Friday, July 25, 2025

The Malignant Metaphysical Menace - The Man From T.O.M.C.A.T. 6

Published in 1968, The Malignant Metaphysical Menace was the sixth of Mallory T. Knight’s The Man From T.O.M.C.A.T. sexy spy thrillers. I believe there were nine books in the series.

Bernhardt J. Hurwood (1926-1987) wrote a number of spy thrillers in the late 60s and early 70s using the pseudonym Mallory T. Knight.

I had previously read the first book in the series, The Dozen Deadly Dragons Of Joy. That one came out in 1967. By 1968 the Flower Children were big news and the hippie thing was gathering steam, and The Malignant Metaphysical Menace reflects this. This is a far-out psychedelic freak-out of a spy thriller, if you can dig it.

Tim O’Shane is an ace agent for T.O.M.C.A.T., a super-secret U.S. spy agency. He is also an agent for a super-secret Soviet spy agency, but his real loyalty is to T.O.M.C.A.T.

He and his pal and fellow agent Ellis are now in the television production business although that is of course only their cover. They are investigating rumours that a charitable foundation set up by a child TV star named Corky Lovemore is involved in some secret research. She’s the star of a TV series, The Kids from K.I.S.S., and she has the reputation of being so wholesome and loveable that it’s nauseating. Her charitable foundation is the Corky Lovemore Institute To Originate Reforms In Science. I’ll let you figure out the acronym there. Mallory T. Knight just loves naughty acronyms!

The people making the TV series have a sideline - making blue movies.

What bothers Tim is that he has stumbled into some seriously freaky spook stuff - mediums, Chinese psychics, astral travelling and lots of psychedelic chemicals. There seems to be a connection to Corky Lovemore’s foundation. Tim’s psychic contacts (Tim himself is somewhat into this kind of scene) lead him to believe that what is really happening in so bizarre as to defy belief. But it involves aliens. Tim starts to feel that reality is a rug that has just been pulled out from under him.

The zombies are rather worrying as well.

More disturbing of all is that Corky Lovemore turns out to be not at all the cute adorable poppet she seems to be.

As you might have gathered this is very tongue-in-cheek stuff but the author pulls it off surprisingly well. There’s some genuinely inspired craziness, there’s some action, there’s murder and the plot moves along like an express train.

It gets crazier and crazier. While there are mind-altering substances involved it’s clear that seriously weird stuff involving the occult really is happening. This novel abandons the world of reality very early on. It’s a wild tongue-in-cheek romp. It is amusing and it really is fun in a very 1968 way.

There’s also a lot of sex. This is a sleazy spy thriller rather than merely a sexy spy thriller. With some science fiction and horror elements. It’s a book that gleefully rides roughshod over genre boundaries.

If you just let yourself be carried along by the zaniness there’s a lot good-natured enjoyment to be had in The Malignant Metaphysical Menace. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first Man From T.O.M.C.A.T. book, The Dozen Deadly Dragons Of Joy.

No comments:

Post a Comment