Peter O’Donnell's Modesty Blaise: Mister Sun

This volume contains three Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures written by Peter O’Donnell with artwork by Jim Holdaway.

Comic strips published three frames at a time in daily newspapers were once immensely popular. It’s a format that is now more or less extinct. These were almost always aimed at kids and younger readers. What made Modesty Blaise revolutionary when the strip debuted in 1963 was that it was aimed much more at grown-ups.

In fact, as is evident in this collection, Modesty Blaise was definitely for grown-ups. It wasn’t just the occasional nudity. The tone could be quite dark and even grim. In the worlds of crime and espionage people get hurt. Good people get killed. Straightforward happy endings are not guaranteed.

Mister Sun is a very early Modesty Blaise adventure, from 1964. A few years earlier Modesty had unofficially adopted a young Vietnamese boy named Weng and paid for his university education in Hong Kong. Now he has become involved with organised crime. It doesn’t make sense. He’s not that kind of kid. Apparently he was trying to get hold of a great deal of money very quickly, for some undisclosed purpose. But if he needed money Modesty would have given it to him gladly.

And Weng has no idea of the trouble he’s landed himself in getting involved with the sinister crime lord Mister Sun. And Mister Sun and Modesty Blaise have clashed before so Modesty suspects a particularly sinister purpose behind Mister Sun’s recruitment of Weng.

There are lots of unexpected ramifications and lots of plot twists to come. This is a rare Modesty Blaise story that involves current events (in this case the war in Vietnam), something that O’Donnell was later careful to avoid. Mister Sun is a suitably dangerous villain and he controls a vast criminal network. It’s a good story.

The Mind of Mrs Drake is unusual in having hints of the paranormal. There is a woman who earns her living as a psychic and she may or may not have some actual psychic abilities. She also happens to be a spy. Her psychic abilities make her very effective at recruiting agents - she knows their dirty little secrets and their weaknesses and their fears, all the things that can be used to manipulate them.

British counter-intelligence have sent in Modesty’s young friend Jeannie Challon as bait. This is Jeannie’s first counter-espionage assignment.

Mrs Drake has an accomplice, an osteopath, and while he lacks her special skills he is much more ruthless and much more dangerous.

The danger for Jeannie Challon is that Mrs Drake’s psychic abilities may have put her one step ahead of her adversaries. Jeannie’s cover could be blown and she would have no way of knowing it.

Modesty dislikes having to kill people but when she decides that someone really does need killing she puts her scruples to one side. This is one of the stories in which that ruthless side of Modesty is in evidence. A very good story.

The Killing Ground is a very brief story that O’Donnell and Holdaway had to produce in a hurry to fill a publication gap. It’s yet another retelling of The Most Dangerous Game. It’s OK but it is obviously a filler story.

Mister Sun and The Mind of Mrs Drake are top-tier Modesty Blaise adventures making this a very desirable purchase.

I’ve reviewed three other early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix, The Black Pearl and Uncle Happy, as well as the first five novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, A Taste for Death, The Impossible Virgin and I, Lucifer.

William Vance’s Bait

Bait is a sleaze novel with a hint of noir by William Vance (writing as George Cassidy) published in 1962.

Melody Frane is an itinerant farm worker in her late teens. Her mother is a drunk and a whore. Melody is constantly trying to avoid the attentions of men but with a body like hers it’s a losing battle. She’s working on a farm which is part of the vast business empire of Harry Ransome.

When company pilot Kenney Ward tries to make her in the cockpit of his plane her problem is that she wants him to stop, but her body definitely doesn’t want him to stop. She wants to be a good girl but she hungers for love and she hungers for men.

She gets herself fired and realises she doesn’t have too many good options. She has no education to speak of. She has no social polish. She has no skills. She has one possibly useful asset - her luscious body.

Then she attracts the attention of the company boss, Harry Ransome. After having sex with her he offers to employ her as his secretary. She is puzzled by this - she cannot type or take shorthand, in fact she has no office skills. Her assures that this won’t be a problem - he’ll send her to Las Vegas for training. Mrs Matthews will take care of her. She accepts the offer.

Melody is naïve but she knows what men want and she realises that being Harry’s mistress will be part of the deal. Had she known that Harry Ransome was married alarm bells might have started ringing. On the other hand she enjoyed the sex with him.

She becomes more puzzled when the training involves no shorthand or typing. Slowly it dawns on her that she is being trained as a courtesan. She is shocked. She thinks of herself as a good girl (despite her propensity for hopping into bed with men). And it does seem like she will be well paid. She likes that idea.

Kenney meanwhile has decided he wants to save her and marry her. She’s not sure about the marriage idea but he is awfully good in bed. Kenney means to win her but Harry Ransome is not likely to relinquish such a useful asset and such a satisfactory bed companion.

There was a considerable crossover between the sleaze, noir and hardboiled genres in the 50s and early 60s. There were noir novels with generous helpings of sleaze and there were sleaze novels with a very noirish flavour. Bait falls into the latter category.

The sleaze elements are very coy even for 1962. There’s not even a hint of even mildly graphic sex. The shock value comes from what would at the time have been considered moral depravity. Melody has a lot of sex. The real shock factor is that she enjoys it.

What makes this novel interesting is the moral ambiguity. There are are no real villains. Kenney’s attempted seduction of Melody in the plane goes way beyond seduction. He intends to take her by force. But he’s one of the good guys. Harry Ransome exploits Melody but she gives herself to him willingly and she’s also willing to be exploited, at least up to a point. He’s not quite an out-and-out villain and to some extent he’s driven by pressure to keep his head above water in a cutthroat business world, and by an unsatisfying marriage.

Melody is a nice girl who causes most of her own problems through her extraordinary mixture of innocence, greed for the good things in life and wantonness. She’s a good girl but if a man is nice to her she’ll drop her panties in a trice.

To the extent that this is borderline noir Melody is both the noir protagonist and the femme fatale. Her stunningly impressive bust measurement, her healthy sexual appetite and her tendency to defend her virtue in a very half-hearted manner make her a dangerous young lady.

The author is aiming for a bit of complexity rather than a god vs evil story.

Bait pulls its punches a bit but it’s a fairly enjoyable potboiler. Recommended. It’s available in paperback from Black Gat Books.

Murray Leinster’s The Mutant Weapon

The Mutant Weapon is a science fiction novella (or maybe at a stretch a short novel) by Murray Leinster (1896-1975). Leinster was a prolific American science fiction writer who deserves a lot more attention. He wrote mostly short fiction.

The Mutant Weapon was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1957. It’s part of his extensive Med Service series.

The story takes place in a future in which humans have colonised hundreds of planets. But Leinster understands something that so many other science fiction writers have failed to understand. Any kind of interstellar empire or federation would be impossible. When travel between the colony worlds takes years there can be nothing even approaching a central government. All the colony worlds are in practice entirely autonomous. They recognise no central authority.

The one partial exception is the Med Service. Med Service spaceships are constantly visiting other worlds. A Med Service man has in theory vast authority but has no means of imposing that authority. Because the Med Service is universally recognised as useful in practice any planetary government will almost certainly quite voluntarily recognise a Med Service man’s authority. The Med Service is the only way the colony worlds can have access to the latest medical technologies.

Calhoun is a Med Service man about to conduct a routine health examination on a brand new colony. His ship has a crew of two, the second crew member being Murgatroyd. Murgatroyd is a tormal. Tormals are cute monkey-like animals but they have a couple of very significant biological peculiarities that make them incredibly useful. Calhoun is very fond of Murgatroyd.

No-one has ever interfered with the Med Service. Why would they? It would make no sense. So Calhoun is more than a little puzzled when someone tries to destroy his spaceship.

When Calhoun does land there are more puzzles. A vast city apparently empty. A man lying dead in a field. He has starved to death but he is surrounded by food. This is impossible.

What is happening on this planet is bizarre, inexplicable, sinister and terrifying. With horrifying implications. It’s a plague but it breaks all the rules of known medical science.

I’m not going to say any more about the plot other than that it contains some very cool ideas and twists.

I like Calhoun. He’s not at all a straightforward action. He’s a doctor and he detests the idea of harming people. On the other hand he has an extraordinary steely determination and a very strong sense of justice. He can be a very formidable adversary and when he has to resort to action he does so in extremely devious and imaginative ways.

And while the focus is on Calhoun’s search for answers there is some action and suspense and a very real sense of menace. And evil. And it’s a nasty kind of calculated evil.

Calhoun is a man who thinks in terms of probabilities. Actions have consequences which can to some extent be predicted. And ingenious plans fail because the people who devise ingenious master plans never take chance consequences into account.

The Mutant Weapon is clever superior-grade science fiction and it’s highly recommended.

Murray Leinster should be regarded as one of the science fiction greats. I’ve reviewed his 1953 alien invasion tale The Invaders and absolutely superb short story collection The Best of Murray Leinster.

Armchair Fiction have paired The Mutant Weapon with J.J. Allerton’s Moon of Battle in a two-novel paperback edition.

Kingsley Amis's Girl, 20

Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) was at one time a very big deal indeed in the literary world. He now seems to have fallen very much out of fashion which is a great pity. Among other things he was one of the great comic writers, at his best the equal of Evelyn Waugh. Kingsley Amis also had the knack of pleasing both critics and the book-buying public.

Girl, 20 was published in 1971, to considerable critical acclaim.

The narrator is 33-year-old music critic Douglas Yandell but the book is dominated by the larger-than-life 54-year-old conductor Sir Roy Vandervane. Roy is both appalling and fascinating. He has achieved success and is a well-known public figure although the suspicion does attach itself to him that perhaps he has never lived up to his early promise and he has never quite reached the top rank as a conductor. He is a champagne socialist, an inveterate liar and an outrageous hypocrite. He has been a poor husband and a dismal father to his three children.

Douglas likes Roy but disapproves of him. Douglas is serious minded and fairly conventional in outlook and despises Roy’s political posturing.

Now Roy’s wife Kitty wants Douglas’s help. She fears that Roy has embarked on another of his “goes” this being her term for his affairs with younger women. He has had a long series of “goes” with progressively younger women. Kitty has at one time been one of his “goes” and she had succeeded in stealing him from his first wife. She fear that sooner or later one of these girls will steal Roy away from her for good.

Douglas becomes embroiled in Kitty’s plottings and in Roy’s. Roy has a way of manipulating people to do what he wants them to do. Even when you know what he is up to, and Douglas is most certainly aware, somehow you get sucked into his schemes anyway.

There are countless complications. There’s Douglas’s girlfriend Vivienne. There’s nothing serious between them but she suits him. There’s Roy’s eldest daughter Penny, whom Douglas tried to seduce a couple of years earlier. There’s Penny’s boyfriend.

And there’s Roy’s increasing involvement in hare-brained political activities. Roy is in danger of making a fool of himself in multiple ways. Douglas feels he has to save Roy from himself. That is not going to be easy and may prove to be impossible.

Amis was a great comic writer and this is a very funny book. It’s perhaps a satire but if so Amis has a large collection of targets in his sights.

I think it’s important not to fall into the trap that so many readers today fall into, of assuming that the narrator’s opinions coincide precisely with the author’s. Douglas Yandell is what would later come to be known as a “young fogey” - a young intellectual who ostentatiously adopts old-fashioned attitudes and outlooks and aesthetic tastes. Douglas is also an intellectual snob. His field is music and he has nothing but contempt for current pop music but this contempt extends to all 20th century music, including Mahler! Amis may have had some such tendencies but it would be a mistake to assume that Douglas is merely an authorial mouthpiece.

Douglas is saddened by Roy’s desperate attempts to ingratiate himself with the younger generation. Roy is certainly an absurd figure, but Douglas is somewhat absurd as well.

And while he disapproves of Roy’s womanising that doesn’t stop Douglas from doing his best to get into Roy’s daughter Penny’s pants. He is a bit of a hypocrite as well. Perhaps Douglas mostly disapproves not of Roy’s womanising, but of the clumsiness with which he goes about it.

Douglas despises Roy as a champagne socialist. Amis himself was at one time a communist. From the mid-50s onwards he moved steadily towards much more conservative views (bearing in mind that such words had totally different meanings in 1971) but what makes Roy ridiculous is the shallowness and opportunism of his views.

Amis cannot be accused of having a limited stereotypical view of women. The female characters cover a broad spectrum. Kitty is neurotic and manipulative. Vivienne is basically a nice girl. Penny is a bit of a mess but given the utter chaos of the Vandervane household that’s hardly surprising. Sylvia, the object of Roy’s lusts, is a horror but she’s young so she has some excuse.

Girl, 20 is definitely takes an acerbic view of the emerging hippie culture, but Amis’s views of the arty-intellectual elite are every bit as acerbic.

This is a very very funny book by one of the four great humorous writers of the 20th century (the others being P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh and Norman Lindsay). Very highly recommended.

Michael Crichton's Zero Cool

Zero Cool is one of the early thrillers written by Michael Crichton under the name John Lange. It was published in 1969, the same year in which Crichton hit the big time with The Andromeda Strain (his first novel published under his own name).

Crichton qualified as a medical doctor in 1969. He never practised but his time at medical school was certainly not wasted. His enthusiasm for medicine, science and technology is obvious in all his books.

The hero of Zero Cool, Dr Peter Ross, is a young American radiologist. He has just qualified as has rewarded himself with a month-long vacation in Spain. He has been told that the beaches in Spain are knee-deep in very attractive very friendly girls. This should be a very pleasant holiday.

He meets a very nice girl indeed almost straight away. Angela is an English stewardess.

Then Peter is accosted by a very agitated Spaniard who warns him not to perform the autopsy. Peter has no idea what the guy is talking about.

And then he is approached by the Carrinis. They tell him a sad story that their eldest brother has been shot and killed and his dying wish is to be buried in the United States (the country from which he was deported some years earlier). But an autopsy must be carried out and they want Peter to perform it. Coming on top of the warning of the day before the mention of an autopsy makes Peter very nervous. He refuses. He is also puzzled. He is a radiologist. He is not even qualified to perform autopsies.

He performs the autopsy, more or less at gunpoint. The autopsy includes one very unusual feature.

Karin, the nurse who assisted at the autopsy, claims to have something to tell him that he needs to know.

Then he is set up and to avoid arrest takes refuge in the first hotel room he comes to where he is helped out by an almost naked blonde. She wants him to sell her information that he doesn’t have.

Things slowly get weirder. He meets the Professor, a very crazy guy. The tall American, Tex, is a bit crazy as well. And he hasn’t met the count yet. There are at least three separate groups and they all want something but Peter has no idea what it is. Karin did offer him a clue. It involves Mexico, and Cortes. The more Peter figures out the stranger it seems.

There’s plenty of action along the way and Peter gets beaten up, kidnapped, tortured, brainwashed and arrested. The plot has lots of twists and double-crosses and Peter realises he can’t trust any of these crazies. There are some fine imaginative action set-pieces and then there are the birds and they’re a very clever touch.

One of this book’s major strengths is that it features an assortment of colourful villains with mysterious motivations. There’s also an assortment of beautiful girls but whether they’re nice girls or evil girls is impossible to say.

Peter isn’t way out of his depth when it comes to dealing with these bizarre situations but he does have a well-developed instinct for self-preservation and a good deal of curiosity.

Exotic settings, fast pacing, solid plotting, hair’s-breadth escapes, crazed criminal masterminds and beautiful dangerous women - if these are the things you look for in a thriller you’ll find a great deal to enjoy in Zero Cool. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed lots of Michael Crichton’s books - Scratch One, Congo, The Terminal Man and The Andromeda Strain. I’m a major Crichton fan.

Mandrake the Magician Vol 1 1934-1936

I had only very dim memories of reading a few of the Mandrake the Magician comic-strips aeons ago. I had forgotten that Mandrake is not a stage magician. He possesses actual magical powers. And he does not rely merely on hypnotism. This is a collection of the earliest strips from the mid-1930s. I believe the character changed somewhat in later strips.

One weakness here is that Mandrake’s magical powers are much too formidable. When a character has such immense powers it can encourage lazy writing - any plot problems are solved simply by utilising one of Mandrake’s countless magical powers. That weakness is partly compensated for in the first adventure by giving the villain equally extensive powers, but it would still have been more fun if Mandrake had to use his wits a bit more instead of just constantly resorting to magic.

The first story is The Cobra. The Cobra is an evil super-magician with ambitions that put most regular super-villains to shame. And he has a castle from which sunlight is banished and it has a mad scientist’s laboratory in the basement. He’s into evil science as well as evil magic.

The Coba has obtained secret documents that could plunge the world into war. Inspector Sheldon of the U.S. Secret Service, his assistant Tommy Lord and Sheldon’s daughter Barbara set sail for the Orient, their destination a small strategically vital sheikhdom. Those papers must be retrieved. Mandrake and his servant Lothar will be helping out as well.

The Cobra is a formidable opponent and his castle is protected by spells that will make Mandrake’s magic useless. It all seems hopeless but Mandrake does not give up easily. At least this story pits Mandrake against a suitably daunting adversary.

The second story, The Hawk, introduces us to the beautiful, mysterious and possibly dangerous Princess Narda. The Hawk is a master criminal. He fears that Mandrake has discovered the plot in which he is currently involved. Mandrake must therefore be eliminated.

Mandrake’s limitless magical powers are a problem in this story. The Hawk is just a regular thug. He doesn’t stand a chance against Mandrake’s powers and the result is never in doubt. Princess Narda is at least an interesting seductive bad girl but it’s otherwise a dull story.

The Monster of Tanov Pass is more interesting. Mandrake is in central Europe and in a remote castle he encounters not a vampire but a mad scientist, and his monster. He’s been up to the usual mad scientist tricks, performing brain transplants. His monster, named Klage, is a gorilla with a human brain.

This time the bad guy gets a lucky break when Mandrake gets knocked unconscious and Lothar has to try to deal with Klage using brute force. A better story with an interesting monster.

Saki, the Clay Camel takes Mandrake to Arabia where he matches wits against a master thief, Saki. Saki, like Mandrake, is a master of disguise. The overuse of disguise is always a weakness in a story but in this case the two adversaries don’t even require skill or imagination - they just assume disguises instantaneously. Since this tale relies entirely on the use of disguise it doesn’t really provide any great interest or excitement.

The Werewolf is more promising. A pretty young woman named Lora lives with her strange old uncle and her surly cousin. The region is being terrorised by a werewolf. Lora is beside herself with fear. Mandrake is sceptical of the werewolf story from the start. This is by far the best story in the collection. Mandrake actually has to think things through. The plot has some clever and amusing twists and there’s at least some suspense.

I believe that Mandrake’s magical powers were curtailed somewhat in the later years of the strip.

Mandrake the Magician in this early form at least has some claims to being the first comic-strip superhero. If you’re a fan of superhero comic-strips then you’ll enjoy this collection a lot more than I did. If, like me, you’re not a fan of comic-book superheroes then, like me, you might be a bit underwhelmed. But this was a hugely influential comic strip and it does have historical importance. It’s just not quite my cup of tea.

Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square

Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square was published in 1941.

Patrick Hamilton (1904-1962) was an English novelist and playwright. He enjoyed some success before self-destructing with alcohol.

Hangover Square is his most famous novel. It was adapted to film in 1945.

While Hamilton clearly had literary aspirations Hangover Square is also a crime novel, falling into the psychological crime novel sub-genre. I have to be honest and say that this is not one of my favourite sub-genres.

Critics get very excited by the idea that this is some kind of political novel offering social commentary and an examination of a society on the brink of war. This is mostly poppycock. The novel is focused entirely and obsessively on the inner workings of its protagonist. The approach of war is there in the background but really plays no significant part in the novel. Maybe Hamilton thought he was saying something important about English society in the late 30s but what he has to say is fairly trite.

In the 1940s there was a huge craze for dubious pop psychology and half-baked Freudianism, all rather laughable but they did provide the raw material for some insanely enjoyable movies.

At the time people thought of schizophrenia and “split personality” as being the same thing. Split personality later became known as dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. This is where a person has two or more distinct personalities. That’s assuming that this disorder actually exists, which is doubtful to say the least. I suspect that Hamilton read a magazine article about it and thought it would be a cool subject for a novel. In the novel it just doesn’t come across as being truly convincing.

Added to which, the protagonist’s main problem is that he spends his entire life in an alcohol haze which is why he falls for a woman who is clearly going to make his life a misery. Perhaps the author would have been better off focusing either on the split personality thing or the protagonist’s alcohol-induced errors of judgment.

George Harvey Bone is a lonely 34-year-old alcoholic loser. He also has some kind of mental disorder which causes him to switch back and forth between two different personalities. He thinks of these as his ordinary moods and his dead moods. When he switches personalities he has no memory of anything the other personality has done. Both personalties are however sad alcoholic losers.

And in both personality modes George is in love with a gorgeous floozy named Netta. In his dead moods he plans to kill her.

His whole relationship with Netta is a disaster right fro the start and in fact there is no actual relationship. Netta is using him at various times when it suits her convenience. Due to a combination of booze, his naïveté in regard to women, his social ineptitude and his desperation he cannot figure out that he should run way from Netta as fast as he can. Instead he keeps crawling back to get kicked again.

George is so hopeless and lacking in self-respect that it’s hard to feel any sympathy for him. The story plays out as black comedy rather than tragedy. That was presumably the author’s intention but it’s so cruel that it’s unpleasant reading.

I can see why this would be the kind of book that literary critics would go for. I found it to be a bit of a mess and a bit of a slog to get through. Your mileage may vary.