The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. - The Blazing Affair

The Blazing Affair was the second original novel based on the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. TV series. The first two novels were both written by Michael Avallone.

These TV tie-in novels were sometimes written before the series in question had even begun its run and were based on the original concept of the series and perhaps the first couple of scripts. As a result they sometimes have a tone that differs slightly from that of the TV series. I suspect that might be the case here. This book and Avallone’s earlier The Birds of a Feather Affair have a more serious and much less outrageous tone than the series.

The Blazing Affair makes use of one of the most overused tropes of 1960s spy fiction and spy television - someone is trying to revive the Third Reich.

It begins with an attempted assassination in the Balkans but the action then moves to South Africa. Diamonds seem to be involved. Presumably these will be used to finance this latest attempt at world domination. A lot of western agents have disappeared in this country in recent times, suggesting not only that South Africa may be the epicentre of this latest threat to world peace but also that the people involved in this conspiracy are exceptionally ruthless and well-organised.

The finger of suspicion points towards a diamond dealer, Simon Ashley.

Crack U.N.C.L.E. agents April Dancer and Mark Slate are sent to South Africa to investigate. Unfortunately their covers are blown and things get unpleasant. Being chased by guys with machetes, that sort of thing.

As you’d expect April and Mark both get captured by the bad guys and end up in some situations that are both dangerous and creepy.

There’s some reasonable suspense. There’s quite a bit of action and a few explosions along the way.

There’s lots of gadgetry. April is a walking arsenal. Even when she’s stripped down to bra and panties you can’t be sure she’s unarmed.

All the right ingredients are here and the plot is serviceable enough but it just doesn’t quite catch fire the way it should. Perhaps the problem is that the villains needed to be a bit more colourful, and perhaps it needed a more fully thought-out plan for world domination in order to give the story a greater sense of threat and urgency.

One of the things I love about the TV series is the chemistry between Stefanie Powers as April and Noel Harrison as Mark, with lots of cheeky affectionate banter. There is some of that in the novel, but not to the same degree.

More could have been made of the South African setting, and the diamond angle.

It’s all fairly chaste, even when April is half-naked. That is of course true of the TV series as well but spicing things up just a little in the novel wouldn’t have hurt.

On the whole it’s a competent enough spy thriller and reasonably enjoyable. Worth checking out if you’re a fan of the TV series.

I’ve also reviewed several other Girl from U.N.C.L.E. original novels - Michael Avallone’s The Birds of a Feather Affair (which is quite good) and Simon Latter’s The Global Globules Affair and The Golden Boats of Taradata Affair (both of which are fun and more lighthearted and with a bit more craziness).

And I’ve reviewed the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. TV series.

Blood-C (2011 anime TV series)

Blood-C is a 2011 anime TV series with interesting origins. In 2000 Production I.G. made a short feature film called Blood: The Last Vampire about a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. It was an absolutely brilliant movie which has never received the acclaim it deserves. There does seem to have been some thought of turning it into a TV series. That finally finally happened in 2011 with Blood-C, but it’s not as simple as that. This series is more of a radical reboot than a follow-up to the movie.

There are plenty of superficial similarities. The TV series also features a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. She also uses a katana (a samurai sword). There are however major differences. Blood: The Last Vampire was set in the 1960s; Blood-C has a contemporary setting. The Saya of the movie worked for some kind of shadowy probably governmental agency. The Saya of the TV series is a kind of girl priestess belonging to a religious sect dedicated to battling supernatural evil.

And this Saya is a very different girl. The Saya of Blood: The Last Vampire is an attractive young woman but there’s something very dark, ruthless, dangerous and chilling about her. She’s one of the good guys but she’s a stone-cold killer. The Saya of Blood-C is a cute bubbly high school girl. The only real similarity between the two girls is that they are both named Saya.

One of the best things about Blood: The Last Vampire is its minimalism. It tells us only what we absolutely need to know, when we need to know it. We get no backstory at all on Saya, apart from one moment at the end which revels her true nature. But it leaves many many unanswered questions.

The TV series is clearly determined to give us a very detailed backstory on this new version of Saya. There’s nothing wrong with that. TV is a totally different medium. In TV you expect detailed backstories.

It may not be evident at first but you really do need to watch Blood: The Last Vampire before watching the series.

You have to be a bit patient with Blood-C early on. I can understand what the series is trying to do. Saya has a double life. She has been chosen to fulfil an exacting and dangerous duty battling supernatural monsters but she’s also a high school girl. She is trying to balance the two sides of her life. She accepts her duty without question and she is a brave and dedicated warrior maiden prepared to sacrifice her life if necessary.

But she also wants to be a normal teenage girl. She wants to have some fun. She wants the other girls at school to like her. She especially wants boys to like her. She has her eye on one particular boy. She has the perfectly normal feelings of any teenage girl.

I think this approach taken by the series is perfectly valid, but the high school stuff is very very cutesy. If you bought this series for the mayhem and monster-slaying you might find this cutesiness a bit over-the-top.

Even in the early episodes however her sacred mission is not forgotten and she does have some epic battles with monsters. These monsters are known as the Elder Bairns.

The series does quickly become a lot darker. The supernatural threats to the idyllic village in which Saya lives become more frequent and more extreme. Saya has promised to keep everyone safe but she starts to wonder if that’s possible.

She also has reason to think that there are many things she has always taken for granted that may not be as simple and straightforward as she’d thought. She had not realised that the Elder Bairns could communicate with humans. They tell her things that disturb her. 

There’s also a dog, a cute little dog she has befriended. He talks to her as well. Whatever he is, he’s not just a cute little dog.

The battle against the Elder Bairns intensifies but the series gradually becomes more interesting in other ways. Both Saya and the viewer are offered tantalising hints that there is something much more complex going on than the threat represented by the monsters. 

There is much that Saya does not yet understand and that she needs to understand but perhaps she is not yet ready for such knowledge.

Saya also has to deal with something else that is new and disturbing - the possibility that love might be blossoming for her for the first time. This is something that scares her a lot more than monsters.

The one minor weakness of this series is that although the monsters are very imaginative they are at times in danger of becoming just a little goofy. The monsters perhaps needed to be a bit creepier and a bit less over-the-top. The problem was that there was a obvious desire to make each new monster more spectacular than the preceding one. The gushing blood effects are also a bit iffy.

The action scenes are certainly lively.

There is some unexpected nudity in episode 8. It’s very tasteful and given the level of violence this is a series that is most definitely not intended for the kiddies.

Blood-C is an odd mix cuteness, mayhem and weirdness. It’s a mixture I like very much. Highly recommended.

Seeing Blood: The Last Vampire first will add enormously to your enjoyment and it is in any case a must-see anime movie.

V (TV miniseries 1983)

V was a two-part 1983 American TV mini-series which gave birth to a franchise. It originally aired on the NBC network. I must confess that I had until now never seen the mini-series or any other parts of this franchise.

Flying saucers suddenly appear over major cities across the globe. But it’s OK. They’re friendly. We know they’re friendly because that’s what they told us.

They look just like regular humans except they always wear sunglasses. And they sound just a bit odd.

The aliens become known as Visitors. Everybody is excited to welcome them. No-one has the least suspicion that they might not be friendly. I have to say that I thought this was wildly implausible. Even with the media assuring everyone that the aliens are our friends nobody has any doubts?

It’s also odd that apparently the CIA, the FBI and the military take no interest in the arrival of the aliens. In fact the government plays no part whatsoever in this series.

The aliens then proceed to act in a way that would have made a five-year-old child suspicious but nobody does get suspicious.

Pretty soon, without anybody realising it, the aliens are in complete control. There are fifty gigantic mother ships and thousands of the Visitors. An invading army has been welcomed in.

TV journalist Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) develops some suspicions. He sneaks aboard one of the mother ships and discovers the truth about the alien Visitors. Meanwhile his ex-girlfriend has become the chief PR officers for the aliens.

Eventually a few people figure out that they’ll have to take a stand but their numbers are few and they’re disorganised.

While there are a few weaknesses to this mini-series there are some real strengths. The aliens do not take control by taking over the military. They take over the mass media instead. Once you control the mass media you control society.

Of course a critical difference between this series and an alien invasion series like The Invaders is that because of their weird voices the aliens in V cannot just blend in with humans. They cannot infiltrate human society. They must find another way to seize control and hijacking the media makes sense. And it does give this series a different flavour compared to other alien invasion series. The aliens have to operate in the open whilst using deception and manipulation.

And of course there are journalists who are only too happy to sell us out and help the invaders. There are also cops who are willing to sell out.

There’s a realistic dark and cynical edge. When the chips are down your co-workers, your friends, your family and your neighbours are all likely to betray you if the media tells them to. The basic human instinct for social conformity makes things easy for the alien invaders.

There’s a very effective atmosphere of paranoia and the paranoia levels rise inexorably.

There’s also a mind control angle which is handled skilfully. Giving the aliens unlimited mind-control powers would have made them too formidable. Their mind-control powers have limitations. It was essential that the aliens be seen as extremely difficult but perhaps not entirely impossible to defeat. 

I don’t want to any more about the ending other then the fact that it allowed for a follow-up series.

There are some pretty reasonable action scenes.

The mother ships are not miniatures but matte paintings (they had neither the time nor the money to build miniatures). When judging the special effects you have have to keep in mind (in this and in all science fiction TV series up to the 90s) that in 1983 people were going to be watching V on relatively small cathode ray TV sets. The deficiencies in the special effects would have been a lot less obvious than they are today when viewed on Blu-Ray. Some of the special effects are very iffy and have a cheap 80s arcade game look.

The budget was huge by 1980s television standards but the series was rushed into production so time was more of a problem than money.

Jane Badler as Diana makes a fine sexy villainess. The acting overall is quite adequate.

V is quite entertaining if you enjoy alien invasion stories (which I do) although I think the alien invasion idea was handled better in several other series both American (such as The Invaders) and British (such as Undermind). V is recommended.

V is available on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig

The Ghost in the Shell franchise began with Masamune Shirow’s original manga in 1989. There were two follow-up volumes. The Ghost in the Shell movie was released in 1995. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence followed in 2004. Both were directed by Mamoru Oshii.

The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series first aired in 2002. The second season (or 2nd Gig) began its run in 2004. The film Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society served as a finale for the TV series in 2006. There have since been other entries in this spectacularly successful franchise.

What’s interesting is that Masamune Shirow’s manga series, the Mamoru Oshii feature films and the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series are all slightly different takes on the same basic premise. The TV series does not take place in exactly the same timeline as the manga or the two feature films. It takes place in the same fictional universe, almost. It’s like three variations on the same basic theme, and each variation has its own appeal. In their own ways they’re all equally worthwhile.

All the different variations deal with Public Security Section 9, a shadowy fictional counter-intelligence, counter-terrorist cybersecurity agency run by the eccentric but brilliant maverick Aramaki. The commander of the field operations task force is Major Motoki Kusanagi. She is a cyborg. Her body is wholly synthetic (although it’s very female and she is in practice a perfectly functional woman) but she still has a human brain and human emotions and she still has her human memories. She was once a fully human little girl.

In this second season Section 9 will be up against a mysterious group known as the Individual Eleven.

The main cast members are substantially unchanged in the 2nd Gig. Aramaki still pulls the strings. Major Motoki Kusanagi is still the field commander. Batou is still her second-in-command and the one person in the world she really trusts. 

And happily the tachikomas, the combat robots used by Section 9, return to the series after a brief absence. The tachikomas are controlled by AI but whether it’s a collective AI or whether each tachikoma has some degree of individuality is uncertain. As is the question of just how far they are capable of operating autonomously. The tachikomas provide comic relief in what is other a very serious very dark series but it works - the writers rather cleverly use the tachikomas to reflect in a humorous way one of the main themes of the second season, the conflict between individuality and collectivity.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex deals inevitably with political conflicts. The series is more interested in the nature of ideological conflicts than with pushing a particular ideology. It’s not really interested in taking sides politically. And it accurately reflects the confused and contradictory nature of 21st century ideological conflicts. The Individual Eleven see themselves as radical individualists but they behave like a kind of hive mind. They also appear to believe in revolution for its own sake. Their goals seem somewhat mystical.

The series also deals with political infighting in government and law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Political leaders are mere puppets. Powerful shadowy forces are pulling the strings. Every law enforcement and intelligence agency is obsessed with ensuring its own survival. They don’t trust each other, for good reason. Aramaki is a clever operator but even he finds himself being manipulated by forces he doesn’t entirely understand.

There’s an ongoing story arc here, as there was in the first season. What’s interesting is that what appears to be happening on the surface is not what’s going on at all. The story arc deals with unrest in a refugee community in Japan, with tensions between the locals and the refugees which could lead to civil war, and government efforts to resolve the crisis. What is really happening is that a series of complex interlocking power games are being played out and none of the players have any interest in the refugee crisis. And I don’t think series director and chief writer Kenji Kamiyama is all that interested in that particular political issue. He’s more interested in the way political power games are played.

There are also ideological drivers but my impression is that Kamiyama is not interested in particular ideologies but rather in the way that political ideologies work. And, more to the point, the way ideologies are likely to work in an information age of total interconnectedness. They may work like viruses.

There are multiple players in the power game - several different intelligence agencies (including Section 9), the military, the bureaucracy, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, mega-corporations, the media and shadowy informal networks. They all have their own agendas. They are all concerned with protecting their own interests. They will all cheerfully sell each other out. They all manipulate each other. None of them care about Japan or about ordinary people. None of them has any genuine commitment to any principles. Winning is all that matters because that means power.

They all see themselves as puppet masters but often they are merely puppets. Mostly they have no idea who is really pulling the strings. The Prime Minister for example has no idea that she is a mere figurehead, a puppet who will be discarded when she is no longer useful.

Aramaki has more insight and he’s a wily old bird but even he finds himself manipulated. He does at least have the advantage of being a skilful player. Motoko is learning to be a skilful player. She’s learning to analyse problems on multiple levels.

The refugees are simply pawns who are being used by several different groups with contradictory agendas.

There are bad guys but some of the good guys might turn out to be bad guys and some of the bad guys might not be straightforward villains.

Other TV series have tried to engage with such issues but this is the first series to do so in a sophisticated and complex way in the context of the age of digital information sharing. And it’s hard to think of another TV series (or movie) that has taken such a brutally cynical approach.

The cynicism level rises as the series progresses. Most of Section 9’s assignments are not what they seem to be.

Mention has to be made of Yoko Kanno’s superb music. It’s very pop but very cyberpunk.

There’s both a DVD and a Blu-Ray boxed set containing both seasons of this series. Thankfully it includes the original Japanese language version with English subtitles as well as the English dub. I have a particular aversion to English dubbed versions of anime. Hearing the characters speaking with American accents just feels totally wrong. I like anime because it’s Japanese. I also really like Atsuko Tanaka’s voice acting as Motoko - her voice just sounds right. And Akio Ôtsuka sounds like Batou.

This is very much cyberpunk but with even more paranoia than usual. Science fiction TV doesn’t get much better than Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the original manga, the TV series Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, 1st Gig and the first movie, Ghost in the Shell (1995).

Perry Mason season 2 part 2

A few episodes from the 1958-59 second season of Perry Mason. The character had to be toned down quite a bit for television but this series was still a great deal of fun. This is a series that raised the bar in terms of complex plotting in American series television.

In The Case of the Fraudulent Foto we get to see Perry in a new rôle - as Deputy District attorney for Waring County. He’s standing in for the Waring County D.A. who is currently on trial for murder. And Perry is defending him. It’s a tangled tale of political and bureaucratic corruption and blackmail with some personal complications thrown in.

The Case of the Romantic Rogue is fiendishly complicated. An heiress is being pursued by a con-man, the con-man is being blackmailed, the con-man’s girlfriend is unhappy about all of these things, the heiress’s uncle who ran off with his secretary has been missing but may or may not have been found. Only Perry mason could unravel a case like this. This one is slightly unusual since the final revelation does not come in a courtroom scene. A good episode but you have to concentrate.

In The Case of the Jaded Joker Danny Ross is a comic whose career is faltering but a new TV show promoted by his pal Charlie Goff will put him back on top. The new TV show goes ahead but without Danny and he’s pretty devastated, as is his buddy/aide/general factotum Freddie. Even Buzzy, the beatnik piano player who is the other member of Danny’s odd little entourage, is almost moved to express some emotion at the news. When Charlie Goff is found dead it’s Freddie who is arrested but there are several other people who also have plausible motives.

It seems like alibis will be crucial but for some reason when the case comes to trial Perry seems a lot more obsessed over the details of the murder method.

Show business is always a good background to murder but this story also gives us, as a bonus, a glimpse into the crazy world of the beatniks. It’s a solid episode.

The Case of the Lost Last Act is another show business murder story. Successful playwright Ernest Royce has written a play about playwright named Steve who gets murdered before he can write the last act of his new play. And now the last set of Royce’s play has disappeared.

This is a play that has made Royce a lot of enemies even before it’s finished. It’s a bitter angry play and everyone who has read the first two acts has good reason not to want the play finished.

When Royce is shot, exactly the way the character in his play was shot, ex-racketeer Frank Brooks figures there’s a good chance he’ll be charged with the murder so he hires Mason to defend him. Brooks had put a lot of money into the play because it was going to make his girlfriend Faith a star but once he figures out that Royce is taking much too close an interest in Faith Brooks decides to pull both his money and his girl out of the play.

Frank Brooks might have a murky past but he’s not the only one. A lot of things happened around the time that Brooks got out of the rackets. Things that people would like to forget, but they can’t.

Perry’s courtroom pyrotechnics are well and truly up to his outrageous standards. His antics aren’t just theatrical, they are actual theatre. There are the usual nifty plot twists. A very good episode.

The Case of the Bedeviled Doctor begins with a stolen tape-recording, a recording of a session with a psychoanalyst. The recording could be very embarrassing if it fell into the wrong hands and as Perry points out the fact that it’s been stolen suggests that it already has fallen into the wrong hands. Murder is the result. Ordinarily in a case of blackmail leading to murder the blackmail victim would be the obvious suspect, but not in this case. In fact there are six people with very plausible motives for the murder.

This story doesn’t have the bravura use of arcane points of law or ingenious alibis that you get in the best Perry Mason episodes. This is a routine episode, but even a routine Perry Mason episode is still pretty enjoyable.

Always a good series to revisit.

Cyber City Oedo 808 (1990)

Cyber City Oedo 808 is a 1990 Japanese anime OVA (original video animation). These were a bit like mini-series but intended for direct-to-video or later direct-to-DVD release. Cyber City Oedo 808 comprised three 45-minute episodes.

It was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, one of the great anime directors who was responsible for such crucial anime movies as Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

Cyber City Oedo 808 deals with three cyber cops in the year 2808. At the start of the first episode they are criminals, serving 300-year sentences in an orbital prison. A very unpleasant place to be. They are offered a way out, of a sort. If they change sides and join the Cyber Police they can gradually get their sentences reduced. There are a few catches. The big one is that they will be fitted with explosive collars. If they disobey orders their heads will be blown off.

It’s not an overly enticing prospect but it’s better than rotting in an orbital prison. Sengoku, Goggles, and Benten agree to the terms.

This is very much in the cyberpunk mould. As you would accept for an anime made in 1990 there are obvious influences from William Gibson’s Sprawl novels and the movie Blade Runner.

The setting is a vast city controlled entirely by computers. The nerve centre of the city is the Space Scraper. It’s like a skyscraper but it’s so tall the upper stories are almost outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

There’s a healthy dose of cyberpunk paranoia. The Cyber Police might be the good guys but their chief Hasegawa is a somewhat nasty piece of work who relies on manipulation and fear. He isn’t interested in winning the loyalty of the trio. They do what they’re told or he’ll kill them. But he’s still one of the good guys - good guys don’t have to be nice guys. I think that’s a nice touch.

The military is not to be trusted. Government is to be regarded with a degree of cynicism.

Some of the themes hinted at here, such as the absolute dependence on technology and the effects of technology on our humanity, would surface in later cyberpunk animes like Ghost in the Shell (1995) and the excellent 2002 TV series Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex.

Cyber City Oedo 808 was made at a time when anime dealing with dark grown-up subjects was still a fairly new thing and Yoshiaki Kawajiri was one of the pioneers of this more ambitious approach. It was also a time when anime was just starting to gain a major following in English-speaking markets.

There’s plenty of action and with only 45 minutes to tell each story the pacing is pleasingly brisk. There are almost none of the erotic elements that you find in Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s later films. There is however some moderately graphic violence.

The visuals are very impressive (as they are in all of Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s work).

Interestingly there are hints of the paranormal and even perhaps the supernatural.

Each story focuses on one of the three main characters. They’re all criminals and outsiders and misfits but they are rather different. Sengoku is more of a classic rebel. Goggles is the tough guy but he has emotional depths. Benten is more of a dreamy mystical romantic although he can be pretty dangerous as well. He does cute things with piano wire.

Since the three characters are quite different each of the three segments has a different flavour. The three segments were originally released separately on video in Japan. English-speaking audiences got to see them with crude English dubs that had almost no connection with the original dialogue and which removed all the essential atmosphere of mystery and tragedy. If you’ve only seen Cyber City Oedo 808 in the English-dubbed version then you haven’t seen it at all.

Memories of the Past

The first episode is Memories of the Past (AKA Virtual Death AKA Time Bomb). In this story the focus is on Sengoku. A hacker has taken control of all the Space Scraper’s security systems and he has fifteen hostages trapped in an external elevator. The hacker’s identity is unknown but he is clearly after revenge. The three reluctant cyber cops have to stop him before he kills the hostages and destroys the Space Scraper, and without the Space Scraper the city cannot survive.

Sengoku manages to find a way into the Space Scraper but he soon finds himself unsure of the identity of the real villain. There may be more than one.

This episode has a decent plot with the sorts of twists that you want to see in a cyberpunk story. 

This is a straight-out action story.

The Decoy Program

The Decoy Program (AKA Psychic Trooper AKA The Decoy) begins with separate cases being investigated by the individual members of the team but there seems to be a common link and it points to the involvement of Special Forces.

Goggles becomes the central character in this segment. He finds himself pitted against a secret weapon intended to be the ultimate killing machine. Lots of mayhem and spectacular fight scenes in this instalment but there’s paranoia and betrayal as well, and possibly forgiveness. Maybe even a hint of love. There’s certainly a theme of lost love and being haunted by the past.

This is by far the most violent segment. It’s a real grudge fight to the death. And when Goggles gets mad he gets real mad.

Crimson Media

Crimson Media (AKA Blood Lust AKA The Vampire) centres on Benten. He’s had an encounter with an entrancing and mysterious woman.

A series of murders has been blamed by the media on vampires. The corpses were drained of blood. Perhaps there are vampires, of a sort. And perhaps the worst vampires do more than feast on blood.

The murder victims were carrying out illegal research.

Again the past figures in the story. This story actually began three hundred years earlier.

Science fictional treatments of vampirism have been attempted a number of times although in 1990 it was still a fairly fresh idea. This is a story about vampires but it also becomes a kind of love story. This segment has much more of an atmosphere of mystery, weirdness and melancholy. It’s my favourite of the three.

Final Thoughts

It’s worth pointing out that Japanese OVAs were not low-budget schlock. They were less expensive to make than feature films but much more expensive than TV series. They were ideal for telling stories that might be too risky as feature films but were much too grown-up and edgy for TV. There was nothing cheap and nasty about them and directors like Yoshiaki Kawajiri did not see them as lesser productions.

Cyber City Oedo 808 offers plenty of style and plenty of action. The first episode is OK, the second and third are excellent. Overall this is top-tier cyberpunk. Highly recommended.

Happily the Blu-Ray (which looks terrific) includes the Japanese-language version with English subtitles which is the only way to see this release.

The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. - The Cornish Pixie Affair

Peter Leslie’s The Cornish Pixie Affair, published in 1967, was the fifth of the original novels based on the TV spy series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (although only the first two were published in the United States).

I’m rather fond of TV tie-in novels, especially the ones that are original stories rather than novelisations of TV episodes. They often have a subtly different tone compared to the TV series. They’re often darker and more violent, and sometimes sexier. The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. novels are definitely slightly more serious than the TV series. In fact the first of the novels, Michael Avallone’s The Birds of a Feather Affair, is very dark indeed.

Another fascinating feature of TV tie-in novels is that they often make explicit things that are only implied in the series. In some cases these are things that would not have been acceptable to the TV networks. In the case of The Cornish Pixie Affair we’re explicitly told that U.N.C.L.E. is politically strictly neutral, favouring neither the western powers nor the eastern bloc. That’s implied at times in the TV show but never explicitly stated.

Peter Leslie (1922-2007) was a reasonably prolific author who wrote quite a few TV tie-in novels based on various TV series including several The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Danger Man, The Invaders and The Avengers.

The Cornish Pixie Affair starts with a murder in a circus, always a good way to start a mystery or thriller story. The murder takes place in rural Cornwall. Sheila Duncan ran a concession stand in a travelling circus. She sold souvenirs. The murder might have been the result of a complicated romantic entanglement but what worries Mark Slate is that Sheila may have been murdered because she was a secret agent. She was in fact an U.N.C.L.E. agent and she was working on a case.

Ace U.N.C.L.E. agent April Dancer is sent to Cornwall to take charge. She talks her way into a job in the circus, taking over Sheila Duncan’s concession stall. There are clues but they seem to make things less clear. Why do so many people want to buy cheap black porphyry statuettes of Cornish pixies? Such statuettes don’t appear to exist, but people keep asking for them. And why are the little souvenir lighthouses made in such an odd way?

And what could possibly be the motive for the second murder?

April decides that engaging in some flirtation with one of the suspects might pay dividends, but she finds out that harmless flirtation can get a girl into a lot of trouble. A girl can end up chained in a dank cellar.

This is a perfectly competent spy thriller. The plot is not exactly dazzling but it’s serviceable.

April and Mark behave in ways that are generally consistent with what we know about them from the TV series (which is essential if you’re going to write a TV tie-in novel) although the novel would have benefited from a bit more witty banter between them.

April gets to make use of plenty of gadgets. It’s amazing what can be done with the things women carry around in their handbags. Or at least the the things April carries around in her handbag.

It’s all fairly straightforward with very little in the way of outlandishness. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. The books lacks the silliness that marred so many of the TV episodes but it lacks the subtle touches of the outrageous that made the good episodes so enjoyable. The circus setting is used quite well.

There’s a reasonable amount of action and suspense. It picks up steam in a major way towards the end with quite a bit of mayhem and some tense race-against-time stuff.

Overall it’s a book that fans of the series should enjoy. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed three of the other Girl from U.N.C.L.E. novels - Michael Avallone’s The Birds of a Feather Affair, Simon Latter’s The Global Globules Affair (which is great fun) and The Golden Boats of Taradata Affair (also by Simon Latter).