Carter Brown’s The Wind-Up Doll

The Wind-Up Doll, published in 1964, is the sixth of Carter Brown’s Rick Holman mysteries.

Australian author Alan Geoffrey Yates (1923-1985) wrote more than two hundred novels and seventy-five novellas using the pseudonym Carter Brown. His books sold well over a hundred million copies. One of his many series characters is Hollywood troubleshooter/private eye Rick Holman. The studios, and the stars, employ Rick whenever they need a very very discreet private eye to get a star out of an awkward spot and avoid scandal.

Toni Astor is a rising movie star. She is twenty-one years old but really she’s twenty-one going on twelve. She was adopted by her aunt Naomi who steered her on the road to stardom. Toni is about to get married for the second time, to the latest pop singer sensation Larry Gold. Her manager has hired Rick to do some digging into the singer’s background. He just wants to make sure Toni doesn’t make a second disastrous marriage.

Rick gets to meet Toni’s cousin Lisa. The two cousins hate each other.

There have been some shady goings-on regarding the careers of both Toni Astor and Larry Gold. Both the film and music businesses are awash with crooked producers, managers, financiers and talent agencies and the careers of both Toni and Larry are complicated webs of dubious deals. And there are complicated webs of family jealousies and family hatreds.

And then the accident happens. A fatal accident. Seventy-foot falls into empty swimming pools usually are fatal.

The police are satisfied that it was an accident. Rick is not so easily satisfied. There are so many potential financial and personal motivations that might be temptations for murder. The problem is trying to make sense of those webs of personal and financial entanglements.

Toni is a nice enough girl but she’s immature and unstable and she knows how to make use of her considerable sexual allure. She certainly qualifies as a dangerous dame who should not be trusted too far. Her cousin Lisa and her mother Naomi seem just as dangerous and just as unpredictable.

Most of those involved in managing Toni’s career are either borderline gangsters or people who are accustomed to sailing very close to the wind when it comes to the law.

As you would expect in a Carter Brown novel there’s quite a bit of sleaze. There’s glamour as well and Brown knows that sleaze and glamour is always an irresistible cocktail.

The plot is nicely twisty.

And as you expect in a Carter Brown story the plot motors along at a brisk pace and there’s some fine hardboiled dialogue.

The Wind-Up Doll might not be great literature but it is great pulp crime fiction and it’s highly recommended. And the Signet paperback edition has a great Robert McGinnis cover.

I enjoy all of Carter Brown’s stuff but the Rick Holman books are rapidly becoming my favourites. Sex, scandal and murder in Hollywood always works for me. I’ve also reviewed one of the later books in this series, Where Did Charity Go?

Bryan Edgar Wallace's The Device

The Device is a 1962 Bryan Edgar Wallace spy thriller.

Bryan Edgar Wallace was the son of Edgar Wallace and was a moderately successful thriller writer in his own right. A lot of his books have been adapted in Germany as krimi films although the films bear little resemblance to the novels.

Cockston is a very successful crook, so successful that he has never been caught and although he has come to the attention of various European police forces no-one is certain of his real identity.

The Device begins with Cockston making a lucky discovery. He runs across a crazy old scientist doing bizarre experiments with mice. Cockston sees the potential for the device the scientist has invented. It could be the key to unlimited wealth and power. There are a number of organisation in various countries that might be very very interested in this device.

I’m not going to reveal the secrets of the Device but Cockston is very impressed by its effects on those mice.

Bill Tern (who also featured in Bryan Edgar Wallace’s previous novel) is a British counter-spy, presumably working for MI5. All he has to go on is a series of curious murders. Four people thrown from cars at high speed in circumstances that suggest that one person on his own could not have committed the crimes. The curious thing is that the murder method is identical in each case but there is absolutely no apparent link between the victims. On this case Tern has a partner - Inspector Quil of Scotland Yard.

And while there are suspects linked to each murder there are no obvious connections between the suspects. The only other clue is a pair of cuff-links but this clue makes the case more confused.

There are two women involved either of whom might turn out to be dangerous (you can’t have a spy thriller without dangerous women).

The bad guys test the Device and it exceeds all their expectations. Unlimited power is within their grasp.

It is now a race against time for Bill Tern and Inspector Quil. The British Government is keen to use the Army to solve the problem, against the strong advice of Tern and Quil. They fear that this could backfire very very badly. 

There’s definitely an assumption that if it’s possible to handle a crisis with cynicism and ineptitude the government will handle it that way.

If Bill Tern has a weakness it is women. He finds it difficult to think the worst of a woman once he has become emotionally entangled and he gets emotionally entangled rather easily.

The only gadget in this spy story is the Device itself but it is a pretty formidable one.

The bad guys are a mix of straightforward crooks, home-grown political agitators and agents of a foreign power. This is certainly a Cold War spy thriller.

Bryan Edgar Wallace might not have been quite the writer his father was but The Device is a solid entertaining spy novel. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Bryan Edgar Wallace’s Death Packs a Suitcase.

George Henry Smith's Witch Queen of Lochlann

Witch Queen of Lochlann by George Henry Smith was published in 1969. It’s an occult thriller that becomes a sword-and-sorcery adventure.

George Henry Smith (1922-1996) was an incredibly prolific author. He used many pseudonyms and to really muddy the waters there were at least two other George H. Smiths writing pulp fiction at the same time.

Duffus January runs an occult-themed bookshop and works as an occasional private eye focusing on cases with occult aspects. His latest case is typical. A girl named Morgan Lacy thinks she has been cursed by a witch. January’s job is to convince her that spells can only harm people if they believe in them. January does not believe that magic actually works.

But January is actually an odd complicated guy. He is terrified of all mechanical things. Especially cars. Cars will watch you and stalk you. January believes that he is an incredibly powerful wizard. It’s just that his spells don’t work on Earth. Magic does not work on Earth. But January is from Earth. He doesn’t believe in other worlds. On the other hand he does have a vague sense of being different. And when he gets his nails manicured he is careful to save the nail clippings. If they fell into the hands of a witch then the witch would have great power over him. Even though magic doesn’t work it pays to take no chances.

January has a magic sword. Except of course that its magic doesn’t work on Earth.

So you might be thinking that January is some kind of nut but the story will soon take a major turn and we will discover why he believes so many contradictory things.

Morgan Lacy is kidnaped by a rather odd couple. And then January meets Annis. She is Morgan’s half-sister. He discovers what is going on. Both Morgan and Annis claim to be the rightful Witch Queen of Lochlann, or at least such claims have been made on behalf of both girls. Lochlann is a kingdom in another realm totally separate from our world. It’s a kingdom beneath the seas, but not the seas of our world. It’s a world of Celtic goddesses and magic and witches. Of course January knows that this is all nonsense.

But of course it isn’t. And now he’s grateful for that magic sword.

He and Annis will have to get some help from the goddess Branwen. This involves a ritual. The ritual comes a pleasant surprise to January since it requires him to have sex with Annis. Living in a world of magic has its compensations.

Of course there are countless dangers to be faced. There’s a long sea voyage. There are monsters, some of them semi-human. There are fish-men. There’s another goddess to deal with. A bad goddess. Branwen is a good goddess.

The kingdom of Lochlann must be saved. Only the rightful witch queen can save it. It would be helpful to know which sister is in fact the the rightful witch queen. Duffus January knows the answer to that question. Or at least he thinks he knows.

The fact that Annis and Morgan are very beautiful rather charming young women complicates things. Whichever beautiful charming young woman he last spoke to tends to be the one that January trusts.

January does find out something. He had always had the feeling that he was really destined to be a mighty and noble warrior rather than a bookshop proprietor. In this new world he really is a mighty and noble warrior. And that magic sword now really is magical.

The way magic is handled is quite interesting. There are limits to what it can do. And even the most powerful sorcerer (or sorceress) can find his magical powers drained by overuse. So magic is not a plot device that allows the hero to solve every problem he encounters without effort.

The alternative world or magical realm in which the hero finds himself is heavily based on Celtic mythology and it’s brought vividly to life.

This is not a book that wants to be taken over-seriously. It’s a lighthearted sword-and-sorcery romp, but there’s a good story here, plenty of action, some romance and it’s all very enjoyable. Highly recommended.

This book reminds me a little of The Druid Stone which Gardner Francis Fox wrote under the name Simon Majors in 1967. I recommend The Druid Stone highly.

James Leasor’s Passport to Oblivion

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carter Brown’s The Hong Kong Caper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philip McCutchan’s Redcap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

Irwin R. Blacker’s The Kilroy Gambit

There’s nothing more exciting when you’re a vintage pop fiction fan than discovering a totally unknown book by a writer you’ve never heard of and then discovering it’s terrific. That was the case for me with Irwin R. Blacker’s 1960 spy novel The Kilroy Gambit. And the icing on the cake is that it was the first of a series of four books about American spymaster Richard LeGrande.

Irwin R. Blacker (1919-1985) was an American who wrote around a dozen novels altogether (all within the space of a decade) and also had a successful career as a writer for film and television.

The Kilroy Gambit is certainly not a James Bond-style action spy thriller. It is a spy thriller, but of a very particular type. It’s very serious in tone, but it’s quite unlike other serious spy thrillers of that era such as Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm novels such as Death of a Citizen. In some ways it’s an anticipation of John le Carre’s approach in which the focus is much more on the spymaster sitting in his office pulling the strings rather than on the field agents doing the actual spying stuff.

It’s also quite cynical, but it’s not the cynicism of a Len Deighton in which the whole business of espionage has a touch of the absurd to it. The Kilroy Gambit is a kind of political thriller, but focused on the sleazy politics of espionage.

The central character is middle-aged General Richard LeGrande who heads a shadowy U.S. agency knows as General Operations (GENOPS). Unusually LeGrande does not have a background as a field agent. During the war he was involved in covert operations but he was the man making the plans and giving the orders, not the agent in the field.

GENOPS is involved in covert operations that are perilously close to being black ops. What they do is pretty much illegal and certainly unconstitutional and probably in breach of international law. Their operations have to be kept secret not just from the Soviets but from the U.S. Government and Congress and the media and the American people.

He now faces his most dangerous enemy - not the KGB but a U.S. Senate inquiry. There’s not a single aspect of the activities of GENOPS that he can reveal to a Senate committee but if he refuses to reveal the nature of those activities it could be the end of his career and of GENOPS. He soon finds out that in Washington nobody has any friends. Every agency and individual on which he relies to protect him is willing to sell him out to gain a political advantage or to advance their own careers.

His immediate problem is an operation in Afghanistan involving arms caches which seems to have gone disastrously wrong. The idea of clever operations that end up as trainwrecks due to bungling or treachery would later be explored brilliantly by John le Carre in novels such as The Looking Glass War. This operation (whimsically codenamed Operation Kilroy) may have been completely blown. The covers of GENOPS agents may have been blown. GENOPS may have been betrayed by one of his own agents. There is a security leak which may have originated with one of the five subordinates who make up the inner circle of GENOPS.

The book is also interesting for its treatment of defectors. Richard LeGrande has never liked defectors. If a man will betray his own country, Russia, then he is highly likely to betray the U.S. as well. Even assuming he’s a genuine defector and not a KGB plant. Defectors are so untrustworthy that in practice they’re a lot more trouble than they’re worth. And Richard LeGrande now has two defectors to worry about.

There’s also the problem that one member of this inner circle, Janet Garner, happens to be his mistress. This not very well kept secret may be about to be aired publicly. That could cause difficulties with his wife.

These nightmares would be enough to deal with but when they happen just as he is about to face a very hostile Senate committee then Richard LeGrande is a man under extreme pressure.

The narrative switches constantly between the Washington witch-hunt against him, his attempts to figure out how Operation Kilroy went so badly wrong and a dangerous mission by a GENOPS field agent, who happens to be his mistress Janet.

There’s almost no action at all, although there are some fine suspenseful moments involving real danger.

It’s the details of operational planning, the portrait of the murky world of Washington politics and the emphasis on a man slowly being crushed by intolerable personal and professional pressures that makes this a fascinating and extremely fine unconventional spy thriller. Very highly recommended.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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.