Review: "Domino Island" by Desmond Bagley

Domino Island by Desmond Bagley HarperCollins, 2019   Domino Island is Desmond Bagley’s “lost” novel. The manuscript (ms) was discovered by the researcher Philip Eastwood at Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center where Bagley’s papers are housed. Along with the ms—titled Because Salton Died—were letters between Bagley and his editor at Collins, Bob Knittel, and handwritten notes on the ms, identifying planned changes for publication, but Bagley pulled Because Salton Died from Collins and the changes were never made. There are a couple hypotheses about why Bagley stopped work on the book. The first and most obvious is Bagley decided it was a hopeless project and there is some evidence supporting this. In the letter to his editor accompanying the ms, Bagley wrote, “I had a bad case of ‘writer’s block’[.]” He had started and abandoned four “standard Bagleys”—adventure thrillers—and he decided to try something entirely new to get his creative energy going. So, in the early days of 1972 he began working on an Agatha Christie-style traditional mystery, or whodunnit, but Bagley wanted to rework the novel into his usual fare because: “My method of writing is singularly ill-adapted for the writing of a whodunnit. I begin with a situation and let it develop, and the plot follows where the development leads; whereas a whodunnit should be meticulously worked out in a synopsis before a key on the typewriter is touched.” The second hypothesis—and my favorite of the two—involves the film, The Mackintosh Man, which was based on Bagley’s 1972 novel, The Freedom Trap. Doubleday, Bagley’s American publisher, wanted a novel like The Freedom Trap that could be marketed in tandem with the film’s release in 1973. Bagley’s next novel, The Tightrope Men (1973), seemed to oblige this request since it is similar in theme to The Freedom Trap. But both thoughts are purely conjecture since, as far as I know, no one has uncovered any direct evidence to support one theory over the other for Bagley’s motive for ditching Because Salton Died in favor of writing The Tightrope Men. Now on to the review: Bill Kemp, a former Royal Army officer, is a highly competent and well-paid insurance consultant working for Western and Continental Insurance Co. Kemp is sent to the Caribbean Island nation, and former British colony, Campanilla, to investigate the death of the well-heeled David Salton. Salton’s decomposing corpse was discovered in a small boat off Campanilla’s coast, and the local coroner ruled the cause of death as a heart attack. Kemp’s investigation is supposed to be nothing more than a simple “check-the-box” operation, but things start unwinding when he arrives on the island. According to a police captain, Kemp’s body was too far gone for a cause of death to be determined. And Salton had enemies everywhere. He was involved in island politics, and he’d been railing against the island casinos—rumored to be owned by an organized crime syndicate—the banking industry, which specialized in moving money discreetly for wealthy clients without paying much local tax, and the current and very corrupt government. Domino Island’s origins as a whodunnit are visible in the finished book. The mysterious death of David Salton. The wide spectrum of suspects. Kemp’s observations of the police’s inadequate original investigation and his developing and then discarding of suspects and murder theories. But the climactic resolution of the mystery is far from traditional—although a portion is set in something like a drawing room—with a bunch of action and a conclusion that would be difficult for any reader to guess because there simply aren’t adequate clues in the narrative. Which is okay, because Domino Island works well as an adventure thriller through its exotic location, bullet-flying action, and Kemp’s tough guy persona. Domino Island isn’t Bagley’s best, but it’s a welcome addition for any of Bagley’s regular readers. *                   *                   * This is a slightly updated version of a review published on Feb. 17, 2022.

a little more about Domino Island…   After Because Salton Died was found, Bagley’s literary estate allowed the screenwriter Michael Davies to make the changes identified in the manuscript notes and from the correspondence between Bagley and Knittel and Domino Island was born. According to Philip Eastwood’s Afterword, Bagley’s “typescript, of approximately 89,000 words, bore on its title page: NEW NOVEL BECAUSE SALTON DIED (if you think of a better, please do) And more than 47 years after it was written, the publisher did find a better title with Domino Island. *                   *                   * Check out Amazon’s page for Domino Island  For more information about Desmond Bagley and his work, check out The Complete Desmond Bagley at Amazon

 

Review: "The Wolf in the Clouds" by Ron Faust

 

The Wolf in the Clouds by Ron Faust Popular Library, 1978   The Wolf in the Clouds is Ron Faust’s second novel. Originally published in 1977 as a hardcover by Bobbs-Merrill’s Black Bat Mystery imprint, it has been reprinted by Popular Library (1978)—which is the edition I read—and more recently as a trade paperback and ebook by Turner Publishing. Like much of Faust’s early work, The Wolf in the Clouds is a relatively simple adventure yarn with a poetic lilt that makes it a little more.    A small town in rural Colorado is under siege by a slow-moving blizzard and a rampage killer. A killer who shot several people at a nearby ski resort and is now hiding in the rugged Wolf Mountain Wilderness Area. The storm trapped three college students skiing in the shadow of the Wolf—a high, unforgiving mountain peak—and two forest rangers brave the freezing temperatures to mount a rescue. The rangers, Jack and Frank, find the skiers safely holed up in a small cabin, but they also find the killer; a man named Ralph Brace whom Jack once considered a friend, but quickly realizes he never knew Ralph at all. The Wolf in the Clouds is an entertaining and smoothly written adventure novel. It is written in first person from Jack’s perspective and the narrative includes ideas larger than the story. The complexity of public land use is only one and it is as relevant today, perhaps even more so, than it was fifty years ago. The prose is both complex and simple; easy to read, but with a texture of beauty about it: “Roof timbers creaked, the last light faded from the windows, the stone walls exhaled a new, acid cold. The long winter night was here; we had fourteen or fifteen hours until dawn.” The story lacks the complexity of Faust’s later novels and the protagonist, Jack, is shaded by a cold veneer. He is aloof, even in an early scene with his wife, and something of an outsider with both the Forest Service and the townsfolk, which is forgivable since everything works so well—setting, plotting, character. The Wolf in the Clouds isn’t in the top-tier of Ron Faust’s body of work, which is reserved for his final six or seven novels, but it is still damn good. *                 *                 * This is a slightly updated version of a review published on May 19, 2016.

Check out The Wolf in the Clouds on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Jim Kjelgaard's Adventure Magazine Stories

Jim Kjelgaard’s Adventure Magazine Stories

by Ben Boulden

Jim Kjelgaard (pronounced kel-guard) is best remembered for his young adult adventures featuring dogs, young boys, and always set in the outdoors. A few of his best-known books are Big Red (1945), Irish Red (1951), Outlaw Red (1953), and Stormy (1959). But Kjelgaard was also a regular contributor to pulp and slick magazines in the 1940s and 1950s, including Black Mask, Argosy, Western Story, Weird Tales – it’s reported he and Robert Bloch cowrote “The Man Who Told the Truth,” but the byline in the magazine identifies only Kjelgaard – Short Stories, Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post and many others. He had a particularly good relationship with Adventure where (by my count) 36 of his stories appeared between 1942 and 1963.
      Of those, 16 chronicled the exploits of a Native American poacher, Charley Hoe Handle, outwitting a game warden named Horse Jenkins....

[For the rest of the article click here to go to Dark City Underground...]

A TALENT FOR KILLING by Ralph Dennis (Coming Soon)

This is good news. Brash Books is bringing out a brand new Ralph Dennis novel with an intriguing history. A Talent for Killing is two novels combined into a single narrative. The first novel, Deadman’s Game, features Kane, a retired and memory impaired Agency assassin:

But the expert killer in Kane rose up again, and now he was working the private side of the street—killer for hire.

Deadman’s Game was published as a standalone novel by Berkley Medallion in 1976, but it was intended as a series by Ralph Dennis and his editor at Berkley. As explained in A Talent for Killing, “the editor who championed the book left [Berkley], leaving Deadman’s Game without a champion in-house and without the editorial support for a robust marketing campaign.” And Berkley’s new editor rejected Dennis’ second Kane novel outright.

Brash Books’ release of A Talent for Killing combines Deadman’s Game with Dennis’ never before published sequel, Kane #2, into a single, wonderful thriller. This new book, along with Brash’s recent releases of Dennis’ Hardman novels and The War Heist (originally published as MacTaggart’s War), is a welcome addition to Ralph Dennis’ canon, and—far too late—corrects the error of New York publishing’s shutout of Dennis in the late-1970s.

The only bad thing? The value of my copy of Deadman’s Game is going to plummet. And, A Talent for Killing, isn’t scheduled for release until September. Although, you can pre-order it now.

EASY GO by Michael Crichton (as by John Lange)

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Michael Crichton published eight thrillers under the pseudonym John Lange.  The Lange novels are something very different than the science fiction Michael Crichton became famous for writing.  They are thrillers more in the vein of Desmond Bagley, Jack Higgins, and Gavin Lyall, and I like them much more than Crichton’s big bestsellers.

Harold Barnaby is an Egyptologist in an age when nothing new or interesting is happening in the field.  His specialty is hieroglyphics, and while translating a text he discovers a reference to the tomb of an obscure Pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings.  In earlier years Barnaby dreamed of the glory of discovering an Egyptian tomb, but now, at the age of 41, he is less interested in glory and more interested in wealth.  He approaches a freelance writer named Robert Pierce with an ambitious plan to loot the tomb, which he estimates to be worth, in 1968 dollars, $50 million.

The novel is written in third person, and is structured in three titled acts—The Plan, The Search, and The Last Tomb.  The scene titles are self-descriptive.  The Plan introduces the genesis of the idea, the plan, and the compilation of the team.  The team arrives in Egypt in the second act, and the third act is the resolution.

Easy Go is all story.  It opens with a flash, and it races from the first page to the last.  The setting is surprisingly rich, and provides, in stark prose, the sounds, smells, and sights of the land—

“The land was flat, desolate, windy; there was no vegetation, no sign of life.”

“The modern traveler’s first view of Egypt is appropriate: Cairo airport, set out in the flat, brown sand of the desert stretching away in silent heat for miles.  It is a landscape that communicates, quite distinctly, a sense of agelessness, unchanging, interminable.”

“The villages were all the same—mud huts, dusty streets, and date-palm trees, stately camels and barking, hungry dogs.”

Easy Go is a thriller as thrillers were meant to be.  It is quick, light, and entertaining as hell.  There isn’t the slightest bit of character development, but it is populated with an exotic group of characters.  There is the wealthy British nobleman financing the operation on a whim who travels with, at a minimum, two young ladies, there is the smuggler, and the thief.  It is exciting, and with just enough of a twist at the end to bring a smile.

Easy Go was originally published in 1968 by Signet and it was republished as The Last Tomb by Bantam in 1974. It was reissued as with its original title by Hard Case Crime, along with Crichton’s other John Lange titles, in 2013.

DEAD RECKONING by Sam Llewellyn

Sam Llewellyn is an author I discovered in the late 1980s as a teenager. He wrote a series of suspense novels set in the British fishing village of Pulteney. The novels all have sailing as a backdrop, and by my recollection none of them feature the same protagonist.

I recently reread Dead Reckoning, the first of the Pulteney sailing novels, published in 1987. It’s narrated by Charlie Agutter, from an old Pulteney family, making a nice living designing racing yachts. The novel opens with Charlie receiving a summons to the village’s lifeboat. A sailing yacht, Aesthete, has been caught in The Teeth—a dangerous stretch of reef just off shore. Charlie designed the stranded yacht, and it’s one of only two produced with a new light weight rudder. The dead sailor at the helm is Charlie’s brother.

It appears the rudder failed and a heavy sea dragged Aesthete into the Teeth shattering its hull. The accident hits Charlie hard. He and his younger brother were close and his business is threatened with collapse since most think his new rudder failed. Charlie’s certain the rudder was sabotaged, but the saboteur is a step ahead and Charlie can’t prove anything. The mystery is as much about motive as whodunit. Charlie isn’t sure why the rudder was tampered with; murder for its own sake—to kill his brother or the other man aboard the yacht—or an attempt to destroy him and his business by undermining the rudder design.

Dead Reckoning is a wonderful suspense-adventure mystery. It was fairly (and correctly) compared to the work of Dick Francis by critics when it was released. A slim line suspense mystery with a sport setting. In this case yacht racing, but it is as much an adventure story as mystery, and it is seemingly influenced by the Alistair MacLean style adventure thriller. It is heavy on description, setting (weather is always an adversary), action and suspense, and light on dialogue and whodunit ponderings. 

Pulteney is a perfect setting for the story.  A boom town that was once a place where fishermen made their living from the sea, but it has been bought up by wealthy professionals and industrialists who use it as a place to moor yachts and brag about to their friends in the city. The rub between the old and new residents creates its own tension as Charlie works to solve the puzzle and catch the killer. He walks a tenuous line between both old and new, and isn’t quite trusted by either.  

Everything works in Dead Reckoning, but what sets it apart from its peers is the seamless weaving of both the culture and sport of yacht racing. The plot can’t be extricated from its background, and one without the other would be useless. The setting is exotic and familiar at once. The characters are smoothly realistic in shades of both likability and familiarity.   

Dead Reckoning was published more than 30 years ago and has held up remarkably well. Sam Llewellyn is back on my list of favorite writers.

OVERFLOW by L. J. Martin

Overflow is the eighth novel in L. J. Martin’s The Repairman series featuring former Marine turned troubleshooter Mike Reardon. When a federal judge is killed on a public bus, destroyed by a deliberately set explosion during Las Vegas’ morning commute, the FBI’s first instinct is to blame it on terrorists, which seems accurate enough when an organization called Destroy Satan America claims credit. A Las Vegas casino owner, Alex Pointer, wants to hire Reardon and his pal, the very wealthy entrepreneur Pax Weatherwax, for a very special job:

“I want you to find, and kill slowly, with as much pain as you can stand to apply, whoever is responsible for the bus bombing.”    

Reardon isn’t a hitman and he doesn’t like to work where he lives, but with a few provisions, no cold blooded murder—for either he or Pax—and a big payday, he takes the job. It isn’t long before it becomes apparent the bus bombing is more complex than it appears, and even less time for the bullets to start flying.

Overflow is a blazingly fast novel. The action is relentless, the story exciting. A few nice descriptions of greater Las Vegas and a barrel of oddball characters give it color. Reardon and Pax have a symbiotic relationship similar to Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and Hawk, and, also like Parker’s characters, they spar good naturedly with clever and often humorous dialogue. Overflow fits somewhere between the thriller, private eye and men’s adventure subgenres, and while it is the eighth in the series it is a good place to introduce yourself to The Repairman.

MIA HUNTER: L. A. GANG WAR by Stephen Mertz (Jack Buchanan)

A three-man strike force accustomed to rescuing prisoners of war in the jungles of Vietnam is stateside on a rogue mission in Los Angeles. Mark Stone, known as the MIA Hunter, is asked by an old war buddy, now a deputy chief with LAPD, to help rescue Rick Chavez from a Colombian drug cartel. Chavez is a Pulitzer award winning journalist who has been writing a series of hard and insightful articles about the drug trade in L. A. The articles have enough detail that the LAPD and the drug gangs—Crips, Bloods and their Colombian suppliers—want to know where his information is coming from.

When Stone and his team arrive on scene, Chavez is being held prisoner in a palatial home in San Clemente; a few doors down from Richard Nixon's house. It takes the team only a few minutes, several hundred rounds of 9mm lead slung by MAC 10s, some smart one liners, and a close call or three, to pull Chavez out of the house. But this is the beginning for the MIA team because as the team is exfiltrating from the firefight, Stone sees a familiar face. A face that belongs to a man who tried to kill Mark Stone in Vietnam.

MIA Hunter: L. A. Gang War—the thirteenth entry in the series—is an entertaining example of the men’s adventure mania of the 1980s. Originally published in 1990 (an honorary member of the 1980s), it is a time capsule of the era, capturing society’s anxiety with an escalating war on drugs, violent street gangs spreading the poison and in the process claiming entire neighborhoods, all in the shadow of America's defeat in Vietnam. It is non-stop action, accented with betrayal, revenge, and the MIA team’s seeming endless supply of bravado and super hero combat skills. There is also a touch of humor, if you look closely, and even a big idea or two. L. A. Gang War is a top-notch example of both the series and the genre.          

Jack Higgins' Paul Chavasse: A Cold War Spy

This is the first two parts of a three part series about Harry Patterson’s Paul Chavasse novels, published in the 1960s by Abelard-Schuman and John Long.  The first two parts are an introduction to the character, and the third part is an analysis of the six titles to feature Paul Chavasse.  This essay was originally posted July 2, 2012.

Paul Chavasse:  An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story

I.       Introduction

The 1960s were a decade of espionage—both in cold war machinations of super power maneuvering and popular fiction.  The popular front of the adventure spy story started when it was made public President John F. Kennedy enjoyed Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.  According to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum website, Allen Dulles, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, stated:

“‘Jacqueline Kennedy gave her husband his first James Bond book (probably From Russia, with Love).’  Dulles then began to buy other books, and sent them to John F. Kennedy.”

Ian Fleming’s work became a sensation, hitting the major bestseller lists and, in the decades since, becoming a pop culture icon; spawning a myriad of films and, after Fleming’s death, attracting authors great and small to continue the Bond series.  While the James Bond series is the most well known of the adventure spy genre, it is far from the best.  The most striking of its contemporaries was Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm novels—a series first appearing in 1960 with Death of a Citizen, and totaling 27 titles in its three decade run.  

In industry, and publishing is no different, when a commercial strike is made—in this case the rise of Fleming from midlist writer to bestselling phenomenon—a host of copycat products are rushed to market.  One of the many spy novels published in the wake of Fleming’s success was a slim volume published by Abelard-Schuman, a British publisher, in 1962 titled The Testament of Caspar Schultz (Testament).  The name on the copy was Martin Fallon, which was a pseudonym for a young Harry Patterson. 

The name Martin Fallon and Harry Patterson have a long and successful history.  Martin Fallon was used for the protagonist of two separate novels—the first was an early title, Cry of the Hunter, which was published in 1962 under Patterson’s own name, and the second was A Prayer for the Dying published in 1973 as by Jack Higgins.  Mr. Patterson has a tendency to repeat himself, and he did something very similar to the two incarnations of Martin Fallon: He killed both.  The novels are both very good, but A Prayer for the Dying is one of Patterson’s best.

II.    Chavasse

Testament featured a stark and hard protagonist named Paul Chavasse.  Chavasse was a former academic who caught the eye of Mallory, the boss of a British espionage agency answerable to the Prime Minister called “The Bureau,” when he helped a friend escape from Communist Czechoslovakia.  Mallory, known as “The Chief,” offered Chavasse a job while he was in hospital recovering from his wounds.  The Bureau is headquartered in an old house in St. John’s Wood—on a polished brass plate next to its main door is inscribed “Brown & Company – Importer’s & Exporter’s”.

Paul Chavasse is a recognizable character to readers of Harry Patterson; educated, exotic—he was derived from a Breton father and British mother—cynical in a romantic sort of way, and tired of the game he can’t, or really doesn’t want, to leave.  Chavasse’s personal life is not really explored in the novels; however, a paragraph from Testament summarizes his early life, in order to explain his French name—

“My father was a lawyer in Paris, but my mother was English.  He was an officer in the reserve—killed at Arras when the Panzers broke through in 1940.  I was only eleven at the time.  My mother and I came out through Dunkirk.”

The novels are serious adventure stories, but there is some humor.  Enough that it seems Patterson likely had a great time writing the Paul Chavasse novels.  An early scene in Testament finds The Chief explaining why Chavasse can’t have some much needed time off.  When Chavasse asks about two specific agents—Wilson and LaCosta—Mallory responds that Wilson is presumed dead in Ankara, and LaCosta—

“…cracked up after the affair in Cuba.  I’ve put him into the home for six months….I’m afraid we shan’t be able to use LaCosta again.”

Another example is a line from the 2001 edition of The Keys of Hell, where two characters are speaking of Chavasse’s excessive skill as a linguist, “He speaks more languages than you’ve had hot dinners.”

The Bureau is set up similarly to that of Fleming’s MI6.  The Chief is over the top and larger than life, and very, very British, and his private secretary, Jean Frazer, is all curves and someone Chavasse quite enjoys looking at—

“She was wearing a plain white blouse and tweed skirt of deceptively simple cut that moulded her round hips.  His eyes followed her approvingly as she walked across the room to her desk and sat down.” 

While his eyes are appreciative, Chavasse is anything but a womanizer, and his relationship with Jean Frazer is that of a friend.  Chavasse, like most of Patterson’s protagonists, has a romanticized view of women, which is often both a strength and weakness, but it always lends itself to the character’s loneliness—he is an outsider, isolated from a society that depends on his work to survive, and often a gentleman people look upon as fallen far below his stature. 

Chavasse always gets the job done and he does it with a complex mixture of larger than life exploit and human frailty; a mixture and style only Harry Patterson can routinely employ successfully.  It is atmosphere, dialogue and action.  When in top form Patterson can tell a character’s story with the singularity of the way he smokes a cigarette, stirs his drink, or looks at a woman.  The six novels to feature Paul Chavasse are a step below Patterson’s best work, but only just.

Part III.  Novels

1.  The Testament of Caspar Schultz (1962)
2.  Year of the Tiger (1963)
3.  The Keys of Hell (1965)
4.  Midnight Never Comes (1966)
5.  Dark Side of the Street (1967)

To be continued...

THE WOLF IN THE CLOUDS by Ron Faust

The Wolf in the Clouds is Ron Faust’s second published novel. It was originally published as a hardcover by Bobbs-Merrill’s Black Bat Mystery imprint, then as a paperback by Popular Library, and recently as a trade paperback and ebook. It is, like much of Mr. Faust’s early work, a relatively simple adventure yarn with a poetic lilt that makes it a little more.   

A small town in rural Colorado is under siege from a slow moving blizzard and a rampage killer. A killer who shot several people at a nearby ski resort and is now hiding in the rugged Wolf Mountain Wilderness Area. The storm trapped three college students skiing in the shadow of the Wolf—a high, unforgiving mountain peak—and two forest rangers brave the freezing temperatures to mount a rescue. The rangers, Jack and Frank, find the skiers safely holed up in a small cabin, but they also find the killer; a man named Ralph Brace whom Jack once considered a friend, but now realizes he never knew at all.

The Wolf in the Clouds is an entertaining, smoothly written adventure novel. It is written in first person from Jack’s perspective and the narrative includes ideas larger than the story. The complexity of public land use is only one and it is as relevant today as it was forty years ago. The prose is both complex and simple; easy to read, but with a texture and feel of something almost beautiful—

“Roof timbers creaked, the last light faded from the windows, the stone walls exhaled a new, acid cold. The long winter night was here; we had fourteen or fifteen hours until dawn.”

The story lacks the complexity of Mr. Faust’s later novels and the protagonist, Jack, is shaded nearly cold. He is aloof, even in an early scene with his wife, and something of an outsider with both the Forest Service and the townsfolk, which is forgivable since everything works so well—setting, plotting, character. The Wolf in the Clouds isn’t in the top-tier of Mr. Faust’s body of work, which is reserved for his final six or seven novels, but it is still pretty damn good.

EAST OF DESOLATION by Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson)

East of Desolation is the twenty-second novel published by Harry Patterson, and the first to appear under his most famous byline, Jack Higgins. It is also a pivotal title in his transition from midlist to bestselling writer. It was originally released in the U. K. as a hardcover by Hodder & Stoughton in 1968, and it was issued in the United States by Doubleday & Company; it was Mr. Patterson’s first U. S. appearance in hardcover.

Joe Martin is a British pilot flying an Otter Amphibian from the small town of Frederiksborg on the southwest coast of Greenland. The flying season is short and the climate cold, but the money is double what he can earn elsewhere and its lack of civilization suits him. He has summer contracts with several mining outfits, and a special deal flying provisions to an Ernest Hemingway-style actor hunting polar bears and everything else drawing breath. The actor is a washed up legend named Jack Desforge who authors, and perhaps believes, his own mythology.

Things get interesting when an insurance adjuster, Hans Vogel, arrives with the widow of a pilot whose crashed airplane was discovered on the ice-cap a year earlier. Vogel wants Joe to fly him to the wreckage to identify the pilot. The story, both Vogel’s and the widow’s, Sarah Kelso, doesn’t add up and Joe has an uneasy feeling about the whole thing.

East of Desolation marks Harry Patterson’s entrance to the top-tier of adventure writers—Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, Hammond Innes. It is markedly better than its predecessors; its characters are richer with less caricature, the plot is larger with more doubt about its conclusion, and its setting is sturdy with a forbidding sense of isolation. It is first person narrative with a hint of the unreliable. Joe Martin knows more than he is sharing with either the reader or the other players. A characteristic shared by most of the cast—Desforge, Kelso, Vogel—which generates significant tension and unease.

Joe Martin is the most developed protagonist of Mr. Patterson’s early work. He is, like many of Mr. Patterson’s protagonists, a man who has fallen below his station, but he is also more; an alcoholic, divorced, and hiding. His relationship with women is more complex than the usual and there is a nicely executed romance between he and an actress friend of Jack Desforge. An early line nicely defines his feelings—

“I think it was General Grant who said: War is hell. He should have added that women are worse.”

The is plot complicated, there are more variables than Mr. Patterson’s earlier work, and a larger cast with believably suspicious motives. It is enhanced by the strong and forbidding setting of Greenland. The flying scenes, to a rank non-pilot, have the feel of reality and give the story a sense of high adventure. And everything works perfectly.

DARK SIDE OF THE STREET by Martin Fallon (Jack Higgins)

Dark Side of the Street is the twenty-first novel published by Harry Patterson, and the fifth to feature Paul Chavasse. It was originally released in the U. K. as a hardcover by John Long in 1967 under the byline “Martin Fallon”; a name that has a history with Mr. Patterson. It was an early pseudonym, and the name of two protagonists who met similar fates in the novels Cry of the Hunter (1960) and A Prayer for the Dying (1973). It made a pre-The Eagle Has Landed appearance in the United States as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback in 1974.

Paul Chavasse is employed by a British intelligence organization called “The Bureau”; its director reports directly to the Prime Minister. Chavasse is educated—a former lecturer of linguistics—ruthless, and very much in demand. When he is approached by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch with an opportunity to spend time in a maximum security prison Chavasse accepts with good humor. His assignment is to infiltrate a criminal organization that seemingly has the ability to penetrate any prison, and abscond with the convict of its choosing. And once out, the prisoner vanishes without a trace.

Special Branch believes the next convict to escape will be Harry Youngblood. Harry was convicted of robbing an airport with two associates, and both have already escaped in spectacular fashion. Chavasse’s assignment is to tag along with Youngblood when his escape comes, and get the details of the organization arranging it. He does, and what he finds is both surprising and daunting.

Dark Side of the Street is one of the more accomplished Paul Chavasse novels. The plot is perfectly executed and surprising. The prose is even and consistent, and at times vividly eloquent—

“Rain drifted against the window with dismal pattering and Chavasse looked out across the farmyard morosely. In the grey light of early morning, it presented an unlovely picture. Great potholes in the cobbles filled with stagnant water, archaic, rusting machinery and a profusion of rubbish everywhere.”

There is a nicely executed heist in the opening pages before it settles into straight adventure. Paul Chavasse is a likable protagonist with a knack for finding himself behind bars, and an uncanny ability of getting out. A situation that happens at least once in the first five novels. The central antagonist is interesting for two reasons. The first is Mr. Patterson’s use of an obvious sociopath with an over the top personality (Sean Rogan less the conscience). The second is his name, Simon Vaughan. A name many readers will recognize as the protagonist from The Savage Day (1972), and Day of Judgment (1979); although it is definitely not the same character.      

The plot is also familiar, but the familiarity is external to Mr. Patterson’s work rather than internal. Desmond Bagley used a similar storyline for his excellent 1971 novel The Freedom Trap, filmed as “The Mackintosh Man”, which was inspired by the 1966 escape of British double agent George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs prison. It is likely, due to the proximity between Blake’s escape and the publication date, it also inspired Dark Side of the Street.  

No matter its inspirations, Dark Side of the Street, is one of the better early novels Harry Patterson published. It is the last novel Mr. Patterson wrote before introducing his most famous nom de plume—Jack Higgins—and it is a bridge between his early work and the brilliant novels he wrote in the middle of his career.   

I wrote a short introduction to the Paul Chavasse novels a few years ago you may find interesting.

THE LONG COUNT by Ron Faust

Jim Racine is a professional boxer. He is 36, and his best years are gone; he is still fit, but his quickness, speed, and strength are memories. When he was younger, Racine was a contender, but now makes his living fighting second- and third-tier opponents in South America. He makes good money, too, but the wheels fall off in the fictional city of Quitasol when he kills his opponent in the ring.

The outcry is significant, and the local government seizes his passport pending an investigation stranding Racine in Quitasol. The U. S. Embassy is unwilling to help, and Racine is certain if he could speak directly to the ambassador he would have his passport back in a matter of hours. When he finally gets his audience the meeting is interrupted by terrorists who kidnap Racine, the ambassador, and three others. The terrorists’ goal is to ransom the ambassador back to the State Department; which means the remaining hostages are extra baggage.

The Long Count is a sparse, well-plotted gem. It is written in first person with a rich, literate prose—seemingly simple, but its simplicity is deceiving. Jim Racine is one of Mr. Faust’s most likable protagonists; many are cold, almost unapproachable, but Racine is well-defined with high intentions. It is also a novel of ideas. There is a late scene where the ambassador and a terrorist are arguing their political differences; the ambassador turns to Racine—

“‘Racine,’ the ambassador said contemptuously. ‘Haven’t you anything to say for your country?’

“‘You aren’t talking about my country,’ I said. ‘You’re repeating slogans.’” 

The ideas tendered are very much of the novel’s era. It was originally published in 1979, and its major themes are communism, capitalism, and the United States role—both politically and economically—in South America. There is no clear “ideas” victor, but everything is encased in a brilliant adventure story.

Interestingly, the word “quitasol,” used as the name of the city where everything begins, is Spanish for “parasol.” I haven’t worked out the connection between parasol, and the story, but I bet there is one.

The Long Count is Ron Faust’s fourth published novel. It was originally published as a paperback original by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1979, and it is currently available as a trade paperback and ebook from Turner Publishing.

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