J. E. Macdonnell’s Come Die With Me

Come Die With Me, published in 1965, was the first of J. E. Macdonnell’s fourteen Mark Hood spy thrillers.

J. E. Macdonnell was an incredibly prolific Australian author. He wrote at least 200 novels, mostly naval fiction (he spent 14 years in the navy). If you like WW2 naval fiction then his stuff is very good even if it does give the impression that the Australian navy won the war singlehandedly!  He wrote in other genres as well and it was probably inevitable that in the 60s he would try his hand at spy fiction.

Mark Hood is a fairly typical tough guy fictional spy. He works for an international agency called Intertrust. It’s one of those agencies that everybody pretends don’t exist. It seems to be an unofficial informal partnership between several countries, including Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union. Its special brief is to prevent nuclear technology from falling the wrong hands. 

One thing that does make this novel notable is the level of casual brutality. And Mark Hood is much more ruthless and cold-blooded than James Bond. He’s even more ruthless and cold-blooded than Matt Helm. Spies cannot afford to leave witnesses and Hood is quite happy to liquidate such people even if they’re actually pretty harmless and even if they’re old shipmates!

Mark Hood is also a very enthusiastic womaniser. Some modern readers may need to head for the fainting couches when it gets to the bit where the heroine gets really turned on after seeing Mark kill a man. Hood is also an athlete and a racing-car driver. 

He’s an American educated in England and the author is trying to create as much of the fashionable cosmopolitan feel of the spy fiction of that era as he can. The Bahamas is a good choice for an exotic glamorous setting.

In this story it’s not the Russians who are the bad guys but the Germans. Yes this is yet another 60s spy story about followers of that Austrian painter chappie who don’t accept that the war is over.

With the author’s naval background it’s no surprise that this novel has a decidedly nautical flavour. The basic premise is somewhat original. The bad guys have stolen an American PT-boat (or an MTB as they were known in the British navy). But this is no ordinary PT-boat - it’s a nuclear-armed PT-boat. Its torpedoes have atomic warheads. And a new very secret very high-tech guidance system. Which is why the Americans are so upset. The British are upset as well - the PT-boat was stolen in the Bahamas - British territory.

There is of course a megalomaniac super-villain of the standard type, a man named Gauss, and he’s rather sensitive when it comes to aspersions on his mental stability. He has a loyal henchman, rather brutal but also a racing-car driver. Gauss has his secret headquarters, eerily reminiscent of the mountain retreat of that Austrian painter. Gauss is very much a sports car enthusiast, among his other hobbies.

He has a master plan of the usual type. It involves a lot more than nuclear-armed PT-boats.

There are two beautiful women in this story although Hood only gets to bed one of them.

There’s some decent action and suspense. The novel has a rather tough gritty feel and it definitely has its dark moments.

Come Die With Me isn’t groundbreaking but it’s a competent spy thriller and it’s recommended.

It should be noted that there’s a 1969 sexy lady spy novel with the same title, James Eastwood’s Come Die With Me.

Sax Rohmer's Grey Face

Grey Face is a 1924 Sax Rohmer potboiler and as to which genre to which to assign it, you’ll have to decide for yourself when you read it. And you should read it.

Rohmer wrote some gothic horror but he also wrote stories that seem to be supernatural (or paranormal) horror but turn out to have rational explanations. There’s often occultism and fringe science. Or esoteric religio-mystical stuff. Even science fictional elements. Even in the stories in which there’s a rational explanation there’s enough strangeness to qualify them as weird fiction. You just never know what you’re going to get.

That applies to Grey Face in a major way.

It starts with a guy named Carey who had been in military intelligence during the war. Now he works for Scotland Yard in a semi-official capacity as an advisor. And he’s had a couple of very odd memory lapses. One night he sits down to write an important report to the Commissioner, Sir John Nevinson. Three hours later he wakes up and the report hasn’t been written. He remembers nothing of the preceding few hours. The following night the same thing happens again. What worries him is that somehow he has used a whole stack of writing paper. He must have written the report. In fact the impressions left on the writing pad confirm that he did write the report But he has no idea what has happened to that report.

He has romantic problems as well. He is hoping to marry Jasmine, the daughter of eminent physician Provost Hope (who specialises in rather fringe areas such as hypnotism and psycho-analysis). Jasmine has broken off the engagement because he lied to her. The annoying thing is that he knows quite well that he did not lie to her and he cannot understand why she thinks he did. She also believes that he has fallen for the charms of the mysterious and notorious (and undoubtedly immoral) Madame Sabinov.

For her part Jasmine is being pursued by M. De Trepniak, an even odder bird. He is reputed to be Russian but nothing certain is known about him. He is fabulously wealthy but the source of his riches are unknown.

These romantic dramas are connected with Carey’s memory lapses, and with some strange experiments, and a jewel robbery and the theft of vital official documents. The connections are bizarre and more connections keep emerging, each of them even more bizarre. There is a mysterious Egyptian, an adept of the mystical arts. There are strange talismans. There is a murder. There is a vast conspiracy which may well have occult underpinnings. It may be linked to forbidden esoteric teachings. And did I mention that there are people who appear to be dead, but are not?

But of course none of this is certain. Everything in this tale is tantalisingly ambiguous.

No-one was better than Rohmer at creating an atmosphere of mystery and menace and decadence and moral depravity.

The plot is fiendishly complex but consistently intriguing. There is plenty of danger (both physical and moral) and breathless excitement. There are hidden rooms and secret passageways. There are cruel imprisonments. There are hoodlums and fiendish human monsters. There are inexplicable and terrifying illnesses.

There’s also a assortment of villains all of whom have given at least some consideration to the idea of double-crossing their accomplices.

It’s huge amounts of fun and it’s very highly recommended. One of Rohmer’s best.

Stark House have paired this novel with another delightfully overheated Sax Rohmer potboiler, The Green Eyes of Bâst.

I’ve reviewed a lot of Sax Rohmer’s work and I particularly recommend The Leopard Couch, The Dream Detective, Brood of the Witch-Queen and of course the Fu Manchu books such as The Mask of Fu Manchu.