Showing posts with label Operation Hang Ten. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operation Hang Ten. Show all posts

Monday, December 7, 2020

Operation Hang Ten #9: Death Car Surfside


Operation Hang Ten #9: Death Car Surfside, by Patrick Morgan
No month stated, 1972  Macfadden Books

Well friends, this is the last volume of Operation Hang Ten I currently own; this series is grossly overpriced on the used books market, so I’ll just have to be content with what I have. And besides, it seems evident that George Snyder, again posing as “Patrick Morgan,” has run out of steam. The previous volume was a chore of a read, with “The Cartwright” falling in love. This one’s even more middling, the only difference being that “The Cartwright” is an outlaw for the majority of the tale – and a pretty unlikable one at that. 

I’ve noted from the first volume I reviewed that Bill Cartwright, “hero” of the series, is probably the biggest dick in all men’s adventuredom. But what’s become more clear with each volume I’ve read is that he’s also a pretty lame-ass “spy.” He talks a big game and thinks very highly of himself, but “Bill” (as Snyder most often refers to him…or, as ever, “The Cartwright”) really doesn’t do much of anything. He’s a grand failure, so far as a surfer turned spy goes; Jim Dana, head honcho of the Operation Hang Ten program, supposedly has taken hippies, surfers, and other assorted “youth types” from their elements, trained them to be spies, and put them back in their elements as operatives. And I believe Bill is the best one he’s got (at least according to Bill!), which is not a good indication of this particular agency’s effectiveness. 

Past volumes have featured Bill blundering his way through the latest assignment, usually getting a woman (or two) killed in the process before finally figuring out the bad guys’ plot and shooting a few people in the final pages. He’s certainly not a hero; he’s too assholic for that. I mean he’s not even an antihero, he’s just a plain jerk. Death Car Surfside takes Bill into even more jerky territory. In this one, which occurs over a single day, Bill manages to knock out a cop, steal tips off restaurant tables, carjack a Mustang, break into an innocent person’s house, and even barges in on the homeowner just as she’s stepping out of the shower. When she asks him if he’s going to rape her, Bill checks out her hot nude bod and says he’s considering it! Of course, this being a men’s adventure yarn and all – not to mention one of the more aggressively macho ones, courtesy Bill’s assholic attitude – the young lady doesn’t mind Bill too much, given that he has “good vibes.” Oh and Bill also beats the shit out of this girl’s boyfriend, tying him up in a closet…where he’ll later be discovered by the bad guys and murdered. Not that Bill feels one pang of guilt over it. 

There’s no pickup from the previous volume, just a passing mention that Bill took a lot of grief from Dana for the events that happened therein. When we meet him at the start of Death Car Surfside, Bill’s doing some pre-dawn surfing at Hermosa Beach. We’re informed this is because all the lousy tourists clutter up the beaches during the day; per the series template, the narrative is peppered with arbitrary and digressive bitch sessions on this or that. Humorously this time they are shoehorned in at the oddest places, like during car chases or when Bill’s running from someone. But while Bill is surfing in the dock he’s shocked to see a Mustang hurtle over the pier and crash spectacularly into the ocean. He barely caught a glimpse of a comatose young woman behind the wheel. 

Bill dives down to save her; this will be his only heroic act in the entire book. She’s been tied into the car and clearly was planted there to be driven to her death. Bill pulls her up to the surface and some other girl comes out of the gloom, saying she witnessed it all. Bill checks the comatose girl’s ID, and next thing he knows he’s slammed in the head, obviously knocked out by the girl who claimed to be a witness. When he comes to it’s morning and the girl from the car is still lying there, but now she’s dead, courtesy several stab wounds. Here’s where Bill’s taken in and read his rights by the cops; the muleheaded main cop won’t buy Bill’s story and comes up with an even more unbelievable one, one which of course “proves” Bill is the killer. Instead of asking to call a lawyer – or better yet Jim Dana – hotheaded Bill instead decks the cop and makes a run for it. 

He’ll operate in this capacity for the rest of the novel, trying to stay one step ahead of the law to clear his name by finding the girl’s killer. But he only makes things worse for himself, proceeding to commit even more crimes along the way – stealing, carjacking, breaking and entering. Even as mentioned unintentionally causing the death of an innocent man who has nothing to do with anything – save for being the boyfriend of the girl whose house Bill breaks into while hiding from the cops. Pretty much everything he touches turns to shit in the book, yet Bill never once questions himself or his actions. Hell, as mentioned even when running from the cops or the bad guys or whatnot, he still finds the opportunity to bitch about society or people in general. He’s almost comically unlikable, but the thing is the reader doesn’t get the impression that Snyder himself feels this way – Bill is presented as the studly and cool hero, even though he comes off like a complete prick. 

Bill’s escape from the cops is one of the few action scenes in the book. Bill runs and swims and runs some more, eventually losing them in the summer tourist crowd. Here’s where he starts stealing so he can get to a payphone and call Jim Dana – and also where Snyder starts page-filling with abandon. It starts off with a pair of old ladies finishing their lunch at an outdoor restaurant and getting into a long conversation – which takes up a few pages – over the tip amount they should leave. Bill, dressed only in a “mini-wetsuit” deal, is actually asked by the management to leave, given that he’s been standing there so long , waiting for the women to leave their table so he can steal their tip. Next he sets his sights on a few dudes who have just eaten, and he snatches their tip. However, Dana doesn’t answer the phone – and won’t answer it until the very final pages, giving the lame excuse that Bill “isn’t his only Operation Hang Ten operative” and thus has been busy with another of his spies! 

The murdered girl was named Charlene Morris, and Bill remembers her address from the ID he briefly looked at. It’s in Newport Beach, so Bill steals some poor guy’s Mustang so he can drive back to his car, “the woody.” At least this preys on Bill’s conscience, to the point where he calls a tow truck driver and offers him a bonus if he hauls the Mustang back to Hermosa with no questions asked – yet more page-filling. I forgot to mention, Bill learned from the cops that there was another corpse in Charlene’s car: her father, a rocket scientist, whose body was shoved in the trunk. Of course the cops are trying to pin both murders on Bill. So he heads to the home Charlene supposedly shares with her dad, and there finds a bunch of hippie squatters – obese Ma and two Manson lookalikes. There are also two women, one of them a willowy blonde and the other a super-stacked one named Cherry. 

Bill suspects something’s afoot, and gets confirmation when they try to attack him. This leads to yet another chase scene, with Bill running from the “family” as well as the cops. He plows through the back yards of some residences and then ditches the woody, picking out which house to break into to hide. I mean folks this is our hero. Of course, the house he settles on turns out to be occupied by a super-built blonde with long legs…and of course, she just happens to be in the shower when Bill breaks in. So he looks around her stuff, checking out her photos and her drawers and stuff…and then waits to confront her as soon as she’s stepping out of the shower! This is how he meets what will become the main female character of the novel: Sam, aka Samantha, probably the most memorable female character yet in the series given her smart comebacks. 

She’s not too shocked by Bill’s appearance, and indeed goes about getting dressed…while Bill keeps oggling her, holding his .22 Magnum on her. Again, this is our hero. As mentioned, she does wonder if he’s going to rape her, and Bill rubs his chin and says he’s thinking about it. Bill is also a dick when it comes to his verbal treatment of women; his style of coming on to them appears to be mocking and denigrating them. All very schoolyard juvenile, but again nowhere is it implied that Bill is wrong for this. Nor is it implied he’s a bad guy when Sam’s boyfriend comes over, a big lug who towers over Bill…and Bill proceeds to beat the shit out of him. And then tie him up and toss him in the closet. Sam says she’s not too crazy about the guy to begin with, plus she’s upset he failed to protect her! Oh and Bill’s such a dumbass he’s unaware “Sam” is a nickname for Samantha. I guess he’s too busy surfing and bitching to watch Bewitched

So Bill, who still can’t get hold of Jim Dana, goes back to follow Ma and her people, because he assumes they were behind the murder of Charlene and her rocket scientist dad. Now here we get an opportunity for some “secret agent” sort of stuff, but as mentioned Bill’s a joke in that regard. He has Sam drive her car and sits there as she follows Ma and her group in their school bus, Bill finding the opportunity even here to bitch about society. But of course Ma’s freaks have spotted the tail and end up crushing Sam’s car. Bill’s knocked out, and when he wakes up he’s tied up in the back of the school bus and Sam’s gone. I should mention we’re over halfway through the novel at this point. I mean it’s almost a joke, that’s how bad it is. 

Ma’s not here, and a bound Bill watches as Cherry goes out into a school, talks up some teenaged girl, and brings her back on the bus – this is how Ma’s family kidnaps people. The new girl’s tied up alongside Bill, and off they go to find Bill’s trailer. Here things get pretty dark, as the poor teen girl is raped by one of the Manson types; this, we’re to understand, is her punishment, given that she didn’t free Bill when she had the chance. The poor girl deserves it! Cherry takes Bill into his swank trailer and basically demands that he screw her on his round bed with the roller bar and the colored lights that change in tempo to the “violin music” Bill can play with the touch of a button. Here ensues one of the more explicit sex scenes in the series, as Bill manages to talk Cherry into untying his hands…then taking her and himself all the way to “completion” before knocking her out. 

Oh and meanwhile, the Manson-esque rapist has accidentally killed the poor girl he was raping. Yet another female character Bill Cartwright has failed to save. He gets his .22 Magnum and finally dishes out some payback. Here we get an almost arbitrary catering to the cover art, where a helicopter comes out of nowhere and starts dropping grenades on Bill. I almost get the impression Snyder was ordered to include such a scene by series producer Lyle Kenyon Engel, as the cover artwork had already been commissioned. Perhaps the biggest development of Death Car Surfside is that Bill’s beloved “woody” (for some reason the car is never capitalized) is destroyed, courtesy the helicopter falling on it when Bill shoots it out of the sky. 

Bill cries over it a bit, then later wonders over how much work it would take to build a new one. But ultimately he seems to cast aside this idea, feeling that a new woody would just be a recreation, a replacement for something he loved and lost. He rents a Charger, which he drives the rest of the novel, but I’m assuming in the next (and final) volume, Freaked Out Strangler, he gets himself a new car. I don’t have that volume, so we’ll have to be content with Olman’s review. Olman excerpts some narrative about Bill’s car in his review, but doesn’t state what car it is. At any rate Bill’s big problem right now is finding Sam, whom he’s been told is a captive of Ma’s. Only, Bill doesn’t know where Ma lives. All this is so far removed from a spy novel – the entire book really has nothing to do with the rest of the series, save for a last-minute development that Ma is working with some Red Chinese agents and she’s been kidnapping the children of prominent American scientists and whatnot for ransom, to give their secrets to the Chinese. 

The book’s only real action scene occurs in a big shopping mall; Bill finds out that Ma’s meeting with a secret Chinese agent who runs a restaurant inside the mall(!?), and Bill barges in there…and is immediately caught. Yes, that’s correct…Bill, who again has the opportunity to demonstrate his bad-ass secret agent skills, is immediately captured by the Chinese agents when he walks into the back room, in which Ma is meeting with her contacts. There are several men there with guns, and Bill meekly hands over his .22 and has a seat. As I say, Snyder was clearly worn out with the series at this point, as so much of the “plot stuff” is relayed via lazy exposition, as here, where the entire plot is exposited by these one-off characters. At least it culminates in a long-running action scene, with Bill, once he’s found out Ma’s address, gorily disposing of several Chinese agents with his .22, before getting in a long chase with Ma that turns into a knockdown, dragout fight. 

You’d think Sam would be a little freaked out that she’s spent the last few hours tied to a bed in a darkened, empty house, but instead she just has a few smart remarks for Bill, once he’s taken off her gag – and Bill replies with some acidic retorts of his own. At this point the entire thing is just nauseating. And of course, next chapter picks up with the couple post-boink in Bill’s swank trailer; the little fact that Sam’s boyfriend was murdered just a few hours before is brushed under the narrative carpet, with Sam pretty much shrugging and saying she never felt the same way about the guy as he did for her! Oh and here Bill finally gets a return call from Jim Dana, who as mentioned basically says he was busy with other crap, so stop your bitching. 

In his review of Freaked Out Strangler, Olman comments that, by that tenth volume, the “faux beat poetry style” Snyder employs for the series seems “almost condensed, thickened, as if it had been left on the stove too long.” This is pretty spot on. As mentioned in my review of the seventh volume, decades later Snyder was under the impression he’d only written five volumes of the series, whereas all other sources peg him for all ten volumes. Could it be that he grew so bored with the series he merely forgot he’d written five more volumes? Or maybe it’s because each volume seems like a retread of the one that came before, so he just thought he’d only written five when he really wrote ten. 

Who knows. This is all of them I have for now, so unless I spot some more for super cheap these are the only volumes of Operation Hang Ten I’ll be reviewing. I’m certainly not going to shell out the $$$ online book sellers are asking. And in fact, what with the woody being destroyed and all, Death Car Surfside makes for a fine pseudo-finale of the series.

Monday, December 9, 2019

Operation Hang Ten #8: Beach Queen Blowout


Operation Hang Ten #8: Beach Queen Blowout, by Patrick Morgan
No month stated, 1971  Macfadden Books

Well it only took eight installments, but we now actually have a volume number on the covers of Operation Hang Ten. Unfortunately only two volumes were to follow, so one wonders if the numbering helped or hurt the series. George Snyder again serves as “Patrick Morgan,” turning in basically the same novel as the other three volumes I’ve read: egomaniac protagonist Bill Cartwright (aka “The Cartwright,” as he often thinks of himself) bumbles his way through a lurid caper in which at least one curvy young beauty is sadistically murdered, usually as a result of Bill’s own foolish actions. We also get sermonizing on the general shittiness of the world.

That being said, Beach Queen Blowout certainly promises a lot. In fact it has a setup frequent blog commenter Grant would appreciate: a gang of hotbod young women, led by a bikini-clad babe who sports a heart-shaped birthmark above her left breast, has been knocking over banks and terrorizing the business establishments around Huntington Beach, California. There’s also some stuff about oil rigs off the coast being sabotaged as part of a blackmail scheme. But Snyder takes this material – which possibly was devised by series producer Lyle Kenyon Engel – and basically ignores it, instead intent on telling the tale of how “The Cartwright” falls in love for the first time

Yes, friends, it’s a “very special episode” of Operation Hang Ten, with Bill (as Snyder usually refers to him) falling head over heels for a young beauty named Lynn he meets early in his investigation. This at the expense of the more lurid (and potentially sleazy) setup promised by the back cover copy – no lie, much is made of this mysterious criminal babe in her bikini that shows off a heart-shaped birthmark, and while Bill makes some cursory attempts at finding out who she is, ultimately her reveal is almost casually dropped on the reader and Bill doesn’t even bother taking her down himself. And the rest of her bikini-clad gang is similarly dispensed with off-page, our hero more concerned with doling out justice to a handful of people.

As usual the entire premise of “Operation Hang Ten,” as devised by chief Jim Dana, is hard to buy, especially if Bill Cartwright’s performance in the line of duty can be taken as a sign of how the other operatives fare. Regardless Dana, who appears a bit more in the narrative this time than in previous volumes, vociferously defends his organization, claiming that the young surfers, punks, and whatnot he’s hired have a better chance of squaring counterculture problems than regular secret agent types could. So Bill’s been sent to Huntington Beach to figure out who the girls are behind these crimes.

There’s no pickup from the previous volume, but John “Fast Black” Washington, the black surfer we saw in #3: Deadly Group Down Under, is again hanging out with Bill. We aren’t reminded as often that he’s black this time, no doubt because he isn’t in the narrative very much, other than to meet some local gal and fall in love with her. Love is certainly in the air in Beach Queen Blowout. Bill and John are hanging around Huntington Beach, complaining about all the lousy beaches given the recent oil spills. Bill meanwhile has been sent here specifically to find out who is damaging those offshore rigs, but instead he bitches about the “punk waves” and wonders if he’s ever going to crack this case.

We’re often told via Bill’s reflection on events that some hotbod women (along with a few “hard-core bitches” who are a bit more “Amazon” in stature) have been hitting businesses, led by the notorious birthmarked babe. Bill’s sure these girls are behind the oil rig hits – eventually we’ll learn the oil company which owns the rigs is being blackmailed for a million dollars or the rigs will be destroyed – but he doesn’t do much to investigate. Not that he needs to, as all the answers will literally fall into his lap. And I mean “literally” in the, uh, literal sense, and not in the figurative sense that most people mistakenly use it in, ie “Steam literally came out of his ears.” (A comment I’ve actually seen online.) 

Bill and John run into a pair of gals in a dune buggy, both of them “table stuff,” as Bill often reflects. He goes for the hotter of the two, Lynn, though keeps reminding us that the other one, Alice, is almost just as hot – she’s just more quiet and shy. Lynn seems to like Bill and tells him she knows of the one good beach left in Huntington, a private cove. She invites him to it, and Bill finds it inundated with women – some of them rather butch-looking – with “Beach Queens” painted all over the place. He makes cursory attempts at looking for any heart-shaped birthmarks; he’s determined Lynn doesn’t have one, thanks to her skimpy bikini, but shy and quiet Alice always covers her big ol’ boobs with a t-shirt, mysteriously enough.

The focus is more on the budding relationship between Bill and Lynn. He finds himself falling for her quick wit, and the great body doesn’t hurt. However, she has ulterior motives; she wants to hire Bill, having seen the “Private Eye” sign on his trailer. Speaking of which, we get a running tour of Bill’s swank trailer, with it’s refrigerator-sized computer that controls everything from the temperature to the drinks Bill is constantly “dialing up.” We also get a good look at his swinging bedroom, complete with mirrored ceiling, colored lighting which matches the mood and flow of the “violin” music that pipes through the speakers, and a roller bar that goes from the foot to the top of the mattress and back again. This latter element is put to memorable use when Bill and Lynn get to their inevitable tomfoolery, Snyder again not descending to outright sleaze but not fading to black, either. In fact this is the most explicit volume of the series I’ve yet read.

Next morning Lynn’s gone and Bill finds himself thinking about her all day. That’s right, folks, even “the Cartwright” can be bitten by the love bug. Meanwhile he’s accosted by Juanita, one of those “hard-core bitches” of the Beach Queen set; she demands Bill get his trailer off their cove by nightfall. While looking down Juanita’s shirt for the birthmark, Bill notices that “it’s a man, baby,” per Austin Powers (probably my favorite bit in that entire movie) – and promptly yanks off Juanita’s fake tits! Operation Hang Ten once again proves itself of a different era as Bill demeans Juanita for “soiling real women,” mocking the she-he good and proper. A dude could get hauled off to jail for shit like that in today’s enlightened era.

But seriously, Juanita’s penchant for cross-dressing is never explained…we do eventually learn “he-she” is the ringleader of the female heisters, even training them for the scuba missions to hit the oil rigs, and I was under the impression the cross-dressing was so as to fool people into thinking he was just “one of the girls.” But Snyder, even if he intended this, doesn’t follow through; he’s too intent on the Bill-Lynn subplot, which becomes the plot of Beach Queen Blowout. And speaking of Lynn, she returns that night to inform Bill she’s really the daughter of a senator, and has been working here undercover herself, helping her dad figure out who is hitting the oil rigs. Hence her interest when she saw the P.I. sign on Bill’s trailer; she feels she’s gotten in too deep and needs some help.

Well after another fairly-explicit all-night bang-o-rama, the two exchange declarations of love. Bill’s caught so off-guard by his own words that he doubts himself for a moment; later he’ll clarify that he’s never told a single woman he loves her, thus Lynn is a first. Finally Lynn gets around to telling Bill what she’s been up to on Queen Cove and how she’s helping her dad and whatnot. And folks this part is laughable because Mr. Bill Cartwright again proves himself to be a jackass of jackasses, probably the biggest dick in the entire men’s adventure universe. Without even hearing Lynn’s full story, Bill starts ranting and raving about her senator father, a guy Bill’s never met and doesn’t even know, accusing him of being dirty and only looking into the oil pollution affair because he’s in the pockets of the oil companies. A crying Lynn storms off to walk the beach and cool down, and jerkass Bill just stands there, fuming. Because Snyder knows we veteran readers understand what’s going to happen to Lynn, he decides to dig the knife in deeper, and has Lynn abruptly turn back and tell Bill he didn’t give her a kiss goodbye! This Bill does, and off Lynn trudges along the deserted beach

Then Alice comes along, asking for Lynn…and here we get more of those “earlier era sentiments” as Bill accuses Alice of being a lesbian, hot for Lynn, and launches off into another rant. But no, Alice has a thing for Bill, she’s just failed to act on it due to her best friend screwing him and all. At this point Alice slinks into Bill’s lap and info-dumps all the, you know, plot stuff we readers have been missing out on: conveniently enough, Alice’s mom runs a motel, and the leaders of the oil company blackmail scheme are all staying there! And Alice overheard their plans! Long story short, there’s some old former madam named Mamie who is plotting with a Mafioso named Eduardo, and Juanita is the hired goon who is training the Beach Queens to do the job – after which the Beach Queens will of course be set up as patsies. Oh, and Alice is worried about Lynn, because she overheard Juanita vow to kill her before storming out of the motel a few hours ago…

Friends, guess what that grisly cover image depicts? (Note even the gash in the poor girl’s throat; the uncredited cover artist is nothing if not thorough.) Yes, Lynn never makes it back from that little walk on the beach. Bill feels an icy coldness descend upon him as he discovers her corpse in the sand: the case no longer matters. His life mission is to find Juanita and kill him slowly. At this point we seem gearing up for a brutal William Crawford-esque revenge thriller, but Snyder just doesn’t have it in him – he’s still intent on doling out something more hardboiled. Thus Bill will ultimately swindle the saboteurs into turning on each other instead of killing them all himself. In this capacity he basically goes rogue from Hang Ten, keeping pertinent info from an increasingly-demanding Jim Dana, and the novel almost works as a finale for the series itself: Bill Cartwright going solo for his own purposes.

The shifting plot focus is displayed posthaste when Bill, about to go out for some vengeance, is accosted in his cabin by sexy Millie, a Beach Queen hotstuff who has been trying to get her hooks in him. She saunters in, announces they’re about to screw, and starts to undress. This was actually a well-conveyed scene because normally such a sequence would be done for titilating purposes, yet the reader is still numb from Lynn’s murder – she was just in Bill’s bed several pages before – thus the exploitation of Millie’s ample anatomy does as little for the reader as it does for Bill himself. Oh, and it’s casually dropped that as Millie doffs her top Bill notices a heart-shaped birthmark above her left breast and thus, literally as I said, the infamous heist-girl leader has fallen into Bill’s lap. So he ties her up, calls Jim Dana, and goes off on his vengeance quest.

But Bill Cartwright isn’t just a dick, he’s also a bufoon. Time and again he’s either outwitted, caught unawares, or makes some foolish mistake. For example, he gets Juanita in his sights several times but loses the “she-he” due to some goof-up on Bill’s part. Then Bill’s caught by Eduardo, the mobster who is backing the blackmail scheme. This at least leads to Bill finally killing someone; he outwits the two hoods who were ordered to kill him, has them lay side by side on a motel bed, then coldly shoots each of them in the head with his .22 Magnum, even after promising not to – and we even get a prefigure of Arnold’s famous Commando line when Bill informs one of the pleading mobsters, “I lied.”

Sadly, the cold revenge yarn Lynn’s murder promised is constantly derailed by Bill’s screwups. I wondered if this was Snyder’s commentary on Bill’s actual youth – the dude’s not even 25, I think – but instead I think our author was just desperately trying to meet his word count and didn’t know what else to do. His attempts at conveying suspense and tension actually make his protagonist seem like a foolish jackass, and this goes on for like 50 pages. And meanwhile Jim Dana’s about ready to fire Bill from the Hang Ten program, given how his “top operative” keeps hiding things. Bill does manage to get Dana to collect a million bucks from the oil company, all as part for Bill to bluff the blackmailers into killing each other – he’s swindled both Eduardo and Mamie into thinking he’ll get the money for them. Oh and meanwhile Bill’s sicced Dana on the entire Beach Queen gang, having snuck on the boat Juanita was piloting to one of those oil rigs. Bill merely waits until the girls have left, then commandeers the boat so that they’re abandoned there…and has them arrested off-page. And meanwhile Juanita escapes Bill yet a-friggin’-gain!

To make it worse, Bill watches on the sidelines as Eduardo and Mamie take each other out, the surviving Beach Queens going full-on Bacchante and tearing Eduardo apart. Then Bill finally gets to square things with Juanita – who incidentally has admitted to killing Lynn – but after shooting him in the kneecap Bill has a “what have I become?” moment and realizes torturing the bastard to death won’t help anyone. Thus Juanita is given a quick sendoff – and it’s a ripoff. I mean I was expecting some William Crawford-esque brutalism. Instead, Bill limps back to his trailer, tells a waiting Alice it’s a no-go on the sex thing (and I forgot to mention the unconfomfortable scene where Alice tries desperately to screw Bill, performing every trick she knows, but the poor grieving boy can’t get it up), because she’ll always remind him of Lynn. And then Bill goes to sit alone in his trailer in misery. “The Cartwright knew love.”

The helluva it is, Beach Queen Blowout is entertaining and sometimes gripping when you read it. At least the first half. But as the various subplots are cast aside, and as Bill constantly screws up his attempts at simple revenge, you start to notice how messy everything is. I mean it’s the second half that really undoes the novel. If only Snyder had gone through with the “cold-blooded Cartwright” plot he initially promised. Instead it’s a mire of crosses and double-crosses, of Bill constantly letting Juanita slip out of his grasp, of various hoodlums getting the advantage f our hero. However, the plot of Bill and Lynn’s romance is well handled, even if Snyder is a bit guilty of telegraphing what’s about to happen to the poor girl.

As stated this would’ve been a fine finale for the series; Bill’s relationship with Dana and Hang Ten is put to the test, almost at times reminsicent of the Timothy Dalton James Bond flick Licence To Kill. However there were two more volumes after this one, and I’m curious to see if Lynn’s even mentioned in the next one. I’ll be surprised if she is.

Thursday, September 13, 2018

The Girl In The Telltale Bikini (Operation Hang Ten #6)


The Girl in The Telltale Bikini, by Patrick Morgan
No month stated, 1971  Macfadden Books

As mentioned in my review of Topless Dancer Hangup, this is actually the sixth volume of Operation Hang Ten, whereas it’s often mistakenly listed as the seventh. The “other books in the series” list in the front makes this clear, and as stated in my previous review, Topless Dancer Hangup features a recap of hero Bill Carwright’s previous six adventures. But, as with most of these “produced by Lyle Kenyon Engel” joints, there isn’t much continuity to worry about anyway, so perhaps the point is as they say moot.

George Snyder once again serves as “Patrick Morgan,” and apparently he did so for the entire series; his style is in effect throughout, though some of the scathing comments on society and ruminations on women have been slightly toned down. But other Snyder mainstays are still here, like the strange insistence on fistfights over all other forms of action – seriously, it seems like Bill’s constantly dropping or losing his “.22 Magnum” and having to resort to his fists. That being said, there are some brutal brawls throughout, with shards of shattered skulls piercing brains and faces just generally smashed.

The plot of The Girl In The Telltale Bikini is almost surreal, most likely because Snyder was winging it or perhaps was given an outline by Engel and had a hard time capturing it. But you know something’s up when the “climax” involves the suddenly-revealed main villain expositing on the scheme and explaining what has been happening. I tend to think it was a case of Engel coming up with the plot, as it follows the old standby of Bill Cartwright having an evil clone, a story Engel previously ran in the Nick Carter: Killmaster entry Double Identity. But, just as with that earlier novel, the “evil clone” doesn’t really pan out and in fact causes more questions than anything, as just as an “evil Nick Carter” served no purpose in Double Identity, neither does the “evil Bill Cartwright” in this one.

A US spy ship has sunk near the coast of Sidney, Australia, and surprisingly this doesn’t much concern Los Angeles section chief Jim Dana of Operation Hang Ten; but when his government associate tells him that a “Bill Cartwright” has been spotted with all the other surfers making use of the phenomenal waves created by the jutting hulk of the ship, Dana perks up – he knows Bill is in California, not Australia. And so he is, enthusiastically screwing his latest girlfriend, a “top-heavy” blonde named June Blue. Bill’s trailer is even swankier this time around; we learn there’s not only a mirror above the bed, but with the touch of a button multicolored lights will flash over the bed. Another button activates rollers beneath the mattress, and June has become very excited about this particular feature.

A recurring bit is how Bill, only “pretending” to be heartless (yeah, right!) breaks it off with this latest girl so he can get on to his secret spy job. This seems to be the last we’ll see of busty June, but we might be surprised. Off Bill goes to Australia, where he goes about his usual method of espionage: loudly proclaiming himself to be Bill Cartwright and getting in frequent fistfights. Not to mention promptly getting himself some local booty; in almost no time he comes across a sexy brunette with a flat tire, and after fixing it Bill finds himself invited back to the girl’s place – and also she tells him he can keep his trailer in the parking lot of the bikini shop she owns.

Her name is Lynda Rahm and she claims to be Turkish or Greek or something; who really cares where the hell she’s from, given her “darker than tan” skin and her “small but ample breasts?” But folks ol’ Bill is pretty dumb this time around, because Lynda is clearly hiding stuff from him, but Bill just sort of goes with the flow and ignores all the red flags. Plus he takes his time about getting her in bed; that being said, when the good lovin’ happens this time, it’s more explicit than the material in the other two volumes I’ve read. In fact Bill and Lynda’s first “encounter” goes on for a few pages of hot and heavy stuff – plus it’s another of those red flags Bill ignores, ‘cause in one of his off-hand ruminations he informs us that women in their 20s and 30s can’t screw worth a damn, whereas women in their 40s and 50s will bang your brains out if you give them the chance, and Lynda’s sack skills are a lot better than her claimed age of 22 would imply.

These off-hand ruminations are a recurring series gimmick, as mentioned a bit toned down this time but still priceless for their reactionary, unacceptable-in-today’s-progressivised, “Miss America 2.0” world. In addition to random bitchery about tourists clogging up the beaches (a series mainstay, but then Bill’s a surfer so it makes sense this would bug him), we get some observations about women, in particular this doozy that would end a career if someone would have the audacity to post it on Twitter:

[Lynda’s kitchen] smelled of just-cooked bacon and coffee aroma. In America Lynda would have been considered a neatnick as a housekeeper. American womanhood was too busy striving for achievements to keep anything but a sloppy house. In Australia Lynda would have been considered an average housekeeper. The women of Australia knew their place and stayed in it.

Bill finds that his name sends young women scurrying away from him – even Lynda initially seemed taken aback when he told her his name – not that this stops him from running around the beach and bullying the sexy surf bunnies. They all run away from him when he announces himself; later he’ll learn that the fake Bill, also a blonde American surfer, is sort of a pimp for Maha Lon Caffrey, guru of a nearby cult. Bill and Lynda crash a meeting at the temple, and here Bill gets a glimpse of his double, who goes onstage preaching how Maha Lon saved him. Of course the real Bill responds with his usual brusque manner and instantly starts a brawl. But Bill has a reason for being pissed, as the previous night a couple temple freaks stomped him in yet another brawl; Bill’s apparently mangled face is only occasionally mentioned by the other characters.

Kudos to Snyder for having the two Bills sort things out in a way apropos to the series: a surfing duel! In fact there’s a bit more surfing material in this one than in the other volumes I’ve read. But just like the “fake Nick Carter” plot fizzled out without much exploitation in Double Identity, so too does it in this novel; the fake Bill is anticlimactically removed from the narrative, and later it will be vaguely explained that he was a crewman on the sunk US spy ship. Why was he posing as Bill? That’s not really explicity stated; the implication is that Bill Cartwright is sort of known on the surfing set and the fake Bill and his companions were looking to exploit his image, in particular his skills with picking up the ladies.

Why? Because Maha Lon’s temple is a cover for a sort of lair of Arabs who smoke hash while they auction off sex slaves, the young women abducted right off the beach and their minds fogged by drugs. At this point the reader can see that George Snyder is basically throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. It’s made all the worse by the laughably poor security these Arabs have; Bill pretty much just walks into the temple, finds the secret passageway, slips on a conveniently-discarded hooded robe one of the cultists left behind, and walks right in on the proceedings. This after the other temple guys beat him up, the previous night – I mean they know he’s the real Bill Cartwright and could undo all their plotting, so why don’t they kill him? Why just beat him up? But Snyder plows on, hoping we don’t think to ask these questions.

Snyder keeps it all moving with frequent fistfights and car chases, not to mention the occasional sex and surfing sequence. Lynda is Bill’s main woman this time around, save for a surprise reappearance by another female character in what is one of the novel’s many hard-to-buy plot developments. But speaking of Lynda, she’s always around when Bill’s ambushed, she has an uncle who owns a shop right beside Maha Lon’s temple, and she has “special” bikinis in her shop which she says aren’t for getting into the water with. She’s also a helluva lot better in bed than she should be, given Bill’s worldly experience, and all this should set off Bill’s warning signals, but instead he just sort of lets things play out. He’s a little muddled because Lynda’s hired him – Bill’s cover being a private eye – to find a friend of hers who is one of the abducted women.

The climax features more brawling, though for once Bill does shoot one or two people with that damn .22 Magnum he’s always dropping. But again the dude just waltzes right into the temple while an auction is going on, the Arabs too stoned to worry about something so minor as security, and starts up a riot. When the main villain is revealed, it’s so hard to buy that Snyder must spend several pages explaining everything. But it turns out that two of the crewmen on the sunk ship – one of whom was the guy who pretended to be Bill – stole a bunch of secret documents, and were sending them over to Arabian bidders via arcane means. The finale at least is fun, with Bill and boss Jim Dana sitting on the beach and watching a bunch of girls model bikinis, all to discover which one has the final coded message hidden on it – the message only revealed when the bikini is wet.

Despite the almost surreal vagaries of the plot, I think I enjoyed The Girl In The Telltale Bikini the most of the Operation Hang Ten books I’ve yet read. Too bad the series is so damned overpriced, but at least I still have a few more to read.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Topless Dancer Hangup (Operation Hang Ten #7)


Topless Dancer Hangup, by Patrick Morgan
No month stated, 1971 Macfadden Books

I was under the impression that George Snyder wrote all ten volumes of the Operation Hang Ten series, but then Justin Marriott kindly sent me a scan of an article Snyder published in a 2005 issue of Paperback Parade where he claimed that he had only written the first five volumes, with no knowledge of who wrote the others. Then to confuse matters even more, Snyder himself left a comment on a revew of this very novel at The Ringer Files, where he stated, “I wrote ten of them…other writers came later after I walked away from the series.”

So what the hell? Did he write five or all ten? I could see him forgetting when he wrote that 2005 article that he’d written one or two volumes, but to forget he’d written five novels? But then, so far as his comment on the Ringer Files goes…there only were ten books in this series, so what other writers could there have been? All very confusing, and all likely moot, as having read this seventh volume* of Operation Hang Ten, I have to say it’s certainly the work of Snyder – which would imply his comment on Kurt’s blog was more accurate than his 2005 article, and that Snyder did in fact write all ten of these books and not just the first five.

It has the exact same vibe as the previous volume I read, #3: Deadly Group Down Under, with a small group of characters and a hardboiled pulp sort of feel. This volume again proves that Operation Hang Ten is more “Fawcett Gold Medal” the “surfing meets spy-fy” hijinks promised by the series concept. Other than one or two sequences where surly hero Bill Cartwright surfs or races his Hemi-powered Woody, the series feels almost exactly like a grim and gritty private eye yarn. Even the cast of characters is whittled down to just a handful, something I’ve noticed is a recurring motif in hardboiled pulp, and the action is mostly comprised of brutal fistfights.

Another indication that this is the work of George Snyder is that Topless Dancer Hangup features that strange tendency of his which I have mentioned before. Whereas the action scenes in a Snyder novel are chaotic, harried, and over within a paragraph or two, the guy consistently over-details comparitively trivial acts like the hero trying to sneak into a building. Just as in The Defector, while the action scenes are over and done with in no time, we will read a couple pages of Bill (as Snyder usually refers to his hero) climbing through a window and trying to lower himself safely to the ground, etc. There are two such sequences in the book, and Snyder’s the only men’s adventure writer I know of who consistently does this – personally I’d rather read a few pages of a shootout instead of a belabored explanation of how Bill jimmies open a window, slides in, and tries to figure out where he can safely land without causing himself injury or making any noise.

Anyway, I enjoyed this one a lot more than Deadly Group Down Under. Bill’s customary opinions on this or that are a bit toned down, and Snyder focuses more on the noirish feel. But still, it’s practically the same book. It seems to me that each of these Operation Hang Ten novels are just noirsh pulp-action yarns with plots that center around a missing or murdered young woman, and Topless Dancer Hangup has Bill venturing to Hawaii to locate a missing Hang Ten operative named Sandra Denny who is the titular topless dancer; she has disappeared with ten thousand in Hang Ten cash along with a microfilm she bought from a Cuban refugee, which purports to show the locations of Red China-funded missile silos in the Cuban hinterlands.

I was unduly harsh on Deadly Group Down Under; it took Kurt’s above-referenced review to make me realize what I’d missed: that Operation Hang Ten is really just a men’s adventure variation of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels, only in third-person (though Snyder’s prose as ever feels like first-person), and with a 24 year-old surfer-spy replacing MacDonald’s “knight errant.” I wonder if this is what series creator Lyle Kenyon Engel envisioned from the start. The similarities extend even to the “wounded birds” Bill encounters each volume, many of whom meet grisly deaths as demanded from lurid ‘70s pulp.

So, while my comments in that earlier review about Bill’s “chauvanism” and “misogyny” (two grossly overused words in the victim culture that is modern American society) are for the most part still valid, Bill’s Cro-Magnon views are tempered this time by…you know, who cares? It just didn’t bug me nearly as much this time, maybe because it just didn’t get as much in the way of the narrative. This time we just get periodic musings on hot secretaries “swishing” their behinds to and from work while Bill eats burgers and watches them from inside a greasy diner (Bill only seems to eat burgers, by the way).

We also get periodic reminders that women were designed to please men. But the most venomous musings are directed more toward the increasing commercialization of Hawaiian surfing spots and how parts of Hawaii will no doubt look just like Burbank in a decade. I’ve yet to read a Travis McGee novel, but it’s my understanding they’re along the same lines – weary cynicism about the encroaching shittiness of the world mixed with ruminations on women. All the same here, if a bit more brutish.

I still don’t buy Bill Cartwright as an action hero. For one, he’s too damn young, for me at least…I wrote elsewhere that I think these men’s adventure protagonists should be grizzled Marlboro Men-types, in their thirties at least….but more importantly he’s kind of a chump. Regardless, we’re informed that Hang Ten boss Jim Dana considers Bill his best operative – which I think is less a commentary on how great Bill is and more of a commentary on how bad the other Hang Ten operatives must be.

But Bill’s called away from his latest steady lay, a good-looking 19 year old surf “bunny” who has lived in sin with Bill for the past three weeks in his high-tech trailer, which as we’ll recall is all run off a computer that mostly just whips up Scotch and sodas for Bill. But our hero is getting sick of how “the girl” is falling in love with him and clearly wanting to marry him; more damningly, she is a neat freak. So when Bill gets his summons to Hang Ten HQ, he throws a “neatnik” tantrum and the girl storms out of his life, just as Bill hoped she would.

Later Snyder softens this a bit by having Bill “sniffling” as he sits alone in his trailer, and it’s intimated that Bill really broke it off with her because he can’t get that involved with a woman; his life is dedicated to eradicating “the lice” of the world. There are parts here and there later on where Bill will mull that his trailer is now “haunted” by the girl’s ghost, but by midpoint through the novel he’s checked out more ass-swingin’ secretaries and ass-baring surf bunnies and has pretty much forgotten about her. That being said, Bill does practically fall in love with another young lady during the course of the novel.

The book is really a private eye thriller; forget any “Surfing James Bond” expectations. Bill heads to Honolulu, as ever having his Woody and his trailer shipped over as well, and goes about scoping out the scene while dealing with the smallscale cast of lowlife characters. He also kills a few pages hitting on a surf bunny named Sue in a subplot that goes absolutely nowhere, mostly so Snyder can provide a humorous scene in which the two openly discuss their intention to have sex in front of a few shocked fellow diners, but regrettably cannot as Sue has not taken her pill that day. The two make a date to screw the following day(!), but “The Cartwright” (as Snyder sometimes refers to his hero, I kid you not) forgets all about poor ol’ Sue.

Rather, the “Cartwright chick” this time around is Marie, a friend of Sandra Denny’s and a fellow topless dancer. There’s a cool late ‘60s vibe bit where Bill checks out Marie dancing in the club, with psychedelic lights playing over her half-nude form. Bill practically falls in love with her, leading to the novel’s one and only sex scene, which is fairly explicit, in particular noting a “small, circular, wonderful movement to [Marie’s] body” that just about blows Bill’s mind. Marie is the only one who knows where Sandra Denny is, and even that she’s a Hang Ten agent, and sets Bill up to meet with her.

As for Sandra Denny, she remains off-page for the duration, being hunted by various people. Bill tracks down her mom, an over-the-hill hussy who comes on strong to our disgusted hero, and also questions Don Arlen, a dark-haired lothario who claims to have been Sandra’s steady boyfriend. (“Were you getting into her?” being an example of Bill’s rather blunt questioning method.) Mostly though Bill runs afoul of three lowlifes from another local club, two of whom shadow Bill throughout the novel, leading to the few (and pretty brief) action scenes.

In fact nothing really comes to a head even though some minor characters are killed off-page. Bill mostly just bitches that he’s getting nowhere in his half-assed investigation and goes back to his trailer to make despondent calls back to HQ and have his computer whip him up some Scotch and soda. It’s only when Marie is captured and put in a sort of dungeon that the novel really kicks into gear, though to be sure it the material leading up to this moment isn’t exactly bad or anything – in fact, I enjoyed it. But I still don’t think the exorbitant prices of Operation Hang Ten on the second-hand market are justified; we aren’t talking about men’s adventure fiction gold here.

Even when Bill goes to Marie’s rescue, Snyder again indulges in his strange penchant for focusing more so on Bill’s climbing through a window and sneaking into the place than the actual action itself. And Bill proves himself again to be a klutz, dropping his .22 Magnum auto and resorting to his hands. The villain ends up blowing himself up. Once Marie’s freed, Bill basically proclaims his love to her and then gets on to the business of figuring out the plot in the last couple pages, with all of it centering around the same small group of characters we’ve been dealing with since the beginning. 

I’ve got a few more volumes of Operation Hang Ten in my collection, and hopefully they’ll be more along the lines of this one. Bill’s bitchery is toned down a bit, and while not much really happens, the tone is nice and hardboiled. It’s a shame though that Manor didn’t reprint the series in full like it did with The Aquanauts; if they had, the books might be a lot easier and cheaper to acquire.

*I was also under the impression that Topless Dancer Hangup was the sixth volume of Operation Hang Ten, as that’s how it’s listed in Brad Mengel’s Serial Vigilantes and on the Spy Guys and Gals website. However the “other titles in the Operation Hang Ten series” list at the front of the book has Girl In The Telltale Bikini, usually listed as being the seventh volume, as actually being the sixth volume. In other words, the order of the two volumes has been swapped in Brad’s book and the Spy Guys site, and Topless Dancer Hangup takes place after Girl In The Telltale Bikini. Not only that, but early in Topless Dancer Hangup Bill briefly flashes back on his previous six assignments for Hang Ten, one of which is the Girl In The Telltale Bikini.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Operation Hang Ten #3: Deadly Group Down Under


Operation Hang Ten #3: Deadly Group Down Under, by Patrick Morgan
No month stated, 1970  Macfadden Books

Possibly one of the most overpriced men’s adventure series on the market, with some volumes listed online at vomit-inducing prices, Operation Hang Ten is also one of the more unusual, so far as series concepts go, with its hero a 23 year-old surfer who works as a spy. Yet another paperback series copyright packager Lyle Kenyon Engel, Operation Hang Ten was never picked up by another publishing company when Macfadden Books went out of business, which may explain why the books are now so scarce and expensive.

But then, if this third volume is any indication, there may be a good reason why the series was never picked up – namely, our “hero” is an asshole of the first order, outranking even Tracker – yes, outranking even Tracker!! Bill Cartwright is a misogynist, cynical, chauvinist, arrogant, obnoxious dickhead, affronting everyone and anyone for no reason whatsoever, including ultimately the reader. He is also absolutely nothing like you’d expect the hero of a series titled “Operation Hang Ten” to be.

Marty McKee well summed up Cartwright in his review of the 8th volume: “For a counterculture hero, Cartwright doesn't seem to care much for the counterculture, and his attitude towards women belongs to a man at least twenty years older and a decade earlier.” Beyond that, Bill Cartwright is much too cynical and all-knowing for a 23 year-old surf bum, with a caustic opinion on everything. I mean people, imagine John Updike as a surfer spy and you’d be close to the bizarre, off-putting feel of this series.

I’ve mentioned before how I detest online reviews that mock older books for their “outdated” sentiments and etc, so I realize I’m coming off as hypocritical, but honest to god, I’m not exaggerating here. Bill Cartwright has absolutely no redeeming qualities. He hates everyone and everything, especially women, and throughout the novel he acts abrasively to anyone he meets. As a spy he’s a waste, and so far as his “cover” as a private investigator goes, he sucks at that, too. Now as for surfing, as far as he’s concerned he’s the best there is.

Anyway. Deadly Group Down Under has Cartwright (or “Bill,” as he’s referred to in the narrative itself) tasked with infiltrating the circle which surrounds an up-and-coming young starlet named Lisa Dane, an Australian with “cotton candy” dyed white hair who both sings and acts. For some convoluted reason never made clear she has been dubbed “Queen of the Surfers,” even though she’s never surfed. To Bill though she’s a “phoney” through and through, and by god don’t think he won’t tell her that.

We open with Bill going about his task in his own assholic way, competing in a surf competition at a party near Lisa Dane’s rented beach house in Santa Monica; the winner gets a black opal and a kiss from Lisa. Bill wins, of course, but then takes the opal, drops it down the front of her dress, and struts arrogantly off. When later he’s threatened by Lisa’s manager, Lance Mikesell, and the man’s security guard, Dingo Lon, Bill tells them to screw off, enjoying a scotch and soda – the preferred drink of every 23 year-old surfer in 1970, of course. 

As Bill expected, Lisa Dane falls for it, coming to check out this mysterious man who spurned her. Bill ends up taking her back to his trailer, which is one of the few interesting touches of the series – it’s equipped with a “scanner” that alerts Bill when anyone comes close to it, and also has a computer that makes him his drinks. I lost count of the number of times I read how Cartwright “dialed up a scotch and soda.” After treating Lisa like shit some more, Bill of course scores with her, though the details are kept vague; this is another of those series where we cut to black when the dirty stuff begins.

Oh yeah, Bill’s supposed to infiltrate the group because someone in Lisa’s circle is taking photos of US military institutions around the world and selling them to the Chinese! But he’s more concerned that the girl is using him as a way to validate her “Queen of the Surfers” status, and he doesn’t like that at all. Oh, and he’s even more pissed that his boss Jim Dana has graced him with an untried young female partner named Lulu, who’s posing as one of the beach bum girls in Lisa’s orbit.

Bill’s vitriol for Lulu is almost as rampant as it is for Lisa Dane. He doesn’t get much chance to unleash it on a third female he’s been “saddled” with, Sharon Ryan, who currently works as Lisa Dane’s assistant but ends up dead when the group comes back from Switzerland to Australia, Bill going there himself to hook up with Lisa on Bondi Beach. Throughout the novel Bill and Lulu trade banter, but it isn’t fun banter, with Bill constantly telling her she’s an idiot and needs to quit because women shouldn’t be working as spies. For example:

Bill closed his eyes. He felt his jaws ache from gritting his teeth. Where was Lulu? Right there was the jolt he needed. A woman’s place was in the oven. Girls belonged at home, barefoot and pregnant, their lives should revolve around some man. This was not work for them. They were created for the care and pleasure of man.

That’s an actual quote from the novel, and it’s a glimpse of the mindset the reader is forced to endure for about 170 pages of smallish print. (Also, one has to wonder what the hell “A woman’s place was in the oven” is supposed to mean – surely he means kitchen??) Of course, none of this stops ol’ Bill from constantly trying to get in Lulu’s bikini trunks. To her credit she constantly stops him, saying she doesn’t want to become yet another of Bill Cartwright’s untold conquests.

Our hero doesn’t just piss off the women, though. Throughout the novel he rushes from one confrontation to another – confrontations he himself starts. For example when attempting to get information from Lisa Dane’s tour photographer, he busts into the poor guy’s place, threatens him, makes fun of him for practically worshipping Lisa, what with all the photos of her hanging about, and then storms out, later coming back to punch the guy a few times! When Lance Mikesell and Lingo Don, despite being the obvious villains of the story (there are like six characters in the entire novel), try to make peace with Bill, he tells them to fuck off. 

On and on it goes, but I started to suspect that maybe here we have another instance of the Ryker effect, ie where our “hero” is not intended to be seen as a hero. Throughout the novel other characters constantly call Cartwright out for being a jerk. Unlike Ryker though his plans usually work out perfectly and he seems to know exactly what’s going on all the time. So who knows, maybe the author means it all to be taken in earnest, and Bill Cartwright is not intended to be seen as a parody of the genre. But as mentioned earlier, he sucks at his job; his “deductive skills” amount to breaking and entering and snooping around. Then he goes back to his trailer and “dials up a scotch and soda.”

As for action, there are only a few fights here, all of them hand-to-hand. A pair of would-be murderers break into Bill’s trailer on Bondi Beach, and he fights them off in a savage brawl, getting some help from an apparently-recurring character, John Fast Black Washington, a black surfer who by the way is black (per ‘70s pulp demands, we are constantly reminded of this). In between bloody fights, these two like to trade world-weary, cynical banter, despite being in their early 20s.

Writing wise the novel’s not bad, so far as the word-spinning goes. But it’s very much in Bill’s perspective (the novel feels like it’s in first-person even though it isn’t), constantly going on and on about his strong opinions on this or that. We also get large blocks devoted to his misogynist philosophy. As I’ve written before, all of this is fine in small doses, I mean the one thing I want from this genre is over-the-top stuff, but at the same time, good grief is it annoying.

Beyond the skill of the prose itself, the plot kind of sucks. As mentioned there are only a few people in the novel, so any “mystery” of who the culprits are is quickly seen through. One also suspects the author had a hard time living up to the no-doubt Engel-created concept of the series, of a “hip” young surfer who is a spy; Bill Cartwright is less hip than Nick Carter. Finally, at least so far as this particular volume goes, the series really lacks in the action and sex category, with too much introspection (and arrogant bluster) getting in the way.

So who was Patrick Morgan? It was really an author named George Snyder, who takes credit for the entire series on his blog. As mentioned above, Operation Hang Ten is not an easy series to get hold of. Last December I was in an antiques store and came across three volumes of the series; sure, they were all beaten to shit and three dollars each, but I grabbed them anyway. So once I build up the stamina I’ll try to endure another one.