Hope this isn't a repeat, but I never saw the message after
sending it yesterday:
I finally had the time and inclination to get involved in one
of the "theme" discussions and so read a Monty Nash spy
thriller by Richard Telfair, _The Bloody Medallion_. It was a
very fast-moving book and a fast read overall. Well-written,
with good descriptions of the locales (the story moves from
London to the French countryside to Spain). And the idea of a
"medallion society" of communists fighting against fascism
was a good one (the secret society was started by the
survivors of a massacre of Russian freedom fighters and each
carries a medallion with a piece of faded red cloth inside,
supposedly dipped in the blood of martyrs).
Nash is the "fox head" of his two-man espionage team and is
after the forces responsible for the death of his partner and
"fox tail." Higher-ups suspect the fox tail of being a
defector, which suddenly means that all of the
counterintelligence the two have collected for years has also
become suspect. Monty realizes the only way that he can
straighten things out is to make an escape and conduct his
own investigation. He trusted his partner and cannot believe
the man was a traitor.
Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? I wish I liked it a bit more.
There was just something missing in the mix--some "oomph" or
something that really would have made this one a grabber. It
just doesn't live up to expectations engendered by such
characters as Matt Helm or Remo Williams or even Joe Gash.
I've been buying Nash thrillers over the years when I can
find them and have several others on-hand. Do they get any
better?
It didn't help that the book I read next was _The Vanished_
by Bill Pronzini, the second in his Nameless series. I've
finally tracked them all down and am trying to read the
series in order. This was a good one, with the detective
trying to find a newly-returned soldier who has disappeared
somewhere between the airport and his fiancé® The
investigation takes him to Portland, Oregon, and to the man's
former posting on an army base in Germany. Along the way, he
makes the first tentative steps toward a new romance with a
woman who has been hurt many times before. Ultimately, the
investigation leads him to a place where it will be
difficult, if not impossible, for this relationship to
progress and the book ends with a great line: "What would I
say to Cheryl? What would I say?" (out of context, this
doesn't make a lot of sense, but in context, it packs a hell
of a punch). The book had me immediately wanting to start
into the next one, which, unfortunately, I hadn't packed to
bring with me.
Craig Larson Trinidad, CO
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