Between 1950 and 1961 American John Gearon wrote eight espionage/crime novels under the pseudonym John Flagg. All were published as Fawcett Gold Medal editions.
Hart Muldoon wakes up in his room at the Villa Rosa in Venzola. Venzola is an Italian resort island that is beginning to challenge the popularity of Capri among the rich and famous. Muldoon has two problems and they’re related. The first is a hangover. The second is a dead guy on the floor of his room. He’s pretty sure he didn’t kill the guy, but as a result of the bender that caused the hangover the presence of the corpse is a total mystery to him.
It’s annoying because he has a date with Elsa Planquet, wife of a famous French film director, at 9.30. Muldoon has been laying siege to Elsa’s virtue for some time and he feels he is close to storming the citadel. It’s not the first time this particular citadel has been stormed but it is a very attractive citadel.
From Yvonne, the cute little French prostitute in Room 26, he finds out the dead guy’s name (Georges Hertzy) and something disturbing. Yvonne saw Hertzy and Elsa together.
Muldoon is a former spook who still does unofficial intelligence jobs. Now he’s been hired by a wealthy American industrialist named Adams. And he’s starting to figure out that the puzzle with which he has been presented has all kinds of interesting and worrying connections. Hertzy’s wife is Elsa’s sister. The broken-down ex-movie star he spotted in the bar downstairs was supposed to star in a movie directed by Elsa’s husband, but that was before Planquet met the cute redhead who is now his constant companion.
Count Cassi is mixed up in all this. That suggests that politics might be involved.
The local police chief will be a problem as well - he’s a man that Muldoon certainly does not trust.
Other players in the game include a topless trapeze dancer turned actress, a rich American woman with a taste for other women and a lovesick young man with a weakness for pretty young French prostitutes.
Sex is definitely involved in the game, and Muldoon is personally involved in this side of it.
Hart Muldoon made his first appearance in Woman of Cairo in 1953 and featured in four subsequent novels. John Flagg made his debut as a writer of spy thrillers in 1950, not long before the first of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels appeared. Fleming is sometimes seen as doing for spy fiction what Mickey Spillane had done for the private eye thriller. Fleming certainly upped the ante as far as sex and violence in spy fiction were concerned and it’s interesting that John Flagg had already started moving tentatively in that direction.
Hart Muldoon began his career as a fictional spy almost as an anti-hero. In Woman of Cairo he is far more ruthless than Bond and there’s a touch of Mike Hammer to the character as well. Muldoon kills when it’s necessary to do so, and sometimes he kills for purely personal reasons. Dear, Deadly Beloved was the second of the Muldoon thrillers and the character has been softened a little but he still has an edge to him. Flagg’s fictional espionage world is more cynical and brutal and morally ambiguous than Fleming’s.
Perhaps that’s why Flagg did not achieve the same success as Fleming. Hart Muldoon is cast in a less heroic mould. He’s far from being an idealist. Flagg was perhaps a little ahead of his time.
One thing all the John Flagg spy thrillers have in common is an atmosphere of sexual perversity. It’s not just the particular sexual tastes of the people involved but also their generally morbid and unhealthy approach to sex. And their willingness to use sex as a weapon.
There’s a perfectly decent plot here. There’s a fairly colourful hero. There’s an assortment of ruthless misfits. There are dangerous sexy women. There are sudden eruptions of violence. There’s a fair amount of sleaze. If you think that all that should provide an entertaining cocktail then you’re spot on. This is a very enjoyable read and it’s highly recommended.
Stark House has paired this one with another John Flagg thriller, Woman of Cairo, in a two-novel re-issue edition.
I’ve reviewed other John Flagg spy thrillers - The Lady and the Cheetah, Death and the Naked Lady and The Persian Cat. They’re excellent and I highly recommend all of them.
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