Showing posts with label Mark Hood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Hood. Show all posts

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Sea Scrape (Mark Hood #12)


Sea Scrape, by James Dark
April, 1971  Signet Books

The Mark Hood series comes to a close with a final installment that was published two years after the previous one. According to seldom-reliable Wikipedia, Sea Scrape was originally published as The Reluctant Assassin in Australia, but that’s not correct. The cover of The Reluctant Assassin, which depicts a sportscar race, doesn’t reflect any events in Sea Scrape. And also this Worthpoint listing, archiving an old eBay listing, shows a few pages of The Reluctant Assassin, and it’s a completely different book than Sea Scrape. So then The Reluctant Assassin was just a volume of the series that never made it over to the US, same as the earlier installment Spy From The Deep. Meaning that there were 14 volumes of Mark Hood in Australia but only 12 in the US. 

As it turns out, Sea Scrape seems like an attempt at a series finale by J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell; for the first real time in the series there’s an attempt at continuity, with previous adventures often mentioned, and supporting characters not seen for several volumes appearing again. Also MacDonnell even seems to harken back to the first volume, turning in a deceptively slim paperback that reads a lot more slowly than its brief 128 pages would imply; there’s some seriously small and dense print here. Compare to some of the more recent volumes, which were really just glorified novellas. Also the sci-fi elements of the more recent books have been toned down, again calling back to the early volumes of Mark Hood. However for the most part Sea Scrape is a retread of Operation Ice Cap (which itself was sort of a retread of Operation Octopus), only with the far-out elements downplayed. 

As with Operation Ice Cap, the supervillain of Sea Scrape wants to get his hands on a Polaris sub, but whereas the previous supervillain collected such subs, this supervillain only needs one of them. Eventually we’ll learn that the supervillain believes Western Civilization is finished, and thus he plans to destroy it and start a new civilization in its wake. (So essentially his plan is Build Back Bettter a few decades early.) Intertrust has gotten word that someone’s planning to steal a Polaris, but the only lead they have is that this person will be staying in a certain hotel in a ski lodge not far from Intertrust HQ in Geneva(!). Blair, the American head of Intertrust, sends Hood to the hotel to scope things out and see if he can determine who the mystery villain might be. (Fortescue, the British co-head of the agency, also appears in the book, furthering the “gang’s all here for the final volume” vibe.) 

While Sea Scrape is busily plotted compared to some of the more recent volumes, it certainly relies a bit too much on lazy coincidence. I mean for one the setup of the mystery villain being at this particular hotel is pretty lame. But then Hood goes there, and the first person he sees is a goatteed, mysterious man – whom we readers already know is indeed the supervillain of the yarn! This is Count Alexander Pefner, the “Satanic genius” of the cover copy, a self-proclaimed “International Zionist” who ultimately turns out not to even be Jewish, but a guy who has gotten into power by working for various governments, including at one point even the Nazis. More importantly he’s got a hotstuff daughter at his side, a twenty-something man-eater who is “one of the most beautiful and unusual girls Hood had ever seen.” This is Rachel Pefner, who ultimately will be Hood’s sole conquest this volume. 

But you can already see some lazy plotting at work here; intel just happens to know a person of interest will be at this specific hotel at this specific time, and the first person Hood sees there just happens to be the very same man he’s looking for! To make it worse, Hood basically just zeroes in on Pefner, despite no firm evidence he is indeed the madman planning to steal a submarine…and in fact, the entire novel continues on that level, with Hood uncertain until toward the very end that he has the right man. Actually in this first half Hood’s under the impression that Pefner is nothing more than an art thief, and Hood goes back to Geneva with his tail between his legs, upset that he’s let Intertrust down. This despite the fact that he’s had multiple run-ins with Pefner’s henchman, a former Navy crewman named Maitland. 

On the other hand, Hood has found the time to conjugate with Pefner’s horny daughter Rachel. But MacDonnell is very reserved this time – not that this series ever got very explicit – and everything happens off-page. About the only thing we learn is that Rachel has a quirk in that she gets turned on by violence. Before “doing the deed” she’ll slap Hood around, or try to fight him in some manner. Otherwise she’s imperious and doesn’t make much of an impression on the reader. And that ultimately is what separates Mark Hood from its obvious inspiration, James Bond. While MacDonnell turns in fast-moving yarns with just the right does of spy-fy thrills, he fails to ever really create memorable characters. Absolutely none of the villains in this series have been on the level of even a lesser Bond villain, and the female characters too fail to make much of an impression on the reader. 

But then I don’t mean to sound like I’m judging things too harshly. I mean Ian Fleming had a full year to work on his Bond novels, whereas MacDonnell was turning out several Mark Hood books a year, in addition to whatever else he was working on. But Rachel Fefner is a perfect example of how these Mark Hood characters could be so much more than what we get. She’s an imperious man-eater who doesn’t hide behind any pretenses, but she doesn’t contribute much to the tale. And for that matter, Hood pretty much leaves her in the lurch, figuring he’s wasted his time checking on Pefner and heading back to Geneva…only for Blair to suspect that Hood might’ve been onto something after all. 

Another thing that makes Sea Scrape notable is that the second half occurs in Australia, which of course is where the series was originally published. After a bit of investigation it looks like the Polaris sub that might be captured will soon be in Australia, so Hood heads over there to investigate, playing a hunch that Pefner might be involved after all. Blair insists that Hood take along fellow Intertrust agent Tommy Tremayne, last seen in Throne Of Satan. Speaking of supporting characters we haven’t seen in a long time, we also get a random reference to Hood’s karate sensei “Matsimuro.” Presumably this is Murimoto, last seen in The Sword Of Genghis Khan, and MacDonnell just forgot the character’s name. Speaking of random references, Hood also thinks back to the events of Assignment Tokyo, which is ironic given that it was I think the worst volume of the entire series – just a slow-moving dirge. More importantly Hood and Blair refer to Norsgaard, the villain of Operation Ice Cap; even they note the similarity between this current threat and that previous one! 

Humorously Tremayne doesn’t offer much in the way of support. He and Hood race around looking into clues and get in a few firefights, but at one point they’re both easily captured by Maitland and his men, walking into a trap. As ever MacDonnell isn’t much for bloody violence, either, but an unusual element of Sea Scrape is that this time Hood uses guns more than his customary karate and judo skills. That said, there isn’t much action in this one; again, it’s very similar in that regard to the earliest volumes, only with slight sci-fi trimmings. For example, we learn that Pefner has his own island, one that contains a high-tech underworld lair beneath it. Macdonnell doesn’t do much to bring it to life, nor does he much exploit Pefner’s Blofeld-esque penchant for acquiring loyal staff – and disposing of those who disappoint him. 

Another interesting element of Sea Scrape is that Hood kills a woman in combat; he’s already done this before, in, you guessed it, Operation Ice Cap. As we’ll recall, that earlier volume had a very similar scenario in which the madman genius had a super-hot daughter, and the daughter and Hood became enemies once they’d spent some quality time in bed. Well the same thing happens here; Rachel Pefner bears a serious grudge with Hood, given how he rushed out on her in Geneva and such, and also now she’s certain he’s a spy – she’s devoted to her father, you see, but isn’t aware her father is in fact an international terrorist. She is under the mistaken assumption that Hood is an industrial spy. Her fate is pretty crazed, one of the most crazed scenes in the series, involving as it does Hood using the rotating blades of a helicopter as his weapon. Hood even pukes after the job is done. 

The climax is somewhat unusual; Hood follows another hunch that Pefner will attempt to capture the Polaris at such and such a location in Australia, and Hood is correct, though he himself is also captured. We then flash-forward one month and Tremayne’s back at Intertrust HQ in Geneva, puzzling over the situation with Blair and Fortescue. Meanwhile we learn that Hood’s been on the sub all these weeks, kept as a prisoner, but now almost friends with Pefner, who likes to come into Hood’s quarters and chat and play chess and whatnot. Humorously, the dude has no idea what’s happened to his daughter, but the threat hangs there that he might find out and of course Hood will suffer. 

However MacDonnell delivers one of his typically anticlimactic finales; Hood does manage to escape – and I love it that Pefner’s men wear scarlet-colored wetsuits on the Polaris – and gets off the sub, taking out a series of foes in almost casual fashion. And we have yet another volume that ends with all the main villains suffering their fate off-page; this is a recurring gimmick of Mark Hood that’s always annoyed me. It seems like every volume ends with Hood blowing people up from afar, and that’s that. Well, at least this time it’s over and done with, this being the final volume of the series and all, and Hood heads off for his expected vacation at novel’s end. 

Unless I ever turn up Spy From The Deep or The Reluctant Assassin, this will be the last volume of Mark Hood I read, and it was a good enough finale. Overall I enjoyed this series a lot, particularly how MacDonnell kept the plots moving and also doled out just enough of that ‘60s spy-fi vibe I enjoy so much. He also always had a lot of scuba action, which I always enjoy. But as mentioned the villains – despite how wild some of them were – never achieved the level of any Fleming creations, nor did the female characters. However on the other hand Mark Hood is exactly what it should have been: a fast-moving pulp-spy series that focuses on entertainment, never striving to be a “serious” piece of espionage fiction.

Monday, September 13, 2021

The Invisibles (Mark Hood #11)


The Invisibles, by James Dark
August, 1969  Signet Books

The penultimate volume of Mark Hood sees our hero in some never-named Caribbean island, here to investigate the possibility that someone has gotten hold of fissionable material. As an agent for Intertrust, Hood’s ongoing assignment is to ensure nuclear power remains in the hands of just a few countries. When we meet him he’s already on location in this “Caribbean stronghold,” trying to figure out who could be behind this scheme. 

There’s a definite vibe of Pre-Code thriller Black Moon to this one, with pounding voodoo drums always in the background and overly-superstitious natives, many of whom have congregated around the mysterious ruler Shango (not to be confused with shanga), who operates out of a remote fortress. There’s no pickup from previous volumes, nor any appearance of Hood’s earlier colleagues, like Tremayne or Murimoto. Instead Hood’s working solo, and as we meet him he’s rolling along in his rental car one night and comes upon a native lying in the middle of the road. The dude whips out a rifle and after a bit of action Hood takes him out with one of his karate moves; as ever, Hood makes most of his kills this time with his hands. This is how I prefer to make my own, btw. 

Hood’s local contact is Sangster, an Intertrust agent who has been on location on this island for the past few years to monitor the situation. He’s not as memorable as former agents Hood worked with; his most memorable qualities are his Land Rover and his limp, which he acquired during some rough field action years before. Oh, and the knockout rum punch he likes to make. Otherwise he’s an affable sort, and there to fill Hood in on the local happenings and whatnot. While Hood’s driving to see Sangster, a “monster” springs up and begins to chase him – tornado winds, a frothing sea, trees ripped out by their roots by an invisible wind, etc. Hood’s car is thrown off a cliff but he manages to survive. 

This is how Hood first begins to understand that his unknown enemies on the island can control the weather. Here he also meets Ecolette, a hostuff half-Creole babe who has been hurt in the melee; she claims “the Invisibles” are after Hood. Soon we’ll learn that she is referring to voodoo spirits. Hood mends her injured arm in a nice sequence in which Dark (the pseudonym is much easier to type than the author’s real name, J.E. MacDonnell) reminds us of Hood’s medical background. But there’s no hanky-panky and Ecolette takes off. Next day Mark learns she’s the daughter of Chardonnier, a conservative Frenchman who is running for president of the island and who is backed by the US, given his “liberal” agenda. He’s running against Shango, who heads up a “left-wing” party that the US does not want to see in power. Some definitions must have clearly changed over the years! 

Dark successfully captures the colonial vibe here, with Hood and Sangster meeting Chardonnier in his sweeping home off the sea as they have drinks, smoke cigarettes, and engage in “man talk.” Dark is also very good at doling out info via dialog; as ever the book is a fast-moving, professionally-produced yarn that comes in at a concise 150-some pages, but has more impact than some books twice its size. This I feel is the true sign of a gifted author, and Dark is certainly that; I’m sorry there’s only one more volume to go. At any rate, here Hood gets the info on Shango’s operation, and it would seem clear he is the villain Hood has been sent here to dispatch. Dark does try to drum up some brief suspense when Hood learns that Chardonnier himself is a physicist, but this suspense is quickly jettinsoned; Chardonnier, it seems, is just too likable and Old World regal to be involved in any nuclear nefariousness. 

We readers know Shango is the bad guy, given the few cutovers to his perspective. With his “lizardlike” eyes and bald head, he comes off as more repitillian than human, and he’s capable of hypnotizing people merely by staring at them. He sends his top henchman over to Hood’s to take him out, leading to another entertaining sequence where our hero again uses his hands and feet instead of a gun. Dark hits all the series bases here, with Hood even engaging in a quick skindiving session to hide the body in some underwater coral. This bit of action perturbs Hood’s boss, Forescue, who talks to Hood via phone from Geneva and comes off as particularly jerkish this time: “The job is too important to have you boys pussyfooting around playing 007’s.” 

Speaking of James Bond, the following voodoo sequence is straight out of Live And Let Die. Hood pressures Ecolette into taking him to that night’s voodoo ceremony in the hills, and they watch from afar as a woman is sacrificed. But they’re spotted, and Hood takes off, making use of Sangster’s Land Rover on the rugged terrain as men with torches and guns chase him; a thrilling sequence that rivals anything by Ian MacAlister. You can almost hear Mandigo’s The Primeval Rhythm Of Life on the soundtrack playing in your imagination. Even here Hood manages to only use his hands in the action scenes, at one point memorably breaking a dude’s hand through the Land Rover’s door window and sticking the torch back in the guy’s face. 

Ecolette meanwhile has been plunged into an erotic sort of stupor from the ceremony – the implication being that she’s been raised with voodoo so under its sway – and Hood has to literally slap her out of it once they’ve gotten to safety. She comes to demanding that Hood take her back to his villa for some all-night boinkery; getting “on all-fours,” she declares, “We will do everything – everything that is possible for two lovers to do to each other.” Dark is a bit more explicit than previous volumes – nothing too crazy, though – with lines like, “[Hood] pounded himself into her.” Indeed we’re told, with no juicy details, that the two engage in various conjugations all the night long, only stopping once they’ve passed out. 

Things get real the following morning, when Hood discovers the true power of voodoo, at least when it comes to its true believers. Here Hood finally decides to take things straight to Shango. First though he has a meeting with Chardonnier, who again doles out info in capably-handled dialog that doesn’t come off like exposition. Chardonnier theorizes that Shango has a “heat-transference” contraption which is capable of drumming up crazy weather and directing it at his prey. So Hood calls up Sangster, grabs his .38, and they head on up into the mountains to infiltrate the villain’s fortress – even going in by the front door! After taking out a thug or two, Hood discovers the power of Shango’s hypnotic eyes. 

Once again Dark capably displays Hood’s medical knowledge with our hero having done minor surgery on himself, planting something within his arm that will allow him to escape Shango’s sway. But while there’s a bit more action here, with Hood taking out a few more thugs, the finale of The Invisibles is a bit anticlimactic, with Hood waiting for Chardonnier to arrive, so the physicist can make use of Shango’s secondary weather-control device and use it on Shango himself, who is departing in a destroyer with a larger weather weapon to lay waste to Miami. Personally I prefer my action pulp novels to end with the hero doing all the heavy lifting, not some one-off supporting character. 

But otherwise there isn’t much to complain about with this one. Once again Dark’s taken the series from its too-stuffy origins into the outer limits of pulp, complete with nuclear-armed “voodooists” and their sacrificial ceremonies. So I can only say again I’m sorry the series will end with the next volume, and also it bums me that one of the Mark Hood novels, 1966’s Spy From The Deep, was inexplicably excluded from the American reprints. Worse yet, like any other vintage paperback published in Australia, it’s not only incredibly scarce but incredibly overpriced when you do manage to find a copy.

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Operation Ice Cap (Mark Hood #10)


Operation Ice Cap, by James Dark
May, 1969  Signet Books

The tenth volume of Mark Hood almost seems like a more fleshed-out rewrite of the earlier installment Operation Octopus, but whereas the plot of that one was “Underwater Nazis,” the plot of this one is “Space Vikings!” And that really is the plot Operation Ice Cap is building toward, only for J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell to scrap the sci-fi stuff at the end and go for a much more primitive finale, with hero Mark Hood being chased through the woods by a woman armed with bow and arrow.

There’s no pickup from any previous volume, and when we meet Hood he’s again on vacation, this time in the South of France where he’s busy conjugating with a Nordic gymnast named Elke. We’re often reminded of Elke’s “boylike” athletic stature, save for her large breastesses, and when we meet the new couple they’re tearing through the narrow roads in Hood’s sportscar. After some nondescriptive sex out in the cheap showiness of nature, the two are lounging around when a trio of Italian toughs come by, looking for some fun. This will be one of the few action scenes in the novel; Hood wipes out two of them with his karate skills, and Elke kills one of them, tossing a knife with a professionalism that jolts Hood. Even more curious is how she takes photographs of the two Hood knocked out, and insists they not bring the police into the affair.

Meanwhile, the main plot of the novel has to do with US Navy ships being melted in the North Pole; a megalomaniac named Norsgaard operates out of a high-tech facility beneath the ice, employing a legion of soldiers, all of them blond Nordic giants, and we watch as he uses his newfangled technology to heat the water around a couple ships to the point that they literally melt. As I’ve mentioned before, the series is now on the same wavelength of the James Bond movies of the day – heavy on the sci-fi plots, but lacking in the quips and humor Connery brought to Bond. Mark Hood for the most part is pretty much a cipher. He’s called into Intertrust headquarters in Geneva – here I belive is the first we learn his middle name is Kingsley – and briefed on the missing ships. He’s to go to Norway to figure out what the hell is going on.

I love how MacDonnell baldly ties together the two plot threads – Hood’s at a hotel in Trondheim, and in comes Elke of all people, surrounded by a group of athletic-looking young people. Hood’s cover as a globe-trotting gaddabout serves him well, and the two laugh at the “coincidence” of meeting again, and begin their affair anew. However, as we soon learn…Elke is the daughter of none other than Norsgaard, the megalomaniac ship-melter, aka “the wealthiest man in Norway.” Not that Hood knew this before coming to Norway; indeed, he has no idea who is behind the situation with the ships, and the opening with Elke in the South of France is incidental to everything. At any rate Elke invites Hood to dinner at her father’s place, which turns out to be a high-tech fortress on an island, serviced by beautiful young women in “futurisitic sheaths of some glistening material” that clings to their shapely bodies.

It’s very much in the Bond movie vibe here as one of these girls shows Hood around the fortress, which is complete with doors that slide open and other such “villain’s lair” amenities. Hood to his credit starts to suspect that any guy who can afford such luxuries – the sliding doors, for example, are built on a level beyond modern technology – might also be the sort of guy who could melt Navy vessels. As I say, MacDonnell just says to hell with careful plotting and belabored setup; he only has about 120 pages to work with, so he gives us the fast moving spy-fy yarn we’re here for.

This “dinner date” with Elke takes up a good bit of the narrative. Norsgaard – who I forgot to mention has a horrifically-scarred face, thanks to improprer forceps handling when he was born – holds forth on the usual supervillain topics as he wines and dines Hood, then trots out a bound and masked pair of guys as part of the afterdinner entertainment. They are of course the two Italian toughs who attempted to rape Elke, earlier in the book; Hood watches in amazement as Norsgaard melts one of them with his melt-ray gizmo thing, but for some reason takes exception when Norsgaard’s hulking blond henchman breaks the neck of the other. This leads to one of the few other action scenes in the novel, with Hood using his karate skills against the thug and his assortment of Viking weapons.

For as it’s clear now, Norsgaard fashions himself as a modern-day Viking (despite the horrific face he too is a towering wall of muscle), and eventually we’ll learn that his plan is to melt the Polar ice caps and destroy civilization, while he and his chosen “perfect” people wait safely in space and then repopulate the Earth with generations of Vikings. This is what he calls his “Viking dream.” He doesn’t immediately tell Hood all this, though; out hero of course has gone through all this – including the fight with the henchman – as a test, Norsgaard gauging if Hood is worthy of being in his Viking army, despite not being Nordic. Initially Norsgaard claims his plan is to melt the caps just a little, enough to raise the waters of docks around the globe, all as some sort of eco-terrosim ploy to get world governments to back off on their environment-harming practices.

Hood’s next test is even more of what we want from this genre; two of those perfect Viking gals come to his bed that night (Norsgaard having insisted Hood stay overnight in the fortress, of course), and offer themselves to him. After a moment of indecision – separately or both at once? – Hood decides on the latter, but as ever MacDonnell immediately ends the scene and we don’t even get a glimmer of naughtiness. Norsgaard next morning informs Hood that this was a test of his “virility,” as Hood will only be granted membership in Norsgaard’s organization if he gets the girls pregnant! And what’s more, Norsgaard has high-tech devices for this as well, so he’ll know in a handful of hours if Hood’s knocked the girls up. We learn that he indeed has, but interestingly this subplot isn’t much belabored other than it’s another right of passage Hood must endure to get into Norsgaard’s orbit, as he has by now of course figured out that this is in fact the villain of the piece. The dashed-off subplot about the pregnant girls is rendered a bit ghoulish, given the climax of the book. 

Sadly though the sci-fi stuff is pretty much jettisoned at this point. Hood strikes up a friendship of sorts with Danielsson, Norsgaard’s personal pilot: Danielsson, we’ll learn, is an astronaut whose chief mission will be to return the colony of space Vikings to earth. He tells Hood the true plans of the supervillain, and since Daniellson himself is sickened by the plot he helps Hood take down Nosgaard’s operation. But it’s all so anticlimactic, friends. Rather than slam-bang action, the third half of the book is comprised of Hood and Danielsson’s scheming. There’s none of the action or thrills you’d get in a Bond movie, that’s for sure. In fact it’s downright messy in how it goes down, to the point that I wasn’t sure what was going on. Hood and Danielsson escape in a plane and Norsgaard’s in a rocket of some sort – not the one going into space, because they’d expect Danielsson to be in that one, so presumably the one that’s supposed to destroy the ice caps? – and the rocket blows up, and our main villain is killed, believe it or not, entirely off-page!

Instead the finale is on the primitive tip, with Hood being stalked in the darkened woods, Elke hunting him Diana-like with bow and arrow. MacDonnell skillfully elaborates the irony of the situation: what started out as such a high-tech sci-fi caper has now reached an altogether old-fashioned climax. This part is more tense than would normally be expected, as Hood has endured such a brutal beating from Elke’s personal henchman (himself scar-faced, a recurring conceit in the novel) that he’s woozy and dazed and can’t even see straight, let alone defend himself from a skilled archer. MacDonnell doesn’t shirk on the man-vs-woman battle, either; usually these pulp authors will have some other female come along and finish off the female villain, or some other development to protect the hero’s “honor” and keep him from killing a woman and all, but Hood dishes out his own death. If that weren’t enough woman-killing, we later learn that Intertrust has overseen the bombing of Norsgaard’s HQ, killing everyone in it – meaning the two girls Hood got pregnant have been killed as well. Not that Hood even considers this!

All in all Operation Ice Cap is a fast-moving yarn with MacDonnell’s typically-capable prose; like a veteran pulpster, he knows how to tell you just as much as you need to know to keep the story moving, without getting bogged down in extranneous details. That being said, this one is at least a little more fleshed out than Operation Octopus, which was almost like an outline at times. There’s a bit more detail and description this time, more fully bringing to life the situations and settings, regardless of how outrageous they are. But I would’ve liked to have at least seen more of Norsgaard’s Viking army, and the prospect of “Space Vikings” was so cool it’s unfortunate we never actually got to see them. Otherwise, this series continues to give you everything you could want from ‘60s spy pulp, and I really like it.

Monday, October 14, 2019

Spying Blind (Mark Hood #9)


Spying Blind, by James Dark
May, 1968  Signet Books

It’s seeming more to me that, of all the post-Bond spy series of the ‘60s, Mark Hood comes the closest to capturing the vibe of Fleming. This ninth volume confirms that, given that it comes off like a variation of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with a little of the sci-fi element of the Bond films of the day.

This is not to say that J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell goes for a Fleming vibe in the actual prose; he describes things a bit more than in previous volumes, which were almost outline-esque, but he doesn’t go to the elaborate lengths of the so-called “Fleming sweep.” But importantly, he keeps things moving and he keeps things interesting. However, at 122 pages (of very small print), Spying Blind is clearly more of a pulp yarn than any of the official Bond novels, and also was clearly turned out in a fast manner; unlike Fleming, MacDonnell likely didn’t have the luxury of spending a month or two in Jamaica writing his first draft and then tinkering with it for the rest of the year back home.

We meet Mark Hood as he’s in Monaco, one week after the previous volume: “Mark Hod had just completed the dangerous assignment of destroying Professor Klepner’s city beneath the sea.” Boss Fortescue at Intertrust ordered Hood on an immediate vacation, and interestingly Hood spends the remainder of the novel off-duty, here in Monaco to take part in a race. This volume’s bit of international intrigue literally falls into his lap: Hood decides to go for a late-night scuba swim by his hotel, where he’s attacked by a random frogman. It’s a fight to the death and Hood manages to kill the guy with his own spear gun; this will be Hood’s only kill until the very end of the novel.

Hood makes it back to the beach and collapses. Then a hotstuff brunette in a bikini appears, addresses him as someone else, and drops a package in his lap, telling him to deliver it to “Carton” on “the yacht.” She walks away, leaving Hood further confused. The dock teems with yachts, he doesn’t know any Carton, and the scuba attacker he just killed has conveniently disappeared, apparently taken away by the currents or somesuch. Here the sci-fi element comes in because the package contains a small, H-shaped bakelite key, and Hood discovers after some trial and error that the mysterious thing has the power to shut off electrical pulses in close range.

We readers learn that this is the control key for a Russian moon probe which is soon to return to Earth. The probe has also discovered a brand-new metallic element on the moon’s surface, which will also factor into the sci-fi. “Carton” is the treacherhous right-hand man of industrial entreprenneur Norman Edgell, who has schemed elaborately to get the key, so he can redirect the returning probe, essentially commandeering it. He wants to steal its “electronic brain” (man we should’ve kept this term instead of the more-generic “computer”), and use the Soviet technology therein to get the US on the moon first. Edgell doesn’t realize that Carton is plotting against him, looking to steal the tech for himself – and he’s also plotting to get busy with Edgell’s hotstuff daughter Lynne, even going to the extent of getting her hooked on heroin.

There’s very little in the way of action in Spying Blind. This is mostly because throughout Hood is trying to maintain his “jetsetting gadabout” image, thus doesn’t want anyone to discover he’s a badass super-spy with suprahuman karate skills. So when a blond-haired, easy-going dude with cold eyes shows up at Hood’s breakfast table next morning, Hood knows it’s a thug already come around to collect the package. This is Danny, a knife-tossing expert who initially threatens to steal the novel but is soon shuffled out of the narrative. There’s a nice bit of cat and mouse as Danny tries to casually threaten Hood, asking for the package for a variety of b.s. reasons. In reality he’s been sent by Carton.

It’s kind of dumb, though: Danny doesn’t speak French, so Hood lies that he gave the package to the cops for safekeeping, and will now call them to bring it back to him. So Hood, speaking French, calls the cops and simply tells them there’s an armed intruder in his hotel room, all while an oblivious Danny just stands there! Danny manages to escape, later doing a job on Hood’s racecar, so that he almost crashes during the race in a thrilling sequence that rivals anything in the Don Miles capers. Hood gets revenge by beating Danny to a pulp with his karate moves; it’s a violent scene but another instance in which Hood refrains from killing anyone in Spying Blind.

Edgell claims his scuba diver’s “gone missing” (Hood having killed him never comes up again in the narrative), so offers Hood the job after explaining what his motives are. So Hood goes along, handing over the control device. This whole bit is hard to buy because part of the reason Hood goes along is so he can cure Lynne of her heroin addiction; we’ll recall Hood is a trained doctor as well, thus he instantly knows Lynn is a “hophead” (per the back cover copy). Brace yourself for this one, friends – while Hood’s attracted to Lynn, he never has sex with her, and indeed doesn’t have sex at all in Spying Blind. The opportunity is of course there, with a week-long voyage to sea on Edgell’s massive yacht and Lynne all alone in her big room, but Hood’s more concerned with curing her – and MacDonnell keeps her off-page as much as possible.

Hood’s also gone along because he wants to see the returning moon probe and its electronic brain. Edgell’s never-seen “specialists” onboard have redirected the probe and it crashes in the sea, Hood and two other scuba-suited men going out to retrieve it and store it in the hidden compartment beneath the ship. There’s some nice tension when a Soviet destroyer immediately comes upon them, having tracked the “meteor” in the night sky, and send armed soldiers over to search the boat. Meanwhile Carton’s discovered via their Soviet mole that the moon probe has returned with a completely new element, taken from the moon’s surface.

The finale is ludicrous. Carton simply drugs Hood, Edgell, and Lynn at dinner, so he can make off with the new element. Then he sends Danny back to kill them all in the most belabored means possible; the new element burns under conditions I’ve now forgotten, so the entire idea is that Danny will pilot the yacht out into the Monaco harbor, having tied up the still-unconscious Hood and others, and then make the yacht burn with the new alien element. Instead Hood of course frees himself and tosses Danny into the propeller blades below – Hood’s second and final kill in the novel.

Even more ludicrous, Carton’s fate is rendered off-page; back in Geneva at Intertrust HQ, Hood is casually informed by boss Fortescue that Tremayne, Hood’s occasional partner (last seen in Throne Of Satan), has rounded up some fellow named Carton who has been attempting to sell some weird stuff on the black market. And Fortescue has no idea that Hood has been up to his neck with the very same group of people. It’s all kind of deflating, and certainly more of a hamfisted and flat-footed ending than Fleming would’ve ever delivered.

But despite it all Spying Blind is entertaining given that MacDonnell invests himself in the tale and keeps it all moving at an assured pace, doling out the economical prose of a pulp veteran. It’s lacking on the sex and violence angle but it still delivers that ‘60s spy-fy vibe I enjoy so much, and while it doesn’t achieve the crazy heights of Operation Octopus, it’s still a helluva lot better than earlier misfires like Assignment Tokyo.

Monday, March 19, 2018

Operation Octopus (Mark Hood #8)


Operation Octopus, by James Dark
January, 1968  Signet Books

I’ve been looking forward to this volume of Mark Hood since I first learned about the series. In this pulpy installment, karate-loving Intertrust agent Hood ventures to a domed underwater city where he takes on Nazis who are experimenting on human subjects, to make them mermen. Plus they’ve captured a nuclear sub and plan to conquer the world! So as you can see, the series continues to veer further and further from its relatively-realistic roots.

First though a word on the ordering of the volumes. According to the essential Spy Guys And Gals site, Operation Octopus is volume 9 of the Signet editions and Spying Blind is volume 8. However, judging from the copyright dates of each book, as well as the Signet numbering system on the front covers, Operation Octopus was actually published before Spying Blind. Also, The Sword Of Genghis Khan is listed in the front of Operation Octopus as the most recently-published volume. So, at least according to the US printing schedule, this would be the 8th volume of Mark Hood. Perhaps it was published after Spying Blind in the series’s native Australia.

Not that continuity is much of a concern; at 125 pages of big print, Operation Octopus is a fast-moving pulp yarn with no pretensions whatsoever, let alone any worries over filling readers in on what came before. Hood himself takes a few chapters to appear, and there’s no setup on the character other than the basic facts – he’s 36 and works for Intertrust. And whereas previous volumes have partnered him up with either karate sensei Murimoto or wise-cracking fellow agent Tremayne, this time Hood goes off on assignment all on his lonesome. Perhaps J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell realized he was unintentionally making Hood a supporting character in his own series; last time, as just one example, it was Murimoto who consistently saved the day.

The opening few pages set the precedent for what will follow; in a bravura bit of economical pulp storytelling, Dark opens in 1945 in the last days of the war, as a U-Boat escapes crumbling Germany, commanded by a pair of scientists: Ulrich Klepner, a superhumanly-gifted surgeon, and his corpse-faced ghoul of an assistant, Bergmann. They’re on their way to what will be their new home: a city beneath the sea, built so close to America (near the Bahamas) that no one will ever dream of looking for them there! And that’s it – that’s all the setup we need, and that’s all the setup we get.

Now cut to April of ’68, and a Polaris missile-bearing nuclear sub, commanded by an old service pal of Hood’s named MacLane, is in the Tongue of the Ocean testing underwater weapons. It’s caught in a net of mutant radioactive plankton, and then German frogmen in strange silver wetsuits board the ship and take the men captive. Yes, the Nazis have now built a veritable wonderland 300 feet below the surface, complete with control rooms that with the turn of a dial can activate those mutant plankton, not to mention “underwater flying objects” made of tungsteen “gossamer” threads that can go faster than any other ship. Plus they’re doing experiments on prisoners, trying to graft fins and gills on them to create mermen. Why not? The veteran pulp reader will note that this plot is mysteriously similar to that incredible volume of Nick Carter: KillmasterThe Sea Trap, with a bit of the plot of another Killmaster yarn, Moscow, tossed in for good measure.

Enter Mark Hood, having a picnic by himself along Lake Geneva – without even the mandatory babe! He’s given his assignment by Blair, the American boss at the Switzerland Intertrust HQ, and Dark seems to forget that in previous books Blair rarely (if ever?) spoke; it was always the French boss, Fortescue (who goes unmentioned this time) who gave Hood his marching orders. The convoluted briefing has it that a “merman” washed up on the shores of New Orleans, and this underwater weapons tester named Spooner was approached in that same city by a bodacious blonde named Inga who tried to, uh, pump him for info on top-secret weapons. After this the girl disappeared, and then the Polaris sub went missing. Hood is to pose as a disgraced Naval officer, kicked out on spying charges, and to slouch around the streets of New Orleans and hope he’s contacted by Inga.

Unsurprisingly, the plan works – Hood is contacted just a few pages after arriving in New Orleans. As mentioned, the book is pure pulp all the way, and pausing to think about what you’re reading is not suggested. We get the first of the novel’s three action scenes as Hood beats some stooge to pulp, breaking his arm with the usual karate bravado; the stooge, never mentioned again, works for Inga, who sent him here to this sleazy bar to collect Hood. Not that it much matters, as Inga comes along anyway, and basically hires Hood straightaway. Soon enough she’s “testing” him, from scuba diving (where she pretends to have underwater delirium to test Hood’s responses) to his skills in the sack: “What are you like as a man?” she taunts him. Here’s the extent of the sex scene Dark provides: “Half-angrily, half roughly, [Hood] showed her.”

Despite the brevity and breathless pace, Dark still manages to create nice little moments, like when Hood and a seemingly-unconscious Inga surface in the middle of a New Orleans downpour. But there isn’t much time for much of this sort of thing; even the description is kept at a bare minimum, like the “space suit”-esque, “sheathlike” suits worn in Klepner’s underwater lair which are not elaborated much upon. Inga promptly takes Hood to the underwater city in a veritable Undewater Flying Object. We get some specious “science” here that all of Klepner’s inventions are made of tungsten, so densely woven as to be “gossamer threads.” After a bit of suspicion, particularly from old U-Boat commander Korth, Klepner is willing to take Hood on as a new recruit: Inga is certain Hood’s intelligence will be a great aid in the cause, which is, of course, the total domination of the world – Klepner plans to nuke Miam with one of those Polaris missiles for starters.

Hood loses his cool when he comes upon Klepner casually lobotomizing old Navy pal MacLane; when he tries to strangle Klepner in his rage, Hood’s later able to bullshit his way out of being killed by insisting that, if he really had wanted to murder Klepner, he would’ve used the dreaded shuto chop of karate! He explains away the whole strangling bit as his nerves being frayed and whatnot. So Klepner rolls in a towering henchman for Hood to prove himself upon; Hood kills him with a single shuto chop to the neck. Hood’s first kill in the book. He’s saved his skin, but later Korth tries to feed Hood to those mutant plankton, and it’s time for the dreaded shuto chop again – Hood’s second kill. His third and final kill is the most surprising of all: Inga. So for once we have a scene where the hero actually kills the villainess, an event most of these pulp authors gloss over: “Quickly and efficiently [Hood] broke her neck.”

But instead of the underwater Nazis and their high-tech contraptions – not to mention those friggin’ mermen – Dark instead focuses on the lobotomized crew of the captured sub, in particular Hood’s efforts to get through to his old pal MacLane. Indeed, all the good stuff is effectively brushed aside off-page; Hood sets the dial that controls the mutant plankton to maximum and escapes in the sub with MacLane and his officers – Hood having figured out a way to countermand MacLane’s brainwashing – while the plankton destroys the city. In other words, Dark doesn’t even bother to deliver a proper send-off for Klepner or Bergmann; he just leaves it that Hood assumes all the Nazis are killed by the rioting massive plankton.

As mentioned, I’ve been wanting to read Operation Octopus for a while now. If you’re into underwater scuba spy action like I am, then it pretty much delivers, though not on the scale of the film Thunderball or anything. In fact, despite featuring an entire city of Nazi frogmen, the book plays out on more of a smallscale nature. In truth I would’ve preferred a bit more of a pulpy flair; Inga is not exploited nearly enough – I mean come on, she’s a friggin underwater Nazi She-Devil, yet Dark doesn’t do much to bring her to life – and I could’ve used more of the freakish “half-men, half-fish” stuff. I still can’t believe it never occurred to Dark to have Hood, you know, maybe meet one of them.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

The Sword Of Genghis Khan (Mark Hood #7)


The Sword Of Genghis Khan, by James Dark
October, 1967  Signet Books

At this point the Mark Hood series has ventured far from its roots. While the early volumes were slow-moving espionage tales (arduosly slow, in some instances), The Sword Of Genghis Khan is straight-up pulp, a fast-moving yarn that comes in at a mere 127 pages of big print. There’s little of the time-wasting of those earlier installments; indeed, one wishes for a little more meat on the bones, as J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell delivers what for the most part is a glorified outline.

But still, one can’t complain, especially when one compares this volume to, say, Assignment Tokyo. It starts with a bang and keeps up the pace till the very end. In fact, the opening is the most crazed yet in the series, as we read about three top satellite scientists being abducted by some mysterious organization. The abductions are all pretty unusual, with the most insane one being a French scientist taken while he’s having sex with some good-looking babe he just met in a bar! Also here we see that Dark is getting more and more explicit as the series progresses; it’s not full-on porn, but at least it’s not “fade to black” such as the earlier sex scenes were. Oh, and one of scientists is abducted by a dude on a rocket pack straight out of Thunderball.

Mark Hood doesn’t show up for a while, and when we meet him he’s already being briefed by Intertrust boss Fortescue. Hood’s usual ally Tommy Tremayne is “still in the hospital” from the wounds he received last volume, so Fortescue tells Hood he’ll be pairing him up with karate master Murimoto. As a reminder, Dark has abruptly made Murimoto an Intertrust agent, whereas the earliest volumes specified that he was nothing more than Hood’s karate trainer, and indeed didn’t even know that Hood was really a secret agent. While Murimoto is an okay sidekick (as the back cover copy refers to him), one misses the chatter of the usual Hood-Tremayne pairing; Murimoto is just a bit too laconic.

Fortescue wants Hood to head over to Russia, as it develops that the three kidnapped scientists were from three of the four contries that comprise Intertrust (ie the US, England, France, and Russia). Since “the top Russian satellite scientist” hasn’t been kidnapped yet, Foretescue wants Hood and Murimoto to go over there, work with the Russian Intertrust agent, and prevent any possible kidnapping. Hood meanwhile has a hunch he should be going to Mongolia – in another wild opening scene, we’ve seen a part of the Yellow Sea boiling, as well as half of a US destroyer. While Fortescue believes this is unrelated to the scientist abductions, Hood feels otherwise.

If you’d need a reminder that the Mark Hood series is nothing like Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, look no further. Whereas Fleming would’ve elaborated on the trip to Russia, with copious cultural details, Dark has his characters in and out of Russia within several pages. Hilariously enough, when Hood and Murimoto get to the desolate base where the Russian scientist, Drobsky, does his work, they find that he’s already been taken, his guards shot in the head! But this is indication of how streamlined The Sword Of Genghis Khan is. Very seldom does James Dark elaborate or exploit a scene, and description is kept to a minimum.

Hood gets his way and convinces Fortescue to allow him and Murimoto to head to Mongolia – on nothing more than a hunch! They ride the Trans-Siberian Express, but Dark again does little to bring the exotic setting to life. To further the pulp feel, coincidental plotting is prevalent; Hood and Murimoto just happen to ride the train out with a super-sexy Chinese babe in Western clothing who is escorting the coffin of her recently-dead uncle. A horny Hood, who didn’t bring along any books (one wonders what he’d even read – Mark Hood by the way has remained a cipher since the first volume), heads off to the bar to get her drunk.

Her name is Khan Teh Fah, and while we are informed a few times she’s quite attractive, Dark doesn’t do much to bring her to life or to exploit her ample charms. A few mentions of her clothing sticking to her nice curves and whatnot. Early on she displays some fervent Communist beliefs, but this gradually fades away. She and Hood strike up a repartee on the long, long train journey, which culminates with abrupt, unexpected violence when the train is hit by lightning or something in Mongolia. Hood and Murimoto free themselves from their cabin, which has plunged along with the rest of the train into a river, and after saving a comatose Teh Hood also rescues her uncle’s coffin, which is floating downstream.

But inside it a curious Hood finds not a dead Mongolian, but the unconscious form of Drobsky, abducted Russian scientist. (Remember I mentioned the coincidental plotting?) Hood has been suspicious of Teh and her party all along, so tries to lie that he didn’t look in the coffin. Despite which her goons surround him and Murimoto with guns drawn and force them to come along to far off Lop Nor, which Hood knows is where Red China does all its atomic bomb testing. It’s also the home of Teh’s mysterious and powerful father, General Khan.

The reader will already gauge that The Sword Of Genghis Khan is James Dark’s ‘60s updating of a Fu Manchu story. Wily General Khan is Fu Manchu and Teh is Fu’s sexy villainess of a daughter, Fah Lo Suee – even her full name, Khan Teh Fa, has a similar ring to it. But talk about that lack of meat on the bones – Dark does little to bring General Khan to life. He lives in a medieval castle in Lop Nor, surrounded by loyal soldiers, but what these people or even the place looks like is left entirely to the reader’s imagination. Khan himself is merely described as “dressed like Genghis Khan,” so let’s hope you already have that visual stored in your head, because Dark doesn’t elaborate.

General Khan, blithely revealing everything to the newly-arrived Hood, says that he discovered the fabled lost treasure of Genghis Khan, his forebear, after an atomic test here in the rugged mountains of Mongolia. But despite his massive wealth, General Khan wants power – he wants Mongolia to take over China, and to kick Russia’s ass due to the USSR’s treachery with Red China. Like a regular Bond movie villain, Khan has loyal scientists at his disposal, ones who have made for him a satellite with a large mirror on it, which directs the rays of the sun. This is the cause of the boiling Yellow Sea in the opening, as well as that light attack on Hood’s train.

But this last attack was a mistake, and because Khan’s daughter was almost injured in it, he had all of the specialists killed. Thus Dark exlains away why Khan keeps Hood and Murimoto alive; Hood has a little medical training, and is able to fool Khan into thinking he’s a specialist in sleep studies(!). So Khan figures to replace him with the recently-killed doctor he previously employed. This provides further convenient plotting, as Khan has been “cryobiologically” freezing those captured scientists, but the resuscitation method is faulty, with all of them waking up as mental incompetents. But Drobksy’s cryo process has went well, and he’s the sole scientist who comes to with all his faculties. 

Rather than a slam-bang finale, Murimoto instead informs Hood that he will need to “dishonor” Khan’s daughter, “by force if necessary.” Teh, whose name means “virtue,” is the uber-protected virginal daughter of Khan, despite her obvious burnin’ yearnin’ for Hood. So Hood does the deed…and Dark leaves it off page! Earlier I should mention we also read as Hood boffs some blonde pickup in a Moscow bar; a sex scene slightly more risque than any previous ones, but as arbitrary as you can get, as it turns out to be a blackmail scheme that goes nowhere thanks to Hood’s karate skills with the dudes who come in with the camera.

But Teh enjoys it, we’re at least informed – and then Hood guts proud Khan with the info of his dauther’s “loss of honor” moments after leaving her room! An enraged Khan yanks the titular sword of Genghis Khan from its wall mounting and we get a brief sword fight…and then Hood has a seat on the floor and watches as Murimoto fights Khan to the death!! I couldn’t believe what I was reading, friends; our “hero” literally has his “sidekick” fight the main villain, due to the reasoning that Khan’s too good at martial arts and Murimoto’s more skilled at karate than Hood is. Oh, and meanwhile Drobsky has set Khan’s satellite to blow up. So in other words Mark Hood himself does nothing in the novel other than take out a few unarmed scientists in the satellite-control center and then screw the villain’s daughter.

Dark rushes through the finale, with the plummeting rocket wiping out the castle and Hood et al escaping in a commandeered plane – flown by Murimoto, given that Hood doesn’t know how to fly(!). Anyone else think this should be re-titled the “Murimoto” series? Meanwhile Teh is bleeding to death, thanks to a sword cut from her dad, who wanted to kill her in his rage over the loss of that “virtue.” To save the poor girl the trouble of being tortured in Russia (Teh you see was the murderer of Drobsky’s guards during his abduction), Hood unties her tourniquet so she’ll bleed to death in her sleep during the flight, and then settles down for a nap! The end!! 

While it’s not perfect by any means, The Sword Of Genghis Khan at least offers plenty of that ‘60s spy pulp vibe I enjoy, and moves a helluva lot faster than earlier volumes of the series.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Throne Of Satan (Mark Hood #6)


Throne Of Satan, by James Dark
May, 1967  Signet Books

The Mark Hood series continues to get better and better; finally J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell has apparently decided to go for the pulpy, comic book vibe of the James Bond movies rather than the espionage-heavy vibe of Ian Fleming’s original James Bond novels. The plots are becoming more pulpy and the action, violence, and sex are given greater focus – indeed, one particular scene in Throne Of Satan combines all three.

Picking up immediately after the cliffhanger climax of the previous volume, we find British Intertrust agent Tommy Tremayne struggling for his life as the ship of his captor, Borja, sinks in the Caribbean. Dark pulled a fast one on readers in the final paragraphs of the previous book, as we see here that the mysterious figure that came out of the water and signalled for an approaching Borja-owned helicopter was not a Borja henchman, as assumed, but instead was none other than Tremayne himself. In his pain-wracked stupor he assumed the chopper was one sent by Hood to save him.

But Tremayne’s just gone from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. Borja, the big villain of the previous book, is here revealed just to be a “partner” of a greater figure, a menacing man Borja is taking Tremayne to see right now, Borja still under the mistaken impression that Tremayne is British physicist Charles Battersby. We readers have already met Borja’s partner in the opening of the book: he’s a Blofeld-esque villain who commands legions of followers and lives in a high-tech compound built inside of a hollowed-out volcano! The paralells to the Bond movie You Only Live Twice are strong, which is interesting in that Dark certainly wrote his book before the movie was released (and the sci-fi elements of Roald Dahl’s You Only Live Twice script are nowhere to be found in Fleming’s original novel).

The Blofeld type is named Dominat. As David Foster points out on The Cultural Gutter, the title of the original Australian edition of this volume was Black Napoleon, and there Dominat was clearly identified as being black. As Foster notes, the editors at Signet apparently shied away from Dark’s somewhat-racist views, and edited out all references to Dominat’s race in this US edition. However one can still see trace elements of the original character; the Signet editors should have added material to replace what they removed, as though Dominat’s skin color is never stated, one can still guess it thanks to otherwise-meaningless reactions on the part of Tremayne when he meets the hulking, muscle-bound villain. (For example, that Dominat’s boasting is due to a “sense of inferiority,” which makes no sense within the context of this Signet edition).

Personally I think the Signet editors should’ve made the dude like a purple-skinned freak, but at any rate the Dominat of Throne Of Satan mostly reminded me of Omne, the menacing, super-powered villain in the excrutiating Star Trek novel The Price Of The Phoenix. But anyway Dominat is by far the best villain in the series yet, and another indication of the pulpier, more sci-fi basis the Mark Hood series is thankfully acquiring. (Those first few volumes were slow-going at best!) Dominat rules the island Dominica, “the most savage, most mysterious island in the West Indies,” and his hollowed-out volcano headquarters is called Devil’s Mountain by the natives.

While Tremayne is choppered there by an increasingly-nervous Borja, Mark Hood meanwhile tries to figure out if his pal and partner Tremayne is really dead. He goes out to the wreckage site of Borja’s ship and scuba dives for a look. Here he finds a few papers in waterproof seals. The new action focus of the series is displayed posthaste as Hood is attacked by an enemy frogman wielding a speargun and a sort of underwater shotgun (a shotgun cartridge on a brass spear). This is one of the more brutal and thus exciting fights in the series yet, as Hood again falls back on his karate skills despite being in the ocean. He gives the dude’s arm a fracture break and ends up killing him with his own shotgun spear.

Hood’s found some intel that makes mysterious reference to “Satan” and figures out the “5 3” on the paper is likely indication of “May 3rd,” ie the following day. However Hood’s boss Fortescue back at Intertrust HQ in Geneva doesn’t give a damn and figures Tremayne needs to be “written off” as dead. Instead Fortescue wants Hood to head into the West Indies to look into a bunch of nuclear “rabble rousers” who have disappared, or something. (Again per David Foster’s article, it’s all vague because the book’s first chapter, which clearly identified these villains as black militants, has been excised from the Signet edition.) Oh, and Fortescue is sending over Hood’s karate instructor Murimoto to assist. This is interesting as previously it was made clear that Murimoto was not aware that Hood was a secret agent, but in this volume we’re informed that Murimoto himself is an Intertrust agent used for “special action work.”

Sex is also given a welcome focus here, with Hood going back to his villa and finding a “dusky, scarlet-lipped beauty” waiting for him. (Whether this means she too was black in the original edition is unknown.) Her name is Jane and she claims that she was checking Hood out on the beach that day; she wants some sex asap. From the burning yearning clearly visible in her eyes Hood instantly figures her for a “nymphomaniac,” and figures all this is no doubt a trap – but what the hell, he screws her anyway. Why not? The sex is beyond vague, but at least it’s there – and Dark has fun with it when Jane pulls a stiletto while they are “making love the second time” and tries to kill him. Hood casually deflects the blade, knocks her out, knocks out the girl’s comrade who waits out in the hall, and then calls the cops to come pick them up! 

Meanwhile Dominat is given a suitably menacing introduction. Defined by Borja as a “mechanical scientist,” Dominat quickly and easily figures out that Tremayne is not a nuclear physicist – that is, after Dominat has shown off these cool biomechanical arm and leg gizmos he’s created. But now it’s time for Borja to pay for his stupidity, not to mention bungling the previous volume’s caper and losing not only the nuclear reactor core but also that plasma cannon. Dominat produces a steel-tipped bull whip, gives Borja a running start, and then nearly decapitates him with one strike! So much for Borja; meanwhile Dominat figures to keep Tremayne around for a while; mostly, Tremayne figures, just to see him “squirm.”

Dark really keeps Throne Of Satan moving, again making all the deficencies of those early volumes so much more apparent. Just a few hours after having sex with the gal who tried to kill him, Hood, still in Kingston, runs into another sexy gal who gives him a run for his money: Mona Gillespie, an American who once raced against Hood on the Grand Prix circuit. He nearly crashes into her while racing his rented Jag through Kingston after picking up Murimoto, and the lady gives chase in her Ferrari, Hood flying along and ready to battle thinking its yet another enemy agent chasing him down. (Oh, and speaking of women, Marcia, Borja’s sexy neice who had a crush on Hood last volume, is nowhere to be found this time, and indeed isn’t even mentioned. Wonder if Dominat sent her a telegram informing her that he just killed her uncle??)

Hood and Mona have a contentious relationship, with their apparent chemistry masked by snide retorts. We are informed Mona is “not beautiful in the accepted sense” but “attractive in a brown, assured way” (not sure what that really means). Most importantly, she does have a “beautiful body,” well displayed by the brief bikini she happens to be wearing while driving her Ferrari. She also has a twin-diesel clipper and will loan it to Hood; Dark again saying to hell with coincidence, Mona claims to have seen a weird sub-like thing in the water near Dominica island! Hood immediately realizes this is the same thing he saw after that fight with the scuba diver by the wreckage of Borja’s boat. Mona agrees to take Hood and Murimoto out to Dominica.

As stated, Dark really ramps everything up in Throne Of Satan, with Hood scoring yet again, just a few pages after tussling with the would-be assassin Jane; after trying to feel up Mona during one of their spats, Hood inadvertently catches her when the ship jolts in the water next morning, and in the chemistry-laden moment Mona says “Be quick.” They manage to do the deed, once again off-page, in a wopping ten minutes. Meanwhile Dominat takes Tremayne on a long tour of Devil’s Mountain, showing off all of his fancy high-tech wonders like a regular Bond Supervillain and also relaying his intention of first conquering Cuba as a forward base before invading the US.

The finale continues with the smallscale vibe of previous books, despite the fact that Dominat has like legions of followers in his volcano lair. Mona, casually announcing that she works for Dominat, turns Hood and Murimoto over to the villain promptly upon arrival on Dominica and then disappears from the text; we are never informed what happens to her. In Dominat’s control room Tremayne commandeers those biomechanical exoskeleton deals and fights Dominat, but still gets his ass kicked. Then it’s Hood’s turn, and he only fares marginally better. Now it’s up to Murimoto, the living weapon, and we learn how Dominat hates the Japanese. “Come on, little yellow man,” Dominat taunts him, later also calling him a “monkey,” and it’s quite interesting that the Signet editors didn’t feel the need to edit sentiments like those out of the book despite removing all mentions of Dominat being black, isn’t it?

So rather than a huge battle between Hood’s team and Dominat’s forces, the climax is instead comprised of Murimoto calmly beating Dominat half to death. From there it’s a mad dash to escape while a beaten and broken Dominat plummets to the volcano’s core in his “atoborer,” his high-tech tank-drill thing. Devil’s Mountain explodes as our three heroes escape on Mona’s boat (again, no mention what happens to her) and that’s that. While the finale wasn’t as spectacular as I would’ve liked, one can’t complain how snappily Throne Of Satan moves, Dark doling out his tale in a compact 128 pages of fast-moving ‘60s spy action. I really enjoyed it.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Operation Scuba (Mark Hood #5)


Operation Scuba, by James Dark
March, 1967  Signet Books

The Mark Hood series improves in a major way after the padded bore that was the previous volume, with a fast-moving installment that never lets up. Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t talking about a ‘60s spy-fy masterpiece like The Psychedelic Spy or anything, but at least J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell doesn’t waste our time with this one. Operation Scuba retains the vibe of the first few volumes and is the same short length as them. But it’s easily the best volume yet.

This volume also finally gets hero Mark Hood out of Asia; he’s been there the past three installments. Some indeterminate time after Assignment Tokyo, Hood is called into the Geneva offices of Intertrust and given his latest mission, along with recurring character and fellow agent Tommy Tremayne. Intertrust boss Fortescue wants them to head to Kingston, Jamaica and for Tommy to pose as a British nuclear scientist named Charles Battersby with Hood posing as his bodyguard.

The concern is a recent string of ship crashes in the Caribbean; we know from the first page that a Spanish mastervillain named Pedro Borja is behind this. Borja lives in a villa in Kingston with an army of henchmen at his disposal; he is a medical doctor and scientist and has created an underwater mechanism that disrupts the gyrocompasses on ships. One of Borja’s loyal scuba divers swims near a ship, hits it with the beam, the compass goes crazy, and the ship crashes. But Borja has grander intentions. He wants to control the nuclear arsenals of the various navies, and now is an opportune time given the naval maneuvers about to occur in the Caribbean.

Intertrust doesn’t know about Borja, but the concern is something is going on that might affect those naval maneuvers, where a bunch of nuclear and atomic stuff will be present. As we remember, Intertrust is solely concerned with maintaining the stability of nuclear power, limited to the US, USSR, England, and France. Battersby will be going to Kingston early for these maneuvers, and Fortescue is afraid someone will try to nab him. Hence, Battersby himself will be sequestered in a hotel under a fake name and Tremayne and Hood will act as bait. 

“Dark” doesn’t waste our time. Hood and Tremayne promptly confront a pair of would-be kidnappers upon arrival in Kingston, with Hood having to ensure they’re dead after a lengthy chase. No one must know that the real Battersby, who turns out to be a belligerent ass, isn’t staying at the opulent villa reserved for him. Instead Hood and Tremayne go there. Hood, again posing under his real name and background, puts on a wetsuit and heads into the ocean for some fish. He’s immediately attacked by a scuba diver! An exciting underwater fight ensues, climaxing with the enemy scuba diver becoming shark food.

Action and intrigue out of the way, Dark gets to the next item on his ‘60s spy mandatories list: the exotic babe. This is a hotstuff young Spanish lady who happens to be standing along the road when Hood comes out of the water after fending off the attack; she’s sexy as can be and comlains that her Alfa-Romeo has mysteriously stopped running. Hood, a car expert, fixes it for her and accepts her offer to go back to her dad’s place to get his leg stitched. Mind you, Hood should be very suspicious of this gal, who says her name is Marcia, given that he’s already been attacked twice. But Mark Hood comes off like an idiot this volume. Oh, and the girl’s last name is Borja. Yep, she’s none other than the niece of Pedro Borja, a man who basically raised her from childhood. 

Borja is very much a Bond-esque villain. He’s ruthless, amoral, and given to grandiose speeches. He even has a henchman, a slim-hipped Spaniard with “womanly lips” named Manrique. Borja is of course behind the plot, as we learn from the first page, but Hood and Tremayne don’t know it. But Borja patches Hood up, all the while planning his death. Plus Marcia has the hots for Hood, but zilch is made of this – the novel is too fast-moving for any funny business, I’m sorry to report.

More importantly, with this volume the series approaches the sci-fi nature of later installments. Borja has created a plasma beam, one which he will use to control the missile-launching mechanisms of navy destroyers. He explains this to Tremayne later in the novel, Borja having successfully captured him – for once again Mark Hood has acted the fool. Despite yet another attempted abduction of “Battersby,” in which sharpshooter Tremayne crippled his would-be kidnappers, Hood decides the next day to go swimming with Marcia, thus again leaving Tommy unguarded! No wonder our “hero” berates himself for failing yet again.

In truth, Tremayne is more so the star of the show; he seems to be in the book a lot more than Hood is, and his dry wit is refreshing when compared to Hood’s utter seriousness (not to mention Hood’s buffoonery). But Tremayne’s in a bad way in this one; caught and taken out in Borja’s fancy yacht in the middle of the Caribbean, where he’s tortured and beaten. Borja thinks Tremayne is Battersby, and Tremayne doesn’t know how long he can keep up the charade. He’s taken through the ringer, pummelled by Manrique, his left hand mangled. Along the way Borja proudly exposits about his plasma beam like a good pseudo-Bond villain. He wants “Battersby” to help him make it more powerful.

Meanwhile Hood trounces futiley around Kingston, pissing off the local cops. He runs into an old navy pal who captains an experimental “flying saucer,” a prototype hydrofoil-battleship thing that moves like greased lightning. This blatant deus ex machina comes in handy when Hood later learns that Tremayne indeed has been abducted by Borja – only too late has Hood begun to suspect the man – and he begs his old buddy to loan him the ship. This leads into yet another maritime adventure-type climax, which appears to be a staple so far as J.E. MacDonnell’s writing goes.

Hood gets to bust out those karate skills in the climax, with a brutal fight aboard Borja’s yacht. But Hood’s still dumb. For no reason at all he assumes Borja’s either dead or indisposed, only for the guy to show up for a final faceoff – after which Hood still drops the ball, getting hit by a curare-dipped blade and slowly losing his senses to the point where he escapes, thinking he’s saved Tremayne from Borja’s sinking boat, only to discover at novel’s end that poor ol’ Tommy was left aboard and presumably drowned with everyone else.

And so ends Operation Scuba, on a big cliffhanger. Dark insinuates that Tremayne, Borja, and perhaps Manrique all escaped with the quick mention of a helicopter escaping the scene, but we’ll have to wait for the next installment to see what happens. Overall though this was a good one, as mentioned fast-moving and gripping at times, but as usual Dark handles the proceedings with a low budget sort of aesthetic. I mean the book is titled Operation Scuba and Borja has an army of frogmen at his disposal, so are we wrong to presume we’d get a Thunderball-esque finale of mass underwater combat? Instead we get a ship run to ground and a quick and dirty karate fight.

But at least stuff happens this volume, so I can’t really complain – and I’m still looking forward to the later installments.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Assignment Tokyo (Mark Hood #4)


Assignment Tokyo, by James Dark
September, 1966  Signet Books

The fourth volume of Mark Hood is, unfortunately, a bit tepid, J.E. “James Dark” McDowell page-filling with abandon in order to meet his word count (and this one appears to be a little longer than previous volumes, which makes the padding all the more obvious). I’d planned to read through the series quickly, but this one, sad to say, was so disappointing that I’ve decided to take a break from it for a while.

It’s six weeks after the previous volume and Mark Hood is back in his home base of Geneva, where he’s itching for some action. Here he trains with his karate sensei, Murimoto, who we learn is not aware that his pupil is a spy; Murimoto in fact wonders why Hood trains so vigorously in the martial arts. He also wishes Hood would compete in the upcoming Meijin Exhibition in Tokyo, as Murimoto feels that Hood is one of the better practioners of karate. 

And who will be surprised when the call finally comes in and Hood’s next mission sends him to...Tokyo? Dark inserts a bit more comedy in the series with this volume, mostly via Hood’s inane banter, particularly when it comes to his partner Tremayne (returning from the previous volume) and Michelle, pretty French secretary of Hood’s Intertrust boss, Fortescue. In Michelle’s first appearance in the series we see that she has long been a recipient of Hood’s shameless advances, though she capably puts him down again and again.

Also as mentioned, Hood and Tremayne here have been refashioned into a buddy-cop duo along the lines of Razoni & Jackson, bickering and bantering from first page to last. This is quite different from their relationship as depicted in the previous book, where they were all business. But here Tremayne makes most of the wise-cracks and Hood acts as the straight man; many of Tremayne’s jokes are at the expense of Hood’s would-be womanizing and whatnot. It’s all entertaining but unfortunately not too funny, at least when compared to the stuff in the Razoni & Jackson books.

Fortescue’s briefing has it that someone has apparently tried to infiltrate the remote Japanese island Oba, which houses the control unit for a US missile satellite weapon called the “MissSat.” Sounding like the ‘80s star wars concept a few decades early, the weapon holds a salvo of atomic warheads which can be fired down at the earth by the press of a button. Oba island is well-defended, including concentric rings of electrofied wiring or something in the ocean around it; locals are clearly warned to stay away. Yet three men in scuba gear just tried to penetrate the defenses, dying in the attempt. Hood and Tremayne are to go to Tokyo to find out why.

Hood attemps more failed womanizing when he promptly begins hitting on pretty Gwen Tremayne, secretary for US ambassador Tomlinson in Tokyo. Hood intends to hold up his cover as a wealthy jetsetter known for hitting and quitting women around the world; here in Tokyo he’s posing as, you guessed it, a last-second contender in the Meijin Exhibition. Be prepared for a ton of expository karate material in Assignment Tokyo, much of it clearly shoehorned in to meet the word count. Parts of the book are almost like a dry treatise on the martial arts.

Much of it comes from Hiroshi Sato, a Japanese man Hood just happens to meet at dinner his first night in Tokyo – coincidental as hell when we learn that Sato will be Hood’s first opponent in the exhibition. Sato is a wise type, very formal and friendly, with good English and a love for the martial history of Japan. Hood likes and trusts him instantly, feeling he’s found a kindred soul; pity then that the back cover copy completely ruins the surprise reveal that Sato is indeed the villain of the piece! 

Also here at dinner Hood meets the busty and beautiful Toi Smith, a half-Japanese, half-American beauty who shows off her incredible bod via revealing clothing. She’s a reporter for Modern Living and hopes to interview Hood; he meanwhile can’t stop staring at her breastesses, much to Gwen Tremayne’s dismay. But Hood has to hurry home and sleep so he can get up super-early and train for his bout with Sato, which is to be held that very afternoon. Tremayne, posing as Hood’s trainer, contributes nothing but more banter given his dearth of karate knowledge.

The Hood-Sato bout is good but again kind of boring as I’ve never felt martial arts fights translate well into print. At any rate Hood gives Sato a great run for his money but ends up being defeated by the Japanese master. Sato, as gracious as ever, offers to send “the top masseuse in Japan” over to Hood’s apartment to repair Hood’s battered body – and surprisingly enough, it turns out to be Toi Smith, again dressed provocatively despite the frosty, disinterested treatment she gives Hood.

And also despite this frosty treatment, Toi herself gets excited at Hood’s own excitement – naked and being massaged, he can’t help but gawk at those awesome boobs of hers and the natural reaction ensues. They end up having sex on the table, the first Hood’s scored since the first volume, but again James Dark provides zilch in the way of details. About the most we get is a little lyrical stuff, but it’s all pretty vague. From here it’s on to a snoozer of a sequence where Hood goes to Sato’s for dinner and we must endure more martial arts talk and also demonstrations from Sato’s “cult” of modern samurai.

Toi is also here, and Hood suspects that she’s secretly Sato’s kept woman; she maintains the frosty nature of before, despite their afternoon banging. Around page 70 Hood finally begins to suspect Sato might be evil. Also at this dinner Toi mentions she’s secretly been lobster diving around Oba; when Hood gets interested, masking his professional interest as concern for her safety, she brushes it all off as a joke. Meanwhile the next morning another dude attempts to infiltrate the island, this time getting all the way onto shore before being gunned down.

Eventually we will learn that Toi really did find a way to get near Oba – plastic cylinders and valves on her scuba gear, which aren’t affected by the underwater elecricity barriers. Also Toi has apparently been taken captive by Sato, who is now fully outed as the villain. His goal is similar to that in the Killmaster novel The Samurai Kill: he seeks to remilitarize Japan and bring back the old samurai spirit. Hood and Tremayne stage a rescue of Toi, but they’re quickly caught by Kosima, the fastest-moving of Sato’s men; all of Sato’s warriors are almost supernaturally skilled in the martial arts. 

After freeing themselves and taking out Kosima, our heroes go after Sato, who has donned plastic fittings on his scuba gear and successfully taken over Oba, even killing off all of the soldiers there with poison gas. Dark finally delivers a bit of action as Hood and Tremayne get on the island, using Toi’s plastic scuba gear, and appropriate a few submachine guns. He isn’t very colorful with the gore, though, but there is a nice part where Hood flat-out murders Sato’s men as they sit enjoying a victorious meal of sashimi. Hood guns them down with a subgun and then later even brings out Sato to happily show him their corpses!

As expected, Assignment Tokyo culminates with a fight to the death between Hood and Sato, the latter defending himself with the stock of an empty carbine while the latter comes at him with a samurai sword. Sato, too superhuman to be defeated, takes off after realizing his cause has been lost – Hood deactivates the MissSat control at the last moment – and commits seppuku by swimming into the underwater defenses beneath Oba island without his plastic scuba gear!

But as mentioned, Assignment Tokyo is just too damn slow-moving to be much fun. Too much of it is mired in inconsequential karate info, and the narrative just plods along. It doesn’t even really pick up until page 110 or so, and as usual we’re talking very small print here. So, long story short, I think I’ll give the Mark Hood series a break for a while; this one kind of wore me out.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Hong Kong Incident (Mark Hood #3)


Hong Kong Incident, by James Dark
August, 1966  Signet Books

The third installment of Mark Hood continues with the real-world vibe of the previous two books; this series is more Sam Durell than Nick Carter. It seems to me that these ‘60s spy paperbacks were more so influenced by Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels rather than the James Bond movies. In other words, the plots rarely if ever strayed into spy-fi, though eventually the Mark Hood books would head in that direction.

But as for Hong Kong Incident, it’s very much like one of Edward Aarons’s Sam Durrell novels, with that same gritty vibe; Hood’s weapon of choice is even a .38 revolver this time out. The novel takes place in Macao and Hong Kong, and James Dark (aka J.E. MacDonnell) captures the area with the verisimilitude of someone who has been there many times. Given that MacDonnell was a veteran seaman, operating out of Australia, I’d wager he was very familiar with the ports and dives of Southeast Asia.

The action opens in Macao, where Mark Hood is competing in the Grand Prix, breaking records in his red Ferrari. But he has to fake an oil problem when a secret call comes through on his headset. It’s from his mechanic, Tommy Tremayne, a slim British dude who, like Hood, is a member of Intertrust. Made up of the “four nuclear powers” (this time we’re informed it’s the US, USSR, France, and England), Intertrust works behind the scenes to avert any potential atomic holocaust. Tremayne and Hood have been sent to Hong Kong to bring over a defecting Chinese scientist.

Hong Kong Incident occurs over one day, and despite being tuckered out from racing all morning, Hood heads over to Hong Kong to meet the defecting scientist at the China border. This is Fan Fee Koy, who only gets out because a fellow scientist, also posing as a country bumpkin merely trying to cross the border for work, sacrifices himself to the machine gun-toting Chicom guards. The whole sequence with Koy plays out tautly, heavy on the suspense, as Hood is unsure if the man’s defection has been noted and if that car behind them is filled with armed Red Chinese spies.

Turns out it is, and a positively endless foot chase ensues…like 20-some pages of small, small print as Hood and Koy are separated and Hood tries to head off the two Chicom spies in the rural hinterlands of Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. Despite the inordinate length this sequence is still gripping, and again plays very much in that real-world vibe. Whereas the movie Bond would dispense with these two Chicom agents without a second thought, Hood instead undergoes a rigorous flight over the muddy, rain-strewn hinterlands (I forgot to mention the novel takes place as a typhoon is closing in on Hong Kong).

Action hasn’t been a focus for this series, so far, but when it happens it’s not bad: Hood engages the agents in a shootout in a shit-fertilized rice paddy and later gets in a brutal karate fight with one of them. Hood is a champion karate master but finds himself up against a practicioner of the dreaded kung-fu, which in James Dark’s mind gives a person almost supernatural martial arts abilities. This fight takes place in a cemetery and features a nicely gory finale in which Hood bashes the dude’s head into a stone urn, shattering it and spilling blood and brains everywhere. When Hood accidentally puts his hand in the brain splatter, he almost pukes.

The second half of Hong Kong Incident moves back into the suspense angle, with Hood reconnecting with Tremayne and trying in vain to find Fan Fee Koy, who was supposed to meet Hood in some Hong Kong dive. Hood and Tremayne have a good working relationship, with Tremayne doling out the British wit and Hood acting as the straight man; it appears that Tremayne appears in future volumes as well. Tremayne also deduces what’s behind Koy’s sudden desire to defect: Koy, an atomic scientist, has figured out that the Chicoms intend to destroy the US Seventh Fleet during the typhoon and blame it all on the North Vietnamese.

Once again Hood’s naval background comes into play, as he realizes that this could easily be accomplished via a lone sub with atomic torpedos, running down the destroyers in the fleet as they’re dispersed in the typhoon. But Koy hasn’t shown up in the dive so Hood can’t be sure if this is the intel the man had to give to Hood’s superiors. Instead Hood and Tremaye meet Karen, a hotstuff Chinese hooker who comes on strong. When Hood returns from checking another bar, Tremayne’s unconscious in a back room, a nude Karen standing over him for some reason, while meanwhile a burly Chinese dude is beating Tremayne to a pulp. 

More brutal karate action ensues; no brain-bursting this time, but Hood messes ‘em up real good. The lovely and nude Karen even receives a judo chop to the neck as she tries to escape, and Hood’s unsure if he killed her – and doesn’t really care. Hood is a mean bastard when he wants to be, and hates “the Commies” with as much passion as Richard Camellion. But rather than “pig farmers” he calls them “soulless bastards.” Anyway, he also discovers that they’ve killed poor ol’ Koy in the meantime, though after torturing one of Chicom agents Hood learns that Koy died of a heart attack before he could reveal anything. 

The finale plays out on that naval fiction tip that doesn’t do much for me. Hood discovers to his horror that the Seventh Fleet has left port, thus if there is a Chicom sub out there the hunt will be on, now that the typhoon is raging. Hood bullshits his way onto the sole destroyer still in port and, at great length, gets the acting captain, a man named Talbot, to believe that he, Hood, is a top-secret agent and that there’s a viable threat to the fleet under the waters. The taut suspense angle goes all the way to the finale, with the two men commanding the ship in the turmoiled waters, gradually realizing they are being chased by a sub and determining how to destroy it without starting WWIII.

Overall this was another entertaining installment, but again the paperback itself is deceptively slim. While Hong Kong Incident runs to around 120 pages, it’s got some super-small print. And again MacDonnell doesn’t shirk on his word count, with dense paragraphs filling each page. His style is similar to Manning Lee Stokes, very measured and staid, only with a little less of the padding.  But I have to say, in today’s harried world, I don’t mind the methodical pacing.