Tightrope Men, The

British resident Giles Denison awakens in an unfamiliar place with vague memories of his past. When he stumbles into the bathroom, he is shocked to see the face staring back at him is not his own. The mirror's reflection, and wallet, prove that Denison is a doctor named Harold Meyrick. Upon further inspection, Denison discovers that he is in a hotel room in Oslo, Norway. Going with the flow, and hoping sanity returns, Denison heads to the front desk and learns that he's been a guest of the hotel for three weeks. Finding his car, Denison is further perplexed when he finds a small doll inside with an invitation for a meeting at a nearby popular tourist spot.

When Denison arrives at the rural, forested attraction, he's immediately attacked by three men. Barely surviving the encounter, Denison escapes with his life and is soon arrested by the Norwegian police. Thankfully, Denison finds some solace when men from the British embassy arrive to spring him from jail. They attempt to explain the bizarre circumstances surrounding Denison's newfound identity. It turns out that Dr. Meyrick was assisting British intelligence in locating hidden papers regarding a top-secret weapon. Some red agency captured Meyrick and the perfectly pedestrian Denison. Meyrick is either dead or undergoing torture, while Denison has been brain-scooped and surgically rendered to resemble Meyrick. 

Desmond Bagley's The Tightrope Men (1973) is a clever, high-speed espionage thriller with the obligatory suit 'n tie good guys fighting global terror with an unlikely hero. Denison's transformation from unwilling, shocked suburbanite into the willing and capable spy was really enjoyable. The author injects some humor and a lot of fun banter with Denison, as Meyrick, forced to engage in relationships with Meyrick's friends and a beautiful daughter. The latter becomes a real mess for Denison as he is falling in love with the woman that is supposed to be his daughter. There's reader speculation on who's in the know and who isn't when it comes to Denison's facade as Meyrick, which made for a great mystery. Of course, there's gunplay and action-adventure in the deep, rural wilderness of Finland (similar to Bagley's Running Blind taking place in the remote wilds of Iceland).    

Needless to say, Bagley rarely disappoints. The Tightrope Men is a well-crafted, superb spy-thriller with danger, intrigue, and romance at the forefront. If you love Ian Fleming, Hammond Innes, and Alistair MacLean, then you are probably already familiar with Desmond Bagley. If not, this is a perfect representation of his work. Highly, highly recommended.

Fun Fact about Paperback Warrior – I'm a bit of a Finland history buff and Bagley provides an excellent, digestible history on Finland's relationship with Russia. There's also passages regarding the Karelian Isthmus, an area in northwestern Russia, where the Finnish population was seemingly replaced with Russian. In particular, I've read poems and stories associated with Finland's National epic Kalevala. There's a great Finnish band called Amorphis that writes and performs songs associated with Finnish history and the Kalevala poems. 

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The Freedom Trap

Desmond Bagley (1923-1983) was one of the first high-adventure authors to join Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean as the stars of the genre. I loved all of Bagley's novels I read, including 1970's Running Blind. In that book, the protagonist has fled a Russian spy named Slade. In the Freedom Trap, released a year later, Slade is presented again, although this is a totally different story. The two books could be considered companions, but are not directly linked to one another. I liked Running Blind so The Freedom Trap sounded like the most logical Desmond Bagley novel to read next. 

The book features a South African burglar by the name of Rearden. In the opening pages of the book, Rearden comes to London for the first time. It's here that he is asked to meet a mysterious man named MacKintosh and his sexy secretary Mrs. Smith. Mackintosh offers Rearden a sizeable sum to steal a packet of diamonds from a London mailman. Although it sounds absurd, I was surprised and convinced by MacKintosh's explanation that the diamonds (in the 1970s at least) were just posted in simple envelopes. Rearden accepts the job and in a few chapters the letter carrier is assaulted, Rearden is richer and MacKintosh has a handful of sparkling diamonds. The entire heist is performed flawlessly - no witnesses, smooth transaction. But later that night, two London detectives come to the door to arrest Rearden on assault and robbery charges. Did MacKintosh sell Rearden out?

The first 80 pages of this book are dedicated to theft and subsequent arrest. It was enjoyable, profoundly convincing and well written. As good as it was, the second act was absolutely terrific. Rearden pleads his innocence through the initial interrogation, sensationalized trial and the mandatory sentence. The judge begs Rearden to come clean on where the diamonds are. Rearden, refusing to cooperate, defiantly proclaims his innocence while the judge sentences him to 20 years in prison. 

After a year in the pen, a convicted mobster insider offers Rearden an agreement. For 20 grand, a mob-backed criminal squad can get Rearden out of jail. The cool part of it? They specialize in getting people out of prison for money. And they know he can afford it. If Rearden agrees to this deal, he could be free. But if he pays, he has no way of knowing if this team even exists. In the worst case, he pays the money and is caught fleeing. His 20-years would probably double. What the hell does Rearden do?

The Freedom Trap is one of the best books I've read in a long time. The first and second acts were just tremendously well written and just so much fun to absorb and understand. The conclusion of the novel was somewhat abrupt and seemed rushed, but it never really harmed what is otherwise a remarkable reading experience. Moreover, the Slade link between Running Blind, and The Freedom Trap is certainly there, but by all means the two books are independent titles. Highest recommendation available.

Note - The book was adapted into a theatrical film in 1973 starring Paul Newman. The title used for the film was The MacKinstosh Man. Fawcett reprinted the paperback under that title as well.

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High Citadel

British author Desmond Bagley was a respected practitioner of the “high adventure” sub-genre of thriller fiction along with fellow British writers Alistair MacLean, Jack Higgins, and Duncan Kyle. To Bagley’s credit, it’s hard to get a straight answer when you ask knowledgeable readers which of his many books is his masterpiece, but his second novel, 1965’s “High Citadel,” is often recommended by those in-the-know.

“High Citadel” stars a heroic Irish pilot named Tim O’Hara, a Korean War veteran who has crawled into a bottle and lives a subsistence existence flying for a dodgy, cut-rate airlines near the Andes mountain range in South America. When a luxury 727 filled with international passengers makes an emergency landing at O’Hara’s home airfield, a business opportunity knocks for O’Hara’s boss who wants him to fly the respectable passengers over the range to their desired destination.

While flying the overloaded and non-pressurized aircraft over the mountains, one of the people on board hijacks the flight by gunpoint and forces O’Hara to make a dangerous landing on an abandoned airstrip high in the mountains near a defunct mining camp. Bagley provides some white-knuckle aviation writing as this scene unfolds. The crash landing is harrowing, and O’Hara’s role as hero becomes fully formed.

After the terrifying landing destroys the rickety plane, we get to meet the international cast of survivors that includes a sexy Latina babe and her enigmatic uncle, a loudmouth American drunk, a British professor of medieval history, an elderly spinster, and a brainy physicist. As the motive for the hijacking becomes clear, we learn that not all the passengers are who they claim to be. Despite their differences, it’s necessary to band together to survive as a team.

The man vs. nature story becomes a man vs. Army tale as the plane survivors encounter hostile forces in the mountain wilderness and are forced to fight for survival with improvised weaponry. Bagley sure knew how to keep the plot moving, and “High Citadel” is a fat-free story filled with action, intrigue, and heroism in a freezing mountain terrain.

Some of my favorite scenes of the book involved the “council of war” meetings in which the survivors must decide whether - and how - to combat the hostile attackers. This a challenging review to write since I’m going to great lengths to not spoil any of the plot developments that are foolishly disclosed on the various iterations of the book cover descriptions and art. If you can go into this one cold, you’re in for several treats.

Reading this 53 year-old paperback, I was constantly reminded of the 1984 film, “Red Dawn” in which a bunch of outgunned and outmanned American high school kids repel a Soviet invasion in their town. “High Citadel” plays with the same idea in a timeless story showing that heart, bravery and ingenuity can triumph against any enemy. You’ll love this one. Highly recommended.

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Running Blind

Along with Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean, British author Desmond Bagley (1923-1983) helped create the basic conventions of high-altitude storytelling within men's action-adventure fiction. His first novel, The Golden Keel, was published in 1963 and propelled a literary career that featured a total of 16 novels, five of which were turned into feature films. As a fan of frosty fiction, I decided to read Bagley's 1970 novel Running Blind, which is set in Iceland. The novel was later adapted for British television in 1979.

In the Scottish highlands, retired British spy Stewart is visited by his former boss Slade (who also appears in Bagley's The Freedom Trap). Slade's pitch is for Stewart to deliver an important package to a gentleman in Iceland. Stewart's experience in the country and his fluency in the Icelandic language make him the perfect operative for the job. Stewart is hesitant to take the assignment post-retirement but agrees in favor of visiting the country again.

The clandestine task of deliveryman for British intelligence evolves into a deadly cat-and-mouse game when Stewart is attacked and the package is stolen. Further, Slade's dismissal of Stewart's account of what happened to the missing package leads him to believe that the whole assignment was a crafty set-up. While Stewart is still in Iceland, he learns that Slade has aligned with a Russian nemesis named Kenniken, a man Stewart shot and hoped to kill earlier in his career. As the net descends, Stewart and his lover must flee into the rural landscape of Iceland, complete with volcanoes and rivers created from melting glaciers. Once there, the two are hunted by Slade's British operatives who are unaware that their leader has defected to Russia. The whole thing makes sense at the end, but some of the finer plot points are "blind" to the protagonist and reader. That's the enjoyment.

Running Blind is an excellent adventure-espionage hybrid that is presented to readers as a first-person narrative. The author, through Stewart's eyes, explains strategies, experiences, old combat stories and the most minuscule details to aid readers. As a fan of Jack Higgins' Paul Chavasse, a spy hero used in five of the author's novels, I felt that Stewart was of the same caliber and breed – sharp, salty and seasoned. The author also included some of Iceland's history and geographical highlights, a bonus for the average suburbanite who may never venture there. At 220-pages of smaller font, I felt the book could have been shorter. But that's the drawback when you become a massive bestseller – publishers want more. Other than the length, there's isn't anything to not like about Running Blind. Highly recommended.

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A Game for Heroes

Using the names Jack Higgins, Martin Fallon, and Hugh Marlowe, Henry Patterson had a successful, early literary career throughout the 1960s and early 1970s with a high-adventure template utilized by Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley and Hammond Innes. Five-years prior to Patterson becoming a household name with The Eagle Has Landed (as Jack Higgins, 1975), he used the name James Graham to write a traditional WW2 adventure novel called A Game for Heroes (1970). It was published as a hardcover in 1970 by Macmillan and reprinted countless times over by the likes of Dell, Harper Collins and Penguin. It remains in print today in both physical and digital versions.

The novel stars Owen Morgan, a British special forces expert who served valiantly in the heart of WWII. After losing an eye, Morgan was shipped back home at the tail end of the war. After finding love and harmony, Morgan is asked to rejoin British forces for a daring mission on St. Pierre, a fictional island in the German-occupied British Channel. After fighting as a spy in harrowing, bloody campaigns, Morgan is skeptical of leading a mission that takes him back into battle. First, it's 1945 and the Russians are knocking on Hitler's door in Berlin signaling that the war is nearly over. Second, Morgan feels as if his reflexes and physical limitations will impact his success. However, the wild card is a former lover named Simone.

Morgan grew up on St. Pierre and his father was an excellent sailor who died attempting to rescue boaters during a stormy, high-seas operation. His love was Simone, daughter of the island's leader. After learning that Simone is one of 60 islanders remaining, Morgan hopes to visit Simone one final time. If successful, this military operation will allow Morgan to penetrate the island's fortifications and learn more about the Germans' underwater positioning and a unique project called “Operation Nigger” (specifically named after the British black labrador). While Morgan will face the opposition alone, he will work with a specialized international team of demolition experts to create diversions by blowing up smaller sea-craft.

Like a lot of Higgins novels, the opening chapter is the middle of the story. In it, we learn that Morgan has been captured by the Germans and is awaiting execution along with a portion of the demolition squad. As Morgan contemplates his future, he tells the story of how he came into the operation and the events that eventually led to his capture. While this is traditional Higgins' storytelling (in first person perspective), the story condenses into a rather surprising narrative. Despite the book's cover, A Game for Heroes is more of a nautical tale that has Morgan reflecting on his father's naval exploits as well as his own. There's a savage, climactic sea rescue but I would be a fool to spoil it for you here. The book's narrative ultimately leads to a wind-swept, stormy finale, but the lead-up is worth the wait.

A Game for Heroes is set in an interesting era of World War II history. It's the end, the final theater, the 1945 closing of one of Earth's most important events. Higgins presents readers with a really interesting scenario – what happens to old soldiers at the end of the journey? With guns pointing at each other, what does the end look like for combatants? There's an amazing scene where the BBC radio announces Hitler has been killed to dozens of German soldiers and their British prisoners. But without any real guidance, how do the two warring factions interact? This is Higgins masterful prose, a reading experience that delivers adventure, calculated risk and lost love but isn't afraid to ask some important questions. For this reason alone, A Game for Heroes is a game worth playing. Under any name, Higgins is extraordinary.

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Rekill

Ian Kennedy Martin, born in 1936, was a prolific British screenwriter with a career spanning four decades. His most notable work is police drama The Sweeney (1975-1978), a television show that was critically acclaimed for its realism. Along with shows like The Onedin Line, The Capone Investment and Parkin's Patch, Martin also authored a dozen or more novels including the 1977 action-adventure paperback novel Rekill, published in the U.S. by Ballantine. It was issued as a $3 ebook in 2012. 

The first six-pages of Rekill set the tone for much of the novel's first half. Readers are spectators as an unknown man, possibly foreign, arrives on a rural Kansas farm to await a family's arrival. When a woman and two small children arrive, the stranger executes them in brutal fashion. Many hours later, the woman's husband comes home to find his family slaughtered and the intruder waiting. In later pages we learn he was tortured and executed and the farm house burned. This same style of execution repeats for three more families before readers are thrown into the thick of the narrative.

When a former North Vietnamese solder is identified as the killer, American brass orchestrate a plan to find and terminate the assassin. The man they choose for the mission is Leeming, a former U.S. Colonel who ran a special forces camp combating the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Leeming faced a court-martial and was later removed from service prior due to a particular incident. Now, Leeming, a widower, lives with his brother on a North Dakota farm. The military asks Leeming to train a special forces soldier to seek and destroy the foreign assassin. If he agrees, the government will remove the court-martial from his records. Leeming agrees and soon the narrative thrusts readers into espionage and intrigue in Paris.

The author had a number of great ideas for the book's plot design. Leeming's protege is interesting and the character allowed the author to create a really unique chemistry – the old warhorse training the younger soldier for a deadly mission. But by the book's second half, most of that story-line is wiped clean. The plot’s emphasis shifts to scouting and researching a known criminal to learn the whereabouts of the assassin. This part was rather redundant and dull after the enticing first half. The book's closing chapters were exciting, but nothing I haven't read before in international spy novels.

If you like slower, more developed international mystery and intrigue, Rekill might be for you. It's distinctively British – slower story, emphasis on planning, dry romantic encounter, high-adventure (there's rock climbing) – that recalled the work of Hammond Innes or a deep-discount Desmond Bagley story. Otherwise, I found Rekill retreading much of the same ground that we’ve all read before. The end result is an average action-adventure novel that should please most readers depending on their reading experience and frequency.

If nothing else, the paperback has a great cover. 

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Fire in the Snow (aka The Lonely Skier

Along with Alistair Maclean and Desmond Bagley, British author Hammond Innes (real name: Ralph Hammond Innis, 1913-1998) is one of the masters of high-adventure fiction. Hammond authored 34 novels from 1937 through 1996 and also penned nonfiction and children's stories as well. My first experience with the author is his 1947 novel The Lonely Skier, which was released in the U.S. as Fire in the Snow. The book was adapted for cinema in 1948 under the title Snowbound.

Set in the snowy Dolomite mountains of Northeastern Italy, the book focuses on a British man named Neil Blair. As an ex-Army officer, Blair is a family man who's unemployed in the book's opening chapter. His friend Engles, a movie producer, asks Blair to vacation at a remote ski lodge called Col Da Verda. The purpose is to write a movie script and team with a photographer named Joe Weston. Aside from the primary role of film creator, Engles asks Blair to search for a mysterious woman named Carla.

Upon Blair's arrival at Col Da Verda he is introduced to a cast of characters that become mainstays in the book's narrative. Blair eventually meets Carla and learns that she is a wealthy Countess and has a romantic past with a few of the book's characters. The most interesting revelation is that the lodge was once owned by Stefan, a former Nazi officer who was later captured and ultimately died from suicide. The resort supposedly holds an abundance of stolen Nazi gold that Stefan hid for safekeeping.

Innes' novel teases high-adventure, explosive action and perilous skiing. However, the reader is forced into the lodge as a spectator for most of the plodding narrative. In fact, the bulk of the book is Blair and the cast of characters drinking at the bar and accusing each other of withholding information on the treasure's location. There are chapters upon chapters of suspicions, finger pointing and threats of violence. Sadly, none of this comes to fruition until the book's last 20-pages. It's as if Innes just didn't have enough story to create a pleasurable experience for readers.

Innes is a fine author and I'm certainly not doubting his literary legacy. It appears I simply picked a bad book. Oddly, his 1948 novel Blue Ice seems to have the same story-line – a stashed treasure in the cold Norwegian mountains. Like his contemporaries, the idea of lost treasure (mostly Nazi) seems to be a prevalent sales pitch for avid readers. I'll certainly read more Innes, and I have a short-list of what fans consider his best work. I'm hoping I'll find a real gem there, but Fire In the Snow isn’t it. 

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The War Heist (aka MacTaggart's War)

Atlanta native Ralph Dennis launched the 'Hardman' series in 1974 for Popular Library. The paperback originals ran 12 volumes, finishing with “The Buy Back Blues” in 1977. In December 2018, Lee Goldberg’s Brash Books began reprinting the Hardman classics starting with the debut. Additionally, one of the other acquisitions by Brash Books was a stand-alone heist novel by Dennis originally entitled “MacTaggart's War.”

The story behind “MacTaggart's War” and it's transformation into today's “The War Heist” is a noteworthy literary accomplishment. Originally this novel was released in hardcover in 1979. The book failed to receive commercial success or critical notice, so the novel simply came and went like many new releases do. By the time the author died in 1988, Dennis was operating an Atlanta bookstore with a file cabinet full of unpublished novels adding to his published works that failed to gain traction with the reading public.

A few years ago, New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg began negotiating with Dennis’ estate for the publication rights to the author’s complete body of work – published and unpublished – with the initial goal of releasing the 'Hardman' series on the Brash Books imprint. After reading “MacTaggart's War” and seeing the possibilities, Goldberg edited the novel’s composition and structure – deleting entire chapters and re-arranging others - to make the book more interesting to modern thriller readers. The end result of this posthumous collaboration is what we have today, a souped-up and streamlined new novel entitled “The War Heist.” At a whopping 407-pages, this isn't your standard 170-page Fawcett Gold Medal quickie. I can’t imagine how much padding the book contained in its original form before Goldberg culled the fat and was still left with such a weighty novel.

Sadly, the end result is a pretty bland and over-plotted narrative that failed to really excite. In all fairness, I'm not a superfan of high adventure paperbacks by Jack Higgins, Desmond Bagley or Alistair Maclean, so a lengthy novel with a WW2 backdrop felt like a heavy lift from the start. The heist aspect of the plot speaks to fans of crime-noir stories of the 1950s and 1960s, but the intricate theft is cloaked in the dense wrapper of an epic novel.

The story leverages an actual event in WW2 history – a simply remarkable mission known as Operation Salt Fish. In 1940, Winston Churchill and his cabinet felt that the United Kingdom was at real risk of being overrun by Hitler’s Germany. Fearing an imminent invasion and subsequent loss, the British conceived plans to ship their liquid assets to Canada by boat for safekeeping. The idea was that Churchill and his colleagues would continue coordinating the fight against Germany from the safety of Montreal. This continuation of the United Kingdom’s governmental continuity would be funded by 2.5 billion in gold and bonds transferred across the Atlantic through a sea of German U-Boats. Miraculously, not one ship was lost in this secret transfer of assets abroad.

Ralph Dennis utilizes this remarkable piece of history as the backdrop for a fictional heist by U.S. Army personnel attempting to rob the millions in British gold from the shipment. The robust novel covers the planning, recruitment and operation to grab the loot during the transfer from boat to train on Canadian soil. There's more than a dozen characters blurring the lines between valiant heroes and despicable villains. After so much planning – spanning chapter upon chapter – the book's final 90-pages have many of the elements of a top-notch action thriller. Nevertheless, the expansive story leading up to the climax failed to fully grasp my attention, so the final payoff left me feeling weary from the long road to Canada.

Despite my own misgivings, “The War Heist” should have much greater appeal to hardcore fans of classic high adventure thrillers. Kudos to Lee Goldberg and Brash Books for re-introducing Dennis’ forgotten novels to a new generation of readers. I sincerely hope that his body of work is discovered by a modern fan base. Moreover, I'm excited to explore the other unpublished manuscripts from Dennis currently in Goldberg’s possession, and I hope that Brash Books continues their commitment to publish the author’s complete catalog in the years to come.

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The Land God Gave to Cain

British adventure author Hammond Innes had a very specific writing ritual. He spent six months researching a location and then six months writing a novel that takes place in or around that vicinity. For his mid-career effort, The Land God Gave to Cain (1958), he traveled to Labrador, a cold region in Canada's northeastern region of Newfoundland. Innes visited the area extensively in 1953, but then traveled there again for his novel. Innes stated that on his first journey to Labrador, he traveled nearly 400 miles into the rugged interior, living in primitive railroad construction camps. He used trains, track motors, trucks, float planes, and helicopters to see the full scope of this majestic area. Eventually, he even roughed the area on foot. 

The travels that Innes made into the Labrador interior parallel those that young Ian Ferguson makes in the third act of The Land God Gave to Cain. By having first hand experience in this area prior to the commencement of full rail travel, Innes paints a realistic picture for readers. Innes places Ferguson and readers into the wild, into flatlands brimming with ice and dotted by hundreds of lakes and rivers between forests of muskeg trees. But oddly, the story begins in suburban London with a simple radio broadcast.

Engineer Ian Ferguson has returned home to London after receiving word that his father, James, has died. James lost the use of his legs during WW1. Confined to a chair, James visited the outside world through Ham radio. When Ian arrives at his father's house, he finds James' bedroom filled with maps and notes about Labrador, Canada. After studying the radio log, he finds that his father died upon hearing a radio broadcast from Labrador. What was this mysterious message?

Ian discovers that his father was tracking a small group of scouts in northeastern Canada. These journeymen would relay their coordinates by radio at various outposts and camps. James simply wrote them all down. Using a map, their trek through the wilderness was something James felt a part of, even when faced with paralysis 15,000 miles away. But, the men disappeared and after days of searching, only one made it out of the wilderness, a French-Canadian man named Laroche. He reported that the rest of the party died in a plane crash or succumbed quickly to the elements. But, days after Laroche's account to authorities, James received a radio broadcast from one of the men Laroche claimed was dead. This broadcast was sent in the dead of night from an aircraft radio in the Labrador interior. Was it a distress call from a dead man?

Because of the importance these men, and mission, had with his father, Ian begins to unravel the mystery. But, the Canadian authorities are quick to resist and claim that Laroche is telling the truth and that there are no signs or indications that anyone else survived. Further, they claim it is physically impossible that Ian's father could have received this distress call from the plane's shortwave radio. First, the plane supposedly sank in an unknown lake. Second, the radio's distance would be just a few hundred miles, not thousands of miles halfway across the globe.

With raw determination and a hunch, Ian travels to Labrador to interview Laroche and learn details about the group's crash. From there, Hammond Innes injects loads of mystery, intrigue and history into the novel's second act. Ian's quest for clues leads to a lot of questions. Additionally, Ian learns that his father had a very good reason for being so interested in this area of Canadian wilderness. The novel's third act is a thrilling pursuit to solve the riddle. 

The fact that Innes keeps readers in the dark for two-thirds of the book is clever, but antagonizing at the same time. I loved the mystery and what Innes forced me to do as a reader - follow the same clues provided to Ian and form a hypothesis on what this whole thing actually means. But, on the other hand, I was often angry because the supporting characters were so vague and aloof. I wanted instant gratification. I demanded instant entertainment. But, this was 1958 and Innes forced me to be patient and work for it.

If you love high-adventure novels set in exotic locations, The Land God Gave to Cain is sure to please you. It has a core mystery, a perceptive protagonist, an obstacle to overcome and an appetite for thrilling adventure. Also, it's a frosty novel in the vein of John Broxholme, Desmond Bagley and Alistair MacLean. If that isn't an invitation, I don't know what is. Just read the book.