Clyde Allison's Have Nude, Will Travel

The sleaze fiction of the 50s and 60s embraced everything from grim noirish tales to romance to comedy. Of those who wrote comic sleaze fiction the best by far was William Knoles (1926-1970).

Have Nude, Will Travel, published in 1962 under the pseudonym Clyde Allison, is typical of his crazy sexy comic romps.

Jake O’Day is a pilot with a knack for getting himself into absurd and embarrassing predicaments. The most embarrassing was the time he thought he was transporting forty-eight harem girls belonging to an important shiekh. The girls turned out not to be girls at all but soldiers employed by the sheikh to stage a coup. Since they were covered from head to foot poor Jake had no way of knowing these were not harem girls. Jake ended up making a forced landing in a neighbouring Middle Eastern country and spending three months behind bars.

As a result of this misadventure Jake earned a totally underserved reputation as a ruthless mercenary leader.

And that’s what led oil tycoon Mr Tamerlane to employ his services. Tamerlane has had his prospective new employee thoroughly investigated and he is well aware that Jake’s reputation as a glamorous soldier of fortune is totally phoney. It turns out that what Tamerlane wants is a phoney soldier of fortune. Tamerlane’s 18-year-old son Sam is neurotic and lives in a dream world. He has decided he wants to be a soldier of fortune. Tamerlane’s plan is to employ Jake to get Sam into some mercenary adventures but what Jake has to do is to make sure these adventures are entirely fake and entirely safe. Tamerlane Sr hopes that this will get all that soldier of fortune daydream nonsense out of Sam’s system and the young man will then be content to go into Daddy’s oil business.

Jake think it’s a crazy idea but Tamerlane offers him an enormous amount of money, so he accepts the offer.

The problem is that Jake knows nothing whatever about being a soldier of fortune and has no idea how to provide Sam with a safe fake adventure. Then Jake gets a brainwave. Why not hire a scriptwriter to come up with some ideas? He can easily persuade Tamerlane to pay the writer lots of money. His friend Barnaby was a writer on a TV series about mercenaries and he likes money so he agrees.

Jake and Sam then become in effect characters in Barnaby’s story. Barnaby sends them off to exotic places and hires actors to play the parts of the kinds of dangerous shady characters that soldiers of fortune would be likely to encounter. Sam is enjoying himself but Jake worries a little. He’s not keen on being shot at, even if he knows it’s only actors shooting at him.

The idea seems to be working but then the plot twists kick in.

There’s plenty of sleaze. Sam takes being a soldier of fortune very seriously and avoids smoking, liquor and sex but Jake is happy to entertain himself with the various women Barnaby provides to play the parts of ex-crazed femmes fatales. Jake has a lot of fun with the twins. They teach him quite a few new tricks.

Jake also has fun with Sugar. She’s a cute blonde girl whom Barnaby keeps as a sort of pet. She doesn’t speak but she giggles a lot and she proves to be very affectionate. So affectionate that she almost exhausts poor Jake.

The sex is moderately steamy by 1962 standards. There’s very little violence. There is a great deal of humour and the novel is genuinely funny.

The basic plot idea is clever and it’s developed with skill and wit.

Incidentally the cover suggests that this is going to be a private eye spoof but there are no private eyes in the story at all.

Have Nude, Will Travel is lots of fun. Highly recommended.

I highly recommend all of William Knoles/Clyde Alison’s sleaze novels. They're all rather ingenious. I’ve reviewed a number of them including Shame Market (very funny), Sexperiment and one of his Agent 0008 spy sleaze/spy spoof books, Gamefinger (which is terrific).

Peter O’Donnell’s I, Lucifer (Modesty Blaise #3)

I, Lucifer was the third of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise novels. It appeared in 1967.

Modesty Blaise of course started life as a comic strip character, created by O’Donnell in 1963. He was hired to write the screenplay for the Modesty Blaise movie, which ended up not being used for the movie. But even before the movie was released O’Donnell had produced a novelisation of the screenplay which was published in 1965 as Modesty Blaise and was hugely successful (in fact a lot more successful than the movie).

O’Donnell eventually wrote eleven Modesty Blaise novels plus two short story collections, while continuing to write the comic strip.

Modesty Blaise was certainly not the first kickass action heroine. Honey West predates her by several years - the first Honey West novel, This Girl for Hire, appeared in 1956. And by the time the Modesty Blaise comic was launched Cathy Gale had already exploded onto the small screen in The Avengers.

What made Modesty Blaise so intriguing is that she was not just a kickass action heroine. She also belonged to the tradition of the gentleman rogue hero. The most famous such hero is of course Leslie Charteris’s Simon Templar, the Saint. The Saint had several precursors and lots of imitators. What makes Modesty Blaise so very interesting is that she was not just the first lady rogue acton heroine, she is still just about the only representative of that species.

And Modesty has a great deal in common with Simon Templar. Both became exceedingly rich by being very successful criminals. Both more or less retired from crime to become crime-fighters. Both have worked unofficially for the British intelligence services. Both occupy a socially ambiguous position. Simon Templar can pass as a gentleman but he isn’t really one. Modesty can pass as a lady but she isn’t really one. They are able to move in the highest social circles but they remain outsiders. Both are charming, sexy and dangerous. Both tend not to worry too much about conforming to conventional standards of morality. Both have a definite streak of ruthlessness. Both are unapologetic about their criminal pasts. Modesty Blaise is to a large extent a female Simon Templar.

The adventure with which I, Lucifer is concerned isn’t really Modesty’s business, but she makes it her business (which is exactly Simon Templar’s approach to life). Someone tries to kill a friend of hers, a man highly placed in the French intelligence community. Modesty tends to get annoyed by that sort of thing. She has a word to Sir Gerald Tarrant, a man very highly placed in a British counter-espionage agency for whom she often works totally unofficially. And she discovers that something very strange is going on. Someone is running a protection racket, but an unusual one. Those who don’t pay up die, but they die of natural causes.

The reader already knows that Lucifer has something to do with his. No, not that Lucifer, the real one, but a very disturbed young man who is convinced that he is Lucifer. He has a very unusual ability, which eventually explains how that unconventional protection racket is worked. That ability possessed by the young man is being used by a criminal mastermind.

Modesty and her partner-in-crime (now her partner in crimefighting) Willie Garvin finally manage to infiltrate this criminal organisation and a great deal of mayhem ensues. There are quite a few complications. Modesty has been having a rather pleasant love affair with a young fellow named Stephen. Stephen is a bit of an innocent and somehow he has become involved in this criminal conspiracy.

This novel deals with the paranormal, in this case precognition. You do have to remember that this was 1967, a time when the paranormal was still moderately scientifically respectable. The paranormal was not a concept that was confined merely to genres like science fiction and fantasy. It would pop up from time to time in spy fiction. In fact at that time some of the crazier real-life intelligence agencies such as the C.I.A. took things like telepathy quite seriously.

And this paranormal aspect is used quite skilfully. The way the protection racket works is clever. The paranormal powers possessed by Lucifer have serious limits. They do not make him invulnerable nor do they make the criminal gag unbeatable. That’s normally the biggest single disadvantage of magic, super-powers or paranormal powers in fiction - they make either the hero or the villain seem too formidable.

And Lucifer is an intriguing charter. He’s a nice young man who just happens to believe that he is the Prince of Darkness. Modesty rather likes him.

During the course of this case Modesty will have to consider whether she’s prepared to (literally) get into bed with the Devil. She decides that she’s done worse things, and he is very good-looking.

The novel doesn’t stint when it comes to action. If you want unarmed combat, gunplay, knife fights and explosions you’ll be well satisfied. There are sinister insane villains (who are much more sinister and insane than Lucifer).

And then there are Pluto and Belial, and they add another touch of outrageousness to the story.

There’s no graphic sex but there’s a casual acceptance of the idea that people do have sex. Modesty likes sex. She’s by no means obsessed with it, but she does enjoy it.

Like the two earlier novels in the series I, Lucifer is clever, witty and great fun. Highly recommended.

To Russia With Lust - The Lady from L.U.S.T. #6

To Russia With Lust is the sixth of the Lady from L.U.S.T. sexy spy thrillers written by Gardner Francis Fox (1911-1986) using the pseudonym Rod Gray. It was published in 1968.

Eve Drum is an ace agent for an ultra-secret U.S. intelligence agency, L.U.S.T. (the League of Undercover Spies and Terrorists). Her latest mission requires her to break into the Soviet Embassy to steal a code book. Her theft is going smoothly until she realises there’s something going on in the adjoining bedroom. What’s going on is that a senior Soviet diplomat is having some bedroom fun with a gorgeous brunette named Magda. While they’re coupling the girl steals a notebook from the diplomat.

Eve figures the notebook is probably worth stealing as well. So of course she steals it.

Later that evening when she meets up with her controller she discovers that she hit the jackpot. The diplomat is Serge Akonov, and he’s important. The notebook is much more important. It contains the whereabouts of a fabulous fortune which Rommel tried to ship out of North Africa in 1943. The treasure is five billion dollars in gold bullion. Of course the bullion was stolen but the U.S. Government now decides it wants to steal that bullion. The idea of returning the gold to its rightful owners doesn’t occur to anyone.

Eve’s job is to get further information out of Akonov and if possible persuade him to defect. She doesn’t know how she’s going to do that but she figures that seducing him will be a good start. Seducing men is one of Eve’s special skills. Eve has seen Serge Akonov in action in the bedroom and she was mightily impressed by his sexual prowess. Seducing him should be very pleasant. Mixing sex with duty is one of the things that makes Eve love her job as a spy so much.

Before Akonov can be seduced it will be necessary to rescue Magda. She’s about to be executed for pilfering that notebook. So Eve pulls off a daring underwater rescue.

Seducing Akonov is easy. Eve poses as a guide for an exhibition of American art in Leningrad and makes sure she attracts lots of publicity by wearing scandalously revealing outfits. That should attract Akonov like a Pooh Bear to a honey pot, and it does. He is so taken by her that he invites her to an orgy. Eve likes orgies.

Persuading him to defect will be less easy, until she comes across something that will be the perfect lever. Of course then she has to get him out of the Soviet Union and the KGB is likely to make that rather difficult.

Finding that treasure proves be a challenge as well. It turns out that knowing where it’s supposed to be isn’t enough.

Fox had a solid formula worked out for both his Lady from L.U.S.T. and Cherry Delight thrillers. Get your heroine naked as often as possible, feature lots of moderately graphic (but not too graphic) sex and include plenty of thrilling violent action scenes. And make sure it all moves along at a breakneck pace. But most importantly, make sure that despite all the sex the book still works as an exciting spy thriller. Make sure to include all the required spy fiction ingredients - double-crosses, betrayals, divided loyalties. Include lots of fight scenes and gunplay and explosions. Include cool gadgets.

In this case the formula works perfectly. We get helicopters battling ships, assassins running about everywhere, underwater action scenes, rocket backpacks and then there’s Eve’s secret weapon. I won’t tell you where she hides it.

In between all the spy action Eve still finds time to have plenty of sex. She has plenty of energy. And she’s a very imaginative girl and she’s always wiling to expand her knowledge base. The sex is described in an engagingly lighthearted cheerful way and is never graphic.

I’ve previously reviewed the first two Lady from L.U.S.T. books Lust, Be a Lady Tonight and Lay Me Odds as well as the first Cherry Delight book, The Italian Connection. They’re all great fun.

To Russia With Lust is high-octane entertainment. Sexy but good-natured and with a perfectly serviceable spy thriller plot. Not to be taken too seriously, but still highly recommended.

Mickey Spillane’s The Delta Factor

Mickey Spillane’s 1967 novel The Delta Factor introduced his series character Morgan the Raider. In fact it was the only Morgan the Raider book to be completed by Spillane. A second, The Consummata, was completed many years later by Max Allan Collins.

Morgan (he doesn’t admit to having a first name but he’s gained the sobriquet Morgan the Raider) is a thief. He shares a name with history’s most famous pirate, and he shares quite a few of that buccaneer’s attitudes as well. Morgan is a thief on the grand scale. His most recent heist netted him forty million dollars. At least that’s what the authorities assume. He was caught but that didn’t bother him too much. He’s pulled more prison breaks than you’ve had hot dinners. And sure enough shortly after beginning his prison term he escaped again.

Escaped, only to be recaptured due to pure bad luck.

Now as the story proper begins he’s facing the prospect of serving the remaining thirty years of his sentence. Then he’s offered a deal by the government. They need someone with his unique skills, specifically his ability to escape from maximum security prisons. Morgan expects that the government will try to double-cross him. We are talking about the government after all. And he has no patriotic feelings whatsoever. He accepts the deal because he figures that he can probably double-cross the government more effectively than they can double-cross him.

The job he has to do involves breaking a scientist out of an impregnable 17th century fortress in a small Caribbean nation.

He is assigned a partner. He’s horrified. He has always been a loner. Then he discovers that the government agent assigned to him is a beautiful young woman named Kim. He decides that having a partner might not be so bad. And their cover story is that they’re newlyweds on honeymoon. That means they’ll have to share a bedroom. The idea sounds better and better to Morgan. Kim makes it clear that there’ll be no hanky-panky but Morgan is confident that he’ll be able to change her mind.

Morgan’s first step is to try to find out how he got recaptured. Someone fingered him, and he’d like to know the identity of that person. There are some other things he’d like to know as well. This sets up a major subplot and also provides Morgan with the kind of motivation that always appealed to Spillane - personal vengeance. A hooker provides him with information and she is murdered. She might have been a whore but she was a really nice girl, and Morgan doesn’t like seeing nice girls get murdered.

The basic concept, a master thief offered a deal if he agrees to do espionage work for the government, isn’t wildly original. And a year later it would be used as the basis for one of the best American TV spy series of the 60s, It Takes a Thief. It’s more than possible that the creators of the series borrowed the idea from Spillane’s novel.

Morgan soon discovers that this tiny Caribbean nation is thoroughly corrupt. It’s run by a dictator named Ortega. He has a brutal secret police chief named Sabin to keep the populace in line.

Morgan doesn’t care about politics but he does care about people and he has a soft spot for women. Women like Lisa Gordot. Lisa has run into major problems with Sabin. She can’t leave the island because Sabin has her passport. Sabin intends to keep tightening the screws on Lisa until she agrees to sleep with him. Lisa isn’t what most people would call a virtuous woman. She’s not exactly honest and while she isn’t a whore she has been known to make profitable use of her body. But Morgan likes her. And not just because she’s sexually available. Morgan isn’t exactly a model of moral rectitude himself and he feels a certain kinship for charming grifters like Lisa. And he really hates seeing women treated badly, even women like Lisa.

The last thing Morgan needs is to get mixed up in political dramas but on this island he finds that while he isn’t interested in politics, politics is interested in him.

To make things more awkward there’s a hurricane on the way. He has to get that scientist out of the fortress and make his escape and time is against him.

It takes a while for the real action to kick in but when it does it’s more than satisfactory. There’s a good deal of bloodletting, and plenty of narrow escapes.

Morgan isn’t just a variation on Mike Hammer. For a big-time career criminal he’s quite a soft-hearted easy-going guy. He’ll kill if he has to, but he tries to avoid it as much as possible. He likes women. He’s no monk. But he likes his women willing. He’s a pretty nice guy.

The plot has some nice twists and Spillane skilfully weaves together the multiple plot strands.

Incidentally you might be amused to find out that the title refers to a portion of the female anatomy.

The Delta Factor is less hardboiled than the Mike Hammer books and it could even be described as somewhat lighthearted. It’s a fun suspense thriller. Highly recommended.

Desmond Cory’s Hammerhead

Hammerhead (published in the United States as Shockwave) was the thirteenth of Desmond Cory’s sixteen Johnny Fedora spy thrillers. It was published in 1963. Hammerhead forms parts of a five-novel cycle dealing with Johnny Fedora’s battles with a top Soviet spymaster named Feramontov.

Shaun Lloyd McCarthy (1928-2001) was an English academic who was also a successful thriller writer. He was best-known for the Johnny Fedora books.

Johnny Fedora is half Spanish and half Irish. He is an agent for the British Secret Service and it’s understood that if he feels it necessary to kill in the line of duty than that’s quite acceptable. A series of thrillers about a British spy with a licence to kill is obviously going to sound like a rip-off of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels but in fact Cory got there first. The first Johnny Fedora novel was published in 1951, a year before the first of the Bond novels. I don’t think it’s a case of one writer influencing the other. In the postwar period readers’ tastes had changed and it was obvious that the spy thriller was going to become more violent and action-oriented. Desmond Cory and Ian Fleming simply happened to realise that before other writers did.

And Cory certainly knew how to deliver violence and action. Johnny Fedora is pretty ruthless. He’s quite happy to use torture to extract information and in this story he kills a man, chops him up into little pieces and stuffs the dismembered body parts into a suitcase. It’s not a good idea to get Johnny upset.

Hammerhead takes place in Franco’s Spain. begins with Johnny receiving a request for help from the glamorous Marisa de Camba. She wants him to investigate the death of actress Sofia Domecq. Sofia had gone to a journalist named Delgado with some startling allegations about a very rich very powerful man named Chaval. The whole story seems odd, which interests Johnny. The British Secret Service is also interested. Those allegations involves drug-smuggling but more to the point there’s the suggestion that American military personnel are mixed up in it. The sort of military personnel who fly nuclear-armed bombers.

Johnny decides he’ll have to infiltrate Chaval’s social circles. He wants to attend one of Chaval’s parties. He’ll need some help. He gets that help from Sofia Domecq’s sister Carlota, a very high-priced prostitute. Chaval’s parties are the sorts of parties at which high-class hookers are welcome.

When Johnny finds out just what Operation Hammerhead really is he realises he’s stumbled onto something very big indeed. Nobody is going to believe him without evidence. He has the evidence, but whether he can hold on top it is another matter.

The plot twists and turns in a satisfying manner. This is a spy thriller and spies can never be sure whom to trust. Even the bad guys can’t be sure about that.

This story is perhaps just a bit more violet than the Bond novels, but with less emphasis on sex. There is Carlota, and she qualifies as the kind of sexy dangerous female you hope for in a spy novel.

There’s a race against time aspect, always good for adding a bit more tension. And it’s not just that Johnny is running out of time to find the key to the problem. He doesn’t even know what it is he’s looking for and he has no idea where to look. All he knows is that he has to find it, fast. There’s a very effective nail-biting climax.

Johnny Fedora is a bit Bond-like but he’s less of a womaniser and he’s much more ruthless. In fact he’s closer to the Matt Helm of Donald Hamilton’s novels than he is to Bond. The overall tone is also very close to that of the Matt Helm books, although Cory is not as successful as Hamilton in showing us the personal consequences of immersion in the vicious world of espionage.

This is a classic Cold War spy thriller with a straightforward Good Guys vs Bad Guys theme. It is extremely well executed and it offers more than sufficient quantities thrills and suspense. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the previous Johnny Fedora book, Undertow. It’s also very much worth reading.

A.S. Fleischman's Danger in Paradise

Danger in Paradise is a 1953 spy thriller by A.S. Fleischman (1920-2010).

Fleischman had been an American professional magician in vaudeville, until vaudeville died. He then turned to writing fiction. Between 1951 and 1954 he turned out half a dozen paperback original spy thrillers, most of them published by Fawcett Gold Medal. He then tuned to writing screenplays and finally to writing children’s books. He was fairly successful in all these fields.

Danger in Paradise follows the standard Fleischman formula - crime and international intrigue in exotic locations, mostly in the Far East.

Fleischman was not a writer who planned his books in intricate fashion. He didn’t bother with outlines. He just started with a very vague idea and sat down to write, having no idea how the plot was going to develop. It was a method that worked for him.

With Danger in Paradise his original idea was to have beautiful young American woman in Bali. A beautiful bare-breasted young American woman.

This American woman is not the central character but much of the plot revolves around her and she’s certainly the most colourful character in the book.

The narrator of the story is an American oil geologist, Jeff Cape. He made a lot of money in places like Indonesia. He managed to spend almost all the money but he had fun and he has no regrets. Now his ship is about to sail. He’s heading back to the States.

Or at least that’s where he was intending to head, until he ran into Nicole Balashov in a waterfront bar. She wants him to take a package with him. She won’t tell him the contents but it’s terribly important. Jeff figures that Nicole is trouble and he wants no part of it, but she seems rather sincere and she’s very pretty so of course he agrees.

Pretty soon Jeff has guys trailing him and he’s pretty sure they mean to do him harm. He suspects they intend to do Nicole harm as well. All his instincts tell him to just get out of the situation and get on the ship and leave Bali far behind him. But Nicole might really be in danger, those men who are after her might even mean to kill her, and even though he thinks it’s her own fault for getting mixed up in dangerous games he just can’t leave her to her fate.

Then he discovers that Nicole is dead. It’s right there in the newspaper. Russian girl killed by terrorists. With a picture of the dead girl. And it’s Nicole. But that isn’t possible. He was talking to her the day after she was killed.

Those guys are still after Jeff. There’s Apollo Fry, the fat man who might be mixed up in gunrunning. Fry is definitely up to no good and he’s ruthless. There’s also Mr Chu, the polite Chinese gentleman with the bird (the bird will be important later). And the man with the Malacca cane. Jeff has no idea where these guys fit into the picture.

And he meets Regina Williams when he takes refuge in her house. She’s a stunning American blonde. He notices her. It’s hard not to notice her, given that she’s naked from the waist up. Regina always goes topless. She’s adopted a lot of local customs. Having her breasts bare at all time is the most noticeable of these customs. Regina also informs Jeff that she is always interested in sex. Another of Regina’s habits is to take her showers in the open. When she’s not half-naked she’s totally naked. Jeff is maybe not quite the archetypal clean-cut all-American boy (he’s spent several years in exotic and often exciting places) but Regina does make him just a tad uncomfortable. When she starts dancing for him he’s even more uncomfortable. Regina’s dance is the sort of dance that gets a man’s attention. He then commits what Regina considers to be a major social faux pas. He turns down her offer of sex.

Jeff can’t really decide which of the two women, Regina and Nicole, is the more dangerous to his peace of mind. They both seem likely to slot into the femme fatale category.

The package Nicole handed to Jeff early on is effectively a McGuffin. All that matters is that everybody seems to want that package.

There’s no graphic violence but there’s a great deal of action and the pacing is relentless. The plot twists and turns in a pleasing way. Jeff is a rather hapless hero. He’s not stupid and he can handle himself in a fight but he’s hapless because he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. His efforts to take control of the situation leave him more confused than ever. But he’s likeable, he doesn’t lack courage and he tries his best.

Fleishman’s prose style is lively. There’s plenty of the atmosphere of the Mysterious Orient that was so hugely popular in pop culture at that time.

There’s no actual sex but there’s plenty of sexiness, which is often more fun.

Danger in Paradise offers excitement, intrigue, dangerous sexy women (often with bare breasts), romance and a very solid plot. Very enjoyable, and highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Fleischman’s Counterspy Express and Shanghai Flame. They’re both excellent.

John Flagg's The Lady and the Cheetah

John Gearon wrote eight spy/crime novels between 1950 and 1961 using the pseudonym John Flagg. All were Fawcett Gold Medal editions. The Lady and the Cheetah dates from 1951.

Rafferty Valois is an American newspaperman. Or rather, an ex-newspaperman. He’s somewhere on the Riviera. He doesn’t know how he got there. He’s also not sure where Loretta came from. Loretta is the girl he’s with.

Something strange is happening to Rafferty. People are treating him as if he’s famous. Even before he was fired he wasn’t the least bit famous.

He is informed that the Countess Becellini wants to see him immediately. He isn’t interested, until he finds himself given a thousand dollars as a retainer. He has never seen so much money before. He has no idea why the Countess wants to employ him but for a thousand dollars he doesn’t care. There are very few things he wouldn’t do for a thousand bucks.

The Countess wants his services in a rather delicate matter. There are some letters which have fallen into the wrong hands. She wants Rafferty to get them back for her. She chose him for the job because she knows he has so much experience in matters of international intrigue. That puzzles Rafferty because he has no experience at all in such matters.

Rafferty soon realises that he is mixed up in a very complicated intrigue. It involves the Countess, her headstrong daughter Bianca, a sleazy Italian prince, a callow but mysterious young American and a gangster. It all seems to be something to do with Bianca’s upcoming marriage to the King of Movania.

That’s not as big a deal as it stands. King Michel has never actually been king. His father was deposed years earlier. And Movania is a small insignificant country. King Michel has been raised in America. There are rumours of a conspiracy to restore the monarchy in Movania but rumours about coups in tiny tinpot countries are commonplace enough. The marriage is however very important to Countess Becellini. It is her chance to restore her social position. It seems that somebody doesn’t want this marriage to go ahead.

Countess Becellini is not the only person who wants to employ Rafferty. Lots of people want the services of the famous and daring adventurer. Rafferty still can’t figure out where this reputation of his comes from.

Rafferty is a nice enough guy. He’s willing to work for anybody if they’re willing to pay him large amounts of money but he certainly has no intention of getting involved in anything illegal or anything nasty like murder. So when one of the people mixed up in this complicated affair does get murdered he’s not very happy about it.

Rafferty’s weakness is that he’s always getting persuaded to help out damsels in distress and when such a damsel needs to be rescued he just can’t say no.

This is not a straightforward spy thriller but it certainly involves international intrigue so it can be considered to fall into the genre of spy thrillers. It’s definitely not in the style of the new breed of spy thrillers that emerged in the 1950s with the success of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. It has more of the feel the feel of a 1940s spy thriller like Victor Canning’s Panther’s Moon. Although written in 1951 the basic story actually seems in some ways more like something out of the 1920s or 30s. The plot is reminiscent of thrillers of that period such as Dornford Yates’ Blood Royal.

I happen to like that older style of thriller so I don’t mind the slightly old-fashioned feel.

There’s not much action (although there's a decent action finale). It’s not an action spy thriller. There is however mystery and suspense.

There are also plenty of sexual dramas. Rafferty likes women. He likes them a lot. There are suggestions that some of the characters have dark sexual secrets to hide. It’s also pretty clear that Loretta is a whore. She is however a really nice girl. While the book is old-fashioned in some ways its honest and open approach to sex is more in tune with the newer style of spy thriller that would shortly start to emerge.

The plot has some satisfying twists. The ending is not quite what I expected. Or at least Rafferty’s actions at the end are slightly unexpected. But the ending works extremely well.

And there is a cheetah. Her name is Iris and she will play an important part in the story at one point.

The Lady and the Cheetah is a thoroughly enjoyable thriller. It’s highly recommended.

Stark House have reprinted The Lady and the Cheetah in a two-novel paperback edition paired with another John Flagg spy thriller, Death and the Naked Lady (which is also very good). I’ve also reviewed another of his spy novels, The Persian Cat.

John Flagg's Death and the Naked Lady

Between 1950 and 1961 John Gearon wrote eight espionage/crime novels using the pseudonym John Flagg. All were Fawcett Gold Medal editions. Death and the Naked Lady came out in 1951.

Mac McLean (the narrator-hero) had been an American serviceman in Europe during the war. At the end of the war he started to make a name for himself as a night-club singer in Paris. In fact he made quite a big name for himself. Now he’s aboard the French ocean liner Dauphiné headed for New York and for what could be a really big career break.

On the Dauphiné he meets the Naked Lady.

And he discovers that he’s in an awkward situation. It’s those jade owls in his luggage. They’re very very valuable and they don’t belong to him. He has no idea how they got there but they could tie him to a murder. He thinks he’s being set up but he doesn’t know why.

And he’s mixed up with two women, possibly dangerous women.

One of the women is Irene. He’s having an affair with her. She’s married to the rich middle-aged Lord Harcourt, very much a member of the English Establishment. Albert Harcourt (Irene’s husband) doesn’t object to his wife’s sexual dalliances. Or at least that’s what Mac assumes.

The other woman is the Naked Lady. She’s a former nude dancer which is why he’s known as the Naked Lady. Her name is Elisabeth. She’s now married to a wealthy South American businessman who is rumoured to be involved in gun-running and fomenting revolutions. Mac hasn’t slept with the Naked Lady yet but it’s on the cards and Mac suspects that her husband Joseph Pasquela might not so tolerant of his wife’s sexual adventures.

There’s a third woman floating about as well, a rising Hollywood movie star with remarkable breasts. They’re Lila’s only real assets but they’re impressive enough to make her a movie star. So make that three dangerous women.

Mac is a cynical American, or at least he thinks he’s cynical. He’s definitely on the make. He’s experienced poverty and now he’s a successful singer and enjoying the good things of life and he has no desire to return to poverty. Mac is a womaniser and while nobody expects entertainers to live like monks he is vaguely aware that he should be a bit more discreet. Some husbands can be very tiresome if you sleep with their wives.

Mac soon finds himself hopelessly out of his depths. There’s at least one sinister conspiracy afoot and it has political ramifications but it’s by no means certain it’s the only conspiracy. There may be multiple players in this dangerous game. Any one of whom could be pulling Mac’s strings. He already faces the prospect of being framed for one murder and he might be framed for the second murder as well, the murder that takes place on the ship.

Mac needs help but where can he turn? One of the women might be his best chance, but which of them can he trust? And he’s just as likely to fall in love with one of these dames. For a man who thinks of himself as a cynic and a cold-blooded womaniser he’s remarkably susceptible to romantic entanglements.

It’s a nicely devious little plot which keeps both Mac and the reader mystified.

The brief period from 1945 to the very early 50s was an extremely interesting period in the history of spy fiction. The Cold War wasn’t yet a major factor. The Soviet Union had been the loyal ally of Britain and the US against Hitler. The Soviets were not yet seen as a major menace. Spy writers were still obsessed with the Nazis. Germany had been defeated but the idea that the Nazis might make a comeback did not seem entirely ludicrous. At the very least the threat of a Nazi revival could still be made to seem plausible (indeed even in the 1960s this idea was still dusted off regularly in spy fiction and especially in TV spy series).

Which means that in a spy novel written in 1951 you can’t assume the bad guys will turn out to be the communists. And while Nazis were still popular villains some spy writers would offer up villains who were neither Nazis nor communists. This novel still definitely belongs to the pre-Cold War era of spy fiction.

This book also belongs to the Reluctant Spy genre, a genre in which the great Eric Ambler specialised in the early part of his career. Death and the Naked Lady is much pulpier than Ambler but it still has a hero who is an innocent caught up in a conspiracy which he doesn’t understand.

Mac McLean is a sympathetic enough hero. He’s not overly bright but he’s not stupid either. He has a weakness for women but mostly he chases the sorts of women who want to get caught. He’s not a seducer of of sweet young innocents. He’s not entirely honest, but he’s fairly honest. He’s not an idealist and he doesn’t mind compromising his principles a little but he’s basically a decent guy. He makes mistakes but he perseveres. Not that he has much choice. He knows that his life on the line.

The author provides us with three femmes fatales, all of them quite different but all of them glamorous and sexy and mysterious.

It’s a fast-moving story with some action and some decent suspense and it’s thoroughly enjoyable. Highly recommended.

I’ve also read and reviewed the first John Flagg spy novel, The Persian Cat, and it’s a lot of fun as well.

Tong in Cheek (Cherry Delight #2)

Tong in Cheek, published in 1973, is the second of Gardner Francis Fox’s Cherry Delight sexy spy thrillers which he wrote under the name Glen Chase. This series is sometimes known as the Sexecutioner series. Fox had plenty of experience in this genre having written the very entertaining The Lady From L.U.S.T. spy thrillers in the late 60s.

Whether the Cherry Delight books qualify as spy thrillers can be debated. Cherry isn’t quite a spy. She is however a secret agent working for N.Y.M.P.H.O., a shadowy top-secret US government agency. N.Y.M.P.H.O. is mostly engaged in the fight against organised crime but some of their cases (including this one) do involve international intrigue. N.Y.M.P.H.O.’s methods are so unconventional that even the F.B.I. would consider them to be unethical.

Cherry is actually a gorgeous redhead by the name of Cherise Dellissio but inevitably everybody calls her Cherry Delight. She’s not just a secret agent, she’s also a high-class call girl. That’s actually part of her job. She belongs to an elite squad known as the Femmes Fatales. They work as prostitutes because it’s a useful cover and one that offers plenty of opportunities for them to get close to organised crime figures. Cherry doesn’t mind. If there’s one thing Cherry enjoys more than being a secret agent it’s having sex. Her job allows her to combine business with pleasure.

Cherry’s latest case has very definite international ramifications. The Mafia is forging links with tongs operating in Red China. It’s a disturbing development which has to be nipped in the bud.

A N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent has been killed by three Mafia hitmen. The three Mafiosi are now believed to be in Hong Kong en route to Red China. Cherry’s assignment is to prevent them from making contact with the Chinese tongs but mostly her assignment is to kill those three men. Cherry’s duties with N.Y.M.P.H.O. include assassinations. She’s quite relaxed about that.

Once she gets to Hong Kong Cherry will be working with an Englishman named Derek Guyfford. He knows the territory and he happens to be a part-time N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent. Cherry is pleased that he seems to know his job. She’s even more pleased when he turns out to be very good in bed. Derek is keen to help Cherry make the hit on the three Mafia goons but he has another agenda as well. He has a more personal more selfish reason for wanting to go to China. A reason that could make him a vast amount of money. Money that he might be prepared to share with Cherry.

It has to be admitted that the Cherry Delight books are very very trashy. Fox’s prose is more than a little rough around the edges. There is however one thing that Fox understood. If you’re going to combine the thriller and erotica genres you have to make sure that your books deliver on both counts. There has to be plenty of sex and the sex has to be pretty explicit but there has to be lots of action and mayhem as well. And if possible you have to integrate the sex stuff with the thriller stuff. Fox made sure to do this.

You have to consider the historical context. In the late 60s and the 70s there was a widespread feeling that the idea that there was a dividing line between erotica and other genres was rather artificial and outdated. In both the literary and film worlds there was increasing interest in breaking down the barriers between softcore porn and other genres. The 70s was the golden age of cinematic art porn and film-makers with respectable arty credentials were enthusiastically embracing the concept of art porn. The idea of combining erotica with other pure entertainment genres was also becoming quite popular.

The spy sleaze novels which blossomed in the 60s and 70s were very much a part of the zeitgeist. Sexiness was cool. Sexiness was fun. And in the 60s and 70s (unlike today) fun was more or less legal.

Personally I think that the first of the Cherry Delight novels, The Italian Connection, is much superior to Tong in Cheek. It’s faster-paced and it puts more emphasis on action and excitement and non-top mayhem. The Italian Connection is enormous fun.

Tong in Cheek is still reasonably good fun and if spy sleaze is your thing you’ll enjoy it.

You might want to check out my reviews of the first of Fox’s The Lady from L.U.S.T. novels, Lust, Be a Lady Tonight and the first Cherry Delight novel, The Italian Connection.

Edward S. Aarons' Assignment Helene

Assignment Helene, published in 1959, is the tenth of the Sam Durell spy thrillers written by Edward S. Aarons (six more were published after Aarons’ death credited to his brother Will but in fact ghost-written by Lawrence Hall).

CIA agent Sam Durell has been sent to the (mythical) newly created island republic of Sarangap in South-East Asia to investigate the murder of the US consul in the old city of Sarangap. The new nation is highly unstable. There’s a rebel army in the hills trying to overthrow the government. The US doesn’t want that to happen but they don’t want to get officially involved. The rebels might be bank-rolled by the Chinese or by Taiwan but either way it is known that an American is involved in running guns to those rebels and that has the potential to cause embarrassment. The deceased consul, Hansen, had presumably been close to finding out the identity of that American.

Durell arrives in Sarangap accompanied by Hansen’s widow, a glamorous movie star. She had been estranged from her husband and it’s odd that she now seems to so keen to go to Sarangap to collect his body.

The first thing Durell discovers is that his cover has been blown. He also discovers that there was a romantic triangle involving Hansen, Hansen’s wife and the Vice-Consul, an arrogant Ivy League pup named Twill.

Sam is eager to interview the three Americans whom Hansen suspected of gun-running but one (a peace activist) has disappeared and one is probably going to be too drunk to provide much useful information. And of course it soon becomes evident that somebody is prepared to disrupt Durell’s investigation by having him killed.

Durell finds himself in the jungle with two beautiful women, neither of whom he can trust, a possibly equally untrustworthy American diplomat and a broken-down American ex-intelligence agent. They fall into the hands of the dangerous rebel leader Trang. What all of these people have in common is that it seems that would all like to see Sam Durell dead.

Sam Durell isn’t quite a stereotypical square-jawed all-American hero. He has just a bit of psychological complexity. He’s not very ideologically driven. In a vague way he believes in freedom and democracy and all that stuff and he’s loyal to his country but he’s capable of understanding that people in the Third World often have very valid reasons for disliking and resenting America and he’s capable of admitting that US foreign policy is sometimes disturbingly wrong-headed and selfish. 

The Sam Durell spy thrillers do not belong to the cynical pessimistic school of spy fiction typified by Greene, le Carre and Deighton but they’re also not quite simplistic exercises in flag-waving.

In this book Durell faces some genuine moral dilemmas and while he’s keen to do the right thing he has to admit that he has no idea what the morally correct decision might be. He knows where his duty as a CIA agent lies but it might not be consistent with his duty as a human being. And Durell isn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of merely following orders like an automaton. He’s aware that people sometimes do bad things for good reasons.

The two women are Hansen’s wife and Hélène, part Sarangapese and part European and all dangerous. Either woman could turn out to be the femme fatale of the story and just about any of the main characters could be the murderer. Durell wants the murderer.

This is therefore part spy fiction and part murder mystery and the mystery angle is handled pretty well with some decent misdirection.

There’s no shortage of action either.

Maybe Aarons wasn’t quite in the premier league as far as spy fiction writers are concerned but he wasn’t far out of that league. Among American spy writers of the same era Donald Hamilton was better but Aarons is very much worth reading. He’s definitely a cut above the average pulp spy writer.  Assignment Helene is highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed a couple of other Sam Durell spy novels, Assignment…Suicide and Assignment - Karachi.

Troy Conway's Coxeman: The Best Laid Plans

The Coxeman series of sexy spy thrillers is credited to Troy Conway which was a house name. Several authors wrote books in this series, notably Michael Avallone. The tenth book in the series, The Best Laid Plans, was written by Gardner F. Fox in 1969. Given that he was the author of the wonderful Lady From L.U.S.T. and Cherry Delight sexy spy/crime thrillers he was clearly an ideal choice to contribute to this series.

The Coxeman is Professor Rod Damon. He’s a sociologist and a sexologist but he’s also a part-time secret agent, working for the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation (whose agents are therefore called Coxemen).

The Best Laid Plans begins with Rod Damon saving a woman who is about to commit suicide. The curious thing is that she has no idea why she tried to throw herself in front of a car.

It turns out that she’s a high-powered diplomat who seems like she might be the Oman to bring peace to the Middle East. Which is why the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation becomes interested. They suspect a plot to derail her peace plans. They further suspect that a shadowy organisation known as HECATE is behind the plot. HECATE is a bit like SPECTRE or THRUSH - they aim at global power but their main objective is to enrich themselves. They’re not ideological.

HECATE have perfected a form of mind control. Rod Damon’s job is to get himself recruited by HECATE. He’ll be safe because he’s been implanted with a device which will nullify HECATE’s mind control techniques. At least in theory he’ll be safe. In practice things don’t go so smoothly. He has no problem getting recruited by HECATE but he discovers that he may not be able to prevent himself from being turned into a robotic assassin.

Like any good fictional spy Rod Damon is highly trained in unarmed combat and firearms skills. He’s also a highly trained sex machine. The Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation has found that it’s very useful for their agents to possess advanced bedroom skills. Damon is a natural stud whose background in sexology has developed his sexual prowess to an extraordinary degree. On this mission he will make full use of all his special talents.

The trick to writing a successful sexy spy thriller is to put as much emphasis on the spy plot as on the sex. Fox managed this trick extremely well in the first of the Lady From L.U.S.T. and Cherry Delight books, mixing non-stop secret agent action with lots of sex. And with genuinely exciting action scenes. He doesn’t pull this off quite so successfully in this book. The plot is just a bit too thin and there’s not quite enough action.

On the other hand Fox does manage to make all the sex integral with the plot, given that HECATE’s plans for world domination involve using sex as a tool of espionage. And he does manage to have his hero engage in an action scene whilst having sex at the same time.

The sex is relatively explicit without being overly crude.

The sexy spy thriller genre which blossomed in the mid to late 60s was very much a part of the zeitgeist of the 60s. The release of the first Bond movie, Dr No, in 1962 had established the idea of the sexy spy. In that very year Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale became the first sexy kickass lady spy in The Avengers. Modesty Blaise made her first comic strip appearance in 1963 with the Modesty Blaise movie and the first Modesty Blaise novel following in 1965. Ramping up the sexual content to create the spy sleaze sub-genre was an obvious move that was going to occur to canny publishers and pulp writers.

And some of these spy sleaze novels really were fun.

The Best Laid Plans is very much of its time in another way, dealing as it does with scientific mind control. This was a huge pop culture obsession at that time.

Rod Damon is a hero you’ll either love or hate. He not only thinks he’s God’s gift to women he really is the ultimate sexual athlete and he’s pretty arrogant about it. He expects women to swoon over him. Given that he’s a super-spy as well you might think that the characters take wish-fulfilment fantasies to an absurd extreme. On the other hand we’re clearly not intended to take this book at all seriously and you can derive some amusement from the hero’s ludicrously inflated ego and impossibly awesome sexual prowess.

Personally I think this is a genre that works better with a sexy lady super-spy rather than a male super-stud super-spy. Fox’s sexy lady spies, Eve Drum (the Lady from L.U.S.T.) and Cherry Delight, are just as sex-obsessed as Rod Damon (their sexual appetites are awe-inspiring) but they’re amusing and charming and likeable as well.

The Best Laid Plans is however reasonably enjoyable if you’re in the mood for a very sleazy spy thriller. It knows it's trash and it doesn't care. It’s recommended if your tastes run that way.

I’ve reviewed a couple of Gardner F. Fox’s other books in this genre, The Italian Connection (Cherry Delight #1) and Lust, Be a Lady Tonight (The Lady from L.U.S.T. #1) both of which are great fun.

E. Howard Hunt's The Towers of Silence

Former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt became best-known (and most notorious) for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, for which he served nearly three years in prison. Hunt had been involved in many CIA covert operations, most of them probably illegal. He was therefore ideally qualified to write spy fiction and using the pseudonym David St. John he wrote the ten successful Peter Ward spy thrillers. Hunt was an extremely prolific writer using his own name and various pseudonyms, writing numerous other thrillers and some excellent hardboiled crime fiction. Whatever you might think of his activities on behalf of the CIA Hunt’s fiction is worth checking out.

The Towers of Silence, published in 1966, was the second of his Peter Ward spy novels.

CIA agent Peter Ward has been sent to India, to Bombay, to find out how Paul Walker met his death. Walker was a low-grade CIA agent but he was murdered and the CIA isn’t happy about that. The problem is that nobody knows what Walker was working on at the time and therefore neither Peter Ward nor his bosses at Langley have any idea why he was killed.

What Peter Ward does discover is that Walker took some photos just before his death. Photos of very explicit Indian erotic art works. This surprises Ward. He’d assumed that Walker was a clean-living all-American hero.

Ward makes contact with Helene Bush. She was working for Paul Walker but Ward is disturbed to learn that she is a former British spy, an MI6 agent. In fact she might well be a current MI6 agent. The British are America’s allies but as Ward knows that doesn’t mean they’re on the same side. The CIA and MI6 would cheerfully slit each other’s throats if there was some advantage to be gained thereby.

What does attract Ward’s interest is a new Indian political movement which might be innocent or it might not be. A very wealthy man named Paramandi, a Parsi, is involved. Ward takes an interest in Paramandi’s daughter Nara. He thinks she might be worth recruiting although perhaps his interest in her isn’t entirely professional.

Ward is still puzzled by those erotic photographs taken by Walker. They were photographs of carvings in caves on the island of Elephanta. Maybe Walker wasn’t interested in expanding his knowledge of the art of love. Maybe he was more interested in that island.

Ward must be on to something because people keep trying to kill him (in one case in an extraordinarily imaginative and horrible way).

This could perhaps be described as the spy fiction equivalent of a police procedural, an espionage procedural if you will. The emphasis is on solid routine espionage tradecraft. Sifting intelligence, making connections, putting suspects under surveillance, gradually building up a picture. You don’t know what the subject of the picture is until it’s complete but you follow procedures. There are certainly action scenes but Peter Ward is not a fly-by-the-set-of-your-pants follow-your-instincts kind of spy. He’s a professional. He doesn’t take risks and he doesn’t act as a lone wolf. British fictional spies tend to work along because they’re working for British Intelligence which has virtually no money and virtually no resources. Peter Ward on the other hand is CIA, with unlimited resources and money behind him. He’s an organisation man.

Hunt was clearly aiming for verisimilitude, to make us feel that we’re watching a real spy working a real case. The plot has twists but it’s very much grounded in reality. There are no outrageous fanciful elements to the plot.

Hunt was a profession intelligence agent so naturally he tries to make the tradecraft fairly realistic and he certainly goes to great lengths to give us a rundown on the political situation in India in the mid-60s and the activities of British, America, Chinese and Soviet intelligence agencies in that country. He devotes a lot of attention to various organisations used as fronts by those intelligence agencies. I have absolutely no idea how authentic any of this background is but what matters is that it feels authentic. It makes us feel that we are getting a glimpse into the real world of international espionage.

And Peter Ward is what real spies (the successful ones anyway) are like. He isn’t colourful. He’s a cog in a machine. He gets the job done. He doesn’t expect the job to be glamorous.

He is however a bit of a womaniser and he’s more cold-blooded about it than Bond. He beds women who will be useful to him and he doesn’t worry himself about their feelings.

The first thing you have to do if you’re going to enjoy Hunt’s spy thrillers is accept the idea of the CIA as the good guys. Hunt wasn’t just trying to write entertaining thrillers, he was also trying to clean up the CIA’s image.

The Towers of Silence obviously doesn’t belong to the high adventure over-the-top school of spy fiction exemplified by Ian Fleming but just as obviously doesn’t belong to the Graham Greene-John le Carre-Len Deighton school of cynical spy fiction. There’s not a trace of cynicism here. The CIA is working for freedom and democracy and the commies are the bad guys and there’s no room for doubts. So as I said earlier I’d call it an espionage procedural. Whatever it is it moves along at a good pace and it just about convinces us that it’s hyper-realistic. And it’s entertaining. Recommended.

I’ve also reviewed one of Hunt’s slightly later Peter Ward spy books, One of Our Agents Is Missing. And I’ve reviewed his excellent 1950 hardboiled noir crime thriller The Violent Ones.

Clyde Allison's Gamefinger (Man From Sadisto 6)

William Knoles (1926-1970) wrote sleaze fiction under his own name and also using the pseudonym Clyde Allison. He enjoyed his greatest success, as Clyde Allison, with his Agent 0008 sexy spy spoof novels. Gamefinger, published in 1966, was the sixth book in the series.

What made Knowles so special among sleaze writers is that his books are not just sleazy, they’re also extremely funny. He was a very gifted comic writer. He also had a knack for coming up with truly outrageous plots.

His Man From SADISTO spy novels featuring Agent 0008 may be his best-known works but sadly they are now exceptionally difficult to find and used copies are astronomically expensive. I would love to collect all twenty books and as soon as I have a spare five thousand dollars that’s exactly what I’ll do.

One single title in the series has been brought back into print and that novel is Gamefinger. It appears to have fallen into the public domain which is the reason it’s the only one to be currently in print.

It certainly starts with a bang. Of sorts. Actually it’s a long steamy reasonably graphic sex scene. Ace SADISTO agent Trevor Anderson (who acts as narrator) is holidaying in Maine, using the cover name Rex Kingston. He’s staying in a log cabin so remote that it can only be reached by floatplane. He hasn’t heard a floatplane land so he is rather surprised when he sees a naked girl floating in the lake. She isn’t dead. He soon discovers that she’s very much alive. She is six feet tall and blonde and looks like every man’s fantasy of a naked amazon. She’s also very friendly. After they’ve had a long hot lovemaking session they decide that introductions might be in order. Her name is Karni. Then suddenly Agent 0008 receives a staggering karate blow and he doesn’t know anything until consciousness returns some considerable time later.

He regains consciousness in SADISTO headquarters. SADISTO is a top-secret US Government intelligence agency. Its mission is to protect the Free World. Protecting the Free World involves killing people and SADISTO’s elite triple-zero agents are licensed to kill. They’re not just licensed to kill, they’re expecting to keep in practise. Preferably by killing people who deserve to be killed (a category that includes anyone of whom SADISTO disapproves). Their ethical standards would shock the average Mob hitman. But it’s OK, they’re killing for freedom.

Agent 0008’s latest mission is his most important yet. The Free World is in deadly peril. A dangerous madman code-named Gamefinger has hatched a plot of such terrifying and sinister evil that it almost takes one’s breath away. Gamefinger intends to end war. This of course would be disastrous. Apart from anything else it would be bad for business and there’s no more profitable business than war. Gamefinger must be stopped.

Gamefinger’s scheme is ingenious. He wants to revive the Roman gladiatorial games in order to provide an outlet for human violence. His new gladiatorial games will be much more brutal than the Roman version, they will involve lots of nude girls and they will be televised live to the entire world. The games will cost hundreds of lives but could save millions of lives if Gamefinger is right. Agent 0008 has to grudgingly admit that it’s a genuine ethical dilemma and that maybe Gamefinger has logic on his side. But 0008 still has a job to do, and his job is to stop Gamefinger.

SADISTO’s plan is to infiltrate 0008 into Gamefinger’s organisation.

There’s plenty of pointed political satire in this book. SADISTO are the good guys but they’re more immoral than the bad guys. SADISTO’s agents are on the side of freedom but they’re sadistic bloodthirsty killers. It’s clever political satire because the author really does raise some pertinent questions about whether the good guys really are the good guys.

There’s also a great deal of black comedy, and the book is at times outrageously funny.

And there’s a lot sex. The sex is described in fairly explicit terms but manages not to come across as crude schoolboy stuff. This is well-crafted erotica.

Agent 0008 is an intriguing hero. He’s very much an anti-hero. He has no morals whatsoever. He doesn’t claim to have any morals. Killing is not just an integral part of his job, it is for 0008 a very pleasant part of the job. He can’t think of anything more enjoyable than killing and torturing people because he’s doing it for the Free World. He can feel virtuous about it. He’s the most chillingly nasty of all fictional spies but he’s brutally honest about himself. He’s a complete rogue but vaguely likeable in his cheerful amorality. He doesn't have any morals but he does understand morality.

The idea of televised deadly gladiatorial-style games being used for purposes of mind control became a very common trope in the 70s and 80s, especially in post-apocalyptic science fiction movies. But William Knoles/Clyde Allison came up with the idea way back in 1966. It’s an idea that may have been used in science fiction stories prior to that time but offhand I can’t think of any examples. Either way it was certainly an idea that would have seemed fresh and startling in 1966.

Gamefinger is basically a sleaze novel (although it is at least very skilfully written sleaze) with a spy plot tacked on but it’s an intriguing spy plot

It’s intended to be sexy and funny and satirical and it succeeds on all counts. Gamefinger is good dirty fun. Highly recommended.

James Eastwood’s Come Die With Me

Come Die With Me, published in 1969, was the last of James Eastwood’s three Anna Zordan spy thrillers. It appears to have also appeared under the title Diamonds Are Deadly.

I know pretty much zero about James Eastwood. I believe he was born in 1918 and I’m moderately sure he was English. There was a film and TV scriptwriter named James Eastwood who produced scripts for some very interesting movies (Devil Girl from Mars, Urge To Kill, The Counterfeit Plan) but I’m not even sure it’s the same James Eastwood. The dates seem to line up. It’s also interesting that the scriptwriter seems to have stopped writing scripts in 1966 and the novelist wrote the last Anna Zordan book in 1969. He may have died or given up writing at the end of the 60s. The fact that one of the key characters in this novel is a TV scriptwriter would seem to be the final piece of evidence suggesting that the two writers were one and the same man.

I approached Come Die With Me not knowing what to expect. I just knew it was about a glamorous lady spy so of course I had to buy it. She might have turned out to be a slightly sexy spy in the Modesty Blaise mould, or the book might have turned out to be a sex-drenched spy fiction/sleaze fiction hybrid like the Lady From L.U.S.T. series.

Come Die With Me is set in Britain and the nation is facing a crisis. Civil unrest, riots, industrial sabotage, that sort of thing. Then the Prime Minister is assassinated and it becomes fairly obvious that there’s some sort of conspiracy at work.

The odd thing is that not long before these events a TV production company was planning a thirteen-episode serial dealing with similar events. The government refused to allow the serial to be produced. The parallels between the events in the TV scripts and the real-life events seem a bit too striking to be coincidental. The British counter-espionage service is keen to have a quiet word with the scriptwriter (a chap named Sandy McTaggart). But he’s vanished. He’s left the country.

Sarratt is the British counter-intelligence chief who is going to have to find that missing scriptwriter. Somehow McTaggart will have to be persuaded to return to Britain. It’s obviously a job for a woman - if you want to persuade a man to do something he doesn’t want to do then the lure of sex is usually the nest bait. Sarratt has just the right woman in mind for the job. Anna Zordan. If the lure of sex with Anna doesn’t work then McTaggart is just not human.

Anna finds McTaggart easily enough. He’s in Switzerland on his way to Italy. Getting his attention isn’t difficult. Anna knows how to get a man’s attention. But then things start to become a bit puzzling for her. McTaggart seems reluctant to sleep with her. Anna has dealt with all sorts of situations in her career as a spy but this is something totally new to her. No man has ever turned down the chance to sleep with her.

And then he wants to marry her.

She figures that this guy has a few problems. Problems with women, problems with sex. It occurs to her that he might be kinky. That doesn’t bother her. Anna is a broadminded girl. Very broadminded.

Before being assigned to this latest case Anna had been tracking a man named Hartley, a young British sales whizz kid of doubtful loyalty. And in the course of the McTaggart case Hartley turns up. It could be a coincidence but it probably isn’t.

Anna ends up getting involved emotionally with McTaggart. They end up on a tiny Mediterranean island. There’s another woman involved. Her name is Gloria and she’s one dangerous female. There’s a diabolical criminal mastermind as well. There’s action on land, at sea and under the sea. The violence is low-key but there’s a fair amount of it.

There’s quite a bit of sex. It’s not even moderately explicit but it is perverse. There’s psychological and emotional perversity as well. The story does in fact have a number of interesting emotional twists and emotional conflicts. Sexual conflicts are also important drivers of the plot. This is a sexy spy story in which the sex is not just something thrown in to spice things up.

Anna is a glamorous and efficient spy, apart from a tendency on occasions to let her emotions get the upper hand. She’s a trained killer and she’s more than willing to kill but she’s not especially ruthless. Killing is just a necessary part of the job. She doesn’t derive any pleasure from it.

Sex is also a necessary part of the job but that’s something Anna really does enjoy. She enjoys sex whether she’s doing it for professional reasons or for purely recreational purposes. And she’s very very good at it.

The plot, with fiction being turned into reality, is quite clever. The characters are quirky and perverse. Eastwood’s prose is very serviceable. The book certainly belongs in the lighthearted action/adventure spy story sub-genre rather than the gritty realistic sub-genre.

All in all this is a very decent spy thriller and it’s highly recommended.

Alistair MacLean’s The Last Frontier

The Last Frontier is an early Alistair MacLean thriller, dating from 1959. It was filmed in 1961 as The Secret Ways and has also been published under that title. In my view MacLean was at his peak in the 60s and early 70s and his best books were those written in the first person. First-person narration suited MacLean’s purposes perfectly and allowed him to indulge in some of his favourite narrative tricks. The Last Frontier is written in the third person and it’s MacLean starting to really find his feet as a thriller writer. He hasn’t yet perfected his technique but he’s getting there.

There are also a couple of interesting aspects to this novel which I’ll get to later.

You know you’re in MacLean country from the first page - the hero is surrounded by a vast expanse of snow and ice and MacLean makes sure the reader feels the cold as well. It’s not the last time in the book that you’ll feel the cold seeping into your bones.

Michael Reynolds is a British spy and he’s behind the Iron Curtain and he’s cold and he’s being hunted. He’s spent months training for a very important mission and this is the first day and it’s all gone badly wrong. He expected the road-block just outside Budapest but he hadn’t expected the second road-block. Pretty soon he’s in the hands of the Hungarian secret police, the dreaded AVO. There’s no escape.

Then the first plot twist kicks in.

Reynolds’ job is to bring a British scientist back from Budapest. The scientist has no desire to return to the West but the British secret service will use whatever means necessary to persuade him to come. They’re hoping that lies, deception and emotional manipulation will work but it’s clear they’re prepared to resort to more drastic measures.

This is one of the interesting aspects I alluded to earlier. In this novel the British are the good guys but they’re as ruthless, dishonest and cynical as the communists. The novel even floats the suggestion that it was the West that was responsible for the Cold War in the first place. These thoughts are expressed by the courageous Hungarian freedom fighter Jansci who is in fact the most noble and sympathetic character in the book. Jansci takes an instant dislike to Michael Reynolds. Reynolds is everything he despises - a man without honour, without scruples, without emotions. A man of blood. And Reynolds is the novel’s hero. We’re getting close to John le Carre-Len Deighton levels of cynicism and darkness here.

There’s also some political messaging but it’s not at all what you expect in a Cold War spy thriller. It’s all about the futility of war and violence and the desirability of peace, non-violence and peaceful co-existence between the West and the communist world. Very unexpected for 1959, and any kind of messaging comes as a surprise in an Alistair MacLean novel. Usually I detest this kind of messaging but I can’t say it bothered me in this book.

Jansci and the Count, both key characters, offer a perspective on the Cold War that is radically at odds with the view that is offered in just about every other spy novel of the late 50s. It’s a perspective with which the novel’s hero, Reynolds, is increasingly in sympathy. And my impression is that MacLean had some sympathy for this radical re-appraisal of Cold War politics as well since it does constitute the major theme of the novel. In many ways The Last Frontier has a much stronger affinity with Graham Greene’s The Quiet American than with mainstream late 50s spy fiction and it can be seen as an anticipation of the moral murkiness of le Carre and Deighton. But the cynicism abut the Cold War in The Last Frontier goes way beyond anything in le Carre.

What we do expect in a MacLean are devious plot twists, relentless action and suspense and this novel delivers on all these counts. The plot is excellent. Reynolds makes mistake, all the heroic characters in the book make mistakes and all the villains make mistakes as well. Every time Reynolds thinks that this time he’s got it figured out and he’s not going to make another error everything goes horribly wrong again. He seems to keep running into brick walls but he’s been trained never to give up so he just picks himself up and has another try.

There’s a fair amount of violence and there are extended torture scenes but again MacLean surprises us. These are non-violent tortures by means of drugs intended not just to break down the victim’s resistance but to leave him nothing more than an empty shell. There’s no need to kill him afterwards because his personality will have been entirely destroyed. It’s much more horrifying than the conventional torture scenes that the average thriller writer would rely on.

Yet another surprise is the real emotional depth of the hero. We’re talking major character development here. By the end of the book the Michael Reynolds to whom we are introduced at the beginning has ceased to exist, not because his personality has been destroyed by torture but because all his prejudices and illusions and cherished beliefs have been exposed as wrong-headed and devoid of meaning. When a man has to abandon all the codes and values by which he has lived he really has to re-assemble his personality from scratch and that’s the challenge that Michael Reynolds faces.

MacLean did at times offer us damaged or flawed heroes (Fear Is the Key being an example) so perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised by the complexity of the hero of The Last Frontier.

There are still the usual spy fiction themes of loyalty and betrayal, but they’re handled in a complex way.

MacLean’s plots were so good and he was such a master of action and suspense that it’s easy to overlook the fact that he could write some pretty gritty hard-edged prose when he had a mind to.

The Last Frontier is a slightly unconventional but very effective and very entertaining spy thriller. It has a slightly different feel compared to the novels he would write in the 1960s but it’s still highly recommended. In fact it’s thematically interesting enough to qualify for a very highly recommended rating.

I've reviewed the movie version, The Secret Ways (1961), on Classic Movie Ramblings.