David McDaniel’s The Prisoner: Who is Number 2?

David McDaniel’s Who is Number 2? was the second of the original novels based on The Prisoner TV series.

Like the first novel, Thomas M. Disch’s The Prisoner, it appears to take place some time after the events of the TV series.

The hero wakes up as usual in his London flat. Through the window he can see his beloved Lotus Seven S2 parked in the street. It’s just a normal day. Then he steps outside the front door and finds himself back in The Village. His London flat has been recreated in The Village.

And he meets the latest Number Two. A rather amiable Number Two. And rather indulgent. Number Six discovers that his car has even been brought to The Village. The narrow roads of The Village are designed for the little electric carts that are used there and can’t accommodate a proper car. But Number Two has arranged to have a miniature racing circuit built in The Village. And when Number Six takes it upon himself to extend the circuit he encounters no opposition.

Being a professional spy Number Six tends to be a pretty suspicious sort of fellow. He’s even suspicious of the cat that has now adopted him. The cat could be working for Number Two. It appears to be a real cat but you can never be sure.

Needless to say Number Six immediately comes up with an ingenious escape plan, involving the car. It will require an immense amount of work and planning but Number Six enjoys that sort of thing.

Number Six has reached certain conclusions. He is obviously in no danger, being considered far too important to be killed or damaged in any way. It’s also clear that he is being indulged, that Number Two’s objective is to provide Number Six with sufficient entertainment and stimulation to possibly reconcile himself to remaining in The Village. Number Two my have other agendas of his own as well. You can never be sure.

One interesting aspect to this novel is that it suggests an extra layer of complexity to Number Six’s character. He was not merely a British spy. He was an assassin. And Number Two suspects that Number Six has quite a bit of unresolved guilt as a result.

This novel answers two of the questions that vex Prisoner fans so much. Most importantly it answers the question - is Number Six actually John Drake from Danger Man? Or at least it answers the question assuming that you regard this novel as part of the official canon of The Prisoner. And that depends very much on whether the novel was approved by Patrick McGoohan.

Any espionage story takes place in an atmosphere of deception and ambiguity. You cannot be sure of anyone’s loyalty. You have to assume that nothing is quite as it seems to be. This atmosphere was present to some degree in Danger Man, a series to which The Prisoner may or may not have been a sequel. The Prisoner however really ramps up the paranoia and the sense that nothing is even remotely what it seems to be. There is no way of knowing if anything at all in this series is reality in a straightforward way. You start to doubt whether anything is reality in any sense of the word.

And it’s the nature of a series such as this that even when the plot is resolved it just raises more questions and doubts. You might still be stuck in an endless loop of non-reality.

The authors of the first two Prisoner novels understood this and they weren’t trying to write conventional spy thrillers. They were trying to remain consistent with the slightly surreal and very enigmatic nature of the series. I think they both succeed pretty well. Disch is more ambitious and pushes the weirdness much further but McDaniel is very good at subtly getting across to the reader that Number Six understands that he cannot believe in anything at all.

Who is Number 2? is pretty entertaining. If you’re not familiar with the TV series you won’t have a clue what’s going on. But if you are a fan of the TV series it’s worth reading and it’s recommended.

David McDaniel also wrote Man from U.N.C.L.E. original novels including The Dagger Affair which is rather good.

I’ve also reviewed the first of The Prisoner novels, Thomas M. Disch’s The Prisoner (later reissued as I Am Not a Number!). And I’ve reviewed The Prisoner (1967-68) TV series. And the Danger Man series.

Anyone who is a fan of The Prisoner must of course watch the brilliant Danger Man episode Colony Three.

The Dain Curse (1978 TV mini-series)

The Dain Curse is a U.S. television mini-series which originally screened on CBS in 1978. It comprises three feature-length episodes. James Coburn stars as private detective Hamilton Nash.

It is based on Dashiell Hammett’s second published novel, The Dain Curse. The novel was published in book form in 1929 but had been serialised in the Black Mask pulp magazine in 1928.

The TV retains the time setting of the novel and that is important. These events take place in 1928, before the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. This is a Jazz Age story, not a Depression-era story.

The hero of the novel is known only as the Continental Op. He figures in two of Hammett’s novels and many of his short stories. In the TV mini-series he is given the name Hamilton Nash (and is played by James Coburn).

It’s worth pointing out that there’s a good reason that Hammett’s private eye stories have an air of authenticity. Hammett spent seven years as a private detective, working for the world’s most famous detective agency, the Pinkerton Detective Agency. That’s also why the hero of The Dain Curse is not a Philip Marlowe-style down-at-heel PI working alone out of a seedy office. Nash works for a very big agency and judging by his fancy clothes he is very well paid. It’s also why he works as part of a team of operatives.

If you’re not familiar with the novel you might think that they’ve added a lot of 70s elements such as dope addiction and the crazy religious cult, but that stuff is all in the novel. It’s easy to forget that drugs were a big thing in the 1920s and that wacky religious cults had been around since the late 19th century. And phoney mystics fleecing foolish rich people were a huge thing in the 1920s.

It starts as an insurance investigation. There was a burglary of some diamonds but the stones were small and of very poor quality and hardly worth stealing. The burglary occurred at the Leggett house. The daughter, Gabrielle (Nancy Addison), seems rather strange. The whole household is strange. Nash doesn’t think there was any burglary.

Then comes the first murder and the plot is soon getting quite complicated. The Leggetts all have odd mysterious murky pasts and the past is more important to them than the present. There are secrets. Big secrets.

Nash solves the case to everyone’s satisfaction but his own. He knows that the solution doesn’t add up. This is the sort of thing that really bothers him.

At which point we need to talk about Hamilton Nash because he is not your stock-standard PI. He works for a big agency jealous of its reputation for honesty and integrity and that suits Nash because he has ethics. He also has professional pride. He believes in doing his job properly and thoroughly.

He’s not surprised to discover that this case has in fact only just begun.

There’s a connection to an obviously phoney religious cult run by the mysterious slightly sinister Aaronia Haldorn (Jean Simmons) and her husband Joseph. Joseph doesn’t just claim to be God. He believes he is God.

Nash gets some advice from his old friend Owen Fitzstephan (Jason Miller), a colourful author of occult potboilers.

There are romantic triangles and romantic quadrangles, lots of betrayals and of course everyone is telling lies.

Money is a motivation for some of the players in this complicated but jealousy, lust and an obsessive desire to preserve secrets are bigger motivations.

Nash is in danger of getting emotionally entangled with Gabrielle which, given her morphine addiction and general craziness, may not be a good idea.

And then there’s the Dain Curse. A family curse going back centuries. Gabrielle has Dain blood.

And this is just the first episode! There are two more to come. With countless plot twists.

James Coburn’s star quality is clearly in evidence but he’s called upon to do some real acting here and acquits himself well. He bears little resemblance to Hammett’s Continental Op and it’s best to think of Hamilton Nash as essentially a new character devised for the TV production. What matters is that Coburn has plenty of charm and he doesn’t play Nash as a straightforward tough guy.

Nancy Addison does a fine job as Gabrielle. It’s a tricky part. We have to be sympathetic to her even though she’s exasperating and she has to keep us guessing as to how far Gabrielle can be trusted.

This was an expensive and lavish production and it looks terrific. The makers wanted a cinematic look and had major battles with the network over the issue but for the most part they got their way. It does look a lot more cinematic than typical American television productions of that era.

The problems with this mini-series are actually inherent in the source material. The novel was in fact four short stories cobbled together so it’s very episodic. 

The mini-series is therefore also very episodic. There’s no one clear central plot strand and overall there’s a bit too much plot.

Fortunately there’s enough wild stuff to keep things interesting and I enjoyed The Dain Curse a good deal. Highly recommended.

The Image Entertainment DVD release is still fairly easy to get hold of and don’t be put off by the fact that it’s DVD. It really looks very very nice. 

Most importantly the three episodes are complete and uncut (there was a heavily butchered version floating around at one time).