The Prisoner TV tie-in novel

In 1969 and 1970 three original novels based upon the television series The Prisoner were published by Ace Books. Since there is some ambiguity about their place in the timeline of the series it’s probably a very sound idea to watch the series before reading the novels. In the case of the first novel you really must be at least vaguely familiar with the TV series. That doesn’t mean you need to rewatch the entire series before reading it, but you need to know what the series is about.

The first of the novels is The Prisoner (later reissued as I Am Not a Number!) which was written by Thomas M. Disch. Disch was a prominent figure in American New Wave science fiction in the 60s. Given that The Prisoner has a very slight science fictional flavour and that New Wave SF tended to be paranoid and edgy Disch was perhaps a fairly appropriate writer for the assignment.

A man and a woman are having dinner in a restaurant. The relationship between them is not entirely clear but there’s some heavy flirting going on. The man has just quit his job. The woman is surprised that he was allowed to do so. He has bought himself a little cottage, a converted gatehouse, in Pembroke in Wales. He has only seen photographs of the cottage but he is sure it will suit him. He has spent the day looking at the furniture he would love to buy for his new home but it’s all hopelessly out of his price range. He will have to be content with cheaper more utilitarian furnishings.

He boards the train for Pembroke. A taxi takes him to a village which is disturbing in its excessive attempts at cuteness and cosiness. He had never been here before but it seems oddly but subtly familiar. He spots his cottage. It looks just as it did in the photos. He attaches no significance to the number 6 on the door. He is puzzled to find that all his furniture is there - the furniture he had fantasised about buying. The furniture that nobody had known that he desired.

He quickly discovers that he is a prisoner. Everybody in the Village is either a prisoner or a jailer but there is no telling which are which. Everybody is referred to by a number. He is Number 6. The person in charge is Number 2.

So it begins exactly as does the TV series, except that it’s not quite the same. There’s that  slight feeling that he’s been here before. If you’re familiar with the TV series you will know what’s going on, except for Number 6’s feeling of déjà vu. There’s something else going on here. And Number 6 has some strange gaps in his memory.

Of course if you know the TV series you know that Number 6 is a British secret agent who has quit the Secret Service. Disch obviously assumes that you do know the TV series and that you do know this but oddly (and I assume deliberately) the words spy or secret agent are never mentioned. Perhaps it’s those gaps in Number 6’s memory. He is obviously aware that he had worked for the government in some capacity connected with security or intelligence but perhaps he no longer remembers exactly what his job had been. Perhaps he no longer possesses the information that Number 2 wants.

When writing a TV tie-in novel it is essential to do nothing to undermine the premise of the TV series. Disch obeys this rule. There is nothing in the novel that is in any way in conflict with the TV series. It’s clearly the same Village. Number 6 is clearly the same Number 6. The themes of the novel are all present in the TV series. This is not a reboot or a re-imagining, but nor is it merely a retelling of the same story.

Disch has added nothing but has put slightly slightly more emphasis on aspects present or implicit in the series. Memory and identity become extremely important. Number 6 is desperately trying to cling to his sense of identity but if one loses parts of one’s memory one’s identity is in a sense threatened. That’s the case not just with Number 6 but with Number 41. She is the woman with whom he was having dinner at the beginning of the novel. Or she might be. Her name is really Liora. Or it might be. It might also be Lorna. How does she come to be in the Village? Is she a prisoner or a jailer? Can Number 6 trust her? Are any of the things she has told him true? And can she trust Number 6?

The paranoia goes deeper. There are things that are genuinely puzzling to Number 2. There are things about Number 6 that are not in line with Number 2’s expectations. And Number 2 also does not know whom he can trust. Even worse, he’s not sure if Number 1 trusts him.

So Disch amps up the paranoia and the sense of an intricate web of lies and deceptions, and the threat to identity. All of which are of course part and parcel of being a spy. And Disch handles these aspects with great skill.

And then Number 6 is persuaded to mount a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, after which things get seriously weird.

I’m not sure this novel could really be considered as strictly belonging to The Prisoner canon but it’s an interesting riff on the same theme and a wild crazy science fiction spy thriller. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed The Prisoner (1967-68) TV series.

The Time Tunnel by Murray Leinster

The Time Tunnel is a TV tie-in novel written by Murray Leinster. Quite a few well-known very good authors ended up writing such books as their usual markets started to dry up.

TV tie-in novels sometimes had a feel that was subtly different from the series. It was not unusual for the first tie-in novel associated with a series to be written before the series actually went to air, with the author having seen only the scripts and perhaps one or two episodes before they aired. That may be the case here. The novel is copyrighted 1966 and the series was first screened in September 1966. It does however capture the feel of the series fairly closely.

The Time Tunnel was a hugely entertaining TV series produced by Irwin Allen that was a bit cleverer than it seemed to be. The big problems with time travel stories are that there is no way to deal satisfactorily with time paradoxes and there’s the danger of extreme silliness. Various science fiction authors have tried to solve the time paradox problem but it’s a problem that can’t ever really be solved in a totally satisfying way.

The Time Tunnel TV series took an approach that was as good as any and better than most. You can try to change the past but no matter how hard you try you will fail and events end up playing out exactly as they did historically. The novel develops this approach in a slightly more complex way which is rather interesting.

The subject is an ultra top secret US Government project to develop a time travel device. The level of secrecy has backfired. The chairman of a senate committee that should have been informed about the project but wasn’t has found out about it and he’s hopping mad. He thinks it’s not just a waste of money but dangerous insanity and he intends to shut it down. I have to say that the senator’s objections make a lot of sense - the idea behind the project really is reckless to the point of madness.

To forestall the cancellation of the project one of the scientists, Dr Tony Newman, decides to use himself as a guinea pig. Everyone on the project is confident they can send a man into another time period. They’re not so confident they can bring him back.

Tony and another scientist, Dr Doug Phillips, end up marooned in time. In fact they’re marooned in various times. There is no way to predict where and when they will end up, and seemingly no way for them to get back to the present day.

Tony’s urgent problem is that he’s in 1889 and he’s about to be a witness to a horrific dam collapse (the famous Johnstown Flood disaster) which historically killed thousands of people. His scientific instincts tell him he must not interfere. His human instincts tell him that he must at least try to avert the disaster. This leads to a very unexpected consequence.

The dangers are not over for Tony and Doug. Having escaped one time period they find themselves potentially in the middle of a massacre in another.

One could object that an ethical scientist with a proper sense of responsibility would not behave the way Tony behaves, but who ever heard of an ethical scientist with a proper sense of responsibility? History is littered with examples of scientists giving no thought at all to the consequences of their scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs.

And Tony is human. Give what seems to be a chance to be a hero and a benefactor he succumbs to temptation, and probably any man (or woman) would succumb to such a temptation.

The challenge for the writer is that we know what is going to happen. We know that the disastrous Johnstown Flood is going to happen. Somehow the writer still has to create an atmosphere of suspense. Leinster does this pretty well. Leinster was in fact a very fine science fiction writer.

This is an enjoyable read that has most of the strengths of the TV series. The characterisation is not exactly deep but it does at least hint at a few ethical issues. Highly recommended.

Murray Leinster wrote a number of these TV tie-in novels including The Invaders, based on the excellent series of the same name. He wrote some superb short stories - I highly recommend the collection The Best of Murray Leinster.

I’ve reviewed The Time Tunnel TV series, in a two-part review. The first part is here, the second here.

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.

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).

E.C. Tubb’s Space: 1999 Rogue Planet (TV tie-in novel)

E.C. Tubb’s Rogue Planet, published in 1977, was the ninth of the Space: 1999 TV tie-in novels. It is an original novel, not a novelisation of episodes from the TV series. It’s based on Year One of the TV series.

E.C. Tubb was a prolific British science fiction writer. He wrote several Space: 1999 novels.

It’s relaxation time for the crew of Moonbase Alpha. They’re enjoying an amateur performance of Hamlet, but when the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears they see and hear something strange, something Shakespeare certainly did not write. It’s a warning that Moonbase Alpha is heading for danger. But every member of the audience saw and heard something different. And every member of the audience agrees that what they saw and heard was terrifying.

Was it some kind of mass delusion? Was it some mysterious message beamed from somewhere in space? Not long afterwards some kind of temporary collective madness afflicts the Alphans. It passes, but again it was terrifying and inexplicable.

Moonbase Alpha’s commander, John Koenig, wants answers. The base’s chief scientist Victor Bergman and chief medical officer Dr Helena Russell cannot provide answers, only speculation. Alpha’s instruments can detect nothing threatening.

Then the brain appears. It can’t be a brain of course, but it looks like one. An enormous brain the size of a planet. And Moonbase Alpha is trapped in a separate miniature universe. There appears to be no escape but some means of escape must be found. One crew member has already died of old age and he was only thirty-two. The same fate may await all of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha.

Space: 1999 was a great series (or at least Year One was great) but you do have to accept the outrageous premise of the series - the Moon being thrown out of orbit and hurtling through space at an absurd speed like a gigantic spaceship. You also have to accept the idea that in the almost unimaginable vastness and emptiness of space they keep encountering countless planets and alien spacecraft. But then the science fiction genre as a whole requires a huge suspension of disbelief. If you love science fiction you learn to accept some wacky science.

The novel captures the feel of the series extremely well. The principal characters - Commander Koenig, Dr Russell, Professor Bergman, chief Eagle pilot Alan Carter etc - behave the way they behave in the TV series. There’s the same mix of space adventure and reasonably cool science fiction concepts.

There’s a reasonable amount of emphasis on Koenig’s responsibilities as commander and the need to be strong and decisive while always bearing in mind that he’s dealing with people not machines. Similarly with Dr Russell there’s emphasis on the awesome responsibilities she has to shoulder alone.

Tubb’s prose is straightforward but pleasing enough.

It’s a very entertaining story with a few serious touches. The crew of Moonbase Alpha have to confront the imminent threats of death (death from accelerated ageing which is certainly a very frightening prospect) and madness. Death is ever-present in this story, in varying forms.

Space: 1999 was not a series that offered spectacular space battles. It offered action, but the action was more likely to be battles against strange unseen alien forces rather than hostile star fleets. This novel follows the same sort of formula. There are narrow escapes from mortal danger but the dangers in this case come from strange force fields and from being trapped in caverns and suchlike things.

This novel also offers us an alien life form that is genuinely alien.

Rogue Planet is a very decent science fiction novel. If you’re a fan of the TV series you’ll enjoy and even if you’ve never seen the series you’ll probably find it entertaining. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed one of Tubb’s other Space: 1999 novels, Alien Seed (which is excellent). I’ve also reviewed another Space: 1999 novel, John Rankine’s Android Planet (which is quite good).

Callan Uncovered

Callan Uncovered is a collection of the Callan short stories written by James Mitchell. Mitchell was the creator and main scriptwriter for Callan, probably the most acclaimed TV spy series of all time. The book also includes a complete script for an episode that was never made plus a treatment for another unmade episode.

The first of the stories (a Christmas assassination tale) was written for TV Times in 1967, shortly after David Callan made his screen debut in A Magnum for Schneider and at about the time that the first season of Callan started airing. The other twenty-four short stories appeared in the Sunday Express over the next few years.

Callan was a spy series that was character rather than plot-driven. The focus was on the psychology of British government assassin David Callan, a killer who no longer enjoyed killing. There’s also an emphasis on the fact that Callan’s victims are not just targets. They are real people. They have wives, and daughters. They have the normal human hopes and fears. In order to carry out his assignments Callan has to get close to his victims which makes it impossible not to see them as real people.

The problem with these stories is that they were written for newspaper publication and they therefore are fairly short short stories with not a lot of scope for characterisation. In fact some of the stories are really just vignettes. They’re mood pieces. They do however manage to capture the cynical seedy paranoid atmosphere of the series.

I’m assuming that these stories are reprinted in roughly the order in which they were written. I suspect that this is so because the quality of the stories gradually improves. It seems as if Mitchell took a while to get a handle on the very short story format. The first half dozen stories are pretty then but after that Mitchell really hits his stride and gives us some very punchy, twisted, dark and cynical tales.

In fact the mood is more cynical than the TV series. The whole point of the TV series is that in the Cold War the good guys weren’t much better than the bad guys. In these stories it’s hard not to see the British intelligence services as out-and-out bad guys. This is the British government not just assassinating foreign agents but brutally murdering British citizens who are often quite innocent merely because their existence is potentially inconvenient to the government. It’s pretty chilling stuff. Hunter is sinister and creepy enough in the TV series but in some of these stories he is clearly evil, and it’s the worst sort of evil, the evil that cloaks itself in high principles which in reality are nothing more than expediency.

Mitchell takes the opportunity to do the occasional quirky story which would not have worked on TV. A story like File on a Careful Cowboy would have come across as slightly surreal on TV and that’s not consistent with the overall tone of the series.

The Stories

In File on a Deadly Deadshot six men enjoying a weekend of shooting. One is the intended target of an assassin. One of the others is the assassin, and Callan has to find out which one. There’s a bit of an attempt in this story to flesh out the Callan-Hunter relationship.

In File on an Angry Artist Callan gets a surveillance job. A struggling artist with a major anger problem may be in possession of top-secret documents.

In File on a Reckless Rider it seems like members of a fox hunt are being targeted but maybe there’s more to it.

File on a Weeping Widow is better developed than most of these stories. The widow of a racing car driver is suspected of espionage but the suspicions are very vague. It’s enough to get her a Red File, but Hunter is prepared to be convinced that she’s clean. Callan’s job is to find evidence to clear her. Callan gets personally involved, in fact he falls in love with the woman. Hunter isn’t totally heartless. If she turns out to be a spy he won’t ask Callan to kill her. He’ll get Meres to do it instead.

File on an Angry Actor presents Callan with a rather unusual assignment. It’s not often that the Section’s target for assassination is a famous movie star. Callan gets a job working on the star’s latest movie and Lonely gets work as an extra.

File on a Lucky Lady is the most successful of the stories so far. Callan has to keep a rich girl alive and unharmed. Hunter fears she may be kidnapped in order to put pressure on here fabulously wealthy father. There’s a bit more action and excitement in this story.

File on a Dancing Decoy introduces Callan to the world of ballet. A Russian ballerina defected a while back but why was it so easy for her? Is she being used?

The diary concerned in File on a Deadly Diary was kept by the late husband of Lady Black. Diaries of important people are always likely to prove embarrassing to someone. In this case there are lots of nasty people who want the diary. Some want to publish it. Some want to suppress it. Including some unexpected interested groups.

File on a Classy Club. The club is a gambling club. Very exclusive. Callan finds he is now a member. His assignment is to lose money. Lots of money. He assumes Hunter has some good reason wanting this to happen but in this case there are several important things that Hunter does not know. And if there’s one thing that upsets Hunter it’s things happening that he doesn’t know about.

Callan finds himself at a health farm in File on a Fearsome Farm, which isn’t much fun except for the dishy Natasha Biscayne.

File on a Careful Cowboy takes Callan to the Wild West. Well actually it’s a dude ranch in the south of France. A senior Mafiosi likes to live out gunslinger fantasies. Callan and Meres find themselves having to enact a classic western showdown scene.

Sometimes Callan’s job involves killing people but sometimes it requires him to keep someone alive, and sometimes that’s even more unpleasant. That’s the case in File on a Doomed Defector, the defector being someone who richly deserves killing.

In File on a Pining Poet Callan discovers that even economists can fall in love, but sometimes important economists fall in love with KGB agents.

File on a Powerful Picador gets Callan mixed up with matadors and picadors and dangerous women.

File on a Difficult Don takes Callan to Oxford. A brilliant young don who breaks codes for the Section is causing Hunter a good deal of concern. The East Germans might be about to snatch him. Callan has to pose as a military historian, which he does quite successfully. But he may have misread the situation pertaining to that troublesome don.

File on a Darling Daughter involves a general and his junkie daughter and a drug-pusher who is mixed up in espionage. Meres gets the opportunity to indulge his tastes for sadism and torture.

Callan hates working with amateurs and in File on an Awesome Amateur that’s just what he has to do. He’s also not sure why a poet should be so important. Nice to see the CIA as the bad guys in this one.

File on a Joyous Juliet deals with a pretty young actress who is having an affair with an older married man. That older man just happens to have developed a horrifying new nerve gas. And he has a possessive wife. All of which makes Hunter very nervous.

File on a Mourning Mother involves a young man, now deceased, who had a secret. In fat several secrets. What matters to Hunter is how many other people shared these little secrets. A very dark cynical story.

Dealing with the KGB is hard enough but in File on an Angry American Hunter has the CIA to deal with and that’s much trickier. And Hunter doesn’t like the idea of the CIA killing people in Britain. There’s another reason that Hunter is very unhappy about this case, as Callan will find out.

In File on a Deadly Don Callan has to kill a mafiosi on his home turf. It’s a job he’d rather not take on but Hunter has private reasons for wanting this kill.

In File on a Tired Traitor Hunter wants Callan to bring in Alfred Dawes, accused of treason twenty-seven years earlier. It seems that for a lot of people the past cannot stay buried.

File on a Harassed Hunter takes Hunter out of the office, in fact for this case he plays the part of Callan’s sidekick. And he hasn’t forgotten how to use a gun. This is one of several stories which give us tantalising glimpses into Hunter’s personal life.

File on a Beautiful Boxer concerns rich playboy Rod Mercer who designs marine engines. The Israelis bought some and decided they were faulty, so they’re going to kill him. The Admiralty likes the engines and wants Mercer kept alive, so it’s Callan’s job to make sure he stays alive. A nice little story.

Goodbye Mary Lee is the unmade script. It would be interesting to know when it was written. Hunter is several times referred to as Colonel Hunter, which only happens in the early episodes which suggests it’s an early script. Callan appears to have left the Section. Meres is mentioned, but doesn’t appear in the story. It’s hard to guess just where this episode was intended to be slotted in.

Callan has fallen in love with an American senator’s daughter who just happens to be mixed up in every fashionable radical cause going. And she may have involved herself in espionage.

The CIA wants Hunter to get the girl, Mary Lee, out of the way (not killed, you can’t go around killing senators’ daughters). Hunter has no idea that Mary Lee has a boyfriend, and his name is David Callan.

There are lots of double-crosses in this episode as Callan tries desperately to keep his new lady love out of trouble. He’s hoping he won’t have to kill anybody. It’s a typically cynical Callan episode content-wise.

Final Thoughts

There was a Callan movie, a somewhat later TV-movie, several novels and these short stories but Callan always worked best as a TV series. TV in the late 60s/early 70s was the perfect medium for creating the enclosed paranoid seedy atmosphere that the series required.

But having said that the short stories are enjoyable and interesting in being even more cynical than the series. Highly recommended.

I've also reviewed the Callan novel Russian Roulette.

Patrick Macnee's Dead Duck (Avengers tie-in novel)

Dead Duck is an original novel inspired by the TV series The Avengers. It was published in 1966 and written by Patrick Macnee. At least Macnee’s name appears on the cover as the author. Of course he didn’t write it. The book seems to have been written by Peter Leslie who wrote some very decent TV tie-in novels. It is just within the bounds of possibility that Macnee may have had some slight input into the book.

Dead Duck was actually the second Avengers novel credited to Macnee, the first being Deadline in 1965.

Steed takes Mrs Peel to lunch, to a very swish French restaurant. He has told her that the duck is divine. One of the other customers would tend to disagree -he has a couple of bites of his duck and keels over dead.

It seems to have been a heart attack. For some reason Steed is suspicious (he sees a man handing over a package to a girl just after the unfortunate diner’s demise) and does some checking. There have been rather a lot of deaths from heart attacks in this part of East Anglia recently. A lot more than one would normally expect.

The victims all have one thing in common. They have all recently eaten, and all have eaten duck.

The story feels like an Avengers yarn. There’s a poacher. With a beautiful daughter who tends to point guns at people. There are two odd old men conducting research - on birds. There’s an old house surrounded by elaborate but oddly childish booby-traps.

Steed and Mrs Peel go both undercover, Steed as a journalist and Emma as a housemaid.

The story gets more Avengers-like. Steed engages in a life-or-death struggle with a bird. There’s mention of a sinister but mysterious character named Worthington whom nobody sees. There’s a South American connection. And there’s a horrifying conspiracy involving, naturally, birds.

There are two villains and they’re fine Avengers villains.

Steed finds that his gadget-loaded umbrella comes in very handy indeed. Not to mention his armoured bowler hat.

The tone strikes the right mock-serious note. And Steed’s plan to unmask the conspiracy is absurdly far-fetched but amusing.

And there are the right touches of Avengers surrealism.

A good TV tie-in novel has to get the characters right. They have to be convincing as the characters from the TV series. This novel certainly gets Steed right. It gets Mrs Peel right in terms of personality but she’s not quite as much of an action heroine as she is in the TV series. She doesn’t get sufficient opportunities to strut her stuff and demonstrate her prowess in unarmed combat.

There’s some of the witty repartee between Steed and Mrs Peel that you expect, but perhaps not quite enough.

These are minor quibbles. It’s an engagingly offbeat story with a fine crazy finale. Fans of the TV series should enjoy this novel. Recommended.

The only other Avengers novel I’ve read is a later one, Keith Laumer’s The Drowned Queen (which features Tara King), and it was quite good.

Peter Leslie also wrote a couple of the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. novels.

Mediterranean Caper (It Takes a Thief tie-in novel #2)

Published in 1969, Mediterranean Caper was the second TV tie-in novel based on the very successful 1968-1970 American TV spy series It Takes a Thief.

It was written by Gil Brewer, much better remembered as one of the great hardboiled/noir writers of the 1950s.

If you’ve never seen the TV series (and if you haven’t you should because it’s terrific) Al Mundy is a cat burglar facing a long prison sentence. One of those shadowy US intelligence agencies offers him a deal - he can stay out of prison if he agrees to steal for the government. He finds himself, very reluctantly, working as a spy.

He doesn’t like it. The SIA (the agency in question) is pretty ruthless. They offered him his freedom but he isn’t free at all. He’s under permanent house arrest and he has to do whatever they tell him to do. Sometimes he thinks prison would have been better - criminals have better ethical standards than intelligence agencies. But he has no choice.

Looking at it another way, he has no skills other than being an extremely accomplished thief and at least he gets to do what he does best. And his missions always seem to bring him in contact with beautiful glamorous women. Al likes beautiful glamorous women. And they tend to like him.

In this case he has to steal a coded formula and he has to rescue a Soviet defector named Marina. Her defection went wrong and she’s fallen into the hands of the KGB. She’s being held somewhere in Marseilles. And the Red Chinese are after her as well.

And, as luck would have it, this Soviet defector happens to be a beautiful glamorous woman.

This mission turns out to be a very easy one. Too easy. He gets the formula but he loses it. He gets the girl but she’s the wrong girl.

It gets worse. Not only has Marina been captured, the bad guys have Miss Agnew as well. Miss Agnew is Al’s parole officer but she also works for SIA. She’s more or less his keeper. Al has a thing for Miss Agnew. His feelings are not reciprocated but that doesn’t worry Al. He’s sure that eventually his charm will win her over. But now she’s in the hands of a madman, the fiendish Red Chinese spymaster Hu Yang who has an obsession with American women. Al has a fair idea what Hu Yang plans to do to Miss Agnew and it isn’t a pretty thought.

TV tie-in novels were often written by authors who had only seen the original outline for the series in question and maybe the first couple of episodes. Sometimes they hadn’t seen a single episode. As a result the tie-in novels often have a slightly different feel compared to the TV series. Sometimes they’re a bit sleazier. That’s not the case here. But this novel does have more of a Bond movie feel than the series. Hu Yang is very much a Bond villain.

Brewer certainly does know how to tell an action-packed tale.

The Al Mundy of the TV series is a charming rogue and Brewer gets that part right. The character in the book is recognisable as the character from the TV series.

Brewer also captures the essential element of the series - Al is very unhappy about working for SIA. Al’s moral standards are flexible but he’s basically a decent guy. He likes stealing but he’s not keen on violence unless he has no alternative. In this novel Al really doesn’t care about the secret formula. He’s not unpatriotic but he’s not overly patriotic either. Politics bores and disgusts him. He does however very much dislike the idea of pretty girls falling into the hands of lust-crazed madmen. His main motivations are to do what he has to do to avoid getting sent back to prison and to rescue the two girls. If the SIA ends up getting that formula then that’s fine but Al doesn’t care.

Brewer was a noir writer so the idea of writing about a man forced into spying against his will would have had some appeal to him.

Mediterranean Caper is lightweight but it’s fun and breezy. Highly recommended, especially if you’re a fan of the TV show.

I reviewed the first season of It Takes a Thief a while back.

I’ve also reviewed a couple of Gil Brewer’s noir novels, The Three-Way Split and The Vengeful Virgin.

Robert Miall's UFO-1 Flesh Hunters

UFO-1 Flesh Hunters was the first of two novelisations of Gerry Anderson’s 1970 sci-fi TV series UFO. Both were written by John Burke under the name Robert Miall. UFO-1 Flesh Hunters was published in 1970. This was a novelisation rather than an original novel and was based on the episodes Identified, Exposed, Close Up and Court Martial.

John Burke (1922-2011) wrote countless novelisations of movies and TV series in the 60s and 70s, including Moon Zero Two, based on Hammer’s extremely interesting movie of the same name. The Moon Zero Two novelisation is actually pretty good.

UFO was not just a fun alien invasion science fiction series - it also had a bit more psychological complexity than you might expect. A lot of the focus was on the personal price that had to be paid by people working for a top-secret organisation (called SHADO) set up to defend Earth from murderous attacks by UFOs. In particular there was a focus on the loneliness of command. The head of this organisation, Commander Straker, has to make frighteningly difficult decisions and he has to make those decisions alone. Even some of his subordinate commanders, such as Lieutenant Ellis (in charge of Moonbase), have to be prepared to sacrifice their personal lives if necessary. It was a surprisingly character-driven series.

The author spends the first third of the book giving us the setup - governments have known for years that alien invaders have reached Earth but they have to make sure that the public knows nothing about this, in order to prevent panic. Test pilot Paul Foster blunders across the truth, and he will face consequences.

While this part of the book necessarily involves a lot of info-dumps it’s hard to see how that cold have been avoided. Anybody who had seem the first few episodes of the series would have known all this stuff, but anybody who had started watching the series several episodes in, or anybody who hadn’t yet watched the series, was going to need to have the show’s fairly complicated premise explained.

Fans of the series would not have minded since one of the things they liked about UFO is that it wasn’t totally action-oriented.

The book also gives us an introduction to the most important characters from the series. Straker, the most interesting character of all, remains a bit of an enigma but that’s the type of man he is. He does not reveal his emotions. Not ever.

SHADO’s biggest frustration is that they have no idea why the aliens are attacking Earth. Then they get a lucky break. They recover an alien from a wrecked UFO. This answers some of their questions, and the answers are terrifying. And what they’ve learned just serves to raise more questions.

There’s a major security leak in SHADO, and there’s an ambitious plan by SHADO to discover the home planet of the aliens.

Burke shuffles the sequence of events around a little, with events from the second episode taking place before events from the opening episode. He has legitimate dramatic reasons for doing this however.

I generally enjoy TV tie-in novels but I have a strong preference for original novels based on a series rather than novelisations and this book is a good example of the potential problems with novelisations. It’s based on four episodes of the series and the novel is therefore very episodic with no strong narrative thread tying things together. Originally novels are often interesting because they offer a writer a chance to explore characters and situation in more depth and from slightly different perspectives. This book does not do this. We learn no more about the characters than we learn from watching the series. In fact, give the high standard of acting in the series and in particular given Ed Bishop’s subtle performance as Straker we actually learn a good deal less about the characters from the novel. The novel also feels incredibly rushed with no real dramatic tension or suspense.

While my experiences with original novels based on TV series has generally been quite positive I was rather disappointed by this book. The events described in the book seemed so much more interesting when watching them on the screen.

Unless you’re totally obsessive about collecting UFO memorabilia you’d be well advised to skip this book.

John Theydon’s Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (TV tie-in novel)

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons was the first of three TV tie-novels accompanying Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s TV series of the same name. Written by John William Jennison (1911-1980) under the name John Theydon the novel appeared in 1967.

If you’re thinking of reading this book I’m assuming you’re a fan of the TV series (which I reviewed here a few years ago).

Earth attacked and destroyed a Martian city after a series of misunderstandings (and driven to a large extent by panic). The Mysterons, the masters of the city, recreated it and are now undertaking a program of vengeance against the Earth. Earth’s only effective defence is an international security organisation known as Spectrum. The Mysterons have the power to destroy things (and people) and then recreate them. People recreated in this way are effectively slaves of the Mysterons. Spectrum does however have one ace up its sleeve. One of their operatives, Captain Scarlet, was Mysteronised but is no longer a slave of the Mysterons, and he is indestructible.

The novel concerns an attempt by the Mysterons to disrupt the world’s weather (a popular science fictional idea in the 60s that was also utilised in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).

The Mysterons make use of a bitter scientific rivalry between Professor Deitz (who believes the world’s weather can be controlled by satellites) and Professor Stahndahl (who believes he can control the planet’s weather by bouncing a beam off a newly discovered electro-magnetic layer surrounding the Earth).

The first target of the Mysterons is London which gets hit with a tropical storm of extraordinary severity. Captain Scarlet and Rhapsody Angel (one of Spectrum’s five beautiful girl fighter pilots known as the Angels) are on leave in London at the time and are lucky to survive.

The next target is Florida. The most savage hurricane in history is just three hours from the coast. The only thing that Colonel White commander of Spectrum) can think of to do is to order three of the Angels to nuke the hurricane!

Colonel White suspects that one of Professor Deitz’s for weather-control satellites has been destroyed and recreated by the Mysterons and is responsible for the weather chaos. That satellite has to be intercepted and destroyed but destroying something that has been Mysteronised is no easy task. There is a way the satellite could be destroyed but it will be risky.

Unfortunately for Spectrum the Mysterons’ plan is actually much more devious than just hijacking a satellite. Somehow Captain Scarlet will have to find the secret laboratory from which all the damage is being done. Captain Scarlet’s indestructibility will be put to the test during this adventure.

Theydon was obviously aiming to include as much as possible of the high-tech Spectrum equipment featured in the series. The Angel Interceptors, the Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles (kind of like high-speed wheeled super-tanks) and the Spectrum Passenger Jets all feature in this tale. He also clearly wanted to find ways to work into the story as many as possible of the show’s main characters - Captain Scarlet and his buddy Captain Blue, Colonel White, all five Angels and of course the sinister Mysteron agent (and former Spectrum officer) Captain Black. Captain Scarlet’s indestructibility naturally has to play an important part. Theydon wants to throw everything into the mix and he does so pretty successfully.

There’s non-stop action, plenty of narrow escapes and lots of things get blown up. And some of them get blown up by nuclear weapons! Rhapsody Angel is captured by the Mysterons and has to be saved.

The plotting is frenetic and reasonably effective.

This is a book aimed at younger readers so there’s no sex and the violence is not too graphic. There is (as in the TV series) some mild flirtation between Captain Scarlet and one of the Angels but it’s all very wholesome. The tone is very close to that of the series.

Overall it’s a surprisingly entertaining little adventure. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re a fan of the TV series. Recommended.

Mission: Impossible (TV tie-in novel)

Considering how successful the series was it’s a little surprising that Mission: Impossible spawned only four TV tie-in novels (all of which were original stories). The first of these was Mission: Impossible by John Tiger. John Tiger was a pseudonym used by Walter Wager (1924-2004). I believe he also wrote I Spy TV tie-in novels.

This first tie-in novel is interesting because it’s based on the first season of the TV series, which means the Impossible Missions Force is led by Dan Briggs (played on TV by Steven Hill) rather than the better-known Mr Phelps of the subsequent seasons. Which is OK by me because the first season happens to be my favourite - I liked the fact that Dan Briggs seemed nothing at all like the popular idea of a secret agent. He could be an accountant, or a pharmacist. I’ve always imagined real spies as being like that - very very ordinary-seeming people.

Mr Briggs gets his instructions in the usual way. He has to go to a particular office at a particular time where a tape-recorded message awaits him. The latest assignment for the IMF is to catch two wanted Nazi war criminals and foil a plan to manufacture a madness-inducing gas. The mission will take the IMF to the small (and of course mythical) South American republic of Santilla. The two Nazis (who are evil mad scientist types) have constructed a secret laboratory on an island in a lake. The laboratory is just about impregnable.

You won’t be surprised to learn that for this mission Mr Briggs selects his four most reliable agents - master of disguise Rollin Hand, weightlifter Willy Armitage, technical expert Barney Collier and of course the ever-glamorous model Cinnamon Carter.

Dan Briggs believes that this will be such a tough mission that it is advisable to have not one but two elaborate plans.

The five members of the IMF arrive in Santilla with their covers in place. Dan Briggs is posing as a Texas oil man. Cinnamon Carter is a beautiful American woman on the prowl for rich men. Rollin Hand poses as an Arab Prince, with Barney as his aide-de-camp and Willy as his bodyguard.

Plan A goes badly wrong so Briggs switches to Plan B. Plan B is based (like any good IMF plan) on deception and it is also based on the use of fear as a weapon. Fear leads people to make mistakes and the IMF needs the two Nazis to make a few mistakes.

Nazi plots were a staple of both American and British action-adventure series in the 1960s. In the world of 1960s television Nazis were all-powerful, they were everywhere and they were constantly about to establish the Fourth Reich.

The book is a bit more cynical about the US Government than the TV series. It is admitted in the book that the US Government is happy to support military juntas (even brutal ones such as Santilla) because it’s good for American business. It’s only one throwaway line but it’s a hint of cynicism that would never have been permitted in the TV series.

In one respect the author misses the point of the TV series. Mission: Impossible was the most relentlessly plot-driven series in television history. There is less characterisation in this series than in any other series ever made. This was a deliberate choice. Nothing was to distract the viewer from the plot. It was vital for the audience to know nothing about the regular characters. This presents an author with difficulties. Writers, even writers of pulp thrillers, want to tell us at least something abut the characters to bring them to life. So the author provides the five IMF members with backstories and emotions. This is a very big mistake. It’s not a fatal error but it is a definite error.

He even throws in a hint of romance between Briggs and Cinnamon, an ever bigger mistake. The entire point of the series was that the IMF members are professionals whose survival depends on having no emotional involvement whatsoever. Their personal lives are rigidly separated from their professional lives. If Dan Briggs had had any inkling that Cinnamon was interested in him romantically he’d have fired her. He’d have had no choice. Spies cannot afford such luxuries. Emotions lead to errors of judgment and errors of judgment get people killed and (even worse) can prejudice the success of the mission.

The other major difference from the TV series is that there’s a lot more violence in the book. The avoidance of unnecessary violence was another key element in the TV series. If someone has to be killed it’s better to manipulate his own people into killing him. It’s crucial that the IMF should not leave a trail of death and destruction behind them - that sort of thing attracts attention and spies do not want to attract attention.

There’s also slightly more emphasis on sex. In the TV series it’s hard to imagine a scene in which Cinnamon is bound and gagged stark naked but we get such a scene in the book. I can understand the author’s decision to add a bit more sex and violence - readers expected spy thrillers (unlike TV series in the 60s) to have those ingredients.

One of the things that made Mission: Impossible such a good series was its realism. Real-life spies don’t run around with guns - spies who run around with guns will only get themselves into trouble. Spies rely on deception and manipulation. That’s why Cinnamon Carter is the most realistic female spy in TV history. If she gets into trouble she doesn’t reach for her gun (she doesn’t carry one because they terrify her) and she doesn’t rely on her martial arts skills (she has none). She talks her way out of trouble. If that doesn’t work she turns on the sex appeal, or appeals to the bad guys’ sense of chivalry. She does what it takes to survive and she knows that trying to shoot or fight her way out of a situation will just put her in more danger.

So there are a few unfortunate minor departures from the spirit of the TV series. On the plus side it has to be said that Wager understood that the key to the TV series was elaborate plots based on deception and he provides us with just that. The fear campaign against the ex-Nazi colonel is clever and it’s absolutely consistent with the methods the IMF uses in the TV series.

Wager also understands the importance of giving each IMF team member a role based on that character’s special abilities - Barney gets to fiddle with high-tech gadgetry, Briggs uses his planning skills, Rollin uses disguise, Willy makes good use of his unusual strength and Cinnamon uses her considerable skill in the art of seduction. Apart from the excessively high body count this does feel like a real IMF adventure. And on the whole the characters behave the way they should. Rollin lives on his nerves but that’s what brings out the best in him. Barney remains cool if any of his gadgets malfunction - he has absolute confidence that he will eventually get them to work. Dan Briggs is methodical and utterly ruthless. Cinnamon is equally ruthless in her use of her sex appeal.

On the whole it all works and it captures the atmosphere of the TV series more successfully than most such novels. It’s fast-paced and the plot feels like a Mission: Impossible plot. It’s all very enjoyable and highly recommended.

The review of this book at Glorious Trash is also worth checking out.

The Halo Highway (The Invaders TV tie-in novel)

Rafe Bernard’s The Halo Highway is a 1967 TV tie-in novel based on the classic 1967-68 science fiction TV series The Invaders. The Halo Highway was the British title - the novel was also published in the US under the title Army of the Undead. It was one of eight novels based on this superb TV series.

The Invaders was one of the classic alien invasion series. On a lonely road late at night a young architect named David Vincent sees a flying saucer land. He knows that the Earth is being invaded but of course no-one will believe him. He gives up his job and devotes all his time and energy to gathering evidence that will convince the government that aliens have invaded. Just like Fox Mulder in The X-Files many years later Vincent frequently has the evidence he needs but somehow it is snatched away from him or it turns out to be too ambiguous or too fantastic to be believable. In the first season he’s a lone crusader although over the course of time and many battles with the aliens he does acquire an informal network of people who do believe him (in the second season he becomes the leader of a much more organised resistance group). It’s paranoia television at its best.

In this novel the aliens, for complicated reasons, are infiltrating the American automobile industry. They do this by arranging fatal accidents for people and then taking over their bodies. A late night telephone call from a distraught widow alerts David Vincent to the fact that something sinister is happening in Auto City.

Vincent has his usual problem - the aliens have taken on human form and to an ordinary observer they are indistinguishable from normal humans. David Vincent is however not an ordinary observer and long experience has taught him to notice the subtle clues that betray the fact that someone is an alien. The aliens are almost perfect simulacra of humans, but never quite perfect.

He quickly discovers that there are indeed a lot of aliens in the Carasel auto company and there have been an astonishing number of car accidents in the area in the recent past. Accidents which should have been fatal but weren’t. There are very few people in Auto City that Vincent can trust, but there are a few. Or at least there are a few he thinks he can trust. He’s not sure if he can foil the plans of the aliens but he intends to try.

One of the things that makes TV tie-in novels both frustrating and fascinating is that they had to be rushed out in order to be in the bookstores while the TV series on which they were based were still running. This meant that the authors in many cases had not actually had the chance to see a single episode of the series - in some cases they hadn’t even seen a final script. They based the books on what they’d been told about the series. The books often have a different tone compared to the series and there are often other significant differences since they were often based on the original concept of the series rather than on the series as they actually turned out to be when they were actually shot.

This is very evident in the case of The Halo Highway. The tone of paranoia is the same. The David Vincent of the novel is pretty similar to the TV version of David Vincent and he has the same obsessive determination. So far so good. But the way the aliens work in the novel is not at all the way they work in the TV series. It seems clear that Rafe Bernard had been given a very rough outline of the premise of the series and then added lots of ideas of his own. The idea of the aliens taking over dead people is actually more reminiscent of the way the Mysterons operate in Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (the other great 1960s alien invasion TV series which first went to air at almost the same time as The Invaders.

Bernard has also added other elements of his own and taken ideas which which were perhaps hinted at in the series and developed them in totally different and much more extravagant ways. He’s given the aliens extraordinary powers of mental telepathy and shape-shifting abilities. He’s added a complex array of paranormal and even New Age elements - the aliens feed off mental energies and control other aliens though these mental energies. The aliens have a zombie-like quality to them.

So as a TV tie-in novel this has to be described as a bit of a failure. It has a feel that is very different from that of the TV series. On the other hand Bernard’s original ideas are quite clever and interesting. Judged as a standalone science fiction novel it’s quite intriguing. Fans of the TV series may be bitterly disappointed by the fact that the novel only bears a superficial resemblance to the series but fans may also be fascinated to see the basic framework of the series developed in such radically different ways.

You could almost describe this book as a TV tie-in novel for an alternative version of The Invaders that was never made.

If you’re looking for a novel that sticks faithfully to the premises of the TV series then you’ll want to give this one a miss. On the other hand if you’re intrigued by the idea of an author coming up with his own variation on the theme of the series you might decide it’s worth checking out - Rafe Bernard’s take on The Invaders is in its own way quite interesting.

To sum up, possibly worth a look with some significant caveats.

I’ve reviewed both season one and season two of the TV series.

Danger Man: Storm Over Rockall (TV tie-in novel)

One of my more recent enthusiasms has been chasing down the various tie-in novels that were produced to accompany TV series. My latest find has been the third of the six Danger Man tie-in novels, W. Howard Baker’s Storm Over Rockall (published in 1966). Which is pretty exciting given that Danger Man (or Secret Agent as it was known in the US) is in my view one of the best TV spy series of all time.

These TV tie-in novels started to become a big thing in the 60s. One of the things that is interesting about them is that they often have a subtly different flavour compared to the TV series on which they’re based. In a novel of course you could get away with a bit more sex and violence but there are often other differences. The producers of a TV series were subject to a lot of pressure from the networks in the US. Even a British series could be affected by American pressure if you wanted to have a chance of selling it there. Return of the Saint was a good example of a British series that had to be made much less violent than originally intended as a result of such considerations.

The writers of TV tie-in novels had by contrast a greater degree of freedom. The result was that the novels were sometime closer to the tone that the producers originally intended the series to have. A notable example is Michael Avallone’s The Birds of a Feather Affair, the first tie-in novel based on The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., a series that suffered from pressure from the network to make it zanier and more light-hearted. Compared to the series Avallone’s rather good novel is much darker and more hard-edged.

The trick of course was to make use of this greater freedom while still capturing the essential feel of the TV series.

Storm Over Rockall is an original novel but some similar ideas were used in the TV episode Not So Jolly Roger (which happens to be an excellent episode).

Someone is trying to sabotage a British rocket program known as Phase Y. It could the Russians. Interestingly the British intelligence services seriously consider the possibility that it could be the Americans. That’s an interesting difference from the TV version. ITC were keen to sell the series in the US so such a suggestion would have been unthinkable in the TV series.

All that is known is that a pirate radio station is broadcasting coded messages in the form of music. The messages are believed to relate to the acts of sabotage and also to anti-nuclear protests. Those protests may well be organised by the same people carrying out the sabotage. Pirate radio stations, usually broadcasting from ships anchored just outside British territorial waters, were a big thing in Britain in the 60s and were a way of circumventing the BBC’s monopoly. They provide ideal background for spy fiction.

John Drake is sent to find out what exactly is going on and to neutralise the problem, by any means necessary. Including assassination. This is another interesting contrast to the TV series in which Drake is a man who only resorts to violence when there is no alternative. Drake’s reluctance to use violence was something that the star of the series, Patrick McGoohan (a man of very strong moral views) insisted upon. The novel in this case may be closer to the original conception of the character as a “licensed-to-kill” James Bond type of figure.

It’s also intriguing that in this novel Drake is used on missions that officially don’t happen. If something goes wrong the British government has plausible deniability. They will disavow any knowledge of his activities. In the original 1960 TV series Drake’s position was also slightly ambiguous (in fact even his nationality was slightly ambiguous).

Drake has one important lead which takes him to a discotheque called The Deeper Dive. He slowly puts the pieces of the puzzle together. In the process he gets a number of beatings for his trouble and has the requisite number of narrow escapes from certain death. As expected the trail eventually leads him to the pirate radio station and we get some mayhem on the high seas.

The ending is very Bondian indeed. Patrick McGoohan would not have approved.

This is very much second-tier spy fiction. W. Howard Baker is no Len Deighton. It is however a reasonably competent espionage tale. Obviously it’s going to appeal mostly to fans of the TV series who should enjoy its glimpses of a slightly more ruthless John Drake. So if you are a Danger Man fan it’s recommended.

The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. - The Golden Boats of Taradata Affair (TV tie-in novel)

The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., a 1966-67 spin-off from The Man from U.N.C.L.E., was not a huge commercial success but it did spawn five TV tie-in novels including The Golden Boats of Taradata Affair by Simon Latter.

Simon Latter was one of the many pseudonyms used by prolific English author Reginald Alec Martin (1908-1971).

The novel has a neat setup. Two hundred years ago a pirate named Manuel Palanga established his lair on a small island which became known as Palaga. It’s now a haven for pirates of a more modern kind. Palaga is a peaceful and prosperous island paradise but its prosperity is based on activities that are not quite legal. The incredibly prolific Palaga family runs the island and does so smoothly and efficiently. And, it has to be said, very much for the benefits of the islanders.

Recently Palaga has attracted the attention of U.N.C.L.E., the international intelligence and law enforcement agency. One of U.N.C.L.E.’s top agents (and one of its most glamorous), April Dancer, has been sent to Palaga. It goes without saying that U.N.C.L.E. agent Mark Slate (who invariably partners April on assignments) is in Palaga as well, posing as a deckhand on a yacht. April is posing as one of the many rich beautiful tourists attracted to Palaga (Palaga strongly discourages non-wealthy tourists).

April’s boss Mr Waverley is particularly curious about the coracles. One of Palaga’s main exports is coracles (tiny boats). Thousands have been exported to the U.S. where they have become something of a craze. Coracle clubs have spring up across the country. What really interests Mr Waverley is that these clubs appear to be run by agents of the sinister international criminal organisation THRUSH.

The tricky part of this assignment is that there are quite a few characters who are very shady indeed but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re THRUSH agents. The Palaga family members are often quite shady (they are the descendants of pirates and piracy is an honoured family tradition) but that doesn’t mean they have the slightest desire to see THRUSH take over their island. That could interfere with their own very benign but technically criminal activities. Of course that doesn’t mean that the Palagas are any more fond of U.N.C.L.E. than they are of THRUSH.

The plot is the sort of thing you’d expect from a typical Girl from U.N.C.L.E. episode, with a sinister conspiracy for world domination and a genius scientist who might be an evil mad scientist or just naïve and easily exploited. There are lots of gadgets and even a mini-submarine.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. had started life as a James Bond-style spy thriller series - slightly tongue-in-cheek but not an out-and-out spy spoof and with genuine spy thriller plots. Unfortunately by the time The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. went into production the network had decided that it wanted both series to be turned into Batman-style zany campfests (with disastrous results). The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. novels are much more serious (and sometimes even quite dark) and much closer in tone to the first season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and that’s a very good thing. They definitely have a much harder edge than the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. TV series. The good guys triumph but there’s often a price to be paid and people get killed, even people who don’t deserve such a fate.

The plots are just as outlandish but there’s less overt silliness and no campiness.

The original idea for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. came from Ian Fleming. His idea was that the series would follow the adventures of two secret agents, a man (Napoleon Solo) and a woman (April Dancer). Fleming had a knack for coming up with cool character names! After Fleming lost interest in the series it was decided to drop the idea of a male-female pairing of super-spies but the April Dancer character was revived for the second season episode The Moonglow Affair. The character seemed to have potential and the result was the spin-off series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. which went to air in 1966.

American television in the 1960s was very strait-laced. Books were less constrained and as a result TV tie-in books at that period often contained a lot more sex and violence than the series on which they were based. That’s true to a very limited extent of this novel. It’s certainly much more obvious in the novel that Mark Slate is not unaware of April’s feminine charms. Particularly her bottom. And there is a bit more violence compared to the TV version (although April still dislikes the idea of having to kill people).

I’ve reviewed two other Girl from U.N.C.L.E. novels, The Birds of a Feather Affair and The Global Globules Affair.

The Golden Boats of Taradata Affair isn’t quite as good but it’s still a pretty entertaining spy thriller. Recommended, and if you’re a fan of the TV series, highly recommended.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - The Copenhagen Affair (novel)

The Copenhagen Affair is an original 1965 novel by Welsh writer John Oram based on the hit 1960s television spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and it’s a tale of flying saucers - but there's reason to believe that these flying saucers might not be from outer space.

Like the other Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV tie-in novels I've read it does deviate in minor details from the TV series but it’s quite enjoyable.

Here’s the link to my full review at Vintage Pop Fictions.

Regan and the Deal of the Century (The Sweeney novel)

Like so many TV series of its era The Sweeney spawned a series of TV tie-in novels. Regan and the Deal of the Century was the third of The Sweeney novels and was written by Ian Kennedy Martin, the creator of the TV series. Nine novels were published, three of them by Kennedy Martin, and they were original stories rather than novelisations of TV episodes.

So the first surprise is just how different it is to the series. The series was very much a buddy series, with Detective Inspector Jack Regan of Scotland Yard’s elite Flying Squad and his sergeant George Carter being the buddies. There is some slight tension between the two men. Regan doesn’t just bend the rules. He beats them senseless and then puts the boot in. Carter isn’t always happy about this, and he lets Regan know. Despite this the two men are firm friends. Carter is scarcely even mentioned in this novel, but when he is mentioned it’s obvious that Regan doesn’t like him all that much. The novel appeared in 1976. The series aired between 1974 and 1978. It would be fascinating to know if the novel represents Kennedy Martin’s original concept for the series, and whether that concept involved a much tighter focus on Regan, or whether Kennedy Martin simply decided to try something slightly different with his three spin-off novels.

The second surprise is that the novel takes place almost entirely in the south of France. Taking Regan out of his familiar London milieu changes the tone dramatically.

This is essentially a political thriller rather than a cop story, but since Regan is a cop to his boot-heels he naturally tries to approach it as a police case. His job is to catch villains. That’s pretty much what gives the novel its flavour - Regan is very much a fish out of water in the world of international intrigue.

The novel starts with the assassination of an Arab oil sheikh in London, to which Regan just happens to be an almost-witness (he saw the killer leaving the building and is the only man who can identify that killer). This is obviously a job for Britain’s secret police, Special Branch. So why has Regan been assigned to the case? Whatever the reason Regan is not happy about it.

Regan finds himself working with a Bahreini cop named Hijaz. He doesn’t entirely trust Hijaz, but Regan is also more than half convinced that everything Special Branch has told him is a pack of lies as well.

It appears that the assassin’s next target will be another oil sheikh, a man named Almadi.

This brings Regan into intimate contact with Almadi’s entourage, specifically Almadi’s girls. Almadi likes to be surrounded by beautiful women. Beautiful is perhaps not an adequate word. These girls are technically prostitutes but they are so stingy gorgeous that it takes Regan’s breath away and they are very very high class and very very expensive. For the price of one night with such a girl you could buy yourself a very decent car. Not a used car. A new one. If fact a night with one of these girls would cost Jack Regan most of a year’s salary. Naturally Jack falls for one of the girls, an exquisite English rose named Jo. It’s not just lust (as it usually is for Jack with women). He thinks she’s the most perfect female who ever walked the Earth. But she belongs to Sheikh Almadi. Which doesn’t stop her from hopping into Jack’s bed. This is likely to get Jack into a world of hurt.

As for the case, Regan is more and inclined to think that there’s a whole lot more going on here that he hasn’t been told about. There’s the matter of the deal with the French government. What the deal might involve he has absolutely no idea.

This is pretty much the Jack Regan of the TV series, but maybe even more pessimistic and more cynical and definitely more given to depression. He drinks too much. But he drinks too much in the TV series as well. He chases women he shouldn’t chase. He argues with his superiors and clashes with just about everybody. He doesn’t have any actual dislike of Arabs, or of the French. Jack just doesn’t have the knack of keeping his mouth shut and following orders and coöperating with other place officers. The one mystery is perhaps Jo’s attraction to him. This is a girl who has billionaires eating out of her hand. Maybe she just has a thing for alcoholic self-pitying broken-down policemen with no future. Maybe they just drive her wild with desire.

Reagan is very much an anti-hero but despite his egregious character flaws we can’t help liking him, even if we sometimes despise him just a little as well and even if we’re often horrified by him. He does his best as a cop, and usually gets results. As a man he does his best also, with much less successful results. But he is what he is, and he doesn’t know any other way to live. He doesn’t really know how to do anything but be a cop so it’s lucky he’s a good one.

There’s some politics in this novel but the political aspects are not always quite what you’re expecting. It won’t do to jump to conclusions about who the bad guys are. And in this world it’s questionable whether there are any good guys.

It’s perhaps a little disappointing that Regan's fascinatingly ambivalent relationships with both Carter and with his immediate superior DCI Haskins, which are highlights of the series, play no part in the novel. But Regan’s very uneasy relationships with authority in general certainly do play a major rôle.

Apart from the very distinctive character of Regan the novel doesn’t bear much resemblance to the TV series but it’s a decent political thriller. Regan and the Deal of the Century is worth a look and it is interesting for fans of the series to see Jack Regan in an unfamiliar environment. Recommended.

The Andromeda Breakthrough

A for Andromeda, broadcast by the BBC in 1961, was one of the most famous science fiction television series of all time (and is now tragically lost). The follow-up series The Andromeda Breakthrough, broadcast the following year and which picks up at exactly the point at which A for Andromeda leaves off, does however survive. Both were co-written by astronomer and science fiction author Sir Fred Hoyle and John Elliot. The novelisation of The Andromeda Breakthrough was published in 1964.

The Andromeda Breakthrough is arguably somewhat underrated. My review can be found at Vintage Pop Fictions.