The Terminators - Berkely Mather

Eleven years after his first appearance in The Pass Beyond Kashmir Idwal Rees is teamed up once more with his bloodthirsty and belligerent Pathan cohort Samaraz in a tale of espionage and derring-do that only Berkely Mather could have written. This time the duo face a band of marauding Tibetan nomads while on the hunt for a missing spy. Oddly enough that spy turns out to be Mather's second series character -- James Wainwright, a hapless and insecure British agent who appeared solo in two previous books by Mather.

The Terminators (1971) begins with a hijacking sequence that is eerily resonant in its detail of airport security systems. I remember the skyjacking paranoia of the 1970s that was largely responsible for the installation of metal detectors throughout the airports of the world but the way the hijackers manage to sneak weapons on board in this novel will be all too familiar to any modern traveller. Once again Mather creates some eyebrow raising scenes that predict criminal behavior yet to come in the real world. The hijacking plants the seed for the hair rising climax that takes place in the final third of the book. Once the prologue is done the story focuses on Rees and Samaraz and their assignments for a covert British secret service agency known as "the Firm".

And for those who are familiar with Rees in his first outing The Terminators will seem like a regular homecoming of characters. In the first recounted escapade of many engaging action scenes the corrupt Indian police office Nadkarni and his Sikh colleague appear briefly only to fall victim to a brutal attack. When Rees receives his assignment to track down Wainwright he learns he will have to travel to the home of the blind General Culverton, father to his old flame Claire, a nurse at the Tibetan refugee hospital. He will also learn that Wainwright and Claire have struck up a relationship that will serve as fuel for a rivalry between the two men. This portion of the book -- a long bickering/arguing sequence -- is the only time where my interest in the story flagged. I could have done without Wainwright's petulance, the juvenile name calling, and his "I'm such a loser" attitude as well. He does, however, step up to the plate in a final heroic act in which he proves himself to be not as self-serving as he at first painted himself.

Mather's unusual sense of humor comes into play throughout the book. We get a variety of awful insults, some translated literally and some left to our imagination, from the foul-mouthed and ill-tempered bigot Samaraz. The humor is a mix of the salty, the vulgar and the oddball. Here are two of my favorites:

...he had about as much chance of pinching my woman as he had of shoving butter up a wildcat's arse with a red hat pin.

What I know about radio, plus a nickel, wouldn't buy the ghost of Gandhi a haircut.

Best not to reveal all the excellent adventure delivered at the hands of this master storyteller. Mather really should have turned to the movie screen more often in his writing career. This book as the other two I have previously reviewed here is both a cinematic wonder of action, an Asian travelogue and a crash course in Indian/Tibetan/Pakistani relations and politics. If you haven't discovered Berkely Mather yet -- what are you waiting for?

The Terminators is now available as part of the library of Top Notch Thrillers, that fine imprint from Ostara Publishing. You can order direct from them (click on the link) or amazon.com (both US and UK versions). Do yourself a favor and introduce yourself to Idwal and crew soon. You won't be disappointed.

Previously discussed on this blog:
The Pass Beyond Kashmir (also available from Top Notch Thrillers)
The Gold of Malabar

The Pass Beyond Kashmir - Berkely Mather

The P.R. materials I received with my copy of the recent reprint of The Pass Beyond the Kashmir (1960) call it a "ripping yarn." While that is a perfect marketing catchphrase it is something of a disservice to this remarkable novel by John Weston-Davies, former military man who served in both Australia and India. Writing as "Berkely Mather" Weston-Davies created three series characters Peter Feltham, British spy Jack Wainwright, and Idwal Rees who debuts in this book. Amazingly, this action packed story is Mather's second novel. It's a masterfully balanced story that blends literate prose, spirited characters, cultural insights and suspenseful action. So impressively done The Pass Beyond the Kashmir is practically a textbook on how to write the perfect adventure page-turner.

The story takes our hero Idwal Rees through a rugged adventure marked by multiple pursuits, captures and escapes as he and an Australian opportunist named Smedley try to make their way from Bombay to Kashmir. There they plan to meet George Polson, a retired British major, who will lead them to the location of documents that may reveal the source of a hidden oil reserve. Aided by Rees' servant Samaraz, a strong-willed Pathan, the two men get off to a bad start when the major vanishes from his home where his wife has been brutally attacked. The local police begin to show an interest in the major's disappearance and based on the probing questions Rees suspects that it may have something to do with the documents. As the three continue eluding and escaping a variety of villains it is clear everyone wants the major and/or the documents. At one point Rees quotes an Indian proverb which aptly sums up the seemingly endless chases: "The Indian night is blind for the watched, but has a thousand eyes for the watcher."

Over the course of these densely packed 190 pages the reader will also be tutored in all things Indian and Asian. Mather is especially adept at interspersing into the action a series of lessons in everything from the Indian caste system to the making of Tibetan butter tea. Below are a few more of the numerous tidbits picked up:

• In India it is not the Express train that will get you to your destination the fastest, it is the Mail train. The express is actually a local.
• Speakers of Urdu cannot pronounce an initial S sound with first adding an additional vowel sound. Therefore, Smedley becomes Ish-medley.
• Only Muslims who have made the arduous journey to Mecca and paid their respects to Mohammed there have earned the right to wear a green turban.  (this may not be so true now apparently)
• A Pathan is an upper caste Muslim. In the story Samaraz is a particularly intolerant, in fact intensely hateful, of anyone not of his caste.
• You apparently cannot do anything in India without the help of baksheesh. Rees and friends are lucky to have the wads of rupees with them as they are constantly passing out money to everyone they meet.

The characters are alive and human and so unexpected in how they behave. Along the way Rees will meet a mysterious Sikh of unknown allegiance; Yev Shalom, "seller and buyer of anything" especially information, who is eerily omniscient in how he obtains that information; a tenacious and very clever British nurse who sees through one of the many disguises Rees and Smedley must adopt; a blind brigadier general who helps guide them to Kashmir; and the requisite master criminal who will turn out to have a surprisingly close connection to Rees. These and several others make for a even more entertaining "ripping yarn."

Humor is also abundant amidst the more serious aspects of the story's violence and politics. Smedley becomes the object of Rees' anger several times and Rees deals with his frustrations and sublimated rage when he chooses to give Smedley a variety of humiliating disguises. He at first shaves his hair and eyebrows, uses shoe polish to darken his skin, and passes him off as a lower caste servant. Pathan insults Smedley further by saying he looks like a dung seller. Later, Smedley is forced to wear a burkah and pretend to be a woman. When he takes advantage of this disguise by attempting to board one of the women only passenger cars on a train all hell breaks loose. It seems his physique and gait give him away immediately.

The Pass Beyond Kashmir is one of the many reissued adventure thrillers released by Top Notch Thrillers, that fine imprint of Ostara Publishing. Mike Ripley, editor of the series, has once again uncovered a whopper of a tale, an exciting page turner to rival anything published today. In fact, I prefer something like this book over the padded doorstop tomes we have nowadays. Mather's story not only has the ring of truth and authenticity thanks to his many years of living in India he tells his tale with hardly one diversion into the Land of Backstory and limits himself with psychological character explanations. As I mentioned before this book is a wonderful primer on how to write a thriller, how first and foremost in this genre it is how action can reveal character better than long drawn out explanations of past life experience. An adventure tale more than any other genre should have immediacy and should take place first and foremost in the present. The Pass Beyond Kashmir is as immediate as they come.

The Espionage and Adventure Novels of Berkely Mather

Idwal Rees and Samaraz appear in:

Berkely Mather as he appears on
the DJ of one of his early books

The Pass Beyond Kashmir (1960)
The Terminators (1971)
Snowline (1973)

Jack Wainwright, British spy appears in:
The Springers (1968) aka A Spy for a Spy
The Break in the Line (1970) aka The Break
The Terminators (1971)

Peter Feltham appears in:
The Achilles Affair (1959)
With Extreme Prejudice (1975)

Non-Series Thrillers
Geth Straker (1962) (based on radio scripts of an adventure serial)
The Gold of Malabar (1967)
The White Dacoit (1974)

Mather has also written historical fiction, TV scripts and was the screenwriter for Dr. No and The Long Ships, an unintentionally campy sword and sandal feature about Vikings and Moors in search of a legendary golden bell.  I may write up a review of that movie which he co-wrote with Beverley Cross.

The Predator - Andrew York

1st US paperback (Berkley, Oct 1969)

Here's the book in which Jonas Wilde is forced to use a gun instead of his hands to deal with his enemies. It's a survival tactic and he must resort to firing a Derringer (of all things) to take out one of three pursuers in the final pages of The Predator (1968). This is only the third book and Wilde came close to being eliminated himself three times in the course of another plot that delivers action and thrills and the usual Yorkian surprise twists.

But I'm starting with the end first, aren't I? Sorry.

At the start we learn that Wilde has been officially retired from the Elimination Sector formerly known as "The Route." (see my review of The Eliminator) Yet only one day later he is picked up by trench coat wearing men who refuse to identify themselves and take n to the Five Star Photography Studio. This was formerly the front for the offices of Mocka, his much younger commander. Now it is the scene of three violent murders. One of the victims is Julia Ridout who gave Wilde his walking papers the previous night then proceeded to give him a farewell in her bedroom. Wilde was just getting over the murder of the first woman he fell for and now he's faced with a another murdered lover. The rage within him can hardly be contained.

Mocka provides Wilde with the background. It all seems to be tied to the disappearance of a CIA agent, Charlie Klaeger. Klaeger was following up leads related to the arranged prison escape and subsequent murder of Alfonso Torrio, an Italian mobster with ties to the American underworld. Klaeger, Mocka reports, must have been tortured and given the location of the photography studio and some hoods from Torrio's syndicate then infiltrated the studio trying to find out what Klaeger was after.  They finished the job by killing everyone on site. Mocka hints that Wilde may be able to find the killers in Rome who have been placing personal ads in English language European newspapers hoping to lure in unsavory types for an underground academy specializing in mercenary skill.

1st UK paperback (Arrow, 1969)

With the help of some of his criminal contacts he obtains some phony ID and becomes "Johnny Foxley" – a London thug who is interested in becoming a killer for hire. He travels to Italy and answers the ad and discovers the he has enrolled in an assassination academy run by a woman with the spectacular name of Glorious Torrio, the daughter of Alfonso Torrio. Along the way he also meets a Antonia Del Rivia, a heroin addicted would-be painter with pansexual tastes, her brother Cesare he is second-in-command at the killer academy, and Paul Sanger, the primary teacher in the art of murder.

Something I have started to note in this series is that Wilde ages chronologically. In this book age and youth are always on his mind. He is bothered by the fact that at only 37 years he is already an "old man" in the spy game. Mocka, his boss, is ten years younger than he is. The students at the assassin academy also are all considerably younger than Wilde. And then there's his troublesome sciatica and muscle problems; they are his greatest weakness at a time when he must be in peak physical condition. His bad back is his undoing on more than one occasion in The Predator and it makes him seem less of a comic book superhero or a mindless athletic killing machine. A spy with chronic back problems is real. I'll take that over the old gunshot to the shoulder cliche which seems to be the only thing that tends to slow down the rest of the fictional spies I've encountered.

York's strength once again is in the creation of hypnotically fascinating woman characters like Glorious (or Glo to her friends). The women are always the most complex and intriguing characters in the Jonas Wilde books, but in Glorious Torrio York seems to have outdone himself. Smart and deadly, she is an Amazonian athlete with a heart of steel, a teasing sexual allure, and a bloodlust to match her carnal appetite. She is the closest to being Wilde's female match as a ruthless emotionally detached killer. It'll take some imagination to surpass this woman in viciousness and cunning. She nearly succeeds in sending Wilde to his great reward on more than one occasion.

Then there is Jonquil Malone, the redheaded American girl Wilde meets on the plane trip down to Rome. She has a habit of turning up unwanted in the most surprising places. She seems to be nothing more than an slightly ditsy tourist looking for a fling with a handsome Brit and she dislikes having been stood up by Wilde not once but twice. She comes off as a stalker and her curiosity gets the better of her. But is she more than just a tourist? Is it all coincidence? Is she just an incredible actress and really a spy?

Writer Christopher Nicole (AKA "Andrew York")

The Predator is a return to a straight thriller. None of the pulpy, quasi-science fiction elements found in The Coordinator are present. Jonas seems to have entered a vigilante stage and appears to be acting entirely on his own until the usual Yorkian twist in the final pages. The expository beginning is a bit to trudge through, but once Jonas lands in Italy the book is nothing but action scenes. And darn good action scenes with little of the requisite monologues that York's characters (mostly the villains) like to indulge in.

This would make a a fantastic movie. Better than Danger Route, the only film version of the Andrew York books. Any action movie producers or screenwriters out there? Here's a book screaming to be adapted into a money making screenplay. It would do phenomenally well at the box office.

UPDATE ON NEW EDITIONS OF ANDREW YORK BOOKS
From an email I received from Mike Ripley, editor at Top Notch Thrillers and overall good guy:
"…we are doing [The Predator] as a Top Notch Thriller in about two weeks time! I’ve enclosed our cover and in fact Pretty Sinister Books is quoted on page 2 in the before-the-title page. We are also doing The Deviator (which I think is better) and have plans to do The Infiltrator."

I've become part of the blurbing world! Very cool.

The entire line of Top Notch Thrillers – a variety of reissued action adventure, spy and crime novels – are available through amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, bookdepository.com (always free shipping!) and a few other online dealers.

To pre-order a copy of The Predator (release date is mid-March 2012) go directly to Ostara Publishing by clicking here. On that page you will see there is already a link to my review of the book. Thanks, Mike!

FFB: The Eliminator - Andrew York

It's 1966. Spies were hot -- both in the bookstores and the movie theaters. Matt Helm was a sensation. He had already appeared in ten books and Dean Martin played him (in a very different guise) in two movies.  All 13 James Bond books had been published, were in multiple printings in paperback, four movies had been released, and the final book Octopussy & The Living Daylights was about to be released posthumously. Then mid-year in 1966 Jonas Wilde appeared on the scene. Who? Exactly.

Although a few insightful reviewers took notice Wilde and his creator Andrew York never really got the attention they were due. This is a series just as brutal and true to life as Donald Hamilton's books and filled with irresistible female characters like the Fleming books. Additionally, they are intelligent, literate, populated with fully realized complex characters and crammed with action-packed scenes that rival any contemporary thriller of the past ten years.  Luckily, for those who missed Wilde back in the late 60s and early 70s readers now have a new edition from the excellent Top Notch Thriller line (selected by hip Mike Ripley) available from Ostara Publishing.

Wilde is a hired assassin who works for a nebulous branch of British intelligence known only among its elite members as "the Route." He's not your typical brawny, sociopathic, professional killer. Sure Wilde is an expert in deadly martial arts and can deliver a lethal karate chop to his intended target. Sure he has an admirably athletic body that arouses the attention of the women he encounters on the job. But he has a few traits you don't normally associate with a macho hired killer. Like for instance his fondness for rum and brandy laced cocktails like the Frisco, Daiquiri and the Alexander. To sharpen his mind and teach himself patience he plays chess and spends a lot of time sailing. His cover is as co-owner of a charter boat company in the Channel Islands. They call him "the Nobody Man." He adopts so many new identities and appears and vanishes during his assignments with the ease of a prototypical Jason Bourne that no police authority has ever traced him to the several accidents he's arranged as part of his elimination assignments.

At one point in the novel a character talks about the claustrophobic, ultra secret world of the Route:

"You belong to the tiny core within the core, within the box within the trunk within the huge shuttered mansion. You are part of the network that makes it possible for Jonas Wilde to operate."

It's a highly structured organization with only four outside members involved. Wilde receives his orders from Antony Canning, Peter Ravenspur provides new identity documents and weapons, and Stern and Bulwer help him with travel on their yacht Regina A. "The Route" has been a smooth covert operation but now Wilde wants out. Like Junior in Charles Willeford's Miami Blues he has a hankering for a normal life and longs to settle down with his girlfriend Jocelyn and forget his past. The higher level people have learned of this before Wilde has submitted his formal resignation and are planning to send him on one final assignment from which they hope he will not return alive.

Wilde learns that he must eliminate a Czech biologist who has perfected a method of germ warfare. When he receives his instructions there's something all too strange about the assignment. They want him to travel to England to do the job and he's never eliminated anyone in the country before. He usually gets a few days to prepare but they want him to leave in 24 hours. And his target will be surrounded by bodyguards and an American agent. All of it is very out of the ordinary to Wilde, but he agrees to do the job then disappear on his own afterwards.

Nothing, however, goes as planned. No one can be trusted. No one is who they appear to be. It's classic spy stuff. And it's done exceptionally well here. Even the sex scenes are sexy as they should be and not sleazy as is the usual case in books of this type.

Surprisingly, in a book so hypermasculine and testosterone pumped it is the supporting female characters who are the most interesting and best realized. There is Rhoda Gooderich, a housekeeper at the estate where he must kill the Czech scientist, who Wilde must charm and seduce in order to get in and around the household. Wilde gives her several nights she will long remember (in more ways than one) even if she may lose her job for all the attention. Marita is a woman who claims to be Peter Ravenspur's niece, but who knows far too much about Wilde and his real work and calls him "Her Majesty's government's executioner." Most fascinating of all is Barbara Canning, his boss' wife, who at first appears to be nothing more than another example of the prim, neglected British spouse but who when forced into becoming Wilde's cohort takes to the spy life with an amazing hidden aptitude for the life of an adventuress. All three women are strong characters vital to the story who hold their own against a virile and wily man and are willing to risk everything to help him escape the clutches of some sadistic and ruthless villains.

York went on to write eight more thrillers with Jonas Wilde. I had never heard of any of these books prior to learning of the Top Notch Thriller reissue. The first book is such a superior example of the spy/assassin subgenre that I plan to read all the books. There are relatively affordable paperback editions of most of the Jonas Wilde books. I suggest you start with this one and decide for yourself. I guarantee you'll want to read at least another. He's every bit as good as Jason Bourne and in some respects Bourne owes everything he is to Jonas Wilde.

The Jonas Wilde Series
The Eliminator (1966)
The Coordinator (1967)
The Predator (1968)
The Deviator (1969)
The Dominator (1969)
The Infiltrator (1971)
The Expurgator (1972)
The Captivator (1974)
The Fascinator (1975)

And if you haven't already seen it, be sure to check out yesterday's post about the movie adaptation of this book that was called Danger Route starring Richard Johnson, Carol Lynley, Barbara Bouchet, Diana Dors, Sylvia Sims, Harry Andrews and Sam Wanamaker.  I've included two video clips:  the original movie trailer and the opening five minutes which includes the entire title sequence (and a drippy wannabe James Bond style theme song) as well as the first two scenes of the movie.

The Young Man From Lima - John Blackburn

In the opening pages of The Young Man from Lima William Raven, the Secretary for External Affairs, is assassinated by a snowman. It is yet another in a series of assassinations of government officials throughout the world who happen to be tied to a mythical South American country called Nueva Leon. This is not a fantastical thriller with supernatural beings in the cast as in other Blackburn books. The snowman turns out to be a man covered in snow. Frosty the Hitman, however, is far from your typical hired gun. In fact he is far from being human as we think of humans. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Marcus Levin, a bacteriologist who appears in several other Blackburn books, is called in to consult on an autopsy. A strange life form has been found in the blood stream of the corpse that seems to be living even after the host body is long dead. Also there were elevated levels of serotonin in the body. It is pointed out that elevated serotonin is often seen in addicts who are partial to hallucinogenic drugs. Furthermore a vial of tablets found on the corpse proves to contain enough of a lichen like plant to cause hallucinations similar to those of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. The corpse it turns out is Frosty the Hitman. There is a fear that someone has created an army of assassins whose minds are being manipulated by mind altering drugs. Shades of Sax Rohmer and a bit of The Manchurian Candidate.  But what about that strange microorganism?  Could that be playing a part as well?

Though this Blackburn book is lacking in supernatural content it still has much to raise it out of the realm of your ordinary espionage thriller and into the world of the weird and strange. It has a decidedly X-Files feel to it with a microorganism not unlike the one that caused the black oil in that cult TV series. I was also reminded of the many pathogen thrillers that range from The Andromeda Strain (a contemporary thriller for the time this was published) to a fairly recent book, Dead of Night by Randy Wayne White, that has a remarkably similar and equally gruesome parasite in the role of the vermicidal villain. There's even a bit of the 1950s monster movie thrown in when in the jungles of Nueva Leon our intrepid heroes must do battle with hordes of soldier ants. These are particularly gruesome scenes.

Overall, the story is one that holds your interest and keeps the pages turning at a rapid pace. There are long stretches of didactic dialog (another X Files trait) but it's probably the most interesting choice in delivering the necessary scientific information to educate the reader on the unusual monster of the piece. The politics of the story is another thing altogether. There are only so many Communist threat tales I can stomach these days. Thankfully, all the paranoia is kept to a minimum. When the true villains behind all the bioterrorism are revealed we are back in Sax Rohmer territory for their motives have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with megalomaniacal world domination.

It's a ripping yarn well worth reading if you want an example of what the eco-thriller was like back in the 1960s. Blackburn like John Creasey had a devilish imagination and could dream up the worst possible scenarios based on current ecological dilemmas. You can discover the many other undeservedly forgotten books that have been gloriously revived by Top Notch Thrillers and Ostara Publishing by clicking here. The series is edited by crime fiction writer Mike Ripley who has done a bang-up job in selecting some great titles that have languished in Out-of-Printdom for far too long. Check them out and read them. Or else.