Post by dougbassett on Jan 29, 2007 12:13:53 GMT -5
I don't read enough men's adventure to really comment regularly here, but I do dip into it often enough and, well, after awhile....
THE SPY IN ANGKOR WAT, Bill Ballinger
Ballinger was one of those guys who used to be everywhere in the publishing world, but don't seem to really exist anymore -- except maybe in sf/fantasy -- and that's the pure midlist genre writer. I don't think anything he ever did was a big success, although he seemingly tried his hand at everything. I think he did some novelizations/tv tie-ins, I know he wrote a couple of Fifties-era suspense thrillers, etc.
This was his stab at a series. I've read another and I don't care for these books, this is really here by way of a consumer warning. Halfbreed superspy Joaquin Hawks goes underground in Cambodia to find and spirit away a nascent pro-Western monarch. As with the other one of these I read -- Hawks joins a Chinese circus there -- too much travelogue, not enough action.
RETURN FROM VORKUTA -- David St. John (E. Howard Hunt)
A CIA agent investigates the strange reappearance of a Royalist and heir presumptive to the Spanish throne. Surprisingly well written and thoughtful in a Philip Atlee/Joe Gall series kind of way (I suspect the big influence). Suffers from the same problems that bedevil the Gall series, though -- not enough space to really get serious about the subject matter, and not willing to adhere to the genre conventions enough to keep it action-filled.
THE ENFORCER: BIO BLITZ -- Andrew Sugar
Surely that can't be a real name? Anyway, oddball men's adventure series features a guy who's constantly cloned (but only for 90 days, or else he'll melt) fighting "collectivism", although really it's just a crime boss who has power over bugs. Not very good but kind of interesting: a big Heinlein influence here.
doug
THE SPY IN ANGKOR WAT, Bill Ballinger
Ballinger was one of those guys who used to be everywhere in the publishing world, but don't seem to really exist anymore -- except maybe in sf/fantasy -- and that's the pure midlist genre writer. I don't think anything he ever did was a big success, although he seemingly tried his hand at everything. I think he did some novelizations/tv tie-ins, I know he wrote a couple of Fifties-era suspense thrillers, etc.
This was his stab at a series. I've read another and I don't care for these books, this is really here by way of a consumer warning. Halfbreed superspy Joaquin Hawks goes underground in Cambodia to find and spirit away a nascent pro-Western monarch. As with the other one of these I read -- Hawks joins a Chinese circus there -- too much travelogue, not enough action.
RETURN FROM VORKUTA -- David St. John (E. Howard Hunt)
A CIA agent investigates the strange reappearance of a Royalist and heir presumptive to the Spanish throne. Surprisingly well written and thoughtful in a Philip Atlee/Joe Gall series kind of way (I suspect the big influence). Suffers from the same problems that bedevil the Gall series, though -- not enough space to really get serious about the subject matter, and not willing to adhere to the genre conventions enough to keep it action-filled.
THE ENFORCER: BIO BLITZ -- Andrew Sugar
Surely that can't be a real name? Anyway, oddball men's adventure series features a guy who's constantly cloned (but only for 90 days, or else he'll melt) fighting "collectivism", although really it's just a crime boss who has power over bugs. Not very good but kind of interesting: a big Heinlein influence here.
doug