James Leasor’s Passport to Oblivion

Passport to Oblivion, published in 1964, is the first of James Leasor’s Dr Jason Love spy thrillers.

James Leasor (1923-2007) was a reasonably prolific British writer of thrillers whose output included ten Dr Jason Love novels.

It begins with a British agent (code-named K) in Tehran being hunted down and killed.

K’s superior at MI6, MacGillivray, has no idea what has happened to K. He just knows that he has suddenly disappeared and that he was trying to get a message back to London. But he doesn’t know what the message was.

Someone will have to be sent to find out what happened but that’s a problem. This is 1964. Most of MI6’s agents are in fact KGB agents. The only way to be sure that an agent can be trusted is to employ someone who is more or less an amateur. An obscure country doctor, Dr Jason Love, seems like a possibility. MacGillivray used him once before on a very small job, many year earlier. Love proved to be fairly sensible and capable of exercising some initiative. Love has no spy training but he’s an ex-soldier and a judo instructor. The fact that he’s a doctor might be useful as a cover.


And there’s something else. Love is obsessed with Cord motor cars (the Cord being a highly advanced American luxury car of the 1930s). And it just happens that a very very rare Cord indeed, a Le Baron limousine, is rumoured to have recently turned up in Tehran of all places. That would give Love an excuse to be poking about the back streets of the city.

Something odd has also happened in Canada and there is a possibly very tenuous link to K’s disappearance.

Love’s first stop is Rome where he meets British agent Simone. She is very annoyed when he refuses to sleep with her.

In Tehran Love does eventually find out what happened to K. He also finds out something else. It’s not a certainty, but it seems likely that his cover has been blown. Which would mean there’s a leak somewhere.

He also finds out what K had uncovered. It’s a major conspiracy that could have serious consequences for Britain.

The reluctant spy was a popular trope in British spy fiction in the 30s and 40s. It was out of fashion by the 60s but Leasor has come up with a convincing reason for reviving it. And Dr Love isn’t so much a reluctant spy as a somewhat bewildered moderately keen amateur. He’s bewildered but he’s not unintelligent. And he is resourceful. And given that he’s a former soldier and teaches judo he’s also quite capable of handling himself in unarmed combat.

This was 1964 and Bond Fever was approaching its height. The trick if you were a spy writer at this time was to capture some of the Bond glamour without making your spy a mere Bond clone. Passport to Oblivion does have some glamour and exotic settings and some action. Jason Love doesn’t have the fancy gadgets that feature in the Bond movies but he has a few simple nifty little devices. There’s some sex, but oddly not for Dr Love. The novel does however acknowledge the importance of sex as a motivation for spies.

Jason Love is a likeable hero and he gradually learns that spies have to be ruthless at times. He’s not fond of violence but having been through the war it doesn’t scare him and if it’s kill or be killed he’d prefer to be the one doing the killing. He treats it as an extension of his wartime military service. Sometimes soldiers have to kill, and sometimes spies have to kill. One thing in his favour is that he’s not excessively trusting.

The plot is solid enough, the conspiracy has some pleasingly wild elements and there’s some fine suspense towards the end. Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.

Passport to Oblivion was filmed as Where the Spies Are in 1966. The movie has a slightly more lighthearted approach which doesn’t quite come off.

Fantasmagoriana

Fantasmagoriana is the collection of ghost stories that Lord Byron and his pals were reading on that fateful night in 1816 at the Villa Diodati when Byron suggested his famous challenge - they would each write a ghost story. As a result Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and John Polidori wrote The Vampyre, the most influential vampire story in history.

It’s a collection of eight German supernatural tales translated into French by Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès in 1812. That’s the version the Byron-Shelley circle read. An English translation by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson came out in 1813. Miss Utterson translated only five of the tales but added one of her own. The paperback edition from Dark Moon Books includes English translations of all eight stories plus Miss Utterson’s story.

The Spectre-Barber by Johann Karl August Musäus is not at all what you’re going to be expecting from a ghost story. In tone it’s perhaps halfway between gothic fiction and fairy tale. A young man fritters away his inheritance and now he can’t marry the girl he loves. He spends a night in a hunted castle. He encounters a ghost - a ghostly barber. A very odd story.

The Family Portraits by Johann August Apel is an unbelievably convoluted tale which involves several portraits which are the instruments by which family curses bring about the deaths of various members of an ancient noble lineage. There were crimes committed in the distant past, with the perpetrators condemned to be the instruments of revenge - with the victims being their own descendants. Quite a good story.

In The Death’s Head by Friedrich Laun a circus troupe is led by a man who seems out of place. He is in fact from a good family but was disinherited. He is a ventriloquist of rate skill and accepts a challenge. He will cause a skull to speak. The performance does not turn out the way he had intended. A nicely creepy tale.

The Death-Bride by Friedrich Laun is told in an interestingly indirect way, with a story within a story. In both that story and the framing story there is a bride-to-be betrayed by her lover. There is a horrifying vow made by the young couple - wishing a curse upon each other in the event of betrayal. There is the mysterious Death-Bride, possibly a ghost or possibly a legend. And there are twin sisters. And a prediction. A strange creepy terrific story.

The Fated Hour by Friedrich Laun concerns two sisters, Florentina and Seraphina. Seraphina dies but in the year before her death she sometimes seemed to be in two places at once. Seraphina had an intense interest in astrology. Perhaps she really could see the future. Perhaps even to the exact hour. An excellent story.

The Revenant by Friedrich Laun differs from the other stories here in an important respect but I can’t tell you how without revealing spoilers. Julie is a young girl who wants to Mary but her father is against it. The father has a curious ability. He can see ghosts. Not the ghosts of the dead but the ghosts of living people.

When Julie does marry she and her husband come to share this belief that the ghosts of the living walk abroad. This is significant for its connection to a vow they make to each other. An OK story.

The Grey Chamber, a True Story by Heinrich Clauren is a fairly straightforward ghost story. A young man named Blendau spends the night in the house of a friend but the only available room is the haunted Grey Chamber.Centuries earlier a young woman named Gertrude had been violated there and later took her own life. Her curse is that for three hundred years she will haunt this room, and she makes another reappearance on this night. A routine story although the atmosphere is effective.

In The Black Chamber, an Anecdote by Johann August Apel a group of learned men are discussing their experiences with ghost. The second half of the story is in fact the second half of Clauren’s The Grey Chamber.

In The Storm by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson a wedding takes place in an isolated chateau. The guests, including a young Spanish widow, are compelled to stay the night. The daughter of the house and the Spanish widow witness something terrifying. A story that relies almost entirely on hints and suggestion.

Fantasmagoriana is a must-read for its historical importance and as a sample of the German gothic horror tradition. It’s also pretty enjoyable. Highly recommended.

Carter Brown’s The Hong Kong Caper

The Hong Kong Caper, published in 1962, was the second of Carter Brown’s Andy Kane novels. Andy Kane featured in only three novels which is a pity because he’s a great character. The Hong Kong Caper is a partial rewrite of his 1957 novel Blonde, Bad, and Beautiful.

Andy Kane is based in Hong Kong. This was during the days of British rule in Hong Kong. It was a rather wild and wicked city. It’s a perfect setting for a Carter Brown thriller.

Andy Kane is not quite a private eye. He’s an entrepreneur with varied business interests, some of them legal. He’s a smuggler and an adventurer. The Hong Kong Police know all about him but they don’t consider him to be a particular menace to society. He might be a smuggler but he’s never touched dope and ordinary smuggling is not considered to be a big deal.

Glamorous brunette singer Natalie Dove offers Andy a proposition. It sounds like a tall tale. A Chinese Nationalist leader making his escape by air in 1944, carrying a million dollars in a briefcase, the plane crash-landing in Kwan-Po Bay, the pilot surviving but ending up in prison and passing on the story to a fellow prisoner. The pilot was Natalie’s brother. And she has a map showing the location of the sunken briefcase.

Andy stopped believing in treasure maps about the time he started wearing long pants. But then he gets another offer that seems vaguely connected. And then a third offer, once again with the story about the million dollars. This time the story is told by a glamorous blonde, Tess Donavan.

Andy still doesn’t believe it but he has been offered several thousand dollars up front. He does believe in money. So he figures he’ll play along.

After the murder and several encounters with very nasty hoodlums and an interesting conversation with Sub-Inspector Cross regarding a Chinese secret society Andy starts to get more interested. And he does owned a powered junk and a couple of sets of scuba gear. The briefcase should be in shallow water - no more than 12 feet deep.

The whole thing would be easy except that it’s in Red Chinese waters. Andy has entered Red China illegally before but it’s always a risky proposition.

Of course with two gorgeous dangerous dames involved you know things will get lively. Especially if the two dames hate each other. Plus each of the women has a partner in on the deal and the two guys don’t seem likely to be very trustworthy. And one man has already been murdered.

This is I guess a kind of caper story. There’s plenty of action involving guns, knives and spears. And Red Chinese patrol boats, and pirates.

Andy Kane is more morally compromised than Carter Brown’s other series characters. He’s basically a charming rogue. Combined with the exotic setting this makes The Hong Kong Caper great slightly disreputable fun and I have no idea why Brown apparently lost interest in the character. Perhaps he was increasingly focused on the American market and wanted to concentrate on thrillers with American settings.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Hong Kong Caper and I warmly recommend it.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Carter Brown’s Al Wheeler mysteries including No Harp for My Angel as well as one of his Danny Boyd PI thrillers, The Savage Salome and one of the delightfully sleazy Mavis Seidlitz lady PI books, The Bump and Grind Murders. And also one of his books featuring Hollywood troubleshooter Rick Holman, Where Did Charity Go?

Robert Tralins' Android Armageddon

Android Armageddon is a 1974 dystopian science fiction novel by Robert Tralins.

Sandor Robert Tralins (1926-2010) was an immensely prolific American writer of pulp novels, published under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms.

The story takes place on Earth’s colony planet Pulsar 143, in the city of Mnemosyne, several centuries in the future. Mnemosyne was the classical goddess of memory and that’s important.

It begins with an attempted alien invasion. The hero of the successful resistance, Doyle, is given a plum job as commandant of the Orrery. But is this a reward or a punishment? Or a means of controlling him? Mnemosyne is ruled by the Secretariat. It’s a totalitarian regime in which supreme power is vested in a super-computer. An artificial intelligence.

Dissent is brutally suppressed. As Commandant of the Orrery Doyle has his thoughts probed. He must agree to show unswerving unquestioning loyalty to the Secretariat. In reality Doyle abhors the Secretariat and everything it stands for. He has reluctantly accepted this post since it might offer possibilities for undermining the totalitarian regime in Mnemosyne. The post gives him some powers but involves huge risks.

Perhaps there are other rebels. Perhaps there is hope.

Firstly he needs to now if he can trust his girlfriend Petra. She’s been getting very close to Kagan and Kagan is definitely a man not to be trusted.

There is a secret concealed in the Orrery, a secret Doyle needs to discover. Memory is the key. An important part of the training of leaders like Doyle is mnemonics, specifically the mnemonic technique of the memory room in which objects in a room are the mnemonic code keys. Which is cool because this is a very ancient technique not used for centuries but Tralins uses it in a far future high-tech setting. In this story it’s part of the mind code, the mental training given to the elites. It’s one of a number of very cool touches in this novel.

Doyle will need to find a way to destroy, disable or neutralise the central computer but in the meantime he has to stay alive and stay out of trouble. Dissenters in this world face worse fates than prison.

There are several nice little touches. The building housing the master computer is called the Orrery, an orrery being a mechanical model of the solar system.

There are android servants everywhere, known as servomen and servomaids. Only they’re not androids. They’re human beings who have been modified to reduce their intelligence dramatically so they can function as mindless zombie drones. It’s creepy, but then this is a sinister future dystopia.

Having spent much of his career in spaceships on the Frontier, traveling at near light speed, Doyle has aged only seventeen years in the past century. This is significant because it means that Doyle remembers the past, he remembers Earth before the space colonisation began. This is one of the reasons he is determined to oppose the Secretariat. He knows from personal experience that the past was better.

For an obscure book by an obscure author Android Armageddon is a lot more complex and clever and interesting than you might expect. This is not a shoot ’em up space opera. There’s not much action but there’s suspense, lots of paranoia and a well-realised future world. The ending has a few odd touches.

Android Armageddon is above-average pulp science fiction. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Tralins’ fairly interesting 1966 sci-fi novel The Cosmozoids which deals with aliens and the paranormal and his hugely enjoyable 1966 sexy lady spy romp The Chic Chick Spy.

Philip McCutchan’s Redcap

Redcap, published in 1961, was the second of Philip McCutchan’s Commander Shaw spy thrillers. The fact that Shaw, like James Bond, is an ex-naval officer who served in the Second World War might lead one to expect him to be a Bond clone.

What’s interesting about Redcap is the time setting. It’s obviously set some time in the future. It’s not the technology - slightly futuristic technology is a common enough ingredient in spy stories with contemporary settings. But the international situation described in this novel is very very different from that of 1961. McCutchan has done a lot of speculating and extrapolating.

The problem of chronology is complicated by Shaw’s age. He has to be old enough to have served in the Second World War but young enough to still be an active field agent. Which makes the late 60s the most likely time setting.

The future setting was a bold choice since it’s the sort of thing that can date a book very quickly.

An international agreement to prevent nuclear war has been signed but it might actually work because there is a way to enforce this agreement. That’s what Redcap is for.

Redcap has to be taken to Australia. It’s too heavy and much too valuable to be entrusted to air transportation. It will go by sea, aboard the world’s first nuclear-powered passenger liner.

The clue that there is a threat to Redcap comes from Donovan, with Donovan’s daughter Judith acting as go-between. Donovan is a disgraced British spy and he’s been dead for years, only he isn’t dead. The clue is fragmentary and ambiguous but very very worrying.

And according to Donovan Karstad is involved. That’s bad. Also Lubin has disappeared, which is also bad.

There’s plenty of potential for treachery and no-one can really be trusted. Donovan was believed to be a traitor. Shaw and many others don’t believe it, but there’s no way to be sure. Karstad is Norwegian and was definitely a traitor but maybe he’s had a change of heart. Lubin is a top Russian electronics specialist and his loyalties are entirely a mystery. Judith is a sweet girl and very cute but in the world of espionage sweet cute girls can be deadly.

The passenger liner sets sail for Australia with Shaw aboard. He’s uneasy from the start. He’s fairly sure he’s being watched. The first murder naturally increases his unease.

There’s plenty of action and it’s handled pretty well. A lot of the action takes place at sea and personally I adore nautical mysteries and thrillers. McCutchan had a naval background and it shows. He has a real knack for using the sea itself as a source of menace. The action at sea is superbly done.

Shaw is a basic hero type with one weakness - he has a very delicate stomach. Overall he’s less ruthless than Bond but he has his moments. Although he has a girlfriend (her name is Debonnair Delacriox which is awesome) this is spy fiction with zero sex.

It’s fast-moving and the pace just keeps accelerating and it gets rather violent. This is a fine spy thriller and it’s highly recommended.

McCutchan wrote more than twenty Commander Shaw books and if I find any more with nautical backgrounds I’ll be grabbing them.

Johnson McCulley's Daughter of the Idol

Daughter of the Idol is a 1909 novel by Johnson McCulley, originally serialised in Railroad Man’s Magazine. Steeger Press have reprinted five Johnston McCulley novels including this one in a mammoth paperback omnibus edition, King of Chaos and Other Adventures.

Johnson McCulley (1883-1958) was a prolific American writer of novels, short stories and screenplays. He is of course most famous as the creator of Zorro.

Daughter of the Idol takes place almost entirely at sea, aboard a tramp steamer. Shipboard thrillers and adventure tales are always a joy to me.

Minding his own business on the docks in San Francisco a young lad named Roland is accidentally shanghaied aboard the tramp steamer Faraway but his uncle, the famed explorer Dick Engle, was deliberately snatched. Initially no-one knows the lad is aboard, until he is discovered by Ruth Holland. Ruth is a beautiful young lady but is very enigmatic about her presence aboard the steamer. She will not explain why things are so tense between her and Dick Engle.

The steamer is bound for a remote Pacific island. The steamer’s crew comprises natives of this island and they seem to be in awe of Ruth, as if they consider her a sacred personage.

A man named Welch, a thorough-going villain, is the prime mover in some mysterious plot. It involves an idol. Welch may be an adherent of a blood-soaked cult centred on the island. Whether he is really sincere about his allegiance to the cult or whether he’s after money or power or a woman remains uncertain.

The steamer’s skipper was in league with Welch but he’s having second thoughts.

Now the action begins and it doesn’t stop. There are gunfights. Some of the good guys get captured by the bad guys. Some of the bad guys get captured by the good guys. There are more gunfights. There are hair’s-breadth escapes. There are fistfights. There are more gunfights. And piracy.

Ruth, Uncle Dick and Roland will need to do something before they reach the island.

That’s where the executions will take place. Perhaps executions, or perhaps human sacrifices.

Dick Engle is a brave hero but he’s not infallible. Ruth is a fine feisty heroine but sometimes she jumps to conclusions. Dick and Ruth are in love but they’re not sure if they trust each other.

Roland is a brave resourceful lad. The captain of the Faraway adds some interesting uncertainty. Maybe our heroes can trust him and maybe they can’t. Welch is a pretty effective villain, ruthless and calculating rather than crazed.

McCulley knows how to handle both action and suspense and create an air of breathless excitement and danger. The nautical setting and the exotic remote island add some splendid atmosphere. There’s a plot with plenty of twists and betrayals. There’s superstition and mystery. And there’s a tangled romance.

McCulley is one of those largely forgotten adventure writers who does not deserve to anguish in obscurity.

Daughter of the Idol is a marvellous adventure yarn and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the title story from this collection, King of Chaos, and the first of McCulley’s terrific Zorro novels, The Curse of Capistrano.

Douglas Sanderson's Prey by Night

Prey by Night is a 1955 thriller written by Douglas Sanderson using the pseudonym Malcolm Douglas.

Douglas Sanderson (1920-2002) had an odd life and an odd career. He was born in England. He moved to Canada and became a Canadian citizen. Then he moved to Spain, then back to Canada, spent a brief period in the United States and then moved permanently to Spain. He originally tried his hand at “serious” literature with little success. He switched to frenetic hardboiled thrillers and enjoyed considerable success. He might be better remembered today except for the fact that he switched between his own name and two pseudonyms and at the peak of his powers as an author he wrote four novels which were only ever published in French. They sold well in France but have never been translated into English. Eventually he decided he liked drinking more than writing.

Bill Williams is an American smuggler based in Tangier. He’s 26 years old. He smuggles all kinds of things into Spain, but mostly fairly innocuous stuff like cigarettes and nylon stockings. He won’t touch narcotics. He works for the Marquesa. She’s an ageing Spanish noblewoman who isn’t really Spanish and while she’s a real marquesa the title was bought. Bill’s business partnership with her was sealed in the bedroom. That’s how she operates. If you want to be in business with her you first have to satisfy her physical appetites. Bill wasn’t happy about this part of the deal, the marquesa is thirty years older than he is, but it’s a profitable partnership.

And, much to Bill's relief, she now has a new young bed partner, a guy named Page.

Bill has a very fast boat and he knows how to handle it, with the assistance of a 17-year-old Spaniard named Paco. Paco is a fine seaman, he’s brave and he’s a good kid. Bill is not so sure about his new crewman, Griswold. Maybe he’s just a drunk, which is bad enough.

Everything goes wrong on the next smuggling run. So wrong that it can’t be bad luck.

Smuggling into Spain is dominated by a crime syndicate known as the Association. There are also independent operators, like the Marquesa. Perhaps there are others. There are independent brokers, like Silva. Competition is ruthless.

Bill knows that someone is trying to set him up. It could be any one of a dozen individuals or gangs. He doesn’t know exactly why.

It could be the Association, or Silva. Or another group. Or the Marquesa. It could be Griswold, or Page. Or Navarro, a rich man with a very expensive hobby (breeding bulls for the arena). Or Hatherton, an enigmatic Englishman, reputed to be a tough guy. Or Hatherton’s cute bed-hopping blonde wife Lavinia. Or Ferrer, who buys from the Marquesa.

He also has to worry about a Spanish cop named Blanco. Blanco appears to be honest, which is always annoying. He also seems to be efficient, which is even more annoying.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Bill is sleeping with Paco’s slightly older sister Maria. If Paco finds out he will try to kill Bill. It’s a matter of defending his sister’s honour.

Bill is a fairly tough guy but he’s not a thug and he’s not exactly a hardened criminal. He certainly doesn’t think of himself as a real criminal. He’s not a bad guy. He’s moderately smart but whether he’s smart enough remains to be seen.

It’s a game of intrigue with multiple players and nobody, not even those doing the most active conspiring, sees the complete picture. Nobody is sure who is double-crossing whom. And they’re not all motivated by greed. Some are motivated by jealousy. The Marquesa and Lavinia are motivated by lust. Which makes their actions unpredictable.

The tone is reasonably hardboiled with a touch of cynicism. There’s a nicely twisty plot, there’s suspense and there are some fine action scenes both on land and sea. Speaking personally there are few things I love more than a nautical thriller.

Prey by Night is filled with frantic action and it’s highly recommended.