QUICK SHOTS: Nick Carter Killmaster #1: Run, Spy, Run by Nick (Michael Avallone) Carter

I'm back on my side-quest to read the number #1's in various long running series with the first Nick Carter Killmaster. I have never reviewed a Nick Carter on the blog. I have like a whole bookshelf full of them, a lot of them purchased cheap from a thrift store next to the local Airforce base. I guess Nick had fans there. But I rarely read a Nick Carter, in fact a lot of the time I sorta forget of the series as a whole when thinking of Men's adventure books, when the series was one of the longest running. Am I not a fan?

The books were a Lyle Kenyon Engel produced joint, and he seemingly tried to recreate the success of these with a dozen other series like Aquanauts, Hot Line, The Baroness, Chopper Cop, etc. etc. but Nick Carter was his biggest action series. The whole thing was a throwback to begin with, a "reboot" of Nick Carter, Detective from the pulps, movies and radio. Seems like we've always recycled ideas. Here, Nick is switched from a gumshoe to a secret agent to keep up with Mr. Bond. He works for an agency called AXE and packs a Luger and a dagger along with other gadgets. I think this is one of the reasons I rarely think about 'ol Nick. I love the ideas behind a lot of Engel's produced series. An underwater troubleshooter with his own submarine? An undercover 70s cop on a motorcycle? A spy who poses as a race car driver? All those sounds awesome, but since it's all for hire work through a middleman to the publisher, it all sort feels a little bland a lot of the time. Too many of the edges have been sanded off. 

Engel hired one of my favorite writers ever Michael Avallone to pen the first couple adventures of this new Nick Carter. Avallone had written a fair number of mysteries in his Ed Noon series by then and would go on to write a lot of swinging spy stories with The Man from UNCLE, The Girl from UNCLE, The Coxeman, The Butcher, and even Ed Noon soon took spy missions from the president. I've covered one of his own super spy characters (that I wish got a series) David Seven here and a bunch of his other work on the site before. I'm a fan.

And this is one of the few #1's I have read before, but it was so long ago that I remembered nothing of it. Run, Spy, Run is the well-designed #1 for a series. It introduces the new set-up and the side-characters. Nick's gear and the swinging spy vibe that the series would carry on. Avallone is tamped down here (more on that later) and playing it fairly "straight." He's a kooky writer, full of exuberance that flowed onto the page. Here we have a competent piece of genre fiction that does what it sets out to do: sell more books. 

Engel didn't seem to like Avallone's draft of the book and in Avallone's own words, said it was "heavily edited," by Valrie Moolman and that's clear. Occasionally a Avallone line will appear, and I do think all the stuff with Nick Carter's pistol, knife, and gadgets all having nicknames was probably Avallone's idea. That's a major throwback to the pulps. Something like The Avenger's "Mike and Ike" gun and knife. Avallone loved the pulps. 

Run, Spy, Run isn't a bad book, it's just not super remarkable. Even #13 or #19 of the Ed Noon books are remarkable, so I blame it on the editing. Avallone couldn't help writing like Avallone, take a look the review for his novelization of Friday the 13th: 3-D and see how he could make most anything come out like his. 

Here in #1, we set up Nick's Blofeld, Judas with his plot to blow up planes with politicians on it. The rest is the trappings of the Bond-era of spy fiction, with secret bases, sexy ladies, travel and action. Though the action isn't dwelled upon and seems a little lifeless. It's almost like it was rewritten too much...hmm...weird, right? The whole thing just makes me want to take an Ed Noon of the shelf and get a proper jolt of Avallone's style.

My copy of Run, Spy, Run is a bundle-up with Nick Cater #100 packaged with, well, #100: Dr. Death and The Preposterous Theft, a pulp Nick Carter tale. It's a dandy little package. This wasn't my favorite Nick Carter, that would be John Messman's Sea Trap or Manning Lee Stokes's Spy Castle. Theses used to haunt used bookstores, but I see less and less in the wild anymore which is a shame, but they can still be found pretty cheap online in big lots. 

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

QUICK SHOTS: Seven Days to Disaster by Jonas (Paul Glen Neuman) Flagg and Geoffrey Graves

Major is one of my favorite paperback publishers. As a publisher they always seemed to make offbeat choices though, I don't know if it was deliberate or just lack of oversight, but out of them you get series like Kirby Carr's Hitman, or attempted series like Joseph Gillman's "Operation Nazi- USA." So, who knows sometimes being loose and goofy is an asset. 

That brings us to "Seven Days to Disaster" by Jonas Flagg and Geoffery Graves. Jonas Flagg was really Paul Glen Neuman who also worked on "Black Eagles," "They Call Me the Mercenary" and "The Phoenix Force." He has a handy-dandy website where you can find out that this was indeed planned to be another series for Manor, but the folded before that could happen, though there are two other books already written. I couldn't track much down about Geoffrey Graves though.

Hadrian Whipp (love it) is our hero. He works for one of those shadowy peacekeeping/crime-busting outfits who need someone with the skill and guts to tackle the dangerous problems without the fuss of the legal system. The disaster in "Seven Days to Disaster" is a hidden atomic bomb in L.A. and Whipp is sent down to take care of it. 

In a refreshing change of pace, the villains on the novel aren't the cookie-cutter Bond-ish villians. No, just regular working stiff who's after losing a government contract decide that the best course of action is to highjack plutonium and ransom Los Angles. Those whacky bad guys. For their trouble they get Whipp on their tail and what that leads to lots of murders, car chases, colorful side characters, explosions and the like. Whipp is an interesting lead, he's a smart-ass but he also REALLY likes his job shooting bad guys, imagine a lighter Richard Camellion, which is funny because also on his website Neuman says that he wrote a screenplay for a "Death Merchant" movie. Now that's something I'd like to see.

For all the murders and derring-do this is a pretty light novel with nice humor, and it works to its advantage, the pages breeze by. There's a little too much backstory for random characters and asides, which is pretty common for an early book. I would have preferred to spend more time with Whipp then some of the rest. That being said I had a lot of fun with it, it's not reinventing the wheel but takes it for a pleasantly bloody turn. 

QUICK SHOTS: Max Roper #1: The Pushbutton Butterfly by Kin Platt

Whoa, I dipped right back into Kin Platt territory. I recently read and reviews one of his Hitman series and I guess his work was still on my brain when I put on my helmet and went down to the book mine that is my library to dig out something to read. I sorta forgot I had finally tracked down the Pyramid paperback edition of the first in his Max Roper series. The Roper books were hardcovers originally, so they are a little classier with more effort and thought put into them his rush-job Hitman books. Not that I'm not a fan of rush-job novels. Stream-of-consciousness can produce some wild shit. The Roper's where the first Platt books I ever read, though it's been about 15 years since I read one. Yikes. Time. 

The later Roper mysteries have a sports gimmick. They each revolve around a different sport, baseball, horse-racing, basketball etc. etc. I'm not too much into sports other than baseball, so that's what probably kept me from diving back into the series. The first two are devoid of any athletics, besides fisticuffs that is, so I was interested in trying #1. Max Roper is one of those private eye/spy-types, an agent for a big national security firm called EPT. A little more high-tech than your average gumshoe but still very much a hard-boiled-school guy. He's appropriately tough, appropriately fond of women and booze, appropriately dumb when the plot calls for it and appropriately sarcastic. My kinda guy. 

I have a real fondness for the 70's era detective novel, you get the hippie angle, a lot of cult/spiritual communes, drugs and just a general shmear of grooviness. This one's got all that. Roper is assigned to find a missing rich-man's daughter (classic) and what follows is a twisting tale of murder, drugs, hippies, communes, stolen cars, switchblades, moider and quite a bit of Roper getting drugged. Platt is a good writer, he's got a fun, slightly tongue-in-cheek style that doesn't take itself too seriously. Probably a hold out from his comic book days. This novel reads like it was a newspaper detective comic strip. Roper could hang out with Rip Kirby or Secret Agent X-9 without skipping a beat.

These kinds of novels are comfort food for my soul at this point. When they are done slickly it's just page after page of feeling at home on those mean streets. This one's "light" hardboiled mystery, not quite as loopy as a Shell Scott but nowhere as tough as a Mike Hammer, its somewhere along the lines of one of M.E. Chaber's Milo March books. I had a good 'ol time with this one, though it's a little longer than it needed to be. This is a 170-page mystery in a 240-page package. Roper and Platt spin their wheels a bit too much in the middle, but they are both pleasant enough to pal around with, so I didn't mind too much. 

All the Roper books have been eBooked by Prologue and that's pretty sweet. Pick one of them up if you're a fan of Mike Shayne or Carter Brown and I'll probably enjoy yourself. Platt had a nice, clean style of writing. He could spin a good version of the standard mystery/adventure story with wit and style and make it look simple.

QUICK SHOTS: The Man from C.A.M.P. by Don (Victor J. Banis) Holiday

"The Man from C.A.M.P." is a 10-book series put out by Greenleaf between 1965 and 1971 all but the final book was written by Victor J. Banis under the name Don Holliday. They are pretty revolutionary books but first a little history. So, it's the late 60's and James Bond was the hot ticket. Scores of imitators arose both in cinema, T.V. and on the paperback rack. Some were stone-serious books, but as the bloom was falling off the rose the spoofs started popping up. I think a lot of people forget how big of a thing "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." was because a lot of these spy-comedy novels more closely resembled U.N.C.L.E. than Bond. I guess it's easier to poke a little fun when you have a weekly program to tune into as opposed to a two-year wait between movies. Then there's the added sucker-punch to pop culture that was the '66 Batman show suddenly it was ever-so-hip to be in on the joke. Here's a short list that is far from complete: "The Miss from S.I.S." by Robert Trailins, "The Man from O.R.G.Y." by Ted Mark, "The Lady from L.U.S.T." by Rod Gray, "The Girl from PUSSYCAT" by Ted Mark, "The Man from S.T.U.D." by F.W. Paul, "The Man from T.O.M.C.A.T." by Mallory T. Knight...and that's just a few and honestly from the samples I've they are usually pretty lifeless affairs. Bouncing from sometimes real weird sex-scenes to limp second-thought action. If you get a "Coxeman" by Michael Avallone you're in for a good time and Clyde Allison's "The Man from SADISTO" books are pure lunacy in a great way, but pas that I haven't found any to justify their usual high prices. 

I discovered "The Man from C.A.M.P." via the SADISTO books' cover artist, the wonderful Robert Bonfils who did covers for both series. The man from C.A.M.P. himself is Jackie Holmes, a millionaire with a fleet of bitchin' vintage cars, is a master of disguise, a crime-fighting organization behind him, a killer poodle, a jeweled derringer and vast knowledge on anything that might come up. He's also gay and on the prowl. Jackie was the first gay man action hero and still really only one of a few to this day. He's a fun-loving character, he really struck me as a combination of Doc Savage and Napolean Solo as played by Peter (Jason King) Wyngarde. C.A.M.P. is a one of those general crime-fighting agencies that populate paperback books. C.A.M.P. works with other government agencies when there's a threat to gays worldwide ready for any threat. Jackie's apart of their "Police Bureau" and with a little help from his friends in the first book he teams up with T-Man to track down a synthetic diamond ring that's involved with the gay community. Along the way there's car chases in vintage Bugatti's, gun fights, torture, drugging's, tons of gadgets, fist fights, helicopters seedy bars and hair stylists. Banis keeps things moving a brisk pace, dropping action, clues and red herrings with aplomb. And yes, considering these are sleaze "porn" books there is a few scenes of gay sex and much like a Bond novel Jackie always gets his "reward" at the end of the book which is usually his straight partner. It's all very tame by today's standards but it's there, I suppose that's enough to turn some people away which is a prudish shame cause it's really a small part of the novel. 

It's clear this book was written quickly. It has a stream-of-consciousness vibe going on, but it's done in such a fun, camp (get it?) and pop art way that it's a total blast. It's an important series too, I'm sure plenty of gay men back in the day absolutely loved having an unabashedly gay hero for themselves. Past that it's one of the better written of the spy-spoofs of the era, easily ranking with Clyda Allison's top-shelf SADISTO books. I read the first one in an omnibus that came out a few years ago as the originals have a hefty price tag. But the omnibus is a great package with extras like interviews and forwards explaining all of this a lot better than I can. The whole series (the Banis ones anyway) has been either reprinted in collections or as separate editions for eBook and print-on-demand, so they are at least easily readable. Obviously, it's probably not a book for everyone, if you like your spy's serious and/or straight and can't budge on either, you're missing out. 

Quick Shots: The Inquisitor #6: Last Rites for the Vulture by Simon (Martin Cruz Smith) Quinn

Like the spy missions that happen in his Inquisitor novels Martin Cruz Smith disavows any knowledge of their existence, basically anyway. It always surprises me how established author treat their early works, I suppose they are worried about tainting their brand with (in their mind) lesser material. I enjoyed the way Randy Wayne White handled it when he got his Dusky MacMorgan books republished. He simply wrote a introduction telling folks not to expect his "better work" but have fun with them, then had them published again in their original format: the near perfect mass-market paperback.  I have heard rumors that Charles Ardai has been trying to get Smith to reprint one of them as a Hard Case Crime novel which would have been fun, especially if it was back in the early days before the imposed hardback/trade-paperback era of HCC began. But Smith wouldn't let it happen.  C'est la vie.

Frank Killy (AWESOME NAME) is an Executioner, Penetrator or Death Merchant with a difference. He works for the Catholic Church. He's a suitably paperback-tough guy with a solider/CIA past who is the Church's investigator or strong arm man, free of pesky rules like "no sex" and "no murder" that other church employees have to follow. It's certainly a fresh set-up for a Men's Adventure series that surely stood out from the crowd. Ultimately it lasted six installments which is a better than some, but a lot worse then others. The book itself is a slightly odd mix of colorful Men's Adventure and plodding detection. In some ways it prefigures Smith's later books and shows his roots as a guy who wrote some Nick Carter Killmaster books. Killy's a pretty good hero, slight smart-ass, he acts like he should and talks like he should, beds women like he should and is just generally a bad-ass, though Smith could have given him more opportunities to show himself as a ass-kicker. 

"The Last Rites of the Vulture" starts off very strong with a nice, clean professional take on two hit-men killing a Monk in Italy. It shows Smith's skill as a writer who well and thought out this hit is. He easily and quickly tells you all you need to know about the killers and their target; a Monk who is surprisingly tough to kill. After the Monk's death (made to look like a natural death) Killy's Priest boss and him go out to investigate and the ball is rolling. There's detective work on Killy's part that uncovers that the Monk was an old bootlegger and mobster who went off to WWII and changed, dedicating his life to being a Monk. Which all is tied into a real estate scheme. It really reads more like a hard-boiled international mystery, I got reminded of Stephen Marlowe's Chester Drum books a lot. Killy is an okay hero though he's fairly "generic he-man" without any extra spice to make him more memorable, save a couple witty remarks. Really the only thing that sets the books apart is the Catholic thing, which only tangentially applied here. There's some fun action set-pieces with hang-gliders, car and sharks and then with escapes and hole digging with dead turtles. It's all very well written, smooth but somehow just lacks the spark that I look for in Men's Adventure novels that set them apart from the crowd.

I've seen on more then one place on the internet where this series is wrongly thought to be a horror/adventure series. On the same lists at "Satan Sleuth," "Sabat," "Chill" and the likes. One wonders if this would have been a better use of the Catholic Church angle. A stalwart Mack Bolan-for-the-church vs. demonic forces plus a little international intrigue. May have been good, who knows? Martin Cruz-Smith really has nothing to be ashamed off with this books series. They unfortunately go for a high price because there's no reprints and Smith has got fans. If you didn't have to pay more then $5 to $10 bucks I'd say grab them but I wouldn't empty your wallet for them as you might be a little let down. I'm glad I stumbled into some cheap copies and I do read one every few years but unless I luck into the rest of the series I can live without them.