Charles Eric Maine’s Timeliner

Timeliner is a 1955 science fiction novel by Charles Eric Maine and it’s a time travel story, of sorts.

Charles Eric Maine (1921-1981) was a successful English writer of science fiction as well as detective fiction. He co-edited a science fiction magazine called The Satellite and wrote quite a few science fiction novels in the 50s and early 60s.

It is 1959 and Hugh Macklin is a British scientist engaged in top-secret research on time travel. His team has constructed a time travel capsule. Only it’s not time travel as such that he’s working on, but psycho time travel. What is psycho time travel? To tell the truth Hugh Macklin doesn’t really know. He believes it’s possible but he doesn’t know what will actually happen if it’s attempted. But he’s about to attempt it anyway. It works by dimensional quadrature. Macklin invented the technique but he doesn’t understand it.

His other current preoccupation is his marriage to Lydia which seems to be heading for the rocks. He’s a scientist so he has an analytical mind. He can’t deny that there is evidence suggesting that she is having an affair. But he’s a man and he does love her and he doesn’t want to accept that this might be true. Lydia will indeed betray him, but not in a straightforward way. His marital problems will soon complicate his scientific experiment.

The experiment is made. And now Hugh Macklin is Eddie Rayner and it’s 2035 and he’s on the Moon, in the newly established moonbase. Only he’s not really Eddie Rayner, he’s still Hugh Macklin. Only he’s not really Hugh Macklin any longer, he’s Eddie Rayner. And he has no idea how he got to the Moon and why it’s now 2035. The experiment was not supposed to work like this.

In Eddie’s wallet is a photograph of Eddie’s girlfriend Valerie. Except that the girl in the photo is Lydia. Only it isn’t. But it is.

And then he’s on Venus 400 years later. He’s now someone different but he’s still Hugh Macklin.

Macklin is now a timeliner but he doesn’t know it yet and he doesn’t understand the full implications although he is starting to become aware that there are some serious ethical and moral implications. He’s not comfortable about these things but he has no idea what he can do about. This is a science fiction novel that does confront ethical issues and it doesn’t do it in a simplistic way. Hugh Macklin is a scientist. He assumes that scientific and technological progress are always good, and if that means a scientist is tempted to do morally questionable or even reprehensible things well that’s the price of progress. At the same time he does feel uncomfortable about such things.

He’s not a straightforward hero. He’s certainly no villain. He is perhaps a species of mad scientist. He is blinded by his scientific ambition. This makes him reckless. His project is nowhere near sufficiently advanced to justify a live test but he goes ahead with one. He avoids facing up to ethical dilemmas. He doesn’t understand people particularly well. He’s fundamentally decent but he is definitely a flawed hero.

The psycho time travel is a clever and original idea and as Macklin slowly learns more it becomes more clever and more original. Affinities are the key. And the ethical problem involved is a rather nasty one.

Of course he would like to return to the 20th century but that appears to be impossible. He doesn’t know what went wrong in 1959. He does however know one curious fact which may be a clue.

Maybe he’s destined to remain a timeliner for all time. Maybe he’s trapped on a temporal rollercoaster.

An intelligent inventive science fiction novel with cool ideas and a bit of depth. I recommend this one very highly.

I’ve reviewed a couple of Maine’s other science fiction novels, Wall of Fire and Spaceways. The latter is excellent and was made into a very good movie by Hammer, Spaceways (1953).

M.G. Braun’s Operation Jealousy

Operation Jealousy (originally published in French as Plan Jalousie in 1965) was part of M.G. Braun’s series of Al Glenne spy thrillers. The English translation appeared in 1966.

M.G. Braun (1912-1984) was an enormously prolific French thriller writer.

Al Glenne is a French secret service agent. His latest mission is to capture Erik Kleimann alive. Kleimann is a German who has been living in Paraguay since 1945, having decided that his wartime activities could cause him some embarrassment in post-war Europe. Now he’s in France, because of Nadine.

Kleimann possesses some papers which could prove very embarrassing for a prominent fast-rising American politician. The Americans want those papers for obvious reasons. The French want them - they will give the French useful leverage over the Americans. The Russians want them for that reason also.

The opening sequence (which takes a place a decade before the min events of the novel) is rather startling. Kleimann has sent an assassin to kill the pretty teenaged Nadine because she has discovered things about him and he cannot take the risk that she might be persuaded to reveal that information. The assassin is a skilled professional. Knowing that she is about to be killed gets Nadine very excited. She is in fact on the point of orgasm. But she is not killed. Instead she ruthlessly and efficiently kills the assassin. Nadine is clearly an unusual girl.

Kleimann is relieved that she survived. He now realises how much he loves her.

But Kleimann is very very jealous. And while Nadine loves him she is not entirely faithful. If he ever finds her in another man’s arms he will kill her and her lover.

Which is what led the French secret service to formulate their plan to capture Kleimann. They will set Nadine up to serve as the bait to bring him into the open. Al Glenne dislikes the plan. Even by the murky moral standards of the world of espionage it seems to him to be sleazy and nasty. But he has his orders.

With so many people after Kleimann things naturally get complicated and there are plenty of temptations to pull double-crosses.

It’s a neat plot with nice twists but this is a psychological spy thriller. In fact it’s a psycho-sexual spy thriller. Everything hinges on the exact nature of Kleimann’s feelings towards Nadine and her feelings towards him. And she’s a very complicated girl. Unless Al Glenne can figure out exactly what Nadine’s motivations are he cannot complete this mission. It’s worse than that. He has to be able to predict Nadine’s actions. Now that is not going to be easy.

It would also be helpful to Al if he knew exactly how Kleimann was likely to react under the impetus of his jealousy. But he doesn’t know that.

There’s a reasonable amount of action. There’s not much sex but the plot is driven by both erotic desires and emotional desires.

Nadine is perhaps a femme fatale of sorts. She could lead Al Glenne to his doom, or she could lead Kleimann to his doom. Al can’t decide if she’s a misunderstood nice girl or a calculating bitch or a cheap slut. She might be all three at once.

Operation Jealousy is an excellent slightly unusual spy story. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed other M.G. Braun spy novels featuring Al Glenne. Apostles of Violence and Operation Atlantis are excellent. That Girl from Istanbul is perhaps not quite as good but it’s still a very fine thriller. These are definitely superior-grade spy novels.

Whitley Strieber's The Wolfen

The Wolfen is a 1978 horror novel by Whitley Strieber. The title suggests that this is going to be a werewolf story but it isn’t really. Or rather it is, but it’s a very very unconventional werewolf tale. And it’s unconventional in extremely interesting ways.

It starts with two New York cops on a routine duty in the auto pound. It’s very boring duty but it’s about the safest job in the whole NYPD. Or so they these two cops thought. Within minutes they’re torn to pieces. And eaten.

The detectives assigned to the case are Wilson and Becky Neff. Wilson is middle-aged, irascible, embittered, doesn’t approve of lady cops but he’s a brilliant detective. He doesn’t approve of Becky Neff until he has to grudgingly admit that she really does have a fine investigative brain. They bicker constantly, but they’re a great team. They hate each other, and they love each other.

This case is puzzling to say the least. The two dead cops were clearly killed by animals. Large powerful animals. Animals such as dogs. But they could not have been killed by dogs. Nothing about the way they were killed is consistent with a dog attack. Dogs just don’t operate that way. The department wants the case buried.

Then more bodies turn up. Wilson and Neff have found out a few things that make the case more puzzling. The animal tracks found nearby belong to no known species. It’s more and more obvious that it was an attack by a pack of animals, but a pack that behaves nothing like a pack of dogs. And nothing like a pack of wolves.

And then Wilson and Neff realise they’re being hunted. This is a story in which both sets of antagonists are both hunters and hunted.

The Chief Medical Examiner is baffled. Wilson and Neff turn to scientific experts for help. Dr Ferguson has a theory but he’s reluctant to reveal it. It’s too outlandish. The ridicule it would attract would end his career. But Wilson and Neff suspect his crazy theory is pretty close to the truth.

The Commissioner and the Chief of Detectives are too intent on playing politics to offer any assistance. In fact they’re planning to offer up the two detectives as scapegoats.

Becky Neff’s marital problems complicate things.

I’m not going to reveal what is really going on. It becomes clear quite early on but it’s more fun if you figure out it out at the same as the two detectives do so. It’s a very clever and original variation on the werewolf idea.

As in The Hunger Strieber gets us into the minds of non-human creatures. In this case the more we know about these creatures the more terrifying they are. And as in The Hunger he’s interested in the mindset of predators.

It’s also similar to The Hunger in its cynicism about power structures and the murky motivations of institutions.

The two cops are flawed but interesting. Becky Neff has a crooked cop husband to worry about but he’s not a crook in a straightforward way. Wilson isn’t conventionally likeable but we develop a certain respect for him and the relationship between the two detectives develops in intriguing ways.

There’s plenty of visceral horror but it isn’t gratuitous. We need to be appalled by the killings.

I haven’t read any of the UFO novels for which Strieber is best known but so far I’m very impressed by his horror fiction. The Wolfen is highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed The Hunger.

Anthony Rome's Miami Mayhem

Miami Mayhem, published in 1960, was the first of the Tony Rome PI thrillers written by Marvin H. Albert under the pseudonym Anthony Rome.

Marvin H. Albert wrote huge numbers of crime and spy novels using his own name and several pseudonyms including Anthony Rome and Nick Quarry.

Tony Rome is a PI in Miami. He lives aboard his boat, the Straight Pass. He won it playing craps. He gambles a lot. Mostly he loses. The Straight Pass is the only thing he has to show for all the years he has devoted to gambling.

Tony gets a call from a PI named Turpin. He and Tony used to be partners. Turpin is now house dick at a Miami hotel. He wants Tony to return a girl to her father. Just to drive her home. There’s no real drama. The girl (her name is Diana) is fine, just drunk and passed out. Her father, a seriously rich guy named Klosterman, has reported her missing. It’s an easy two hundred bucks for Tony.

So why has someone torn Tony’s boat, car and office apart looking for something? It has to be something very valuable.

Diana has lost an item of jewellery. It’s a pin in the shape of a daisy. It’s moderately valuable, but not worth enough for someone to go to so much trouble to get hold of. And it doesn’t explain why Turpin has had his brains blown out (we know about this right at the start so this is not a spoiler).

The Klosterman family setup provides endless potential for dramas. Klosterman has an ex-wife. He hates her. Diana’s husband is chasing other women. There’s a sleazy doctor who’s lost his medical licence and he’s mixed up with the family. And there are some secrets.

That missing pin leads Tony to all kinds of discoveries. Valuable jewels do tend to be associated with all manner of shady dealings.

Klosterman is determined above all to avoid scandal. What he wants from Tony is help in covering up any possible scandal. And Klosterman has major political connections. There is a background of corruption involving politicians, cops and powerful men like Klosterman. Justice means nothing. Power is everything. Tony Rome is basically honest but he’s a realist. In a crooked town in a crooked state in a crooked world there’s no point in even daydreaming about justice. The first thing for a PI to worry about is to survive. Then if you’re lucky you worry about collecting your fee. If you’re real lucky maybe you can keep the innocent out of trouble.

Tony Rome is hardbitten and cynical. He just wants to spend his time gambling and fishing. He’s tired of dealing with cops and crooks and junkies and hookers and other assorted lowlifes.

Tony is hard but he’s no thug.

The plot is complex. At times you wonder if there’s any way the author will be able to tie everything together but he does so quite successfully.

It would be a stretch to call this noir fiction but it does have a few noir tinges. It’s a fine hardboiled crime thriller with the right balance of action, mystery and suspense. Highly recommended.

Miami Mayhem was filmed in 1967 with Frank Sinatra as Tony Rome. It’s a movie worth seeing.

Everything Marvin H. Albert wrote is worth reading, including The Gargoyle Conspiracy, the two superb adventure thrillers he wrote as Ian MacAlister, Driscoll’s Diamonds and Valley of the Assassins, and his Nick Quarry crime thrillers The Girl With No Place To Hide and No Chance in Hell.

Men’s Adventure Quarterly #11

Issue 11 of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, is the UFO issue. This time it’s all non-fiction articles from men’s adventure magazines dealing with the sinister visitors from outer space. But since the subject is UFOs most of these non-fiction articles are in fact pure fiction. But that makes them more fun.

And there are articles from some of the respectable UFO experts of the late 40s and the the 50s, such as Donald E. Keyhoe - the man who did more than anyone else to give belief in UFOs a vague gloss of respectability.

Some of the articles present lots of evidence although whether that evidence would stand up under any genuine investigation is highly debatable. Some of the most entertaining articles are pure moonshine and those articles are the most fun. I had no idea of the threat we faced from underwater UFOs.

The history of our civilisation for the past century or so has been an endless cycle of outbursts of mass hysteria. The UFO scare was just one of the mass hysteria outbursts of the 50s. There was of course the Red Menace, but there was also Juvenile Delinquency and of course the “comic books are undermining the moral fibre of our youth” scare.

The UFO scare was the most interesting.

In an odd way it was also the most plausible. In the late 1940s even reputable scientists were inclined to accept the idea of a universe teeming with intelligent life. The reasons why contact with alien civilisations was actually very very unlikely were not fully appreciated. When the UFO craze started to gather steam around 1947 it was not necessarily the province of cranks and nutters. It was really only in the 70s that belief in UFOs became a fully-fledged fringe belief.

Of course there was always an edge of paranoia. In some of the articles you can see the paranoia take on a vaguely political edge, with space aliens being seen almost as commies from space.

It’s also interesting to see just how much the government was mistrusted, even in the early 50s. There was also a certain degree of mistrust of the military. I’d never really thought about it before but the UFO scare really was the moment when a lot of people first seriously considered the idea that the government might be systematically lying to them. In the case of UFOs the government probably wasn’t lying, but it’s significant that people believed it might be.

There are as usual a number of photo features focused on some of the great science fiction babes of movies and TV, in this case including Anne Francis and Mara Corday. And there’s a cool photo feature on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s wonderful UFO TV series.

This volume is beautifully presented and glossy which is what we’ve come to expect from this publication. And of course we get the original artwork from the various men’s adventure magazines.

This issue is a treat for UFO buffs. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed several previous issues of Men’s Adventure Quarterly - #4 The Jungle Girl Issue, #6 the Heist Issue and #7 The Gang Girl issue. I highly recommend them.

Peter Cheyney's Dark Duet

Dark Duet is a 1942 spy thriller by Peter Cheyney. It was the first of his “Dark” series of spy novels.

Peter Cheyney (1896-1951) was an Englishman who from 1936 to 1951 enjoyed great success with his American-style pulp thrillers. Cheyney hadn’t been to America but that didn’t matter. He knew the America of the movies and the pulps and he correctly assumed that that was the America his readers wanted. Some of his books were set in the United States, others were not, but most had that American pulp style.

His Lemmy Caution and Slim Callaghan novels were lightweight energetic fun but it’s immediately obvious that Dark Duet is going to be something much darker and more serious, and much more gritty.

I generally dislike wartime spy thrillers because there’s too much propaganda but while this book suffers a little from this flaw it has lots of compensating strengths.

It starts out with a man named Fenton sitting in an office. He has a problem to solve. He deals with the problem by making use of two hitmen, Kane and Guelvada. He needs a woman murdered. It has to be done discreetly and it has to look like an accident. The twist is that Fenton works for the British Government. It’s the British Government that wants the woman murdered. Kane and Guelvada are British Government assassins.

Readers in 1942 would have reacted differently to this setup compared to readers today. In 1942 most readers would probably have considered that since there was a war on there was no problem with the government having its enemies liquidated. Readers today might find this concept slightly uncomfortable.

Shortly afterwards the two assassins are in Lisbon, awaiting instructions for their next hit. They are about to discover that the hunters can easily become the hunted. One of the strengths of this story is the way the hunters and the hunted exchange roles frequently.

Portugal is neutral but every second person in Lisbon is either a German or a British agent. Some of the local police and officials are pro-German and some are pro-British. It is not a good idea to trust any of the local officials.

Kane and Guelvada are very skilful hitmen but they are also somewhat cerebral. They think quite a bit about the nature and the psychology of their work. Guelvada thinks a lot about women - women play a vital part in all their missions. If you’re going to be involved in intelligence or espionage work you’re going to be dealing with women. Sometimes as targets, sometimes as innocent victims, sometimes as useful tools (as honey traps for instance), sometimes as allies and often as dangerous unpredictable factors. In this case a woman is going to become involved in a way that the two assassins were not expecting.

Kane and Guelvada are rather complex and rather interesting characters. They are two very different men which is why they’re such an effective team. Kane is coldly logical and calculating. Guelvada is imaginative. He thinks of himself as an artist. Murder can be done with style and artistry.

Cheyney builds the suspense slowly but skilfully. We can see a trap being artfully constructed to engulf them but they may be constructing a trap of their own. The question is which set of hunters will be able to strike a killing blow first. It’s a dangerous dance of death.

This is a fine and gripping gritty realist spy novel and it’s highly recommended.

The good news is that copies of the “Dark” spy thrillers seem to be easy to find.

I’ve reviewed some of Cheyney’s Lemmy Caution novels - Dames Don’t Care and Never a Dull Moment. And one of his Slim Callaghan PI thrillers, The Urgent Hangman.

Doc Savage 5 - Pirate of the Pacific

Pirate of the Pacific, published in 1933, is the fifth of the Doc Savage novels. It was written by Lester Dent.

Doc Savage is a superhero of a kind but he has no superhuman powers. He has simply developed his own physical, psychological and intellectual powers to an extraordinary degree. He is a scientist and inventor and is fabulously wealthy. He uses his wealth and his physical and intellectual capabilities to fight crime and injustice everywhere.

The major flaw of the Doc Savage stories is that Doc is much too perfect. He never makes mistakes. He never fails to foresee danger. He does not even have a few minor weaknesses that might make him seem human.

His five assistants are not quite as perfect, but almost.

The previous book in the series, The Polar Treasure, had taken Doc Savage and his friends to the Arctic in a super-advanced submarine. On their arrival home they are bombed from the air. And they discover that they now have pirates to deal with.

Piracy was rife in the South China Sea at that time but Tom Too is more than just an ordinary pirate. He has much grander ambitions. He wants his own country. He is plotting to take over the Luzon Union (we’re clearly talking about the Philippines here). Tom Too controls a huge pirate fleet ad a vast army of cutthroats. He is very much a megalomaniac and an evil genius and a Super Villain.

Juan Mindoro has asked Doc for help. Mindoro runs a secret society in the Luzon Union but his secret society is not sinister. He’s one of the good guys.

Tom Too’s influence even extends to New York where his henchmen murder one of Mindoro’s old friends and associates.

Tom Too’s organisation is gunning for Doc Savage as well.

Doc and his buddies head for the Luzon Union upon aboard the passenger liner Malay Queen. It’s a voyage marked by non-stop mayhem.

Tom Too’s tentacles are everywhere. Almost anyone could be one of Tom Too’s agents.

Doc’s buddies keep getting captured by the bad guy but Doc is never dismayed.

Doc has a number of non-lethal weapons at his disposal. He prefers to capture bad guys alive. They are sent to an institute that Doc funds where they are reprogrammed to be useful law-abiding citizens. Yes, perhaps a bit Clockwork Orange-y. It is an early example of the interest in brainwashing and mind control that became more and more of a feature of pop culture and reached a fairly spectacular lowering in the 60s. It’s intriguing to see these elements, which would increasingly be the province of fictional bad guys, being used here by the good guy.

It should be assumed that Doc’s methods are entirely non-lethal. He isn’t one of those moralistic superheroes who won’t kill. He doesn’t in the least mind killing bad guys if he has to and he and his crew never go anywhere without a supply of machineguns and grenades.

Interestingly I don’t recall a single female character in this book. Not even a very minor female character.

Pirate of the Pacific is breathtakingly politically incorrect and those who enjoy being offended will have a field day.

One thing you have to say about Lester Dent - he understood that pulp action adventure is all about action. And the pacing doesn’t flag for a moment.

Pirate of the Pacific has zero subtlety and complexity but it’s excellent pulp fun and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed two of the earlier Doc Savage books, The Polar Treasure and Land of Terror.