James Mayo's Shamelady

Stephen Coulter (1914-1986) was an English author who wrote the five Charles Hood spy thrillers using the pseudonym James Mayo. The third of these spy novels was Shamelady, published in 1966.

I have the impression that Charles Hood’s backstory changed a little from one novel to the next.

In Shamelady he’s not exactly a spy or a secret agent or even a private eye. He works for a consortium of banks. He’s a kind of trouble shooter. It is mentioned in passing that he had worked for the Secret Service. He had killed for them, and apparently he has killed for the bankers as well.

As this story begins he has been instructed to meet a girl named Alex in New York. He has no idea what it’s all about but it presumably involves some kind of criminal activity or shady financial dealing.

Alex is apparently out of town but will be back on Boxing Day. It’s now Christmas Eve, so Hood has two days to kill. He finds himself at one of the legendary Christmas parties organised a very rich and eccentric couple, the Sessels. There are supposed to be some very friendly girls at these parties. Hood likes girls very much indeed. It’s an amusingly wild party but there is something not quite right. Hood can’t quite put his finger on what it is that makes him uneasy.

On the other hand he does meet Bonbon. She’s a charming witty very kooky redhead. He likes her a lot by the end of the evening he has discovered that she is also very good in bed.

The next day it’s back to work, arranging to meet Alex. And he discovers that she is now deceased.

This makes it even more likely that there is something big going down. Maybe Bonbon’s friend Rosario could be a lead. Rosario has become very very rich by marrying multiple times and marrying wisely.

Hood’s vague uneasiness increases. Just odd little things that worry him.

Pulling the strings is a diabolical criminal mastermind who is motivated not by money or power but by boredom. He needs to make his life exciting even if that involves extreme danger. Charles Hood has a similar outlook on life so he’s not entirely unsympathetic but on the other hand he is firmly on the side of law and order.

The plot involves gold, aeroplanes, perfume and exotic flowers (including one known as the Shamelady which opens up for you if you stroke it the right way). There’s also the island with the nude girl, the decaying chateau, some very scary henchmen, plagues of bugs and a super-computer named Lulu. Lulu is the key to various daring and insanely ambitious criminal enterprises.

This was of course 1966 so Lulu uses punch cards but this was a time when people were starting to have wild expectations of computers could do. It was also a time when it was starting to occur to some people that computers could be used for sinister purposes, such as crime.

Charles Hood is a charming womaniser. He firmly believes that the best way to get vital information from pretty female suspects is to sleep with them. And even if they don’t have useful information time spent making love to pretty girls is never time wasted. The arch-criminal likes girls as well. Everybody in this story likes girls, and the girls like men. It’s sexy in a good-natured slightly naughty way but not actually sleazy.

There’s enough action to satisfy any reasonable reader and there’s plenty of woman in peril stuff to keep the tension nice and taut. The tone is not actually tongue-in-cheek but it is witty and the plot is outrageous with some definitely bonkers touches. It’s the genuinely interesting arch-villain that makes this book really notable, and it’s a fast-paced and consistently enjoyable read. Highly recommended.

Valerian Complete Collection vol 1

The French Valérian and Laureline science fiction comic book series was written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières. The series was immensely popular and ran from 1967 to 2010. It was inspired to some extent by the success of Jean-Claude Forest's Barbarella comics, but without the erotic overtones.

The setting is the 28th century. The city of Galaxity is the capital of Earth’s galactic empire. Science and technology have created unlimited prosperity. Government is in the hands of technocrats and scientists. In 1967 that sounded utopian. Today of course the idea of rule by technocrats and scientists sounds like a recipe for a dystopian nightmare.

The overwhelming majority of people do no work at all. They spend their entire lives in artificially induced dreams. Which also sounds a bit dystopian!

Valérian and Laureline are among the tiny majority who still do useful work. They are spatio-temporal secret agents who travel through space and time and act to prevent any tampering with time and space. Like Time Lords.

Bad Dreams was the first Valérian and Laureline adventure, published in the magazine Pilote in 1967. Valérian is sent back to the 11th century to apprehend a mad scientist, Xombul, who is making use of sorcery with the intention of taking over people’s dreams. He wants to shock them out of their dream existence (which might be a good thing but might be dangerous). And of course he wants supreme power for himself (which is definitely a bad thing).

Valérian meets a cute 11th century forest girl named Laureline. In the course of the adventure she is temporarily tuned into a unicorn and since as everybody knows unicorns can read minds she now knows that the world of the 28th century exists and she knows what it’s like. This means that she can no longer be permitted to remain in the Middle Ages, so she is recruited as a spatio-temporal agent. She and Valérian will henceforth operate as a team.

This first adventure is as much fantasy as science fiction with perhaps just a hint of the French concept of le fantastique. Magic is introduced without the least embarrassment.

The City of Shifting Waters and Earth in Flames, written in 1968, form a single adventure in two parts. Valérian and Laureline are sent to New York in 1986. Nobody really knows what happened in those times, prior to the 23rd century. That time period is a dangerous forbidden zone. They find a flooded Manhattan being looted by feral hippies.

Xombul has come up with another nefarious plan which has something to do with a lost scientific library. There are two scientific geniuses is this tale, Xombul the mad scientist and Schroeder the eccentric but certainly not evil young scientist who is on the verge of discovering the secret of time travel. Given that nothing is known of this time period perhaps at some stage he really did unlock the secret.

The American setting was not chosen randomly. Christin and Mézières had spent some considerable time in the United States and had picked up a love of the American landscape.

The third story, Empire of a Thousand Planets (dating from 1971), moves us into full-blown space opera territory. The planet Sirte is the centre of an interplanetary empire but the Sirtean had never discovered spatio-temporal travel. Now their empire is decaying. The prince’s rule is fragile and perhaps mostly illusory. The Merchants’ Guild is hatching conspiracies. And then there are the mysterious Enlighteneds, possibly a priestly caste with great powers but possibly something stranger.

It’s a confusing situation with no clearcut good guys and bad guys.

The first two stories are fun but a little tentative but by the third story the series has really hit its stride. Mézières’ visual style is becoming more confident and more flamboyant and Christin’s storytelling is becoming more ambitious. This is the European approach to comic books which is quite unconcerned with genre boundaries but very concerned with aesthetic style. Highly recommended.

In 2017 Luc Besson brought Valérian and Laureline to the big screen in the underrated Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Besson drops the time travel angle (which would have added too many complications) but he captures the overall feel of the comic wonderfully well.

J.R. Salamanca's Lilith

Lilith is a 1962 novel by J.R. Salamanca which was made into an excellent 1964 movie. Vince is an aimless young man just out of the army who joins the staff of a mental hospital where he meets a disturbing young woman named Lilith.

Reading the novel cleared up for me something that was rather confusing in the movie. In the movie the story appears to takes place in the early 1960s but the time period doesn’t quite make sense. In the novel it is absolutely clear that Vince begins his employment at the hospital in 1946 or 1947. And a great deal of the character motivations (which are the same in both the novel and the movie) are much more comprehensible in a late 40s setting.

The first quarter of the novel gives us a detailed backstory for Vince. It’s a bit dull but necessary. The movie gives us the essentials of his background through a few subtle hints which work well in a movie but would not have worked in a novel. In both cases we find out that there are events in his past with which he has never come to terms and that while he definitely does not dislike women he is all at sea when it comes to emotional relationships.

Vince has no formal qualifications but is employed as an occupational therapist and will be trained on the job at the Poplar Lodge Hospital in his hometown in Maryland.

Lilith is one of the patients. She is twenty-two, beautiful and enigmatic. She is sweet but very disturbing. Everyone is disturbed by her but Vince is particularly vulnerable in this regard.

It is important to note that Poplar Lodge is not a state hospital but a very expensive private hospital. The patients are from very rich families. They are well-educated and highly intelligent. They are also schizophrenic. Vince is warned that crazy and intelligent is a dangerous combination. These patients are quite capable of outsmarting even experienced staff members. Lilith is very very intelligent and very very crazy.

At Poplar Lodge the patients are treated entirely by psychoanalysis. Drugs and shock therapy are not used. This means their sexual urges are intact. This will become important.

Vince is also told that whereas the delusions of schizophrenics are almost always unstable, irrational and illogical Lilith is different. She has created a complex fantasy world that is stable, coherent, logical and internally consistent. It just happens to be a complete delusion.

Lilith comes across more like a refugee from the realm of faerie than an everyday mental patient. It’s not that her delusions come and go. She lives permanently in her fantasy world. She is entirely disconnected from the real world.

A complicating factor is Warren, another patient. He is twenty-two, painfully shy, socially inept. He is hopelessly in love with Lilith.

The best part of both novel and movie is the jousting tournament. This is apparently a real thing in Maryland. The riders carry lances but don’t tilt at each other. The object is to spear metal rings suspended from an archway while riding at full speed. It requires great skill. Vince enters the tournament. He will be wearing Lilith’s colours - her blue scarf. Lilith is delighted. Now she imagines Vince as a knight in shining armour competing to win the favour of a fair lady, Lilith being the fair lady. Vince is almost seduced by the fantasy as well. He is realising that he is in love with Lilith.

There’s obvious potential for all this to end very badly. While the movie follows the plot of the novel very very closely the ending is different. The movie’s ending is superior but what matters is that in both novel and movie the ending is not quite what we expect.

While the treatment of mental illness may have changed the story is still relevant. It still raises important questions about the fantasies we all construct for ourselves, and about the seductive nature of fantasy worlds. Lilith wants to remain in her fantasy world. She is mad but happy. It also suggests how very easy it is to be drawn into another’s fantasies.

There’s so much that is fascinating and provocative and disturbing in this novel that it’s sad that it’s now so completely forgotten. Highly recommended.

It’s long out of print but affordable used copies are not too difficult to find.

I’ve also reviewed the movie, Lilith (1964).

The Red Skull (Doc Savage)

The Red Skull is a Doc Savage novel published in the Street & Smith Publications pulp magazine Doc Savage Magazine in August 1933.

It was written by Lester Dent, writing as Kenneth Robeson. Kenneth Robeson was a house name at this publisher. Lester Dent wrote most of the Doc Savage Magazine stories.

The Red Skull begins with an entertaining shootout on a golf course involving an aeroplane. A cowboy kind of guy from out West is trying to get a message to Doc Savage. His buddies need some help.

Doc and his assistants - Monk, Ham, Renny, Johnny and Long Tom - are always ready to help anyone in need.

In this case it’s something to do with a radium mine in Canada, but Doc has a feeling that the whole story is phoney. Doc believes that somebody really does need his help but that the message may have been tampered with.

So Doc has to try to figure what’s really going on, but he doesn’t where it’s going on or who it is needing help, or what it’s about or who the bad guys might be.

But there are definitely bad guys.

The trail leads Doc and his crew to Arizona. There’s a dam under construction. Somebody seems to be sabotaging the construction, for no obvious reason.

Of course there is a reason. But in the meantime there’s more than sabotage going on. There are attempted murders. Doc’s assistants are among the intended victims, and the beautiful secretary of one of his lieutenants is kidnapped.

Doc is also puzzled by the plane crash involving one of the owners of the dam construction company. It doesn’t seem to add up.

There’ll be plenty of meyhem before this story is concluded and it builds to a satisfying action climax.

Doc Savage doesn’t like to kill bad guys (although in the early stories many of them do come to a sticky end). Doc prefers to capture them and send them to his private clinic where they get the Clockwork Orange treatment - they get brainwashed and turned into respectable law-abiding citizens. In the early 1960s brainwashing became a major pop culture obsession and figured in countless spy and science fiction stories, and was always seen as something sinister. It’s odd to see it treated in such a positive way in 1933.

He makes use of gadgets, most notably various methods of dispersing knockout gas, and occasionally gas of a more lethal nature.

Doc has an ultra-advanced high-speed aircraft of his own design, and a high-tech autogyro. I’m always delighted by any kind of 1930s high technology.

There was never any doubt that Lester Dent knew how to keep a pulp adventure story powering along.

The Red Skull is fine pulp adventure. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed several earlier Doc savage novels - The Man of Bronze, Land of Terror and The Polar Treasure and I recommend all of them.

Michael Avallone’s The Alarming Clock

The Alarming Clock, published in 1956, is one of Michael Avallone’s many Ed Noon pulp private eye thrillers (he wrote at least thirty Ed Noon books).

Michael Avallone (1924-1999) was an amazingly prolific American author in various pulp genres.

The Ed Noon books are long out of print and used copies can be pricey. They may for all I know be available as ebooks - I have zero knowledge of and interest in ebooks.

The Alarming Clock starts promisingly. PI Ed Noon has a package delivered to him, with a very cryptic note attached. The package contains an alarm clock. What’s weird and disturbing about the clock is that there’s nothing weird and disturbing about it. It’s just a very ordinary cheap alarm clock. There has to be some secret attached to it but Ed can’t even guess what it could be.

In the early stages I thought the story had a slight Maltese Falcon vibe. The key to The Maltese Falcon is the falcon but nobody is sure if it really exists, if it does exist it might be a fake, it’s reputed to conceal immense riches but it might turn out to be worthless and if it’s a fake there may be more than one falcon. Despite all this uncertainty a motley collection of shady characters are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths and double-cross each other to get hold of it.

Which is also the case with this clock. It might contain hidden diamonds, or the key to finding some hidden treasure, it might conceal vital military secrets, or a stolen top-secret device, or it might contain evidence of a crime (or it might be the evidence). Or it might be just a very ordinary cheap alarm clock.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Avallone reveals too many clues as to its true nature too early on so we know what kind of story it’s going to be.

On the other hand, like The Maltese Falcon, the story still has a motley collection of very suspicious characters prepared to take drastic steps to get hold of it. They could be rival criminal gangs or rival spies or even undercover Feds.

Ed Noon did not come down in the last shower. As soon as he got the clock he played the old switcheroo. And someone else then plays the same trick. So now nobody knows how many clocks there are or which is the real one.

Any good PI thriller requires at least one dangerous dame. This one has two. One blonde and one brunette, both glamorous and they hate each other (in the way that only women can hate other women) which adds to the fun. Ed loves Alma but that doesn’t necessarily mean he can trust her. He is sure that he can’t trust Myra but he might of course be wrong about that. Nobody in this tale is what he seems to be. The good guys might really be bad guys and the bad guys might really be good guys.

The book is not short on action. The violence is not graphic. There’s no sex.

Avallone keeps the true nature of the clock concealed quite skilfully. We can make guesses. The important thing is that the characters in the story are even more in the dark.

Ed Noon is a typical likeable wisecracking private eye, basically honest but he has occasional misunderstandings with the cops. He’s a PI of the down-at-heel type. He has pokey office and cannot afford a glamorous secretary, or even an unglamorous one.

Perhaps it needed a more colourful master villain but then it’s the nature of this story that we don’t know the identity of the master villain.

The Alarming Clock is perfectly decent moderately hardboiled entertainment and it’s recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the two Girl from U.N.C.L.E. TV tie-in novels written by Michael Avallone, The Blazing Affair and The Birds of a Feather Affair. They’re both worth reading.