first contact story, but a very unconventional one.

The Visit only lasted a very short time. Aliens visited six sites on Earth and then departed as mysteriously as they had appeared. Those sites are known as the Zones. There was no communication whatsoever between humans and the aliens. There were casualties among the human populations but it was never clear that the aliens actually had hostile intentions.

The Zones are littered with alien artefacts. Visiting the Zones is very very dangerous. No-one understands the nature of the dangers but they are very real. Governments have successfully suppressed all knowledge of what went on in the Zones and of what the Zones contain. The truth is that scientists do not have the remotest idea of what the Visit meant or why it took place.

Uses have been found for some of the alien artefacts (such as batteries providing limitless energy) but nobody knows the real purposes for which these devices were intended.

Entering the Zones might be incredibly hazardous but where there’s a profit to be made there will be people wiling to take the risks. Such people are known as Stalkers. The scientists do not care to take such risks but they are willing to buy artefacts from Stalkers. And there is a thriving black market.

Redrick Schuhart is a Stalker. Redrick is an ambiguous hero with complex motivations. Money is one of his motivations, but not the most important.

One of his Redrick’s forays into the Zone almost ended in disaster. He managed to save his companion, Burbridge. Burbridge claims to know the location of the Holy Grail of artefacts, the Golden Sphere. Maybe he will tell Redrick how to find it. The rumour is that the Golden Sphere can grant wishes. That might be mere rumour, but some of these artefacts really can do impossible things.

Close contact with the Zones can have unexpected consequences. Children who are not quite normal. Even more frightening and puzzling, when people who were in the vicinity of the Visit movie away to other cities very strange things happen. Strange inexplicable impossible things.

There are some wild, bizarre and very imaginative ideas in this novel. It’s a novel that exists on the fringes of conventional science fiction.

There is also a certain amount of excitement and suspense. Death can come quickly and unexpectedly in the Zone. And maybe worse things.

You find yourself hoping that the authors will be able to come up with an ending worthy of all the cool ideas that they’ve thrown into the story. Sadly they do not do so. I found the ending to be bitterly disappointing.

The authors ran into considerable censorship proems in the Soviet Union even though they had gone to great lengths to avoid taking any ideological positions. There is a rather cynical tone to the novel, which might explain the censors’ hostility. The Visit is after all the subject of government cover-ups throughout the world.

Roadside Picnic was filmed in 1979 by Andrei Tarkovsky, as Stalker.

Roadside Picnic is extremely interesting and imaginative but the feeble ending robs it of true greatness. Still worth a read. Recommended.

Curt Siodmak's Donovan’s Brain

Donovan’s Brain is a 1942 science fiction novel by Curt Siodmak.

German-born Curt Siodmak (1902-2000) enjoyed success as an author, screenwriter and film director.

The fact that it’s about a disembodied brain kept alive in a laboratory might tempt some readers to dismiss this book as mere pulp science fiction but Siodmak was a writer with more substance than that.

He addressed a similar theme again much later in his excellent 1968 novel Hauser's Memory.

Donovan’s Brain is the story of a bizarre medical experiment carried out by Dr Patrick Cory. He is obsessed by the idea of keeping a brain alive outside the body. He has had limited success with monkeys. Then a golden opportunity is dropped into his lap. A light plane has crashed in the mountains. Dr Cory is first on the scene. A man in his sixties is horribly injured and his chances of survival are nil, but his brain is undamaged. Dr Cory is able to remove the brain. The brain is placed in a large glass jar filled with serum and surprisingly remains alive.

Keeping Donovan’s brain alive is all well and good but Dr Cory wants to find a way to communicate with it. There’s no doubt that Donovan’s personality still exists.

He finds a way to communicate but Donovan’s messages are rather cryptic.

There’s also a mystery story of sorts. Donovan’s behaviour just before the plane crash was puzzling. And Donovan has some odd obsessions. It’s possible that those obsessions now dominate his personality. Dr Cory needs to find out more about Donovan in order to make sense of whatever it is that Donovan is trying to tell him. Donovan’s surviving children may have their own reasons for not wanting Cory to learn certain things. It’s also apparent that they think Donovan told Dr Cory something important before dying (they of course do not know that Donovan is still alive after a fashion).

Donovan’s personality has to some extent taken lodgement in Dr Cory’s brain. And Donovan is a very strong personality. And, perhaps, not quite sane. Perhaps he was never quite sane.

The idea of two personalities, with conflicting agendas, occupying the same brain has been used countless times but it’s worth remembering that Siodmak was utilising this idea way back in 1942.

And he was doing it skilfully. Neither the reader nor Dr Cory have any reason to think that there is anything sinister about Donovan, at first. Donovan was a remarkable man. Dr Cory was particularly excited to have the opportunity to preserve his brain - it would be an opportunity to learn about the workings of the mind of a man who had achieved great success. And for quite a while Cory isn’t concerned. Donovan’s obsessions seem to be simply a desire to correct mistakes that he made. Nothing worrying about that. It’s only very gradually that Cory begins to suspect that perhaps Donovan was somewhat sinister. But what I like about this story is that Dr Cory is not having his mind invaded by the mind of a psycho killer. Donovan is more complicated than that.

Dr Cory is confident that he can remain in control. Donovan’s brain is just a mass of brain tissue sitting in a glass jar filled with nutrients.

This is a story focused not just on Donovan’s obsessions but on Dr Cory’s as well. They are perhaps similar in some ways - both are men driven by ambition. Dr Cory is driven by ambition in a good way. He wants to advance scientific knowledge. There’s no harm in that is there?

This is fine intelligent science fiction with some dashes of mystery and horror. Curt Siodmak certainly deserves to be appreciated more. Highly recommended.

And Siodmak’s Hauser’s Memory is very much worth reading as well.

Robert Sheckley's Untouched by Human Hands

Untouched by Human Hands is an early collection of short stories by American science fiction writer Robert Sheckley (1928-2005).

It’s immediately apparent that Sheckley has a knack for creating truly bizarre alien races. Races that are physically incredibly alien, and socially and culturally incredibly alien. And alien in really interesting ways.

What really interests Sheckley is that if truly alien races encounter each other any meaningful communication will almost certainly be impossible. And actions will be misinterpreted in totally unpredictable ways.

He also has a taste for humorous or semi-humorous science fiction. Not an easy thing to pull off but he does it reasonably well. Some stories have a sting in the tail, some don’t.

And he has an extraordinary imagination.

The Monsters appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953. It’s a first contact story. The trick is always to make aliens seem truly aliens. In this case Sheckley offers us two species (one of them obviously our own) that are almost unimaginably different physically. And even more unimaginably different culturally. Even when they learn each other’s languages they cannot communicate. Which predictably leads to serious problems. A clever story with some nice black humour.

Cost of Living was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1952. It’s a satire on consumerism and the cost of endless debt and it remains relevant today. This is a future in which people not only get themselves but also their children into perpetual debt.

The Altar appeared in Fantastic in 1953. A very ordinary inhabitant of the very ordinary town of North Ambrose, New Jersey, suspects that he has stumbled up the existence of strange cults in the town. He might be right.

Shape was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. The Glom are making another attempt to invade Earth. The Glom can take on any shape they choose, and yet at the same they have no freedom or individuality at all.

The Impacted Man appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952. It concerns the galaxy in which we live as a vast artificial creation. A rip occurs in the fabric of this artificially manufactured space-time continuum and some poor schmuck gets caught in it.

Untouched by Human Hands was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. A couple of rather amateurish spacefarers are in trouble. Their food supplies are gone. They find a building. The construction of buildings implies a reasonably advanced civilisation so surely it should be possible to find food. Unfortunately these aliens are so different from ourselves that although our spacefarers find plenty of food they cannot eat any of it.

The King’s Wishes was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953. This is a wild story. A couple who run an appliance store have a problem with a burglar. But he’s not an ordinary burglar. He’s a ferra. A sort of djinn. He’s very friendly but he insists that he has to steal appliances to take back to his king. It turns out that this kingdom is very distant, in more ways than one. A very clever very playful story.

Warm was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. A young man, Anders, starts hearing a voice. The voice can’t tell him where it’s from but it will tell him when he’s getting warm. Anders starts to see things in a new and disturbing way. He starts to see reality as it really is.

The Demons was published in Fantasy magazine in 1953. A hideous red-scaled monster named Neelsebub has tried to conjure a demon but instead he’s ended up with a mild-mannered insurance salesman from New York, by the name of Arthur Gammett. Neelsebub wants Arthur to produce a vast hoard of gold for him. Arthur of course cannot do this but he decides to do some demon-conjuring of his own. This is a fun story that is like a farce, but with demons and pentagrams.

Specialist was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. It’s a variation on the living spaceship idea which would become popular many decades later but this spaceship is entirely made up of an assortment of living creatures, each serving a very specialised purpose. Of course if a member of the crew is killed then that component of the spaceship no longer exists, which can be a very serious problem.

Ritual appeared in Climax in 1953. The inhabitants of a planet have been waiting 5,000 years for the gods from the stars to return. Then finally two gods land in a spaceship. The gods are strange - they have two legs and two arms and, bizarrely, no tails. But the planet’s spiritual leader, Elder Singer, is prepared. The rituals must be followed. There must be four days and four nights of ritual dances before the gods can be offered food or water. The gods seem to be begging for food and water but Elder Singer knows that that is part of the ritual. Everything is ritual. Another excellent story of disastrous mutual incomprehension between alien races who have nothing but friendly intentions.

Beside Still Waters appeared in Amazing Stories in 1953. It’s a low-key tale of the friendship, of sorts, between an old man and a robot one a tiny asteroid.

Seventh Victim was later expanded into a novel The 10th Victim. Both the story and novel are reviewed here. And I've reviewed the superb movie adaptation, The 10th Victim (1965).

A collection of truly offbeat eccentric but delightfully clever tales. Highly recommended.

Jimmy Sangster's private i (Spy Killer)

Jimmy Sangster was much better known as a screenwriter but he wrote a lot of novels. In the late 60s he wrote four spy thrillers, two featuring glamorous lady spy Katy Touchfeather and two featuring a spy named John Smith. A man whose real name really is John Smith. The first of the John Smith spy novels, private i, was published in 1967. It was later reissued with the much less interesting title Spy Killer.

The novel opens with John Smith in a lunatic asylum. He isn’t mad, but there seems no escape. We then flash back to the events that led him to such an unpleasant place.

John Smith works as a private enquiry agent (the British name for a private detective). He’s broke so he’s pleased to have a new client, a Mrs Dunning. The case should be straightforward. It’s a routine divorce case. The one very slight complication is that Mrs Dunning is John Smith’s ex-wife Danielle. Perhaps he should have realised that with Danielle involved the case probably wasn’t going to be straightforward after all.

Finding himself suspected of a murder is rather disturbing.

Smith gets really worried when Max shows up. Max had been his boss when he was in the Secret Service. The last thing Smith wants is to get mixed up in the sleazy world of espionage again. But that’s what’s happened.

And if Max is involved then Smith really wants nothing to do with any of it. He doesn’t have a choice. There is that murder charge hanging over his head.

Max wants the notebook. Smith doesn’t know anything about a notebook. But now he figures that if he doesn’t find the notebook Max will throw him to the wolves.

This was a time when spy fiction, and especially British spy fiction, was becoming very dark and cynical. This novel dials the cynicism up to the max. Smith quit the Secret Service after being ordered to take part in a massacre of poor dumb deluded young people who had been manipulated by various intelligence agencies. Smith particularly disliked having to blow a young girl’s face off with a shotgun. That’s when Smith decided he wasn’t cut out to be a spy.

And he knows Max’s methods. If someone is even a minor threat, or even just a minor inconvenience, Max has that person killed. They don’t have to be enemy agents. The British Secret Service is like a more amoral version of Murder Inc.

Smith wants to get rid of that notebook but he knows that as soon as he does he can look forward to a bullet in the back of the head.

Max wants the notebook. A foreign power wants the notebook. Smith has to hand it over or they’ll kill him. But he can’t hand it over because it’s his insurance policy. If he no longer has the notebook they’ll definitely kill him. It’s a tricky problem.

You expect double-crosses in a spy thriller but in this one it’s not just the bad guys but the good guys and even the hero planning double-crosses. And double-crosses piled on top of double-crosses.

The notebook seems to be a kind of McGuffin but the contents gradually become more significant. The contents also present Smith with more of a moral problem. He doesn’t have much in the way of ethics (his days as a British agent knocked all the idealism out of his system) but he does have some morals. He may however have to choose between mortality and survival.

This is a novel that relies more on paranoia and atmosphere than on action but there are some good action moments.

Smith is a fascinating character - he’s overweight and balding but that doesn’t mean that he’s not dangerous. Max is one of the nastiest villains in spy fiction and he’s one of the good guys. Although whether the British Secret Service in this novel can be described as good guys is very very debatable.

There are two women involved and at least one could turn out to be a femme fatale figure. Sangster is however a very fine writer and his plotting is very solid so jumping to conclusions can be a mistake.

An excellent story. Very dark, very cynical, very paranoid. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Touchfeather, the first of Sangster’s Katy Touchfeather novels, and it’s excellent.

Masamune Shirow's Black Magic

Black Magic is a very early manga by Masamune Shirow. It dates from 1983 so he was in his early twenties at the time. He hadn’t yet developed his mature style but he was already playing around with lots of cool ideas.

This is cyberpunk but very early cyberpunk. The genre was only starting to emerge at this time. Black Magic predates William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, the novel that really established a firm framework for the genre. The Japanese could be described as early adopters of cyberpunk.

There are seven sections to the book, some described as chapters and some as prologues. This is a world of AIs, bioroids and combat robots. The dividing line between computers, humans, bioroids and robots can be very blurred.

The setting is Venus, the only planet in the solar system in which intelligent life is to be found. The Venusians have built an artificial sun on Earth’s Moon. There is life on Earth but it hasn’t amounted to much. The Venusians have started to establish colonies on some of the other planets.

While it lacks the depth and complexity of his later mangas such as Ghost in the Shell this is very much a Masamune Shirow manga. His trademark interests and obsessions are all here. And he gives us lots of fast-moving violent mayhem.

The first prologue, Black Magic, introduces us to a cute girl who has magical powers. Very heavy-duty magical powers. There’s a super-computer than has created other super-computer. Some of these computers are mere machines, some appear to have consciousness. They’re all named after figures in Greek mythology. The cute magical girl, Duna Typhon, was created by one of these artificial intelligences. To what extent is she human? Are her powers magical or super high tech? These entities are not exactly gods. They are not worshipped as gods. But they are god-like and they do behave like goods.

The first chapter Bowman deals with interplanetary colonisation by the Venusians. The story takes place on one their colonies. A young female investigator named Pandora takes control of a new nuclear submarine. But why would anyone have constructed a ballistic missile submarine on a colony planet?

There’s a second prologue and then we move on to the second chapter, Booby Trap. The MA-66 is an advanced combat robot. Four of them are out of control. They will need to be destroyed. The MA-77 is even more formidable. It has advanced decision-making capabilities. An MA-77 has gone rogue as well. There’s lots of high-octane action in this chapter.

City Light moves the action to Saturn’s moon Titan, or at least to a spaceship on its way there and finding itself in trouble. There are people aboard the spaceship who should not be there. Sabotage may be afoot.

The Epilogue is perhaps unexpected although there have been plenty of clues pointing in this direction.

I always love Masamune Shirow’s footnotes. We don’t get many of those where but we do get some cool endnotes explaining the tech stuff. I love the guy’s playful tongue-in-cheek approach to these. You can tell he has fun doing these mangas.

Masamune Shirow was later slightly embarrassed by the old-fashioned graphic style of this early work. It is a bit old-fashioned but it’s lively.

If there’s a fault here it might be that the author is throwing a few too many ideas into the mix. It’s never quite clear where the magic fits in. He would later move to a more pure cyberpunk style with Appleseed and with Ghost in the Shell he produced one of the towering cyberpunk classics. And he was still in his twenties.

Black Magic’s flaws are actually its strengths. It’s wild and offbeat and surprising. And it’s great fun. Highly recommended.

The Booby Trap chapter was the basis for the 1987 anime OVA Black Magic M-66.

Jimmy Sangster’s Touchfeather, Too

Touchfeather, Too dates from 1968 and was the second of Jimmy Sangster’s two spy thrillers featuring sexy lady spy Katy Touchfeather. And I do so love spy thrillers featuring glamorous sexy lady spies.

Jimmy Sangster (1927-2011) had an immensely successful career as a screenwriter. He wrote a lot of movies for Hammer, including most of their best early movies. Unfortunately his career as a novelist tends to get overlooked. He wrote a number of fine spy novels.

Katy Touchfeather is an airline stewardess. She’s beautiful, sexy and charming so that definitely makes her an airline stewardess rather than a flight attendant. This is however merely her cover. She is actually a British counter-espionage agent.

Her latest mission involves a Greek shipping tycoon named Galipolodopolo. He doesn’t make his real money from shipping but from gold. Katy understands just enough about international finance to understand that Mr Galipolodopolo’s dealings in gold are highly illegal. The British Government wants to put an end to his gold dealings.

Katy’s immediate target is handsome young bullfighter Antonio. She discovers that his athletic prowess in the bedroom is as impressive as his prowess in the bullring. Antonio appears to be working as a courier for Mr Galipolodopolo. Katy has to find out how Antonio is involved and if necessary to kill him. Katy doesn’t particularly like killing people, but sometimes murder is part of the job. Although it does seem a pity to have to kill such an impressive bedroom athlete.

Katy has managed to get herself invited as a guest on Galipolodopolo’s luxury yacht. That’s where her trysts with Antonio take place. The mission does not go according to plan. It does end with a corpse but Katy didn’t do the killing. And she didn’t get the evidence. Mr Blaser is very annoyed with her. But he gives her another chance.

As a result Katy ends up in the African nation of Borami. She ends up on board Borami’s presidential jet. And she also finds herself in a Dakota desperately short of fuel trying to find somewhere to land in the middle of a desert.

More disturbingly, she ends up back on Galipolodopolo’s yacht but as a prisoner rather than a guest. She she gets to meet Lucia. Lucia is very beautiful and very glamorous, and very evil. She is Galipolodopolo’s chief torturer. Katy does not like Lucia. The odds are heavily stacked against her but Katy is resourceful and deadly.

Katy’s employers do not supply her with any gadgets. Sangster was clearly trying to avoid the obsession with gadgetry in 60s spy fiction and spy movies. Katy doesn’t really need gadgets. You can leave Katy alone in a room and within five minutes she will have collected an assortment of small inoffensive household items and turned them into a small but deadly armoury. Very low-tech, but Katy is a great improviser and she knows an astonishing number of methods for killing people.

There is a certain amount of 60s Deighton-esque cynicism here. Mr Blaser tells Katy that the British Government plans to confiscate Galipolodopolo’s gold. When Katy suggests that it sounds like the British Government intends to steal the gold Mr Blaser has to admit that this is indeed the intention. But of course when governments steal things they don’t call it stealing.

The government of Borami is corrupt. The Americans, Chinese, Soviets and British are all heavily involved in Borami and their motives are entirely cynical. International politics is a dirty game.

Katy is fairly ruthless. She doesn’t like having to kill people in the line of duty. If she has to do so it can keep her awake at nights. For a couple of nights. Then she forgets about it. No point crying over spilt milk.

This is a sexy spy thriller but the sexiness is very mild. The plot is solid.

The book’s main asset is Katy Touchfeather. She’s not infallible. She makes mistakes but she has an amazing ability to get herself out of the messes she gets herself into. And she does so in very clever very entertaining ways. She’s a very cool action heroine even if her ethics are just the tiniest bit dubious.

This is a hugely enjoyable spy thriller. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first book in the series, Touchfeather, and it’s very good indeed.

The Spy and the Pirate Queen

The Spy and the Pirate Queen was published in 1967. American former newspaper reporter Hal D. Steward wrote two sexy spy thrillers in 1967, both featuring CIA agent Nails Fenian.

Both were published as paperback originals by a small obscure outfit specialising mostly in sleaze fiction. And The Spy and the Pirate Queen straddles both the spy fiction and sleaze fiction genres.

These two books were I believe Steward’s only forays into the world of spy fiction.

Nailan Fenian, nicknamed Nails, is a philosophy professor, which is a useful enough cover for a spy.

Nails is in Singapore, on the trail of a Chinese lady pirate. Yes, piracy was in fact common in the South China Sea in the 1950s and 60s. Madame Wong is a very successful and ruthless pirate who operates on a large scale. Nails’ job is to terminate her activities which means killing her if necessary.

Within hours of his arrival in Singapore Nails knows that his cover has been blown. Several attempts have been made on his life. An informer has been murdered. More murders will follow. Madame Wong does not take kindly to people who pry into her affairs.

Nails gets involved with a beautiful half-Chinese girl, Lung Mai, who works as a freelance spy. She may be the femme fatale here but that is by no means certain. Nails hopes she’s innocent. She’s amazingly good in bed. He would hate to have to kill a woman with such impressive bedroom skills.

Madame Wong has never been photographed and has kept her true identity a secret. One day she intends to retire, as a respectable citizen. If there is a chance that a person might, deliberately or inadvertently, reveal her true identity her policy is to have that person quietly disposed of. It seems that both Nails and his buddy Underwood at the US Embassy are now in the category of people to be eliminated.

The plot is fairly straightforward, perhaps too straightforward for a spy novel, with the main interest being provided by the possibility that Lung Mai will try to double-cross Nails or double-cross Madame Wong. She might even try to double-cross both of them.

When you read a lot of paperback originals it’s noticeable that most are quite competently written even when they’re trashy. It’s therefore a slight surprise to come across one that is rather poorly structured and that features rather clunky prose. That unfortunately is the case here. Steward also has a bit of a tin ear for dialogue.

There are some fairly graphic sex scenes although they come across as workmanlike rather than passionate.

Nails Fenian is just a little too perfect a hero. A hero needs some flaws, or at least some quirks, to make him interesting. Fenian is just a by-the-numbers action hero.

Madame Wong is at least a reasonably interesting villainess and lady pirates are of course inherently cool, and the piracy in the mid-20th century concept is cool as well. Lung Mai is also a reasonably effective seductive ambiguous dangerous woman.

The Spy and the Pirate Queen is not a great spy thriller. If you’re a fan of sexy spy thrillers it’s maybe worth a look but there are much better books in this genre.

Curt Siodmak's Hauser’s Memory

Hauser’s Memory is a 1968 science fiction espionage novel by Curt Siodmak.

Curt Siodmak (1902-2000) enjoyed success as a novelist and a screenwriter, and occasional film director. He is best-known for his screenplay for the Universal horror classic The Wolf Man and for his best-selling science fiction novel Donovan’s Brain. He was the younger brother of the great film director Robert Siodmak.

Dr Cory is a rather emotionally detached scientist working in the field of memory. He believes that memories are encoded in RNA and that by injecting RNA from one animal into another the memories of the first animal can be transferred to the second. Cory has done some experiments that seem to indicate that this really is possible. It should be possible to do it with humans as well but of course performing such an experiment on people would be ethically dubious.

Then Cory is approached by the CIA - they have in their hands a defector named Hauser and they want the secrets locked in that defector’s brain. Unfortunately Hauser was shot. He is now in a coma and is not expected to survive the night and is not expected to regain consciousness. Hauser was a German who ended up in the Soviet Union after the war. He had been doing top-secret military research for them.

The CIA (an organisation never troubled by ethical considerations) wants Cory to transplant Hauser’s RNA, and therefore his memories, into the brain of a volunteer. Of course this will probably kill both Hauser and the volunteer but the CIA is prepared to take the risk.

The experiment is eventually performed, due to a series of misadventures, on Cory’s young assistant Dr Hillel Mondoro. Whether the experiment has been a complete success or not is uncertain but Mondoro now knows things he couldn’t possibly know. Suddenly he speaks fluent German. He has memories that are not his own. He is Hauser, but he is still Mondoro. The two personalities come and go. Sometimes he is Hauser but on some level he knows that he isn’t really, and sometimes he is entirely Hauser.

Cory and Mondoro are just scientists. They have no interest in politics. It would all be nothing but an exciting scientific breakthrough but for two things. Firstly, Mondoro’s memories include vital Russian defence secrets. The Russians think those memories belong to them. Secondly, the CIA thinks Hauser’s memories belong to them. Of course Hauser’s memories and scientific knowledge are now locked up in Mondoro’s brain. So the CIA and the Russians both want Mondoro.

An added complication is that Mondoro now not only has Hauser’s memories, he has Hauser’s will. There were important things of a personal nature that Hauser intended to do. The Hauser personality is still determined to do those things. The Hauser personality has its own agenda that has nothing to do with the agendas of the CIA and the Russians. Under the influence of the Hauser personality Mondoro suddenly hops on a plane to Copenhagen, and then goes to Berlin. With Cory trailing after him hoping to keep him safe, and with both the CIA and the Soviet intelligence people after him as well.

The science in this story may seen fairly screwy but this was 1968. RNA and DNA were all the rage. They were thought to be the secret to everything. It’s also worth noting that human behaviour is still very poorly understood. We don’t know how much of our behaviour is innate and how much is learned. Siodmak’s ideas might be bold and speculative but in 1968 they would have seemed plausible. And Siodmak develops his ideas skilfully and subtly, and with as much emphasis on the ethical problems as on the scientific implications. This is clever intelligent science fiction.

This is also clever intelligent spy fiction. There are so many layers of ambiguity and betrayal and duplicity, and so many complex motivations on the part of both the individual characters and the spy agencies on both sides. There’s ambiguity right from the start. Did Hauser really want to defect? It seems that he had certain plans of a personal nature that led him to want to leave Russia but it’s by no means certain that he really wanted to defect. It’s possible he was simply snatched by the CIA. There’s also some uncertainty as to how he got shot.

Hauser was a complicated man with a complicated past. He may or may not have been guilty of more than one act of political betrayal, and more than one act of personal betrayal. But in these cases was he really the villain or the victim? Poor Mondoro has to try these things out, on the basis of confused and fragmentary memories. This is a rather cerebral spy story but with plenty of suspense and some action as well.

Siodmak’s novel manages to work exceptionally well as both unconventional science fiction and an unconventional spy thriller with some moral depth as well. Very highly recommended.

Peter Stafford’s The Wild White Witch

If historical fiction is fun and sleaze fiction is fun then if you combine the two you’ll get double the enjoyment. It’s not surprising that historical sleaze enjoyed quite a vogue for a while. Peter Stafford’s 1973 novel The Wild White Witch is a satisfyingly outrageous representative of the breed.

And it’s not just historical sleaze - this is a story of madness and lust in the tropics where the hot sun unleashes forbidden passions.

Peter Stafford was a pen name used by the fairly prolific Hungarian-born writer Paul Tabori (1908-1974). There was another author named Peter Stafford active at the same (who wrote books on psychedelics) so there is some potential for the two to get confused.

In 1830 Jeremy Radlett, the 22-year-old youngest son of a Scottish laird, receives an invitation to join his uncle Richard at his estate in Jamaica. No member of the family has seen nor heard anything of Richard Radlett for decades but he has apparently prospered in the West Indies and being childless he intends to make young Jeremy his heir. Jeremy takes ship for Jamaica.

Jeremy is in for some surprises when he reaches Rosehall, his uncle’s sugar plantation. His uncle is dead but has left a beautiful young widow, Melissa. Melissa has inherited the estate.

Jeremy is obviously disappointed but is persuaded to stay on as a guest. Jeremy is rather an innocent and the brutal realities of planation life shock him.

Jeremy is an innocent in other ways as well. He is a virgin. He knows little of sex but he does know that no decent woman enjoys it. He is in for quite an awakening when Melissa takes him to her bed. Her sexual appetites are voracious. Jeremy had no idea that such pleasures were possible.

There are a few problems. It’s fairly clear that the brutal overseer Arkell had been accustomed to sharing Melissa’s bed. Arkell is not at all happy about relinquishing his position as Melissa’s bed partner. He will make a dangerous enemy. And the slave population may be planning to revolt.

Then Jeremy discovers the secret door, which leads to an underground cavern. He witnesses rites so depraved that he is scarcely able to believe them. Surely Melissa could not be connected in any way with such things.

Given the setting you might expect voodoo to figure in this tale, but this is essentially a witchcraft story.

The setting is a society based on slavery but the book goes out of its way to make its abhorrence for slavery obvious so don’t make the mistake of having a knee-jerk reaction to the subject matter.

There is plenty of graphic sex and assorted debaucheries and depravities. Jeremy’s bedroom romps with Melissa are steamy to say the least. This is one of those sleaze novels that promises all manner of lurid delights and thrills and this one delivers the goods.

There’s a memorably depraved villain (or villainess - I’m not going to tell you which it is).

You can’t really go wrong with an overcooked extra-sleazy tropical gothic melodrama. It’s a formula that works for me. And this one is nicely scuzzy and it’s done with a reasonable amount of style and energy.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wild White Witch. Highly recommended.

Robert Sheckley's The 10th Victim

The 10th Victim is a 1965 science fiction novel by American writer Robert Sheckley (1928-2005). Bear with me because the story behind the novel is a bit complicated.

In 1953 Sheckley wrote a short story, Seventh Victim, for Galaxy Science Fiction magazine. It was adapted for radio in 1957. The excellent 1965 Italian science fiction movie The 10th Victim was based on Sheckley’s short story. The movie was scripted by Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvioni, Ennio Flaiano and Elio Petri and directed by Elio Petri. Sheckley wrote a novelisation of the movie, with the title The 10th Victim, which was published in 1965. Sheckley later wrote two sequels, Victim Prime and Hunter/Victim.

All of these works deal with the theme of murder as sport and entertainment. This became a very popular them in science fiction movies in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Obvious and notable examples are Rollerball and The Running Man.

In this review I will be dealing with both Sheckley’s 1953 short story and his 1965 novelisation.

Sheckley’s short story Seventh Victim is set at some unspecified time in the future. Murder is now entirely legal, but tightly regulated by the government.

This is not quite a post-apocalyptic or a dystopian future although it has some affinities with such futures. War had become so destructive that it was outlawed completely. The government however realised that not only would it be impossible to eliminate the desire for violence, it would also be harmful. To eliminate violence would be to risk eliminating all kinds of socially necessary qualities such as courage and resourcefulness. It would produce a bland conformist society lacking in creativity. And life in such a society would be unsatisfying.

It is important to note that in this story murder is a purely voluntary activity. It is essentially an extreme sport. Both the murderer (the “Hunter”) and the Victim are volunteers. Participants, if they live long enough, alternate between playing the Hunter and Victim roles. A Hunt always ends with a kill but sometimes it is the Victim who is killed and sometimes it’s the Hunter.

Frelaine, the protagonist, has participated in six successful Hunts as both Hunter and Victim. Apart from his enthusiasm for this lethal sport he is a perfectly ordinary well-adjusted citizen. His seventh Hunt as Hunter does not turn out as he expected. To say anything more about the plot would give away spoilers. This is an excellent story with a nice twist and very good very economical world-building - we are told just enough about this future world to get us interested.

Sheckley’s novel The 10th Victim is not just a very expanded version of the short story. It is very much based on the movie, so it’s Sheckley taking his own ideas from his short story and ideas from the writers of the screenplay of the movie. The movie retained all the core ideas of the short story but added a lot of extra touches and some extra characters. The movie changed the names of the two main characters and changed the setting from New York to Rome. The novelisation uses the character names from the movie (Frelaine becomes Marcello Polletti and his adversary in the Hunt becomes Catherine Meredith) and the extra characters from the movie. It is very much a novelisation of the movie, but since the movie was generally faithful to the core idea of the original story the novelisation can be seen as both Sheckley’s creation and the creation of the screenwriters.

In the novel Catherine has completed nine successful Hunts. If she completes her tenth Hunt successfully she becomes a Ten. No-one can compete in more than ten Hunts, but once you become a Ten you gain immense financial, political and social status. For her tenth Hunt she is the Hunter. Marcello is the Victim. This is only his fourth Hunt.

Catherine has a media job so her tenth Hunt is turned into a major media event. As in the short story both the Hunter and the Victim come to have slightly ambivalent feelings about the Hunt since they have both made the mistake of developing some kind of personal connection.

It’s a very witty novel (and that’s true of the film as well). There’s quite a bit of black humour. What’s really interesting is that the novel has no political axe to grind. There is no suggestion whatsoever that this is a totalitarian society. It is neither a purely socialist nor a purely capitalist society. There’s some mockery of big business and the media but there’s mockery of bureaucracy as well. The novel takes no overt stance on the morality of the Hunt. It is not presented as being overtly evil or overtly good. Participation in the Hunts is entirely voluntary. The Hunts do serve a social purpose. Whether that purpose is sufficient to provide a moral justification is left for the reader to decide.

The tone is more absurdist than anything else. The target is not any particular political system but the absurdities of human nature, and of human civilisation. Turning murder into a sport is not a capitalist conspiracy or a socialist conspiracy. It’s just the way people are. We enjoy violence. It satisfies a deep human need. You can create any kind of political utopia but you will never be able to escape from the deep primal needs that drive human behaviour. We want sex, we want love, we want violence, we want money, we want status. We want to dominate and we want to be dominated. We’re an absurd species but it’s our absurdities that make us human.

An excellent amusing eccentric clever novel. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the excellent movie adaptation The 10th Victim (1965) and several of the other movies that deal with the same theme, or variation on the theme, including Joe D’Amato’s Endgame (1983) and Lucio Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984).

Donald E. Westlake’s The Outfit

The Outfit, published in 1963, is the third of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker novels written under the pseudonym Richard Stark.

I’m not going to give away spoilers for the first two novels (although in fact Westlake does so in this novel) but this third book continues Parker’s feud with the organised crime syndicate known as the Outfit.

Parker is not a member of the Outfit (although he did a job for them once). He’s an independent professional thief. That doesn’t mean he’s small-time. His jobs are always major robberies. He’s very successful. He pulls very few jobs because the ones he pulls are very lucrative. In between jobs he lives a life of leisure in Florida.

Now he has a problem. The Outfit seems to have taken out a contract on him. He thought he had resolved his issues with them. Parker is annoyed but far from disconsolate. He has already established his ability to hurt the syndicate badly. Now he will have to hurt them again, to make them see reason.

The Outfit has a weakness. Their security at their various illegal operations is lax. It has never occurred to them that anybody would be crazy enough to try to rob them. That was before they encountered Parker. Parker is crazy enough to do it. Except he isn’t crazy, just stubborn. If Parker has to hurt the Outfit his campaign against them will be meticulously planned and well thought out. He’s a cold calculating professional.

I love the opening of this novel. Parker is in bed with his current woman, Bett. She is not a criminal. He isn’t the slightest bit in love with her but she suits him and she’s good in bed. A gunman breaks into the hotel room and starts shooting. Any normal woman would be terrified. Bett is excited. Parker realises he will have to torture the gunman for information. He finds such things distasteful but he thinks Bett might enjoy it. When he asks her if she would enjoy torturing the gunman she gets very excited. Parker knew there was something about this girl that he liked. We are definitely in Parker’s world.

There’s another early scene, involving two brothers and a woman, which is just so incredibly Parker-ish.

This is not a straightforward heist story. Rather it is a whole series of heists. Parker’s campaign against the Outfit is based on persuading other independent professional criminals to start raiding Outfit operations. Each of these robberies is a perfect heist story in miniature.

Parker comes up against some old foes in the Outfit, foes who might be thinking they have a score to settle with him. They still haven’t quite realised that they’re up against a very smart guy who thinks out his moves well in advance. Parker has survived a long time as a professional criminal. He knows that if you rely solely on being fast with a gun or your fists you won’t last long. You have to play it smart, and not react emotionally. Parker approaches his conflict with the Outfit more like a game of poker than a bar-room brawl. He’s a tough guy but that’s not what makes him such a fascinating character.

Parker is a full-blown anti-hero. He is ruthless and amoral and apparently emotionless. He has been misunderstood as having no redeeming qualities. That’s not quite true. If necessary he will kill without hesitation and without remorse. On the other hand he never kills without a reason and he never kills for pleasure. He is very careful not to kill innocent bystanders.

In this story he has a woman. He knows that eventually he will have to get rid of her, but getting rid of her does not mean killing her. It just means giving her the brush-off as cleanly and painlessly as possible. He has no intention of killing her. That would be cruel. Parker, despite his serious character flaws, is not a cruel man.

And despite those flaws the reader is going to be on Parker’s side. He’s just so super-cool.

It’s a tough cynical book. Very entertaining. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the excellent first Parker novel, The Hunter (AKA Point Blank) and the second, The Man with the Getaway Face. You do have to read this series in order. You also need to see the 1967 movie Point Blank, based on the first novel.

Jack Sharkey’s The Secret Martians

Jack Sharkey’s science fiction novel The Secret Martians was written in 1960.

Jack Sharkey (1931-1992) was a prolific American playwright. He also wrote a lot of science fiction short stories, mostly between 1959 and 1965. He published a few novels with The Secret Martians being one of his few novels in the science fiction genre.

The setting would appear to be the mid to late 21st century. Jery Devlin works in advertising. His current assignment is to persuade American women that Plasti-Flex bras will make them irresistible to men. Jery has a particular talent that has made him a success in advertising. Advertising is of course based entirely on lies and misleading claims. Jery has an uncanny ability to spot lies and misleading or false information. He can spot things that just don’t add up or don’t ring true. If Jery can spot the lie in a piece of advertising copy in less than five seconds the copy is rejected, but if it can fool Jery for five seconds it will fool the general public indefinitely.

This skill is about to become important in a completely different context. Jery has been chosen by Interplanetary Security (IS) for a secret mission. Or rather he has been chosen by the Brain, the super-advanced computer on which IS relies. Jery has no experience in secret agent work but the Brain has decided that that skill of his makes him the only man for the job. Jery is given a little disc known as an Amnesty. This disc gives him unlimited authority. It’s not just a licence to kill, it’s a licence to do anything at all that he considers necessary.

Jery is sent to Mars on a rescue mission. On his journey to the red planet Jery acquires a travelling companion, Snow White. No, not that Snow White. This Snow White is just a regular human, albeit a very blonde and very pretty young female human. His meeting with Snow White was no accident.

The mission involves a missing party of Space Scouts. They’re like space age Boy Scouts. They were on a trip to Mars which was a kind of PR stunt on behalf of Earth’s government. They simply vanished from the spaceship Phobos II. Vanished in totally impossible circumstances. Jery solves that mystery very quickly but it leads to a whole series of other mysteries and conspiracies and counter-conspiracies.

Jery discovers that all sorts of things that people have taken for granted about Mars are not necessarily true. In fact all sorts of things that people have taken for granted about various subjects Mars might not be strictly true. Everyone knew about the Sugarfeet. They’re a Martian life form resembling smallish crystalline dragons. They’re dumb and harmless. There had been another much more advanced Martian race but they’re long since extinct, leaving behind only a few ruins. Everyone knew about parabolite, a common Martian rock that is potentially immensely valuable that is impossible to exploit.

There are at least four different factions which might intend to kill Jery. Or they might see him as a potential ally. There are shifting alliances and betrayals. Each faction has an agenda, but their agendas seem to be changeable. Jery can’t trust anyone other than Snow White. He is sure he can trust her. Of course Jery admits that he is absolutely hopeless about women.

The plots and counter-plots get more and more convoluted but they’re certainly ingenious.

As you might expect in a tale with a heroine named Snow White there’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek vibe. It’s a wild crazy romp of a story.

There are cool very alien-like aliens. There’s some action. Jery is not your standard square-jawed action hero. He’s not much of an action hero at all. But he does have that ability to spot the true meanings behind things, to see beneath the surface of the obvious. And an ability to tease out the tangled motives of others. He’s likeable enough. Snow White is a fairly feisty heroine.

There’s some amusing technobabble. I have no idea how much of a grounding in science the author possessed but he had enough to make his technobabble sound vaguely plausible and it is undeniably clever. There’s some wild pseudo-science and fringe science and it’s worked into the book’s plot rather nicely.

The Secret Martians is fast-moving and entertaining with enough solid science fiction content to make it much more than just an adventure story set on Mars. Highly recommended.

This novel is paired with Secret of the Flaming Ring by Rog Phillips in an Armchair Fiction double-header paperback edition.

Robert Silverberg's Killer

Killer is a 1965 sleaze/noir novel by Robert Silverberg which has been reissued by Stark House in their Black Gat Books imprint. In the 50s and 60s there were a lot of novels, most of them paperback originals, that straddled the worlds of sleaze fiction and noir fiction. Some were noir with a side order of sleaze. Some were sleaze with a side order of noir. Killer definitely falls into the latter category.

The fact that the novel was originally called Passion Killer and written under the pseudonym Don Elliott (which Silverberg used for his prolific output of sleaze fiction) and that it was published by Corinth Books tends to support this assumption. It was clearly aimed at the sleaze fiction market.

A rich middle-aged man, Howard Gorman, wants his wife killed. He will then marry his much younger and very hot mistress Marie. He hires hitman Lee Floyd to do the job. It should be a straightforward hit but things get complicated. For one thing Marie is having an affair with her friend Dolores. Lee Floyd picks up a girl. There’s a private eye mixed up somewhere in here as well.

You might think there’d be potential here for double-crosses and you’d be right. You might also think there’d be potential here for various emotional and sexual betrayals and again you’d be correct.

Marie certainly doesn’t love Howard but he’s rich and the idea of marrying money appeals to her. Marie likes money. Of course she enjoys her bedroom romps with her gal pal Dolores too much to have any intention of remaining faithful to Howard.

Most of the novel consists of endless sexual encounters. You have to admire Marie’s stamina. Her sexual appetites are prodigious. Lee Floyd has plenty of energy in the bedroom as well. And Dolores is no slouch either. The sex scenes are lengthy but not at all graphic (in fact they’re a bit tame by 1965 standards).

This doesn’t leave much space for the noir plot. There is definitely a noir plot here. It’s not wildly original and it’s not overly complex but it is there.

The major weakness is Lee Floyd. Silverberg does a fine job letting us know what kind of man he is and what makes him tick. Then suddenly halfway though the novel Floyd starts doing things that are totally and wildly out of character, for no good reason. It doesn’t ring true. Given that Lee Floyd is more or less the noir protagonist here that’s a real problem.

You do have to keep in mind that Silverberg churned these sleaze novels out astonishingly quickly. If you wanted to make money from this sort of writing you needed to be prolific. Silverberg was extremely prolific and he made a very comfortable living from his sleaze novels. Given that this novel would have been written very very quickly it’s no surprise that it feels a bit like a first draft. Essentially it is a first draft. You sit down at your typewriter and write and once you’re finished you put the manuscript in an envelope and post it off. You then wait for your cheque to arrive. You don’t bother revising. You won’t get paid any extra if you spend time polishing and revising.

There is for example the subplot involving the private detective. It just doesn’t go anywhere or serve any purpose but I guess Silverberg figured that there should be a private detective in the story.

There are so many sex scenes that the crime plot never has the chance to develop much momentum or sense of urgency.

On the plus side the novel has a fairly decent femme fatale. It also has a scuzzy cynical vibe. All of the characters are worthless human beings. They’re right at home in the noir universe. There’s the right atmosphere of desperation and sordidness. There is just enough here to indicate that, had he really put his mind to it, Silverberg could have written a fine noir novel.

Sadly Killer just isn’t all that good. As noir it doesn’t quite make it although it has a few good moments. As sleaze fiction it’s OK but Silverberg wrote much better sleaze novels, such as his excellent 1959 Gang Girl. Killer is maybe worth a look but don’t set your expectations too high.

Perley Poore Sheehan’s Woman of the Pyramid

Perley Poore Sheehan’s novel Woman of the Pyramid was published in The All-Story pulp magazine in 1914.

Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798 had first sparked western interest in ancient Egypt and by 1914 Egyptology had become quite a craze. This novel was therefore very topical.

In the days before the First World War a young American named George Carlton is a bit of a scientific dilettante. He’s trained in psychology and psychiatry but his real interest lies in the occult and in what would later come to be known as the paranormal. He’s very interested in ghosts.

As an aside, at that time such interests still had at least a degree of scientific respectability and plausibility.

Carlton is in love with a pretty English girl named Alice Wentworth. Wedding bells would seem to be in the offing. In the meantime Carlton, Alice and her aunt are off to Egypt. Carlton already has a very keen interest in ancient Egypt.

Carlton is a little disturbed by the mysterious woman he keeps seeing. No-one else seems to be able to see her. He suspects that she’s a ghost of some sort. He also suspects that she’s connected to ancient Egypt in some ways. He thinks of her as the Woman of the Pyramid.

He becomes a little obsessed. He enters the famous Red Pyramid (the third largest of the pyramids) and there he encounters the Woman of the Pyramid again. It’s a fateful meeting. Carlton finds himself back in the distant past. The Woman of the Pyramid is the queen, Netokris, recently widowed. And Carton is no longer Carlton. He is now Menni, an important man, governor of the royal palace in fact. It seems that the queen sees him as a potential husband.

Menni isn’t interested. He’s in love with slave girl Berenice, who is in fact Alice Wentworth. Netokris is a woman who doesn’t take no for an answer. She’s ruthless, cruel and inclined to act on whims. She decides that Berenice is a rival whose existence cannot be tolerated.

There are various palace conspiracies afoot and while Carlton/Menni doesn’t want to get mixed up in them it might be the only way to save Berenice/Alice, and his own skin.

A possible ally is the priest and sorcerer Baknik. Baknik has various occult powers including the power to foretell the future. The future he predicts for Carlton/Menni and Berenice/Alice is a case of good news and bad news. His predictions of the queen’s future are not entirely hopeful either. All of the characters feel themselves to be the playthings of Fate.

This might at first seem to be a time travel story but it’s more of a past lives story. The question is the extent to which events in one life will affect their next life.

It’s also very much a love story.

Most of the story takes place in ancient Egypt but the final quarter of the book brings Carlton back to the 20th century, where the same three people seem destined to replay the events of the past. The past lives thing is done quite well here with the past lives and present lives intersecting neatly.

I don’t think Sheehan was overly obsessed with historical accuracy but the background is at least vaguely historical. Netokris probably existed and may possibly have been responsible for building the Red Pyramid. Some plot points are lifted from the account of her reign by Herodotus.

If the past lives thing appeals to you and you have any kind of interest in ancient Egypt and you happen to enjoy pulp adventure/romance then this novel will tick all your boxes. I enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

Woman of the Pyramid has reprinted in a paperback omnibus edition (including three other stories by the same author) by Steeger Books in their excellent Argosy Library series.

I've also reviewed another of Sheehan's novels, The Red Road to Shamballah. It's pretty good also.

Jimmy Sangster's Touchfeather

Touchfeather is a 1968 spy thriller by Jimmy Sangster which slots neatly into the “glamorous sexy lady spy” sub-genre. And I do so love that sub-genre.

Jimmy Sangster (1927-2011) had an incredibly successful and impressive career as a screenwriter. He wrote a huge number of movies from Hammer, including most of their best early films. He had some success also a novelist although that side of his writing career tends to get overlooked.

Sangster wrote a number of spy novels, including the two Touchfeather novels.

Katy Touchfeather is an air hostess (to call her a flight attendant would be silly and anachronistic). At least that’s her cover. She’s actually a spy (or perhaps counter-spy) working for a very hush-hush British intelligence agency run by a Mr Blaser.

There’s a security leak at a research establishment and a Professor Bill Partnam is under suspicion. Partnam is off to Bombay to read some scientific papers at a conference and Katy’s job is to watch him and find the necessary evidence if he’s passing secrets on to The Other Side. Katy will be the air hostess on his flight to India. She doesn’t think she’ll have much trouble getting close to the Professor. She’s right about that. They quickly end up in bed together.

That’s no problem. Mr Blaser won’t have any objections to that. She does however fall in love with Bill, and Mr Blaser would not approve of that at all. Katy is aware that her emotions are interfering with her judgment. She just can’t believe that Bill could be a traitor. And of course he might not be, but Katy isn’t thinking too clearly where Bill is concerned.

The whole mission starts to fall apart. Katy is going to have some explaining to do to Mr Blaser. To be fair it’s not all Katy’s fault. The whole mission was ill-conceived.

The case is not over yet. Katy is drawn back into it, and once again her personal life and her professional life get all mixed up together.

In the course of this adventure Katy discovers just how dangerous flying can be. And just how dangerous spying can be.

The plot is a nicely constructed web of tangled motives and deceits, and self-deceit. It all leads up to an an absolute corker of an ending. It’s a bit of shock but if you’ve been paying attention you’ll realise that it’s the only possible ending.

We get some backstory on Katy, which explains how she came to be a spy. It also explains why she’s willing to kill in the line of duty, and why she has absolutely no qualms about doing so.

Any English author creating a glamorous lady spy in 1968 was inevitably going to be influenced to some extent by Cathy Gale and Emma Peel, and especially by Modesty Blaise. Katy, like Modesty, has an active sex life. She likes sex, and she likes men. She genuinely likes men, and like Modesty Blaise she gets emotionally involved. Katy isn’t excessively promiscuous. Three regular boyfriends at a time is enough for her. Of course she sleeps with other men occasionally as well. Unlike Modesty Blaise, she does allow her emotional life to interfere with the job.

Katy doesn’t have the psychological, emotional and moral complexity of Modesty Blaise but she does have some complexity.

There is a slight Len Deighton influence at work. There are touches of cynicism and you don’t want to put too much faith in authority figures, or in the rich and powerful. Sangster isn’t trying to be terribly cerebral but he is trying to write a book that is more than just a potboiler. And he succeeds. It all turns out to be a very satisfying spy thriller indeed, with some real punch to it. Very highly recommended.

The good news is that Touchfeather is in print, from Brash Books, and apparently without the text having been tampered with.

Richard Stark's The Man with the Getaway Face

Donald E. Westlake wrote 24 novels, under the pseudonym Richard Stark, featuring his anti-hero Parker. The Man with the Getaway Face was the second in the series, appearing in 1963.

These are definitely hardboiled crime novels (very hardboiled) but they don’t qualify as noir fiction.

Parker is one of the great anti-heroes in fiction. He’s a career criminal specialising in large-scale robberies and he’s unstoppable because he simply doesn’t consider the possibility of losing. If a job does go sour Parker just moves on.

This novel opens with Parker getting a new face, a necessity after the events of the first Parker novel (and I'm not going to reveal even a hint of a spoiler for that one). The plastic surgery has depleted Parker’s funds somewhat so he agrees to do an armoured car job with Skimm. Skimm’s girlfriend Alma came up with the plan.

Parker doesn’t trust Alma and he doesn’t like her plan. Right from the start he has no doubt that Alma is planning a double cross. But Parker really does need money urgently so he’s prepared to do the job. He’s sure he knows exactly how Alma intends to execute her double cross and he’s confident he can take appropriate steps. He’s also confident that he can make sufficient changes to her plan to make the job viable.

Interestingly the heist is not the real focus of the novel. The real focus is entirely unconnected with the heist. It concerns that plastic surgery job.

The heist itself provides some excitement and suspense but the real suspense kicks in afterwards. In a lot of crime stories it’s the betrayals that come after the crime that are the meat of the story but that’s not the case here. There really are two entirely separate plots running in parallel.

Anti-heroes don’t come much more ruthless and coldblooded than Parker. He is incapable of feeling remorse or regret. He cares about other people only insofar as they are useful to him. He will kill without hesitation. He will use whatever level of violence he considers necessary.

Parker’s mind is icily logical. Emotion is never allowed to interfere with his plans.

He should be a monster, and human monsters are rarely interesting. Parker does however have a couple of redeeming qualities. He kills only when he feels it is necessary. He uses violence only when he feels it is necessary. He gets no pleasure from violence. It’s not that he has a conscience. He simply sees unnecessary violence as inefficient, wasteful and risky. He might be incapable of feeling genuine human affection but he is also incapable of actual cruelty.

He is also, in his own way, an honest crook. If you’re involved in a job with Parker and you play things straight with him he’ll play things straight with you. He won’t consider double crossing someone unless he knows for sure that that person has double crossed him.

Parker has no illusions about women and has no intention of ever getting emotionally involved but he has no actual dislike of women. In fact he has no actual personal dislike of anybody. That would be a distraction and it would be inefficient.

And there was a woman once, and he still thinks about her. Once, just once, he experienced something resembling a normal human emotion.

All of this means that despite his extreme anti-hero status the reader finds it impossible to hate Parker. We feel a certain grudging admiration. He’s an unapologetic ruthless criminal but we can’t help hoping he gets away with his crimes.

There are indications in this book that by this time Westlake knew he had found a winning formula and that there were going to be more Parker novels to come.

The Man with the Getaway Face is great hardboiled crime. Highly recommended.

I've also reviewed the first Parker novel The Hunter (AKA Point Blank).

Scott C.S. Stone's The Dragon’s Eye

The Dragon’s Eye is a 1969 spy thriller by Scott C.S. Stone published by Fawcett in their Gold Medal series. I’m afraid I know nothing about the author other than that he had certainly spent time in the Far East.

This is an amateur spy tale. Michael Hawkins is a reporter covering the war in Vietnam. When his best friend, a fellow war correspondent, is killed in the fighting Hawkins decides he has had enough. He’s getting out of Asia and he’s going home. He gets as far as Hawaii and falls in love with the place. He’s going to settle down and write a book. And maybe get his chaotic love life in some sort of order.

Then an old buddy, Leslie Trent, shows up. Trent is now a spook. The mysterious intelligence agency for which he works wants Hawkins to do a job for them. Hawkins is informed that he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

An English journalist, Malcolm Leigh, has become rather a big wheel in the Red Chinese hierarchy. He’s an intelligence analyst but he’s highly placed politically. Now he’s considering defecting to the West. And he won’t negotiate with anyone but Michael Hawkins.

Leigh’s defection is not going to be a simple matter. The Chinese don’t know that he plans to defect but they do know that something is up, and they know that Leslie Trent and Michael Hawkins are involved. Hawkins’ cover is blown right from the start. And the Chinese do not entirely trust Malcolm Leigh and they never have.

A further complication is that Leigh wants to bring his Chinese girlfriend Choy-Lin with him to the West. Getting two people out will be more difficult than just getting one out.

And then Trent’s contacts start getting killed. What’s worse is the strong probability that at leas one of them talked before being killed. The Chinese intelligence services do not know the exact plan that Trent and Hawkins have in mind but they’re now in a position to make some shrewd guesses.

Most of the book is taken up by an extended chase through South-East Asia. Trent, Hawkins, Leigh and Choy-Lin are never more than a short step ahead of their pursuers. It’s also the middle of the monsoon season. And everything that could go wrong seems to go wrong.

There’s a fair amount of action and suspense.

The plot is really a fairly standard defector plot. It’s handled with some skill and there is one extra complication (which I can’t reveal for fear of spoilers) that adds a slight touch of originality.

Hawkins is a typical amateur spy. He doesn’t want to be killed and he doesn’t want to kill anybody. He just wants to go back to Honolulu and resume work on his book. He’s moderately brave and moderately resourceful. He’s not cut out to be a spy but he does his best. He’s likeable enough. He’s just a regular guy.

There’s no one particular villain who stands out. The bad guys are rather anonymous which is probably a lot more realistic.

Malcolm Leigh is the most interesting character because he has complex and contradictory motivations.

The author offers us some background on the workings of the Chinese intelligence services although whether any of this stuff is accurate is a question I can’t answer.

The Dragon’s Eye makes good use of exotic settings and captures the severely paranoid flavour of the Cold War, and the paranoid treacherous world of espionage, pretty well.

The Dragon’s Eye is a solid pulp spy thriller. Recommended.

The House of Invisible Bondage

Between 1912 and 1934 American authors J. U. Giesy (1877-1947) and Junius B. Smith (1883-1945) wrote a whole series of novels, short stories and novellas featuring the exploits of occult detective Semi Dual. These were serialised in various pulp magazines. The House of Invisible Bondage was serialised in Argosy in 1926.

Semi Dual is a physician but he is also a student of various forms of esoteric knowledge including astrology. He has some limited telepathic abilities. He is a rich man who lives in luxurious and tasteful seclusion in a penthouse above the 20th floor of an apartment house. He has a passionate devotion to the righting of wrongs and a keen interest in crime-solving. He does not operate directly as a private detective but he has persuaded two trusted associates, Glace and Bryce, to set up a private detective agency. When a case interests Semi Dual he allows Glace and Bryce to do the legwork and the routine investigation while he directs things from the background, making use not just of his knowledge of esoteric lore but also his keen understanding of human psychology.

Semi Dual knows that Marya Harding is about to ask for his help. He has no way of knowing this, but he knows it nonetheless. Sure enough a few hours later she shows up seeking help. The help is actually for her friend Moira. Moira’s fiancé Imer Lamb has just been arrested for launching a murderous attack on his valet. It makes no sense. Imer is a healthy, outgoing thoroughly cheerful and good-natured young man. He has no serious vices. His valet is devoted to him and relations between master and servant have always been easy-going and cordial.

Nonetheless Imer is now behind bars. And it’s worse than that. The police surgeon has decided that he is an incurable homicidal maniac. Imer Lamb is likely to spend the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum. In the short term his brother has managed to get him admitted to a private psychiatric clinic.

Semi Dual agrees that this is extremely curious and once he has cast the young man’s horoscope he perceives that the case is much more complex and much more devious. He does not yet know what is behind it all but he does know that Imer Lamb is not a murderous madman.

There are family dramas involved, a has-been Hollywood starlet comes into the picture, there are questions of inheritance, there are various financial entanglements of a dubious nature and there is also the screaming woman at the clinic. On top of this there is another inexplicable outburst of violence, not on the part of Imer Lamb but involving someone closely connected to him.

Semi Dual is a patient man. He may not know the identity of the guilty party but he is weaving a web and that guilty party will inevitably become entangled in it. Semi Dual’s patience is matched by his confidence.

It’s a solid enough plot. The paranormal and occult elements are important and add some spice and flavour but they don’t overwhelm the story. Good old-fashioned detective skills are still required. And the story doesn’t rely on supernatural evil - this is a tale of very human evils such as greed and jealousy.

Semi Dual makes a fascinating hero. In his speech and behaviour he comes across like some kind of medieval wizard. He seems out of place in the world of the 1920s but in fact he is also a man of science and reason.

Bryce is a fun character - a hardboiled ex-cop who is nonetheless a true believer in Semi Dual’s mysterious powers. Moira is a likeable heroine who is determined to stand by the man she loves. There are several villains but they’re not necessarily motivated by pure evil. In this story it’s human weakness that drives people to act badly.

It’s all very entertaining and if (like me) you love occult detective stories you should be well satisfied. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed The Complete Cabalistic Cases of Semi Dual, volume 1, which contains the first three Semi Dual novellas. Most of the Semi Dual stories have now been reprinted in paperback by Steeger Books in their Argosy Library series.