David Lewis’s The Omega Assignment

The Omega Assignment, published in 1976, was the second of David Lewis’s two Steve Savage spy thrillers. I believe that was the extent of Lewis’s literary endeavours. His real name was Patton D. Lewis. That’s all I know about him. Given that his spy hero is British it’s reasonable to assume that Lewis was British.

Steve Savage is a photo-journalist who does occasional jobs for the British intelligence services. He’s strictly a free-lancer. He does intelligence jobs for the cash.

This adventure starts with the sinking of an incredibly expensive and luxurious private yacht, the Cytherea, not far from Cyprus. The Cytherea was owned by a wealthy German businessman, Herr Braeder. The sinking was no accident. There appear to be no survivors.

The Cytherea was a floating pleasure place. The pleasures it catered for were the pleasures of the flesh. Whatever your sexual tastes, no matter how outré, the girls on the Cytherea would ensure that those tastes would be accommodated.

Half a dozen of the passengers on the Cytherea’s final voyage were senior NATO officers. They did not meet easy deaths when the ship went down, not did any of the passengers or crew. Although nobody knows it in fact one man and three of the girls survived. Their survival was not due to luck.

Shortly afterwards Steve Savage is offered a photographic assignment. A German magazine wants photos of the wreck. This surprises Steve, since as far as he was aware the wreck had not been located. He will be working with a journalist named Destiny Blaine. Destiny is a pretty blonde American, very feminine, although feminine girls usually don’t carry Colt .45s in their handbags.

Steve and Giorgio (an expert Cypriot diver with whom Steve has worked before) find the wreck easily enough but in that sunken ship there are a lot of things that are puzzling and disturbing. There are signs that some terrible things went on before the ship went down. Steve isn’t entirely surprised when it turns out that someone does not want them to investigate that wreck, and will take drastic steps to dissuade them.

Things get more dangerous and more violent. Steve also figures out that that there are a lot of things he wasn’t told. He is half inclined to have no more to do with any of it. That changes when events transpire that give him a personal stake in the case. In fact two personal stakes.

There is non-stop action. The plot isn’t anything special, it’s pretty standard spy stuff, but the book powers along at such a pace that you don’t have time to worry about plot weaknesses. The action scenes are violent and exciting and very well handled.

There’s some underwater action, always a bonus as far as I’m concerned.

There’s definitely a brutal edge to this book. There are scenes of horrific violence and torture, and they’re described very graphically. There are also touches of perversity.

There’s some sex but it’s pretty tame by mid-70s standards.

Steve Savage is a fairly stock-standard secret agent hero. He’s more cynical than Bond. He doesn’t care about ideology. He just wants to live to get paid. Destiny is a likeable enough heroine. There’s no real depth to any of the characters.

The novel does have a memorable villain. He’s a diabolical criminal mastermind but more insane than most of that breed and more sexually perverse. And he has a proper diabolical criminal mastermind secret headquarters.

I have no idea why this author wrote just two spy thrillers. On the basis of this one I’d have expected him to have a decent career writing pulpy action-adventure thrillers.

The Omega Assignment is fine entertainment. Highly recommended.

I discovered this book through a rather favourable review at Paperback Warrior.