"The Importance of Being Ernie"

Carroll John Daly (1889-1958) is rightfully credited with inventing hardboiled crime fiction in the pulp magazines with his characters Three-Gun Terry and Race Williams. He also wrote his share of straightforward mystery stories, including “The Importance of Being Ernie” from the June 1952 issue of Thrilling Detective Magazine.

Our narrator George Norton befriends the local repairman, a reclusive old man named Ernie. George quickly learns that Ernie has a special gift that transcends his ability to fix broken lamps. When George summarizes any mystery novel while talking to Ernie, the old man can identify the murderer every time.

George is so impressed with Ernie’s armchair detective skills that he tells the local police and a local private investigator that they should utilize Ernie’s services to solve vexing crimes. However, neither of the professional investigators approached have any interest in indulging Ernie and bringing him on-board as a consultant.

A local murder springs Ernie into action and the cops get to see his Sherlockian skills of deduction up-close. Does he really have a gift or is there something else going on here?

This is a delightful little story with a couple great twists at the end and is definitely worth your time. It’s been scanned and made available on the internet for modern audiences — just Google the title and author. Alternatively, an outfit called Radio Archives has reprinted the entire magazine from that month and made it available for sale HERE.

The Guns of Navarone

Alistair MacLean's The Guns of Navarone was an eight-part WW2 serial that first appeared in the September 22, 1956 issue of Saturday Evening Post. It was compiled into a hardcover novel in 1957 by Collins. It was then printed in paperback in 1957 by Perma (M-4089) and reprinted multiple times since then. The book was adapted into a blockbuster film in 1961 by Columbia. In 1968, MacLean reunited some of the characters for the book's sequel, Force 10 from Navarone. That book was adapted to film in 1978. Never seeing the movies, my voyage into this story begins with MacLean's original novel, The Guns of Navarone. 

On the fictional island of Kheros, 1,200 British soldiers are marooned. Off the nearby Turkish coast, the Nazis have installed massive, radar-controlled guns that can fire upon any Royal Navy ships attempting to rescue them through the deep water channel. The only hope of rescuing these British troops is by eliminating the guns. That's where Captain James Jensen steps in.

Jensen's plan is to recruit an international special ops team that can climb the staggering 400-foot cliff to penetrate the island's defenses and detonate an explosive device. The team is led by Mallory, an excellent mountain climber with plenty of military experience in Crete. He is in command of an explosives expert, a savage fighting-man, an engineer, and a navigator. It's the perfect team for this harrowing journey through the snowy mountains into the mouth of Hell. 

Having read MacLean's Where Eagles Dare (1967) first, The Guns of Navarone seemed similar in nature, but missed the cloak-and-dagger style. MacLean makes up for it in a big way by adding a hefty load of high-adventure action. At nearly 300 paperback pages, this novel has nearly everything, including mountain climbing, boat battles, gunfights, hand-to-hand combat, drama, and an exhilarating pace that glues the reader to these epic challenges. 

The most interesting aspect of MacLean's storytelling is that he is constantly evolving these characters by placing them in extreme situations. The characters the reader meets at the novel's beginning are grossly changed by the last page. The experiences of war, overcoming adversity, and the trials and tribulations of defying death itself affects these men. I really enjoyed watching the transformation and specifically how Mallory's leadership was modified when faced with an injured team-member. 

Lastly, as a fan of David Morrell's Rambo II character (read my review), it was fun drawing comparisons to MacLean's character of Andrea. The description that Mallory provides of this seemingly immortal, savage fighter, was similar to Colonel Trautman's description of Rambo. Andrea's exploits throughout the novel fighting the Germans, mostly as a loner hero, was a true highlight. I'm not sure this novel is quite the same without the addition of Andrea. It was an integral portion of the story.

The Guns of Navarone is an absolute masterpiece of high-adventure, and I give it the highest recommendation. You won't be disappointed with the story, plot development, or characters. MacLean deserved the heaps of praise his early and mid-career novels received. He was a master craftsman and you owe it to yourself to read one of his best. Whether this one is as good, or better, than Where Eagles Dare is up for debate. I love them both equally.

Note - British author Sam Llewellyn was commissioned to write two additional sequels - Storm Force from Navarone (1996) and Thunderbolt from Navarone (1998). I've read disparaging remarks about those two novels. 

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Operation Destruct

Christopher Robin Nicole (born: 1930), author of over 200 books, was born in Guyana and settled in the Channel Islands nestled between England and France. He wrote a three-book espionage series starring Jonathan Anders — all currently available as affordable ebooks — with the first installment being Operation Destruct from 1969. 

Jonathan is a 23 year-old chess prodigy and skin-diving enthusiast in southern England. He works for an antiquarian book dealer that is actually a front for a secret counter-espionage agency of the British government. He’s a rookie operative who, as the paperback opens, hasn’t really been tested in the field. This is his first assignment. 

The Ludmilla is a boat — a Russian trawler — that recently sunk in the English Channel in 30 feet of water with no recovered survivors. The intelligence service tasks young Jonathan with traveling to the island of Guernsey near the shipwreck to determine why a Russian fishing boat was there in the first place and what contributed to its sinking. 

There’s a good likelihood that a British sleeper agent posing as a Soviet marine biologist was aboard the Ludmilla. The boat clearly contained Soviet secrets that sparked the shipwreck, and Jonathan’s assignment is to quietly learn the score. The setup for this one is a total pleasure, and the writing quality far surpasses a normal 180-page 1969 spy paperback. 

Guernsey is an interesting setting for much of the novel. The island is located in the British territorial waters of the English Channel between England and France. It was German-occupied during WW2 and is filled with underground bunkers and fortifications like a honeycomb across the island’s eight-mile length. During the war, the Germans were expecting Guernsey to be the site of an allied invasion, but we opted to hold the D-Day festivities in Normandy, instead. The residents are known as Guernseymen, but that was 1969 — I’m sure there’s another term, now. 

In a world filled with paperbacks starring self-assured, confident spies, Jonathan is a pleasure precisely because he is green, uncertain of himself, and wet behind the ears. He’s thrust into his first field assignment alone with only his wits guiding him to sink or swim (sometimes literally). 

The book’s opening scenes and exciting conclusion are both awesome. However, there’s a good bit in the middle that was rather dumb and at times almost descended into parody. I’d still recommend the novel because the ending is so interesting and unlike other books you will read in the genre. Overall, Operation Destruct is an easy recommendation, and I look forward to the next book in the trilogy. 

Buy a copy of the eBook HERE.

Paperback Warrior Primer - Howard Hunt

There is already a lot that can be said about Howard Hunt. He was both a WW2 veteran, a spy, a Hollywood screenwriter, war correspondent, and a criminal. His life has been fictionalized by the film industry, his exploits chronicled by numerous non-fiction books about the infamous Watergate incident, and his possible involvement in the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Even Hunt himself wrote non-fiction books about his own life. While all of these things are fascinating, the purpose of this Paperback Warrior Primer is to examine some of his literary highlights. You can dig the hole deeper through any number of other resources. He authored at least 88 novels, most featuring lurid covers that we appreciate.

Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (1918-2007) was born in Hamburg, New York. He attended the prestigious Brown University and later began writing for Life as a war correspondent. Later, Hunt joined the Navy, serving on the USS Mayo during the early days of WWII. After, he went to the Army Air Corps and then finished his military stint with the OSS, the nation's wartime precursor to what is now known as the CIA. Beginning in 1949, Hunt was an officer for the CIA, performing 21 years of international counter-intelligence until 1970. During this entire time, Hunt was writing novels.

His first book was East of Farewell, published in hardcover by Alfred Knopf in 1942. The book reads like a true biography as Hunt recounts the day-to-day life upon a Fletcher-class destroyer. Hunt also used his Army Air Corps experience to write his second novel, Limit of Darkness. It covers a single 24-hour period in the "life" of a Navy torpedo bomber squadron on Guadalcanal in 1943. With the success of these two novels, Hunt won the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, which provided him a grant to help fund his writing career and provide blocks of time where he can pursue his art form. 

During the 1950s, paperback original novels became extremely marketable by publishers. Hunt was in the perfect position to take advantage of this publishing craze by writing and selling a lot of books under his name and various pseudonyms. 

As John Baxter, Hunt authored the two novels A Foreign Affair and Unfaithful in the mid-1950s. 

Using the name Robert Dietrich, Hunt authored 12 total novels, but 9 of these make up the Steve Bentley series. Hunt produced nine series installments between 1957 through 1962 as Dietrich. He revisited the series in 1999 under his own name with one additional installment featuring the titular hero at an advanced age. In the novels, Bentley is a Washington D.C. accountant that stumbles into a lot of crime inside the Nation's Capital. Mostly, these crimes are solved by doing favors for clients or business associates. But often, they just conveniently appear in strip clubs, bars, and even by the roadside. Bentley is easily likable and shares a lot of stereotypical genre tropes with the popular private-eyes of the era - he drinks a lot of alcohol, engages in various relationships with women, owns a boat, former military, and can fight, shoot straight, and speak the truth. Paperback Warrior has a number of reviews about the series HERE. Some of the Steve Bentley books have been released in brand new editions by Cutting Edge Books, including an ebook omnibus containing a majority of the series. Cutting Edge also offers the stand-alone Dietrich novels One for the Road, Be My Victim, and The Cheat. 

1. Murder on the Rocks (1957)
2. End of a Stripper (1959)
3. House on Q Street (1959)
4. Mistress to Murder (1960)
5. Murder on her Mind (1960)
6. Angel Eyes (1961)
7. Curtains for a Lover (1961)
8. Calypso Caper (1961)
9. My Body (1962)
10. Guilty Knowledge (1999, as Howard Hunt)

As David St. John, Hunt authored a nine-book series starring CIA operative Peter Ward. These books were published between 1965 through 1971, and then later were reprinted under Hunt's own name in the 1970s to capitalize on his newfound fame connected with Watergate. In this series, Ward is helping Soviet scientists defect, dodging enemy assassins, chasing sensational cults, and investigating assassinations of foreign leaders. It's stereotypical spy-fiction of the era, but enjoyable nonetheless. Hunt also used the David St. John pseudonym to author the 1972 novel The Coven, a stand-alone thriller about a Washington D.C. attorney navigating witchcraft and murder. 

1. On Hazardous Duty (1965)
2. Return from Vorkuta (1965)
3. The Towers of Silence (1966)
4. Festival for Spies (1966)
5. The Venus Probe (1966)
6. One of our Agents is Missing (1967)
7. The Mongol Mask (1968)
8. The Sorcerers (1969)
9. Diabolus (1971)

Hunt's Gordon Davis works are all stand-alone novels. Paperback Warrior reviewed Where Murder Waits HERE and Hard Case Crime reprinted House Dick in 2009 using the name E. Howard Hunt. A majority of the Gordon Davis paperbacks were reprinted by various publishers under Hunt's name, once again to capitalize on Watergate.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon was running for re-election. A group of men beholden to the President was caught burglarizing the Democratic National Committee headquarters – President Nixon’s opposition party – at a hotel called The Watergate in Washington, DC. One of the burglars caught was Howard Hunt. It became known as the Watergate Scandal and one of the central questions was: What did the President know about this burglary and when did he know it? The burglary led to the resignation of President Nixon. Howard Hunt, among others, was incarcerated for his part in the burglary and served 33 total months in federal prisons in Pennsylvania and Florida. While in prison, Hunt suffered a minor stroke. 

The prison stint did not dampen Hunt's literary career. If anything, it improved his sales. Publishers were able to list a front-cover blurb that connected the author's name with one of the greatest scandals in U.S. history. Once he was released from prison, Hunt began writing consistently, but also realized that his prior pseudonyms were being converted to his real name.

In 1985, Hunt created an action-adventure series starring Jack Novak, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency. The series ran seven total novels from 1985 through 2000. 

1. Cozumel (1985)
2. Guadalajara (1990)
3. Mazatlan (1993)
4. Ixtapa (1994)
5. Islamorada (1995)
6. Izmir (1996)
7. Sonora (2000)

While he was authoring the Novak series, he also authored three-stand alone action-adventure novels using the pseudonym P.S. Donoghue from 1988-1992 - Dublin Affair, Sarkov Confession, and Evil Time.

On January 23, 2007, Howard Hunt died from pneumonia in Miami. He is buried in Prospect Lawn Cemetery in Hamburg, New York.

You can read all of our Howard Hunt reviews and listen to a podcast episode dedicated to the author HERE.

Night Hunter #01 - Night Hunter

According to Wikipedia, Robert Holdstock (1948-2009) was a British author that specialized in science-fiction, horror, and fantasy genres. He won several literary awards for his novel Mythago Wood in 1984 and 1985, the first in a fantasy series about an ancient forest. Along with series titles like Berserker, Raven, and The Professionals, Holdstock authored a six-book supernatural series called Night Hunter using the pseudonym Robert Faulcon.

The series debut, The Stalking, and its sequel The Talisman, were published as a hardcover omnibus in 1987 by London's Century Hutchison. However, the series also debuted the same year in individual paperbacks by Charter. My wife purchased the debut, The Stalking, which is simply titled Night Hunter for this paperback edition, and provided it to me as a birthday gift. 

Daniel Brady has a research position in England's Ministry of Defense. He lives an average life with his wife and kids in a Berkshire suburb. However, as the book begins, Brady and his wife both sense that something is in their house. They feel something watching them. Further, Brady's wife even experiences this unseen entity at her job. So, the book begins with a really creepy overtone. 

Brady's entire existence is turned upside-down when a group of cult members, apparently possessing supernatural abilities, breaks into his house, rape his wife, and then capture his family. Severely injured in the attack, Brady succumbs to a coma and spends weeks in the local hospital. He awakens to answer questions from the detective, and in turn, learns that no one knows where his family is.

It turns out that the weird cult has been providing the rape 'em and grab 'em traveling gig for a long time. There are other survivors out there. Brady swaps his story with a woman named Ellen, and the two form a relationship that doesn't strictly focus on intimacy. Instead, Ellen shows Brady that he has psychic powers and proves to him that he can fight this menacing cult. With his newfound X-Men powers, Brady sets out to kill the cult and find his family.

This book had potential and started out fantastic. When Brady awakens from the coma, the author unfortunately shifted the novel from horror to fantasy, complete with long sections on spells, archaic rituals, and protection rings. It was like reading a card-playing game's tutorial on how to level up your character. These sections were tedious, dull, and lacked excitement. I was hoping for a cool hybrid of horror and action-adventure, but that wasn't the case. I was thoroughly unimpressed with Night Hunter. 

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Layover in Dubai

Former Baltimore Sun reporter Dan Fesperman was a foreign correspondent who travelled the world covering international events. He’s been racking up genre fiction awards since he became a novelist in 1999 drawing upon his knowledge of far-flung locales. My first exposure to his work was his 2010 thriller, Layover in Dubai. 

The novel begins in April 2008 as we join 28 year-old American corporate auditor Sam Keller at a crowded bar in Dubai during a layover with a colleague en route to Hong Kong. The bar is filled with hookers from every nation propositioning him for sex, and Sam finds the whole scene rather glum instead of erotic. 

Sam is a conservative and an analytical fellow with a lust for adventure. His employer is a big Pharma company similar to Pfizer. Sam is traveling with an older colleague named Charlie. In a Chapter One flashback, we learn that the Corporate Security Director has pressured young Sam into spying on Charlie during this overseas trip during the Dubai stopover.

Things go sideways pretty quickly when a gruesome murder occurs. Sam knows more than he’s willing to share with the police until his corporate masters arrive to provide guidance and support. We also meet two rival Dubai police detectives who are the best characters in the novel.  

Throughout the paperback, Fesperman’s plotting is generally solid, but drags a bit in the middle. He doles out relevant facts judiciously through a combination of flashbacks and investigative revelations. Young Sam is not the only character with a hidden agenda driven by a large, shadowy bureaucracy, and the gamesmanship of the various characters was a pleasure to read. There’s a lot of interesting cultural tidbits sprinkled throughout the novel. You walk away from the book with a better understanding of cosmopolitan Dubai culture and the battle between modernity versus Emirati tradition. 

Layover in Dubai successfully straddles a corporate thriller with a straight-up murder mystery enhanced by the modern, exotic setting in the Arab world. The young executive swept up in workplace intrigue recalls John Grisham’s The Firm in a foreign land. If the interesting setting for a modern-ish thriller appeals to you at all, you’re sure to enjoy this one. Recommended. 

Buy a copy of the book HERE.

Hawkwood

Andrew P. O'Rourke (1933-2013) was a judge and County Executive of Westchester Country, New York, He was also the Republican candidate for New York governor in 1986, eventually losing to Mario Cuomo. Along with his political aspirations, O'Rourke pursued a short writing career in the 1980s. He authored two men's action-adventure novels, The Red Banner Mutiny (1985) and Hawkwood (1989). Discovering the latter novel at a used bookstore, I was intrigued enough by the artwork to tackle this 275 page Bantam novel. 

The novel's opening chapter is one of the more suspenseful sequences I've read in a long time. The set-up is that a man and his family have been targeted by Mob killers. These opening pages play out as a cat-and-mouse game where the assassins are in the man's house hunting the family from room to room. But, the man has a trap door that leads through the walls to a hidden staircase. In an attempt to escape with his family, they are caught in the basement and systematically murdered. 

Next, a Vietnam veteran named Gerald H. Wood is on a plane recalling his most recent assignment, disabling an alarm system. Readers quickly put together that Wood clipped the electronic system so the Mob assassins could kill their target. Through a backstory that runs about 50 pages, readers are introduced to this titular hero. Wood graduated from college earning an engineering degree. Rather than pursue that lucrative career, he enlisted in the military and attended Officer Candidate School. Later, he became a Green Beret and gained himself 15 months in Vietnam. In the military he met and fell in love with a kingpin's daughter. Welcome to the family.

Hawkwood becomes a rather epic, sweeping character study when Wood becomes disenchanted with the Mob lifestyle. His wife wants a divorce, but Wood realizes divorce to the Mafia is more like death. In a convenient way, Wood is transporting four-million bucks on a commercial airliner when the plane crashes. Wood barely escapes death, but finds the disaster the perfect cover to flee the Mob. Using the cash, Wood takes the name of John Hawkwood, a historically famous Englishman turned mercenary. The book's second-half deposits Hawkwood in Argentina, and through a wild series of events, he's thrust into a war between Argentina and England in the Falkland Islands. 

Obviously, there is a lot to unpack in Hawkwood. The origin portion of the novel is similar to Mark Roberts' introduction of Mark Hardin, the protagonist of The Penetrator series. There are some similarities with that title as well as James Dockery's presentation of Bucher in The Butcher series. The idea of a man on the run from the Mob is a popular one and O' Rourke does it well. The author is able to bridge together a number of major storylines, as well as transition the novel from a vigilante style, containing a few typical genre tropes, to a mercenary military adventure. Those are all positives.

The only negative aspect to Hawkwood is a deep transition into a type of Tom Clancy tech-thriller with time spent on analysis of the Argentina/English war and some of the military history associated with the highly contested Falkland Islands. I felt this removed Hawkwood from the action, and displaced a lot of the momentum and character building. I also found the ending fitting, but it certainly was a finale that could have created a series. The character's transformation, and setup, would have made for a sequel and future series installments if the author or Bantam wanted to pursue a continuation. 

Hawkwood should appeal to fans of 70s and 80s action-adventure titles like Death Merchant, The Butcher, and The Penetrator. While slightly more literary, it has all of the genre tropes that those hefty series titles possessed. Recommended. 

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