Forgotten Books: The Bamboo Bomb - James Dark (J.E. MacDonnell)

(This post originally appeared on April 26, 2006, in slightly different form.)


There's a story behind why I read this particular book at this particular time -- so naturally I'm going to tell it.

Like a lot of people who have a lot of old paperbacks, I sometimes have trouble remembering which books I own and which I don't. So when I come across something interesting in a used bookstore, I occasionally have to ask myself, do I already have this one or not? And if I can't remember, I err on the side of caution and buy it anyway, because -- in the words of a very wise man -- you never regret the books you buy, only the ones you didn't buy.

Anyway, I was discussing this with Livia the other day, which led me to remark in passing, "That's why I have five or six copies of THE BAMBOO BOMB by James Dark."

She just looked at me and asked, "Have you ever actually read it?"

I had to admit that I hadn't, so she said, "I want you to read it."

Now I have. And it's not bad.

Mark Hood is your typical Sixties secret agent: rich American playboy, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, internationally renowned cricket player, race car driver, karate master, etc. Just the sort of guy who spent the Sixties fighting the bad guys and keeping the world safe. He works for Intertrust, a top-secret international spy organization. In this book he's sent to Singapore to pull the old "American down on his luck" bit so he can infiltrate a group of villains who are out to destabilize the Far Eastern political arena . . . I think. I'll admit I had a little trouble following the plot because I know almost nothing about politics in the Far East during the Sixties. But that's okay, because Hood fights a bunch of bad guys, romances a couple of beautiful girls, and blows a bunch of stuff up real good.

One of the best things about this book is its length -- 127 pages. And there's more plot in that 127 pages than in a lot of 500 - 600 page thrillers that I've read. True, there's not much characterization or back-story, but sometimes I don't care. You pays your money and you takes your choice. More than anything else it reminded me of the Sam Durell books by Edward S. Aarons, with its hardboiled hero and exotic locations and convoluted plot. "James Dark" didn't write as well as Aarons, but then, few people ever did when it comes to this particular sort of book.

"James Dark" was really J.E. MacDonnell. I know nothing about him other than the fact that he wrote a lot of war and espionage novels in various series under various names. The Mark Hood books were originally published by Horwitz in Australia during the mid-Sixties, and at the same time about half of the books were reprinted in the U.S. by Signet, cashing in on the secret agent boom of the time. I think I have all the U.S. editions -- multiple copies of some of them, in fact.

But just to set the record straight, I checked my shelves and I don't have five or six copies of THE BAMBOO BOMB.

I have three.


(Update: I never got around to reading any more of those James Dark books, and I haven't replaced any of them since the fire. But I have fond enough memories of this one that if I ever run across any of them at a reasonable price, I'll pick them up. I might even read them. And this won't come as any shock, but I once again have multiple copies of some books because I saw them in the store and couldn't remember if I already had them. In fact, just the other day I barely caught myself in time to keep from ordering a book on ABE that I had just ordered another copy of maybe a month earlier.)

The Green Hornet: Year One: The Biggest of All Game - Matt Wagner

A while back I read and enjoyed the first volume in THE GREEN HORNET: YEAR ONE, and now I've read the second trade paperback collection from the comic book series. Volume Two is called THE BIGGEST OF ALL GAME, and it's an appropriate title as The Green Hornet and Kato step up their war against gang boss Skid Caruso. In fact, they cause so much trouble for Caruso that he calls in the brutal gangland killer known as The Scourge and sets him on the trail of the Hornet.

Interspersed with this storyline are flashbacks detailing how The Hornet came to be equipped with his famous car The Black Beauty, his electrified weapon The Hornet's Sting, and his downtown headquarters with its secret alleyway entrance. Britt Reid's secretary Lenore Case is also introduced in this volume. All of this is classic Green Hornet lore, told in a little grittier fashion for modern readers maybe, but faithful enough to the original that a purist like me really appreciates it. I'm still not crazy about the series being set in Chicago rather than Detroit, but I can live with it.

As usual Matt Wagner's scripts are excellent, fast-paced and hardboiled and occasionally humorous. He's also credited with art direction on the series, which I suppose means he did rough breakdowns for Aaron Campbell's pencils and inks. I like Campbell's art for the most part. His storytelling is fairly easy to follow, and his characters all look right.

I've liked The Green Hornet ever since I first listened to the radio show in the early Sixties. Wagner's doing a fine job with this retelling, and when the next volume comes out, I'm sure I'll read it.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: Coronet Blue

Following up on Bob Randisi's suggestion from last week, today I want to look back at a summer replacement series that surprised everybody and still has a cult following, CORONET BLUE.

       

Some of you probably remember summer replacement series, which were exactly what they sounded like, new programming that took the place of reruns during the summer. Bear in mind that back in those days, most TV series produced between 30 and 40 episodes per year, not the 22 that's considered a full season now. Even so, all the networks would have a handful of summer replacement shows.

When CORONET BLUE made its debut in the summer of 1967, it's likely no one expected much out of it. It had been produced a year or two earlier and had been sitting on the shelf. The premise seems to have been inspired somewhat by ROUTE 66, THE FUGITIVE, and RUN FOR YOUR LIFE: a semi-anthology series with one or two continuing characters. The twist here was that Michael Alden, the protagonist of CORONET BLUE (played by Frank Converse) didn't know who he really was. He didn't know if that was really his name. All he knew was that he had climbed out of the East River in New York, the mysterious phrase "Coronet Blue" had some meaning to him . . . and people were trying to kill him.

That's a classic thriller set-up, and CORONET BLUE made the most of it as Michael Alden spent the summer trying to discover his true identity and find out why those mysterious enemies wanted him dead. The series caught on and became extremely popular, with the ratings rising each week. The on-going mystery had something to do with that, and so, I think, did the great theme song and opening credit sequence. That song has been stuck in my head for more than 40 years now.

Then suddenly it was over, with no resolution at all. Rumors abounded that there was a mysterious final episode and CBS, for some reason, decided not to show it. That seems not to have been the case. After all, when the episodes were produced in the first place the hope was that the series would be successful and would continue. Some executive decided that wasn't going to happen, and everyone involved moved on to other project while the episodes sat gathering dust until CBS trotted them out as a summer replacement series. Even after they saw its popularity, there was nothing they could do about it. Frank Converse was already working on another series, the short-lived cop show NYPD.

The rumors about the intending ending of CORONET BLUE persisted, and eventually creator Larry Cohen revealed in an interview what his plans had been. You can find the information easily enough on-line if you really want to know. But I'll say here and now that I don't buy it, not for a second. I hate to second-guess the guy who came up with the whole series, but I would have been severely disappointed if I had seen that ending. Maybe this is one of those rare cases where something was better because the outcome was left up to the imagination of the viewer.

"The Galvanized Yankees of Company D" - Troy D. Smith

The Galvanized Yankees were Confederate prisoners who volunteered to serve with the U.S. Army on the frontier during the Civil War. I researched and used this setting in some of the novels in my Civil War Battles series and have been interested in the period ever since. Troy Smith mixes battlefield action, interesting characters, and dialogue that rings true to produce a compelling story with a poignant ending. "The Galvanized Yankees of Company D" is top-notch historical fiction.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

I remember listening to and enjoying the CBS Radio Mystery Theater back in the Seventies. Now all 1,399 episodes are available on-line for free. I'm an OTR fan from 'way back, although I can never seem to find the time to listen as much as I want to, but I'm definitely going to check these out, probably starting tonight. Lots of great stuff here!

The Masacado Scrolls #1: The Fall of Awa - Charles T. Whipple

Charles T. Whipple is best known as a well-respected Western author under the pseudonym Chuck Tyrell. But he also writes stories set in Japan, where he's lived and worked for a number of years. His novella THE FALL OF AWA is the first in a series of fantasy yarns based on ancient Japanese mythology, and it's a good one.

The heroine, a girl named Ryo, is the daughter of a servant in the household of a local ruler. When the kingdom comes under attack by the forces of a rival warlord aided by dark sorcery, the fortress of Awa falls and Ryo and her mother are doomed to life as slaves of the conquerors. Other mystical forces are at work, though, and Ryo is destined to play a pivotal part in the battle between good and evil.

With its young heroine, you might think this is a YA novella, but not really. The battle scenes early on are bloody and almost Howardian in their sweep and pace. That hardboiled, gritty realism continues during the story of the time Ryo and her mother spend as slaves, culminating in a sorcerous conflict that sets the stage for more stories to come.

I'm not a big fan of stories set in the Orient, but Whipple does a great job with this one and has me looking forward to the rest of the series. It's a nice blend of historical and heroic fantasy, and if you're a fan of those genres, you should check it out. I enjoyed it a lot.

Check Out Latchkeys: Unlatched - Steven Savile

The first book in the Latchkeys series is now available on Amazon and will be available soon for the Nook as well. I played a small part in creating this young adult fantasy series with a number of other authors and will be writing one of the books coming later on. It's been a great experience so far, and as with the Dead Man books, one of the best parts is getting to read all the books done by the other writers. So if you're a fantasy fan, you definitely need to check this one out.

Bob's Birthday

Today marks the 106th anniversary of Robert E. Howard's birth in Peaster, Texas, about twenty miles as the crow flies from where I'm sitting. If you'd like to celebrate, the accepted procedure is to read one of your favorite REH stories and raise a glass of your favorite drink to the Greatest Pulp Writer in the Whole Wide World.  That's what I plan to be doing this evening.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: The Lone Ranger, May 1937

Earlier this week in my comments on the great new collection UNMASKED from Black Dog Books, I mentioned the pulp magazine devoted to the Lone Ranger. Here's the cover from the second issue of that pulp, which features the story reprinted in UNMASKED. The art is by H.J. Ward. The Lone Ranger novel takes up most of the wordage inside, but there are also short stories by Claude Rister, Lawrence A. Keating, and Frank Kavanaugh, an installment of a serialized biography of John Wesley Hardin by Chuck Martin, and an assortment of articles, features, and columns, including the "Lone Ranger Stamp Page", whatever that was. As popular as the radio show was, and as much other merchandising featured the Lone Ranger, I'm surprised the pulp magazine was unsuccessful. Maybe the fact that THE MASKED RIDER, a pulp series featuring a character clearly inspired by the Lone Ranger, was already being published had something to do with it. In fact, one of those Masked Rider stories, "Outlaw of the Red Hills", was written by Lawrence A. Keating, who has a story in this issue, making one more connection between the characters.

Forgotten Books: The Time Traders - Andre Norton

When I was a kid, Andre Norton books were everywhere. Every school library and every public library had what seemed like dozens of them. Plus the paperback editions of her books were plentiful and easy to find. During that era, her name was as synonymous with science fiction as those of Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke.

I read a bunch of those books, too, although I was never as big a fan of Norton's work as I was of those other authors I just mentioned. And as time went by I stopped reading her books entirely. At least forty years went by without me picking up an Andre Norton book.

Recently I got the urge to give her work a try again and see how it holds up, so I read THE TIME TRADERS, the first in one of her many series and a book that I never read back in the old days, at least that I recall. It has an interesting set-up: young Ross Murdock, who's in trouble with the law, is given the choice of taking part in some top-secret government project or being subjected to an ominous-sounding "Rehabilitation". Naturally Ross goes with the top-secret project and soon finds himself part of an American time travel experiment in which agents are sent back into the past to vie with Soviet Russian agents for alien technology that shouldn't exist in Earth's past.

I've always liked time travel books, and this is a good one, packed with adventure as Ross and his fellow agents deal with the hardships of life in ancient Britain as well as carrying out an espionage struggle against the Russians. Then, to complicate things even more, the aliens show up . . . and they aren't happy.

I thought the writing in this book was a little bland – I always thought Norton's work, though it was written for a primarily young adult audience, could have used a little more grit – but the ideas are intriguing, the pace rocks right along with a considerable amount of action, and Ross Murdock makes a likable hero. The whole thing is pretty dated but still enjoyable. I probably won't drop everything to read more Andre Norton books right away, but I don't think it'll be another forty years before I read one, either. (For one thing, I'd be nearly 100 years old!)