Nick Carter #6: “Saigon” by Michael Avallone/Valerie
Moolman. Madame Claire La Forge, the
widow of French intelligence agent La
Petite Fleur, still cares for their plantation in North Vietnam, with her
trusted bodyguard, Saito, a Japanese servant. When a French agent stumbles into
her plantation, dying, he claims to have a hidden message for Intelligence, and
she sends Saito to Saigon to contact the French Intelligence Service. Hawk is
also notified, and with Nick Carter already in Vietnam disguised as a doctor
with the World Health Organization, he is alerted to respond to the case. This
was a topnotch Killmaster story. It appears there is some question about the
authorship, however. Michael Avallone submitted “Saigon”, as the third story in
the new series, but it was delayed until the sixth issue, with Valerie Moolman
taking over the writing of the series from Avallone. “Run Spy, Run” was the first
book in the series, and a good entry by Avallone, but his second story, “China
Doll” was awful. I’m guessing that he was fired after “China Doll”, and
“Saigon” was turned over to Valerie Moolman for rewrite. “Saigon” seems all
hers, though she may have used Avallone’s original concept, but heavily rewrote
the manuscript. Very little, if anything, seems to remain of Avallone’s writing
in this one.
Earl Norman
The Earl Norman books are becoming extremely rare, and publishers don’t seem to be interested in reprinting the series. The only way some of us may ever have all the stories is for collectors to scan and type the stories into PDF to swap with other collectors. I have already completed PDFs of HANG ME IN HONG KONG and KILL ME IN ROPPONGI. I am working on KILL ME IN YOKOSUKA. If other collectors would do the same for some of the other books, we could eventually have PDFs of all ten books. Why not help? I can be contacted at fadingshadows40@gmail.com
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
The Invisibles
Mark Hood #13: “The Invisibles” by James Dark (James
E. M MacDonnell).
Mark Hood is sent to a small Caribbean island where he encounters voodoo and
murder. Intertrust believes someone on the island may be building a nuclear
bomb. What he finds is Shango, the power behind the island voodoo, and
possessor of a heat-exchanger unit powered by nuclear fission. This machine can
create hurricanes, and Shango wants to blackmail the world with his power. This
is a nice entry, with some good karate to take care of the bad guys. A fun read
over all.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Roppongi & Atami For Trade
FOR TRADE
Kill Me In Roppongi & Kill Me In Atami
Burns Bannion #9: “Kill Me In Roppongi” by Earl Norman (Norman
Thompson). In this final novel of the “Kill Me In …” series, Hedges sends
ex-Stars & Stripes newspaperman, Addis Racquets to him for help. Racquets
now runs his own small paper, and has received a death threat along with an ad.
He hires Bannion to answer the ad, and find out what’s going on. Although
Inspector Izawa and Hedges are mentioned, they have no active part in this
story. It involves the IOON (International Order of Nationalists) Nazi
organization. They are running an illegal abortion scheme in Japan, bringing
women from all over the world that need an abortion, then blackmailing them to
work as their sex spies. Unfortunately, this was the final Burns Bannion novel.
Not a great series, but definitely a fun one with sex and karate as the main
theme. The series was published by Berkley in the U.S., but distribution in the
Far East must have been poor, so Norman Thompson, who had contacts with the
military and Stars & Stripes, had the series printed by a Japanese
publisher under his ERLE BOOKS Logo. This enabled him to get his books on the
racks in the PX system of military bases, where millions of G.I.s became
familiar with them. I don’t know if Berkley was aware of this double-dealing or
not. Sadly, the ERLE Editions seem to have been printed without editing or
proofing, so there are many typos in them. If readers have a choice, buy the
American editions published by Berkley instead. Actually, I’m not sure if
Berkley even published the last two stories or not. This one is only 49k, kind of short for a
paperback. I have a pdf of this one for trade.
Burns Bannion #6: “Kill Me In Atami” by Earl Norman (Norman
Thompson). This one could have been a Bud & Lou comedy film. Bannion is
hired by a wealthy widow, Mrs. Hikonami. She wants a renter removed from her
estate. Legal action would take years, but she wants Bannion to see that he
leaves early, even if it means a karate chop to back of the neck. But there’s
more to the case, as he soon finds out. The widow’s husband was murdered by a
karate blow to the back of the head, forcing the head into a sharp instrument,
but everybody says it was a suicide. En route to the estate, Bannion picks up a
‘wooley booger’ girl (read the book to find out) who loves sex, but someone
hangs him and pins a suicide note on his chest. Arriving at the mansion, he
finds the widow’s sister, Fujiwara, and Mrs. Hikonami’s daughter, Asako.
The three women are exact images of each other. Over the next three nights, the
power goes off, and one of them enters his room to seduce him, but he never
knows which one. Except that it isn’t the 300-pound maid, who also knows
karate. There are hidden passages behind a bookcase, tunnels beneath the
mansion, and monsters lurking about the tunnels and an abandoned sanitarium
nearby. More supposed suicides happen, men hanging in the tunnel, and Bannion’s
wooley booger girl inside the sanitarium. This is one of my favorites in the
series. Thought Hedges is mentioned, he isn’t in this story. Inspector Ezawa
introduces Bannion to Mrs. Hikonami, and then we don’t see him any more. Oddly,
this is the only Burns Bannion novel not reprinted in the ERLE Edition in
Japan. It’s only available in the American Berkley 1962 printing. I might add
at this point that the Berkley editions were well edited, while the Japanese
ERLE editions were not. This Berkley edition paperback is for trade.
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