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.

J.J. Allerton’s Moon of Battle

J.J. Allerton’s science fiction novel Moon of Battle originally appeared in Amazing Stories in December 1949. Allerton is a very obscure writer about whom I know nothing.

There are many ways in which the heroes of fiction novels travel to other planets. Pratt, the hero of this book, travels to the Moon in a truck. A big 18-wheeler.

Well actually he’s driving to Phoenix and then the transmission fails and he almost crashes rounding a steep curve, and suddenly he’s on the Moon.

Even given the limited knowledge of the Moon in 1949 this story is pretty fanciful. The Moon is inhabited. Some of the inhabitants are rather strange, some are so big that they’re almost giants and some seem to be essentially human.

One thing the author does know about the Moon is that it has very low gravity, and he makes good and frequent use of this.

The giant he encounters first tries to kill him but they soon become fast friends.

And then there’s the girl. There has to be a girl. Her name is Maeri. She isn’t wearing much in the way of clothing. Pratt thinks she’s a swell girl.

Of course her father is some of tribal chieftain. There are many lunar societies, all of them at very primitive technological levels. And it seems like a major war on conquest my be about to get under way. Pratt has to get involved because, as I said, Maeri is a swell girl. He can’t let anything bad happen to her. Maeri’s brother and other members of the tribe are preparing to face the threat on invasion by the Hammers.

Of course Pratt and his pals are captured and they have to face the horrors of the pot. Which is not a cooking pot. Well, not exactly.

There’s lots of crazy stuff to come. Allerton throws everything but the kitchen sink into the mix and maybe it doesn’t all make sense but it keeps the reader on his toes.

The odds are stacked against Pratt except for one thing - he still has his truck. And the gas tank is full. A truck-driving man is never beaten as long as he still has his truck. And even the boldest space aliens get nervous when faced by a huge 18-wheeler. The truck is no gimmick. It’s an absolutely essential ingredient in the story.

The pacing is brisk and there are betrayals and things are not necessarily what they seem. These are pretty basic ingredients for a science fiction tale but Allerton handles them competently enough.

This book’s biggest flaw is its biggest strength. The idea of a guy suddenly appearing on the surface of the Moon at the wheel of a big ole semi-trailer is definitely goofy and dumb. And at the same time it’s pretty darn cool.

Pratt is a cool unflappable tough guy hero. He’s not taking any nonsense from a bunch of weird space aliens.

Of course he and Maeri will fall for each other. This romance angle could have been fleshed out a bit more.

There’s nothing startling here but it’s reasonably enjoyable in a very pulpy way and one can’t help thinking that there should have been more truckers in space science fiction stories. Recommended as long as you’re not setting your expectations too high.

Armchair Fiction have paired this title with Murray Leinster’s The Mutant Weapon in a two-novel paperback edition.

Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck

Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck was published in 1935 and is of course a romance novel. What am I doing reading, and reviewing, a romance novel? Men don’t read romance novels. The fact is though that if one is interested in vintage pop fiction one can hardly ignore such a notable and popular genre altogether. And Regency Buck has considerable historical importance to students of genre fiction. It marked the beginning of an entire genre, the Regency Romance. 

It is also interesting in that it actually combines two genres, the romance novel and the mystery novel. Heyer wrote many romance novels and many mystery novels and on occasions combined the two.

I have to say that this novel is not at all what I expected. Which of course probably reflects that not having read any romance fiction I had all kinds of prejudices and preconceived notions about the genre.

Not one bodice gets ripped. There are no heaving bosoms. This is more like Jane Austen, but (interestingly) with a lot less actual romance. This is a tale of a young woman’s adventures and misadventures in London in 1812 (we can date it precisely because the first two cantos of Byron’a Childe Harold had just been published).

Miss Judith Taverner and her brother Sir Peregrine Taverner have just inherited vast fortunes and have decided to leave Yorkshire and set out for the bright lights of the big city. They hope to make a splash in the world of fashionable society in London.

Initially it appears that Judith’s hopes will be dashed. She is hopelessly provincial. She does not understand the niceties and subtleties of the world of fashion. She makes one social faux pas after another. It seems hopeless until Beau Brummell (who was of course in real life the ultimate arbiter of taste in Regency England) takes her in hand. He realises that there is no hope of persuading her to follow the rules. Instead he encourages her to behave even more eccentrically. Maybe she cannot follow fashion but she can instead lead fashion. It works. She is a sensation. Of course it helps that she is a statuesque blonde beauty possessed of a vast fortune. Soon she is inundated with offers of marriage.

There is the problem of Lord Worth, her guardian (and Peregrine’s guardian). Judith thinks he is the most odious disagreeable provoking man she has ever met. He is also domineering and it is obvious that he intends to assert his authority over her. No man has ever done that. At the same she is excited by the challenge and also fascinated by Lord Worth.

Peregrine on the other hand spends his time losing a fortune at the gaming tables. He is a likeable but foolish young man.

Judith has to deal with irritatingly determined suitors. She has an encounter with the Prince Regent and escapes with her virtue intact (which is quite an achievement).

And something else is going on, something that would horrify Judith if she knew about. Since it is intended to come as a surprise to the reader I am going going to offer any hints about it.l

The problem with any kind of historical fiction is that it always reflects the outlook and the preoccupations, and the psychology, of the period in which the book was written rather than the period in which the book is set. It is almost impossible (indeed it may be completely impossible) for the characters not to be to some extent contemporary characters wearing period costume. 

But unlike today’s writers of historical fiction, who deliberately give their characters 21st century social attitudes, Heyer does try very hard to make her characters representative of their period.

What can also be said of Heyer is that she made an extraordinary effort to get the minor details right. She did immense quantities of research on the social customs, the fashions and the way of life of her chosen periods. Of course an actual writer of that era would simply have taken it for granted that her readers know all the minutiae of everyday life and would have omitted many such details. Heyer, realising that her readers would not have an obsessively complete knowledge of such things, makes a point of telling us all those details. What’s impressive is her ability to do this without ever seeming to be offering the reader clumsy infodumps. She seamlessly integrates the background details into the story. She also demonstrates her knowledge of some surprising subjects, such as prize-fighting and cock-fighting.

I think most women will enjoy Regency Buck although if you’re looking for wild steamy passion you might be disappointed. But there is a love story here and it’s a good one. I can’t speak for all male readers but I enjoyed the book. Heyer’s prose is lively and witty and she has the ability to bring the world of Regency England vividly to life. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Heyer’s clever amusing detective novel Death in the Stocks.

The Ring-A-Ding UFOs by Robert Tralin

The Ring-A-Ding UFOs, published in 1967, is the third of the Miss from S.I.S. spy thrillers by Robert Tralins. It fits roughly into the “sexy lady spy” sub-genre (a sub-genre I adore) although the sexiness here is very very restrained indeed. The emphasis is on fast-paced goofy fun.

Lee Crossley is ostensibly a travel writer but she’s actually a secret agent, working for S.I.S., an all-female international counter-intelligence agency. With her sidekick David Dudley she’s investigating an old Spanish fortress in Florida. S.I.S. has no idea what is going on in this fortress but they suspect it’s something sinister. Lee and David will have to get inside but first they’ll need to dodge the crocodiles. Crocodiles, not alligators, which puzzles Lee.

Our two daring spies are disabled by a barrage of unearthly noise and Lee finds herself sliding down a long damp fleshy tube (yes there could be a bit of symbolism here).

Of course there’s a mad scientist. In fact something more sinister and terrifying than a mere mad scientist - a mad evil psychiatrist. The old fortress is now a mental hospital but the patients aren’t being cured. It’s possible they’re subjects of a hideous experiment and there may be aliens behind it. And yes, there may be UFOs.

There’s definitely something nasty in the swimming pool.

Luckily Lee has plenty of gadgetry with her. Deadly lipsticks, hairbrush communicators, that sort of thing. And a life-saving bra. One of the things I’ve learnt from reading so many sexy lady spy thrillers is that lady spies always have something interesting concealed in their bras. And in the case of some fictional lady spies, in their panties as well.

Apart from aliens and UFOs this story also involves brainwashing. Brainwashing intended to be on a very large scale.

Lee and Dudley get captured repeatedly but they’re not easy to keep hold of when you’ve caught them.

There’s quite a bit of exciting action but no graphic violence.

There’s no nudity or sex at all.

This book is obviously not taking itself too seriously. The plot has plenty of wild craziness. It’s a spoof, but there is a reasonable spy thriller plot here. And there will definitely be plot twists.

There’s a suitably insane mad scientist chief villain but he has a few weaknesses. He’s rather attracted to pretty young ladies and his judgment is a bit touch and go in that area.

Tralins keeps things moving along at a breakneck pace.

The Ring-A-Ding UFOs is pure entertainment and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the second book in this series, The Chic Chick Spy (which I enthusiastically recommend), as well as a fairly interesting SF novel by Tralins, The Cosmozoids.

Fans of sexy lady spies might like to check out some more of my reviews. James Eastwood’s The Chinese Visitor is the first of his enjoyable Anna Zordan spy novels. Lust, Be a Lady Tonight kicks off the very sexy but very entertaining The Lady from L.U.S.T. series. And Jimmy Sangster's Touchfeather is a total delight. And for fans of sexy spy thrillers in general there’s Clyde Allison's outrageous Gamefinger (Man From Sadisto 6).

Robert E. Howard's The Lost Valley of Iskander

Robert E. Howard created numerous series characters besides Conan. One of the more interesting was a 19th century gunslinger from Texas named Francis Xavier Gordon who becomes a renowned swordsman and adventurer in central Asia. He becomes known as El Borak. Five El Borak stories were published during Howard’s lifetime with several others appearing posthumously. The Ace paperback The Lost Valley of Iskander collects three of the El Borak stories.

These are adventure stories with exotic settings rather than sword-and-sorcery. There are no actual supernatural elements.

The novel The Daughter of Erlik Khan was published in the pulp Top Notch in 1934. El Borak has been hired by two Englishmen, Pembroke and Ormond, to find a friend of theirs who has disappeared. El Borak soon discovers that he has been tricked. He has also been given a reason to seek revenge.

His pursuit of the treacherous Englishmen will take him into the country of fierce Kirghiz tribesmen who tend to kill outsiders on sight. They are devil-worshippers. Along the way El Borak encounters a troop of Turcoman bandits and he soon assumes their leadership. His quest will take him to a mysterious forbidden city where he will, quite unexpectedly, find the beautiful and formidable Jasmeena. They are old friends. She needs his help. She’s in a very awkward situation indeed. Being worshipped as a goddess is not all it’s cracked up to be.

This is a fine adventure story anyway but it’s Jasmeena who makes it really interesting. She’s not a good girl and she’s not a bad girl. She’s ambitious and she’s out for what she can get but she isn’t a scheming spider woman. You wouldn’t want to trust her too far but she’s not malicious or cruel. Perhaps El Borak doesn’t entirely approve of her but he rather Iikes her. She’s feisty and sexy and she’s just what a rollicking tale of adventure needs.

This is an action-packed tale of betrayal and revenge. Fine stuff.

In the short story The Lost Valley of Iskander El Borak has to deliver a package of vital documents that prove that a master criminal named Hunyadi is plotting to embroil the whole of central Asia in a religious war. And El Borak discovers a lost civilisation in a hidden valley - descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great.

The lost civilisation angle is cool and Hunyadi is a suitably menacing villain. A fairly good story.

The novella Hawk of the Hills was published in Top Notch in June 1935. An Englishman named Willoughby, a sort of unofficial agent of the British Government, is trying to negotiate an end to a feud between two bandit armies. One of which is led by none other than El Borak.

Willoughby is well-meaning and his theoretical understanding of diplomacy is sound but he just doesn’t understand the psychology of the wild tribesmen of the North-West Frontier. He doesn’t understand the complicated loyalties and he can’t comprehend the intricate webs of treachery, ambition and greed that motivate the bandit chieftains. El Borak thinks Willoughby is a nice guy but a man out of his depth. El Borak knows that the way to end his blood feud with the perfidious Afdal Khan is to kill him. That deeply shocks Willoughby.

There are plenty of battles and sieges and narrow escapes, there’s an impregnable castle and there are running fights in cave systems. This is Robert E. Howard in top form.

The North-West Frontier is an ideal setting for stirring violent tales of adventure. It’s a world apart from the civilised world.

El Borak is a fine hero. He has a code of honour but he’s no Boy Scout. He’s a realist. He is at heart as much of a barbarian as Conan.

The El Borak stories are terrific. Highly recommended.

Boileau-Narcejac’s She Who Was No More

Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s novel Celle qui n'était plus (translated into English as She Who Was No More) was published in 1952. It has also appeared with the title Les Diaboliques.

The ingeniously-plotted psychological crime novels of the writing team of Pierre Boileau (1906-1989) and Thomas Narcejac (1908-1998) had a huge impact on French crime fiction.

She Who Was No More was the basis for one of the masterpieces of French cinema, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955). This was much to the disappointment of Alfred Hitchcock who had been after the film rights. A few years later Hitchcock adapted another Boileau-Narcejac novel, D'entre les morts, as Vertigo.

In his film Clouzot made major changes to the plot.

It was filmed again, much less successfully, as Diabolique (1996) with this American production making further changes to the plot.

The novel begins with traveling salesman Fernand Ravinel planning to murder his wife Mireille, with help from his mistress Lucienne. The money from Mireille’s life insurance will set them up in Antibes. They have chosen an ingenious murder method - they will sedate her and then drown her in the bathtub. The body will then be dumped in a lavoir (a kind of open-air laundry with a large pool). A few days later Fernand, having established an alibi, will discover the body. It will appear to be a clear case of suicide and he and Lucienne will claim the insurance money.

A few days later Fernand makes a disturbing and impossible discovery. He comes up with all sorts of wild theories to explain it. Some of the theories are quite bizarre. Or perhaps he is going mad? He is sure that Lucienne can explain it.

I can’t tell you any more details about the plot, but there are some nasty little twists coming up.

While the plot is very clever this is primarily a psychological crime novel with the focus on Fernand. Right from the start he is puzzled his motivations. He doesn’t really wish Mireille any harm. Perhaps he still loves her. Perhaps he loves Lucienne. It has occurred to him that Lucienne is mostly interested in the insurance money. He is not sure how far Lucienne has manipulated him.

He feels guilty and comes up with unlikely rationalisations. He tells himself that he is not really a criminal.

All of these ideas are going through his mind right at the beginning so I’m not revealing any spoilers here.

This novel takes us on a deep dive into the chaotic and disturbed mind of Fernand. He was probably always unstable but now, under extreme stress and guilt, his fevered imagination has gone into overdrive. He even starts to believe that something uncanny or supernatural is going on. His grip on reality, always tenuous, is slipping badly.

This could at a stretch be thought of as noir fiction. The influence of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity is fairly obvious. The difference is that She Who Was No More has hints of horror fiction as well.

The English translation is available in paperback from Pushkin Vertigo.

I’ve also reviewed Clouzot's film adaptation Les Diaboliques (1955) and Boileau-Narcejac’s Vertigo (the English-language title of D'entre les morts).

C. L. Moore’s Judgment Night (SF Masterworks collection)

Catherine L. Moore (1911-1987) is best remembered for her Jirel of Joiry sword-and-sorcery stories and her Northwest Smith sword-and-planet tales published in pulp magazines in the 1930s. As a pulp writer she was certainly in the same league as Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. After the death of her husband Henry Kuttner in 1958 she retired from fiction writing. Judgment Night in the SF Masterworks series includes five of her longer works from her later career in the 1940s and 50s.

Her novella Paradise Street (published in Astounding Science Fiction in September 1950) is a western set in space, or at least it’s a frontier story. This is a future in which humans have colonised distant planets but have encountered no other intelligent species. The setting is the planet Loki, once the domain of fiercely independent trappers and prospectors. The story’s hero, Jaime Morgan, is one of the last of that breed. Now the settlers have come, much to Morgan’s disgust. Loki is becoming a civilised planet. Morgan wants nothing to do with civilisation. Civilisation is for those who care nothing for freedom.

Morgan has arrived in his spaceship with a cargo to sell - a very valuable perfectly legal substance but now it’s become valueless. Or maybe it hasn’t. Either way it’s now impossible for Morgan to sell it on Loki, and he’s broke and he has no fuel for his rocket. Then he gets an offer. He doesn’t like the offer but he has no choice. It means working for people he neither likes nor trust. It means taking orders.

Morgan is a frontiersman. He knows how to survive in the wilderness. In the civilised world he is helpless. His world will soon no longer exist, so this is very much a story of the vanishing of the frontier, and the consequences of that. Civilisation is all well and good, but it comes at a price.

Morgan knows he is being lied to but he doesn’t know just how many lies he is being told and just how vast the web of deception in which he is entangled really is. What he thinks is going on is not at all what is really going on. There are various factions and alliances and conspiracies. And Morgan just isn’t equipped to deal with this new world of complex machinations and manipulations. He is however well equipped to deal with action and he gets plenty of that.

Morgan is a likeable flawed hero. Most of his problems are of his own creation but he can’t help being the man he is, and that man is in many ways rather admirable. He refuses to face the future, but we admire him for that. Nothing matters more to him than his freedom and he is willing to pay the price to remain a free man. His judgment is often poor, but he cherishes the right to make his own mistakes. He drinks too much and he gambles too much. Paradise Street is excellent.

Promised Land is a novelette published in Astounding Science Fiction in February 1950. It deals with posthumanism. The solar system is being colonised but survival on the other planets and the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn is near impossible. Two solutions have been tried - altering people to suit the conditions on those planets and altering the conditions on those planets to suit people.

The incompatibility of these approaches is now evident on Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. The present population is composed of humans heavily modified for local conditions (know as Ganymedans) but as the terraforming of the planet advances it will become habitable for normal humans but no longer habitable for the Ganymedans. That is likely to set off a power struggle. Another story with a flawed hero, and an ambiguous villain. Moore had a knack for taking ideas that were around at the time but taking them in unexpected and provocative directions. Fascinating story.

The 1945 novelette The Code appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in July 1945. Again she takes a straightforward idea, scientists trying to reverse the ageing process. Then she veers off into wild crazy directions involving the nature of time, parallel universes, evolution, alchemy, the nature of personality, the nature of memory and Faust’s bargain with Mephistopheles! And she makes it work. Bizarre but brilliant story.

Heir Apparent appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in July 1950. It’s set in the same universe as Promised Land. Earth’s empire is controlled by Integrator Teams - seven humans and a computer linked together functioning as one mind. Two outcasts from such a Team are at the centre of a vast power struggle. They may be the prime overs or they may be pawns. These two men hate each other but there is still a weird link between them, the legacy of having been on the same Integrator Team. A superb story.

C. L. Moore’s 1940s and 1950s SF was very cutting edge indeed. She mixes philosophical and even spiritual themes with SF and in a couple of these tales she is playing around with proto-cyberpunk concepts - group minds, man-machine interfaces, virtual reality, posthumanism. She was ahead of her time. These stories also display her ability to write cerebral SF with emotional depth.

Catherine L. Moore was one of the giant of science fiction, a dazzling talent with a formidably varies output. This collection is very highly recommended.

I reviewed the lead story in the collection, the novel Judgment Night, separately a couple of years ago. And I've reviewed her Jirel of Joiry sword-and-sorcery stories and her Northwest Smith stories.

Paul Tabori’s The Doomsday Brain

The Doomsday Brain, published in 1967, was the first volume in Paul Tabori’s Hunters trilogy.

Hungarian-born Paul Tabori (1908-1974) wrote in various genres and his work tends to be wild and imaginative, rather eccentric and often brilliant.

The Doomsday Brain is a spy thriller with some science fiction elements.

An eccentric tycoon has established an international crime-fighting and counter-intelligence network known as The Hunters. They insist that they’re not in the business of revenge and they’re not vigilantes but since they track down criminals who have not been brought to justice by the proper authorities they certainly seem to have some vigilante tendencies.

Computers are malfunctioning all over the world. These do not appear to be random malfunctions, It’s beginning to look like there’s a conspiracy afoot.

It may have something to do with a German war criminal on the run. He now calls himself Master Brug. His mad scientist inclinations have led him to an interest in computers and their potential for mind control.

This mad scientist is fascinated by the idea that the human brain is a kind of organic computer (a delusion that still has its adherents today).

The trail leads the three Hunter field operatives to eastern Europe - to Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

There are various shady characters involved as well as an assortment of Eastern Bloc government and secret police officials some of whom may be thinking of defecting, some of whom may be double agents, some may be sympathetic to the Hunters and some may be in league that that German mad scientist. 

There is limitless potential for double-crosses. And a great deal of paranoia.

Naturally there are women involved, who may be dangerous or treacherous but they’re definitely willing to employ the arts of seduction.

Mind control in various forms was a major obsession in 1960s spy and sci-fi novels, TV series and movies. This novel is interesting because it deals with computers as a tool for world domination. This was 1967. Nobody really knew just how many things computer might potentially be used for. The idea that computers might be used for sinister purposes, for gaining power through the control of information, was beginning to gain traction. This is a novel about the use of computers to achieve world domination which was still a fairly exciting new idea for writers to explore.

Exactly how the computer mind control works does get glossed over a bit. But this is a spy thriller, not a textbook.

It’s a reasonably action-packed story, the Hunters make use of some cool and offbeat gadgets, there’s 1960s cutting-edge tchnology and it builds to a fairly wild climax (as Tabori’s novels tend to do).

The Doomsday Brain is decent entertainment and it’s recommended.

I’ve reviewed some of Tabori’s other books. His Demons of Sandorra is a superb provocative nicely crazy dystopian science fiction novel. The Green Rain is an intriguing sci-fi satire. The Wild White Witch (written using the pseudonym Peter Stafford) is hugely entertaining historical sleaze with admixtures of voodoo and witchcraft.

Dennis Wheatley’s The White Witch of the South Seas

The White Witch of the South Seas, published in 1968, was the last of Dennis Wheatley’s Gregory Sallust thrillers. Wheatley wrote in various genres including science fiction and spy fiction but became best known for his “Black Magic” series of occult thrillers. He created a number of popular series characters. What’s interesting is that some of these characters featured in both Black Magic occult thrillers and straightforward espionage thrillers.

That’s the case with Gregory Sallust and The White Witch of the South Seas straddles both genres. In fact it’s a spy/crime/occult/adventure thriller.

Gregory Sallust is a dashing British gentleman spy with quite an eye for the ladies. Wheatley’s thrillers can be somewhat on the sleazy side. Ian Fleming was a fan and Gregory Sallust was certainly one of the models for James Bond.

The story begins in Brazil. Retired British spy Gregory Sallust gets caught up in a treasure hunt. Towards the close of the 18th century a Spanish ship was wrecked just offshore of an island somewhere to the west of Fiji. The ship may or may not have been carrying a hoard of gold.

To whom does the gold belong? The hereditary ruler of the island, the Ratu James, thinks it’s his. The island is a French possession, so the French feel that perhaps it should belong to them. James has persuaded Gregory to back him but he is also seeking financing from a Brazilian millionaire. Lacost, a French adventurer with decided criminal tendencies, is after the gold as well.

The situation is complicated by two women. Olinda is married to the Brazilian millionaire but she has fallen in love with James and he’s hopelessly in love with her. Gregory has begun an enjoyable sexual liaison with glamorous Frenchwoman named Manon. Manon has her own interest in this treasure hunt and it’s unfortunate for Gregory that he is unaware of this.

There will be various attempted murders, vicious gunfights at sea, the usual perils of the deep and countless double-crosses. There’s also a malevolent witch-doctor to deal with. And of course, there’s the White Witch of the South Seas.

This is an occult thriller of sorts, but not quite in the conventional sense. There is a spy thriller aspect and it’s interesting since it involves the French, the British, the Russians and the Americans. What’s really interesting is that despite Wheatley’s reputation as a political reactionary he’s clearly far more sympathetic to the Russians than to the Americans! And this was the late 60s, de Gaulle was in power in France and there was no love lost between de Gaulle and the British. The French are not the bad guys in this story, but they’re not quite the good guys. Wheatley was a complicated man and his views on most subjects were far from straightforward.

This is Dennis Wheatley, so there are touches of sleaze.

There’s no shortage of action. And yes, there are suggestions of occult powers.

If Wheatley has a fault it’s his tendency to go off on lengthy tangents but in this case the tangents are fascinating, dealing with Brazilian history, French colonial history and the cultures of various South Pacific peoples (including some lurid accounts of cannibalism).

The White Witch of the South Seas is wild adventure in very off-the-beaten-track exotic settings and it’s enjoyable stuff. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed two of Wheatley’s earlier Gregory Sallust thrillers, Contraband (from 1936) and the totally outrageous They Used Dark Forces (from 1964).

John D. MacDonald’s Nightmare in Pink

Nightmare in Pink, published in 1964, is the second of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels.

John D. MacDonald (1916-1986) was already a prolific novelist but it was the Travis McGee books that made him a very big deal in the world of crime fiction.

Travis McGee is not exactly a private eye. To get a private investigator’s licence would involve filling in forms and would give him at least an unofficial status. McGee doesn’t want any of that stuff. And private eyes have to work at least semi-regularly and have an office. McGee’s not having any of that either. McGee goes his own way. And who needs an office when you have a houseboat like The Busted Flush moored in Fort Lauderdale.

McGee takes on cases on a very unofficial basis, usually involving the recovery of stolen money. The cases are so risky and so speculative and so likely to end in failure that no-one else will touch them. If he recovers your property he gets half. His clients don’t complain. Without McGee they know they’d have no chance of getting anything.

This is a more personal case. McGee has an old army buddy named Mike who is now in a Veterans’ Hospital and he won’t ever be coming out. Mike is worried about his kid sister Nina. Her fiancé was killed and he was in possession of a large sum of money. Nina assumed he had stolen it from his employer, investment banker Charles Arminster. Mike wants McGee to find out what really happened, so that Nina can stop torturing herself.

McGee has no intention of getting romantically involved with Nina, but he does.

He comes across hints that something odd has been going on at Charles Arminster’s bank.

The plot takes a long long time to really get going. McDonald likes to indulge himself in philosophical ruminations on life and love and at time he goes overboard in this direction. 

The plot is serviceable but very straightforward and you can see how it’s going to play out very early on.

McGee does eventually land himself in a very unpleasant very bizarre situation. I’m not going to risk spoilers but it does tap into some of the major obsessions of that time period.

I don’t think dialogue was McDonald’s forte. At times it seems a little phoney. Not quite the way real people talk.

McDonald was clearly not trying for a hardboiled flavour. At times I get the uncomfortable feeling that he’s trying to be a bit too literary. The romance angle is fine but it overshadows the crime plot.

McDonald is very cynical about the world of 1964. Looking back from the perspective of today of course it seems like paradise on Earth.

There’s very little action and very little suspense. The pacing is leisurely.

I didn’t enjoy this one anywhere near as much as I enjoyed MacDonald’s first Travis McGee novel, The Deep Blue Good-By. It's moderately entertaining but I was a bit disappointed by Nightmare in Pink. Perhaps part of my disappointment is the New York setting - I like McGee more when he’s on his home turf in Florida. That’s what gave the first McGee novel such a wonderful flavour. This one comes across as more generic. It is however worth a look.

I’ve also reviewed The Deep Blue Good-By (which really is very very good).

A. Merritt's The Ship of Ishtar

The Ship of Ishtar is one of the greatest and most influential fantasy novels of all time but it has a complicated history. A. Merritt wrote it as a novelette in 1919. He sold it to Argosy All-Story Weekly. The editor didn’t publish it, not because he didn’t like it but because he liked it so much he advised Merritt to expand it into a novel. The novel was serialised in Argosy All-Story Weekly in 1924. Unfortunately the hardcover edition in 1926 was a censored butchered version. The numerous paperback editions, which sold millions of copies, were the butchered version.

The 2024 Centennial Edition published by DMR Press is Merritt’s original version and is therefore an essential purchase. It also includes the wonderful illustrations (including those by the great Virgil Finlay) from several of the earlier published editions.

John Kenton has returned from service in the First World War not exactly a broken man, but deeply scarred. He is rich and he has financed an expedition by an archaeologist named Forsyth. Forsyth has sent him an odd Assyrian stone block covered with inscriptions. Kenton discovers that the block is hollow. Inside it is a toy ship. Suddenly Kenton is standing on the deck of this ship. It is no longer a toy ship. It is the Ship of Ishtar.

He has not exactly travelled in time. He is definitely no longer in the United States in 1924 but as becomes apparent as the story progresses it is tricky to say exactly where, or when, he is now. He has perhaps traversed a portal.

He is caught up in a conflict between two Assyrian deities, the dark god Nergal and the goddess Ishtar. Kenton falls in love with the beautiful priestess of Ishtar, Sharane.

There are some odd things about this world in which he finds himself. For one thing, there’s no night and day. The ship was created by the gods several thousand years ago, but the crew includes a Persian and a Viking, who obviously originate from much later time periods.

Kenton has entered what might be a magical world, or an alternative universe, or the abode of gods or something else entirely. It becomes more and more difficult to say exactly what might be going on. This world may be a world of the past, or a world somehow outside of time and space as we understand those concepts.

The ship makes landfall at various harbours and much of the action takes place in the island kingdom of Emakhtila. This is a world partly constructed from elements of past histories and mythologies but it’s also an imaginary realm. It is a separate world created by the gods, totally separate from the real world.

There’s a fine tale of action and adventure here, and a fine love story as well. This is a love that defies the gods.

It is however the atmosphere and the mysterious ambiguous nature of the world that Kenton has entered that impress most. This is a thoroughly pagan world. Kenton and his companions and Sharane are in the hands of the gods. This is a world of fatalism. Men and women are but toys to the gods. The fact that the gods continually directly intervene in human affairs, in often capricious ways, is taken for granted.

Merritt has tried to create (or re-create) a world of myth and legend. Kenton’s instinct is to fight against fate. He’s a hero from the world of pagan mythology but even the bravest hero cannot necessarily prevail against the gods. He can however choose to die as a hero should. But Kenton does not belong entirely to this world - perhaps he will not be constrained by the dictates of fate.

The Ship of Ishtar is truly one of the masterworks of fantasy fiction and it’s very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Merritt’s novels The Face in the Abyss and The Metal Monster and his excellent short story collection The Fox Woman and Other Stories. All of Merritt’s books are very much worth reading.

Thomas M. Disch's The Prisoner TV tie-in novel

The first of the original novels inspired by the hit 1967 television series The Prisoner, Thomas M. Disch's The Prisoner, begins with a definite sense of déjà vu. 

It's not quite faithful to the series but it is an interesting riff on the same theme and it's a wild crazy entertaining science fiction spy thriller. 

Lots of paranoia and weirdness.

My full review can be found here.

Fritz Leiber’s Swords and Deviltry

Swords and Deviltry, published in 1970, is a collection of three of Fritz Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Leiber wrote a vast number of these stories beginning in 1939, with the final story being written in 1988. In 1970 the stories were collected in seven paperback volumes arranged in internal chronological order (which was wildly different from the publication order). Swords and Deviltry was the first of the seven volumes.

In these three tales we see two young men discovering their destinies, but this is sword-and-sorcery not high fantasy so while their destinies will involve deeds of heroism they’ll also involve a good deal of thieving. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are not exactly law-abiding citizens. In fact they’re rogues and criminals, but rogues not entirely lacking in honour.

Leiber was determined that if he was going to write sword-and-sorcery he was not going to write mere Conan pastiches. He created his own distinctive style of sword-and-sorcery.

Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were perhaps the single most important influence on the development of Dungeons and Dragons. The world of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is the world of D&D, created by Leiber thirty years before anyone had thought of role-playing games.

The first story in this collection, the novella The Snow Women, was written in 1970 and it introduces us to Fafhrd. He is eighteen years old, a young giant, still dominated by his mother but chafing at this domination. Home for the Snow Clan is the frozen northern wastes. The Snow Women are witches.

Each year a travelling show arrives, much to the delight of the men and the horror of the women who strongly disapprove of fun of any sort.

Fafhrd has rescued a female dancer, Vlana, from the jealous wrath of the Snow Women and that is likely to cause a breach with his mother. Fafhrd is captivated by the free-spirited slightly wicked Vlana but he has been courting a local girl, Mara. He is caught between these two very different women.

This is a tale that give us a very detailed backstory on Fafhrd. I’m not necessarily a fan of detailed backstories but this one does set up some of the important themes of this story cycle. The clash between barbarian and civilised societies is a perennial theme of sword-and-sorcery with, usually, a contrast being drawn between the freedom, bravery and nobility of barbarians and the corruption and wickedness of civilisation. In this story Leiber turns that on its head. The Snow Clan is a society run entirely by women. It is a repressive stifling rules-obsessed pleasure-hating society. The Snow Women ruthlessly crush anyone who defies the rules.

Vlana comes from the world of civilisation, a world of freedom and pleasure and opportunity, a world to which Fafhrd longs to escape. Fafhrd wants to breathe free city air. This is the story of Fafhrd’s first steps on the road to adventure.

The short story The Unholy Grail had originally been published in 1962. This gives us the Gray Mouser’s backstory. He was a young man known as Mouse, an apprentice wizard. An apprentice to a very humble country wizard named Glavas Rho. He is teaching Mouse white magic although he suspects that the young man may well be tempted to dabble in darker forms of magic.

The cruel and ruthless local lord abhors wizards, for reasons connected to his now deceased wife - a woman he feared greatly. The duke both fears and hates his daughter Ivrian. And the daughter has formed a secret tentative romantic attachment to Mouse. This is a situation that is likely to end badly, and it does. 

This is a story of jealousy, betrayal, suspicion and revenge and the meek young man known as Mouse becomes a more morally ambiguous but much more formidable figure, the Gray Mouser.

In the third story, the novella Ill Met in Lankhmar, we find out how these two slightly disreputable adventurers meet. They are, independently, doing some freelance thieving in Lankhmar. A dangerous thing to do - the Thieves’ Guild deals ruthlessly with outsiders. Fafhrd is living with Vlana while the Mouser is shacked up with Ivrian.

Fafhrd had made an unwise vow to Vlana, to aid her in revenging herself on the Thieves’ Guild. And now Fafhrd and his new friend the Gray Mouser, having had rather too much to drink, have foolishly decided on a head-on clash with the Guild.

Leiber handles the sorcery elements extremely well. The Snow Women’s snow magic consists entirely of a mastery of the power of coldness. And you can be in the grip of sorcerous power without being aware of it.

Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery can switch very quickly between lighthearted adventure and real darkness. 

These three stories tell you all you need to know about what makes these two slightly disreputable slightly cynical heroes tick and will leave you thirsting for more of their adventures. Highly recommended.