W. Howard Baker - Danger Man

[dem bones]

W. Howard Baker - Danger Man: Storm Over Rockall (Consul, 1965)

Design Ken Freeman

Blurb:

DANGER MAN
Radio Seatime was the latest addition to the pirate radio movement. It poured out endless programmes of popular music ... and something else —instructions for widescale sabotage of Britain's atomic programme.

So the call went out: "Send for John Drake" and in the events which followed he found himself pitted against one of the most dangerous groups of saboteurs that the nation ever had to face.

Begins with some suspicious types launching their secret rocket from the Henry P. Williamson moored off Rockall, but let's not worry too much about that - it blows up anyway - and cut straight to top Beatnik hangout, The Deeper Dive, situated below a Chinese restaurant and presided over by a Javanese known as Mister Mister, where a bunch of self-styled intellectuals in jeans and high neck sweaters are grooving to the heavy sounds emanating from the several small transistor radio's fixed into the wall, all of them permanently tuned in to Radio Seatime. The beardie weirdies are having a groovy time until top DJ Scratch McCaw introduces a new jazz number from "the mostest group - the Way-Outs"

"Even from the habituees of the Deeper Dive there came now a long, shuddering moan of united protest as the syrup of standard pop was replaced by the most extraordinary cacophony ever to shatter the eardrums of mankind. There is jazz and there is progressive jazz. The music - if that be the word - of the Way-Out's had progressed, apparently beyond the point of no return .."

While the majority of the audience attempt to talk above the Way-Out's, a man and a girl in the corner sit taking notes (that'll be Genesis and Cosey, I'll wager), but they're not the only ones. All around the country, mysterious persons are tuning in to Radio Seatime at that precise moment, jotters at the ready - including Sir Alwyn Fortesque and the powers that be at Whitehall! As Sir Alwyn explains, The Way-Out's are a threat to the establishment - "worse that the Beatles. Or those other ones, the, um, Rolling Whatsits" - because their music carries coded messages to those who would sabotage Britain's atomic programme! Clearly, someone will have to be assassinated for this, and the only man who can be trusted to pull off the hit is agent John Drake - Danger Man!

All this, and i'm only up to p.20

[dem bones]

Through a process of being bashed over the head, captured, escaping, being shot at, bashed over the head, captured, etc., Drake quickly discovers what's going on. The Russians, led by a sadistic fatso named Oblomov, have teamed up with Charnley, the multi-millionaire owner of Radio Seaway and, via the music of the Way-Out's, are coordinating the demonstrations and acts of sabotage by those "traitors" BBB (Ban Britain's Bombs) versus Phase Y of the Government's space program! Time for Drake to adopt another of his cunning disguises (none of which have worked to date) and infiltrate The Deeper Dive. This time he opts for a "seedy raincoat" and, amazingly, no-one recognises him. "To all appearances he was just another of the sad, weary misanthropes who frequent such haunts of misery."

Unfortunately, just as he's listening to the enemy's top secret plans, who should stagger in but Ukluk, his Eskimo man-servant, who's discovered the key to Drake's mini-bar and wants to start a punch up. The pacifists are more than obliging and soon "plainly everyone was enjoying him or herself much more than before." But Drake has learned enough: a few more narrow escapes from death and explosions and it will be time to take out the Pirate Radio station once and for all ...

[dem bones]

Finished it now. Slightly disappointed that we never get to meet the Way-Outers, but it's a fair old barnstormer and, at around 140 pages, nice and easy on the brain.

Not much by way of love interest, and what little there is seems to have been added as an afterthought. Actually, I spent the whole novel convinced that Drake was an avowed misogynist and celibate until his saucy exchange with Charnley's daughter, 'Heather' in the closing paragraphs. I guess the sight of her drugged and dumped in a crate, "her dress .... torn from hem to bodice and so was her underwear beneath" must have momentarily distracted him from duty after all.

There's also a brief hostile pub scene when Drake visits the fishing village of Sandiport where "the cut of his clothes stamped him as a foreigner - which is to say, from more than ten miles away". Having convinced an old lobster man that he isn't with the pirate radio ship, the locals take the opportunity to moan and moan and moan about how the sea dogs aboard the "jazz-wagon" were "taking the bread from honest folks mouths" although the gist of their complaint remains the same: "they were all a lot of stand-offish foreigners, worse than London folk"

[pulphack]

Really, this reads like a Blake with Drake cunningly substituted. I think the lack of salaciousnerss can be put down mostly to the fact that McGoohan would stamp his foot. On TV, Drake never got involved in such shennanigans, and this was mostly down to big Pat's views on such matters. Also, and this is really sweet, actually, he didn't want his kids to see him kiss another woman other than their mum on TV. I love the man for such idiosyncracies.

The Exterminator, which is credited to WA Ballinger on the Zenith reprint I have, isn't so beautifully sixties, but still worth a read. I think it's a Baker, as he didn't seem to use the Ballinger name for anyone other than himself until much later.

Peter Leslie also did a Danger Man - Hell For Tomorrow - which I've gleaned from an excellent Steve Holland interview in PBO#4, the paperback collectors newsletter, for 1997, which a chum of mine unearthed in his attic recently. I have no idea if this was for Press Ed, or was ATV generated. Mr Leslie, of course, ghosted a coupole fo Avengers titles for Pat McNee, which are mentioned elsewhere. Which follows me following Dem on the New Avengers... and all of this without DVD or VHS! Ain't paperbacking grand?

All we need is for John Burke to have done one... but he didn't. Meanwhile, over on HIS thread...

[dem bones]

Found this, the Cave New Avengers and a Sweet badge [fig A] nobody in their right mind would dream of wearing on a quick excursion to Spitalfields Market on Sunday so the place isn't quite dead by Yuppie - just deadly expensive. It was either this lot or a warm jumper for the winter but they didn't have a black mohair one so a no-brainer, really.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if you turn up a Blake with identical plot as the John Drake character struggles to be one dimensional. Storm Over Rockall plugs another Howard Baker Danger Man, Departure Deferred.

The Sweet. Their smash hit Wigwam Bam was reputedly heavily influenced by the atonal sonic assault of the Way-Outers

Forgot to mention. Baker ain't quite in the Richard Allen league, but product placement fans will be pleased to spot some gratuitous references to The Daily Mirror (Drake reads Garth) and Blue Mountain coffee.

[pulphack]

i'm surprised Baker plugs the Mirror, as his political leanings would have made him more of a Mail or Express reader. anyway...

interesting point about Drake being one-dimensional, and therefore it could easily be a de-Blaked title. i don't think it is, but the thing is that it would have been so easy. Blake was little more than a set of characteristics that the reader fleshed out over time. even going back pre-Baker to the golden age, it was always the series villains that stood out. this was partly because the writers could create their own, whereas they were stuck with what everyone else had done to Blake and Tinker, and the editorial template. but mostly i guess it's because you have to keep the hero of a multi-author series fairly general, and not too detailed, as then nuances between writers will be really jarring to continuity. you only have to look at Nick Carter (not that Franklin needs an excuse for that!) or Mack Bolan to see that in action up to the present.

with Drake, if you look at some old Danger Man episodes now, he was a very cold, aloof character, and that would be hard to translate to the page for anyone. the only way i could think of it happening would be if Pat McGoohan had ghosted a ook as McNee did with Leslie for the Avengers.

by the way, doesn't the bloke he's fighting on that cover look like Denholm Elliott!

[dem bones]

W. Howard Baker - Danger Man: Departure Deferred (Consul/ World Distributors, 1965).

Design: Ken Freeman

Blurb:
Taking the identity of a dead agent who was hostile to British intelligence John Drake is ordered to rescue — at all costs — a young woman sentenced to death by a Peking-orientated clique in Albania.
It is an assignment that could shift the course of nuclear power and Drake has only 36 hours in which to see it through.

An original novel based on TV's highly successful DANGER MAN series. "Departure Deferred " is a story that, for action and suspense, would be hard to equal.

Picked this up earlier. If it is even halfway as much wild fun as Storm Over Rockall ....

[cromagnonman]

Speaking of Danger Man: I picked this up recently in the local junk shop which might interest you;



it seems to be an original US novel for which there was no corresponding UK edition, although the sticker does go to show that it was imported here. What is interesting about it is that it uses the DM term rather than the Secret Agent moniker which the show was marketed under stateside.

There appears to have been more of an appetite for original novels based on British shows in America than there was even over here, as the extra Avengers novels testify to. Whereas the reverse held true here for US crime shows such as Cannon and Kojak.

Here's the back cover:

[ripper]

I have only read the Danger Man novel The Exterminator some 40+ years ago. It's funny how a trivial event can stick in your mind for so long, but I remember exactly how I came to get that book. My mum had taken me to the dentist for a filling and because I had been a good boy we called at a secondhand odds and ends shop just along the road. They had an old bookcase outside crammed full of books, and I asked my mum to buy me The Exterminator. I couldn't have been more than 8 and it took me years to actually get around to reading it. Like most of my books, it was given away/thrown away/disappeared when I got married.

[andydecker]

Here is a tranlated paperback from the 60s. Only the first season from 60-62 was broadcast here in Germany.

The tv-series must have been successful enough to spawn a Heftroman. Bi-weekly from 1963 to 1976 there was a new adventure by anonymus German pulpsters. 464 novels in all. Today the novels are tame and boring. I caught a rerun on one of those nostalgia stations. As much as I like McGoohan, I found this also boring and static. Compared to that The Saint with Moore was breathlessly fast.

Edit: Maybe the paperback is also written by a German writer and the original title "Danger Man" is just made up. I can't find a novel by "Ralph Smart".

[dem bones]

W. A. Ballinger - The Exterminator (McFadden-Bartell, 1967)

Blurb:
Exterminate the Exterminator!

Those were John Drake's instructions from the head of British Intelligence. The job appealed to him, for the Exterminator (the C.I.D.'s nickname for the deadly hatchet man) was suddenly wiping out British agents with unusual speed and accuracy.

Drake knew he was tracing a phantom, for there was only one clue to the ruthless killer: the slaying always occurred when the yacht of a millionaire sportsman was in port.

Was the Exterminator a member of the crew? A guest on the Yacht? Or the owner himself?

Drake had to get on the yacht and find the answer fast - for the next victim was already on board!


Picked up another one at Spitalfields market on Friday last. Begins with the spectacular murder of Brit Agent Harry Jarvis on a Santo Paulino building site during Mardi Gras. Evidently the Executioner is a fan of the Kray twins.

[Ian Fryer]

Nov 11, 2018 11:38:38 GMT cromagnonman said:

Speaking of Danger Man: I picked this up recently in the local junk shop which might interest you;



it seems to be an original US novel for which there was no corresponding UK edition, although the sticker does go to show that it was imported here. What is interesting about it is that it uses the DM term rather than the Secret Agent moniker which the show was marketed under stateside.

There appears to have been more of an appetite for original novels based on British shows in America than there was even over here, as the extra Avengers novels testify to. Whereas the reverse held true here for US crime shows such as Cannon and Kojak.

Here's the back cover:

I think the explanation for the use of the Danger Man title is that the novel is based on the original half hour Danger Man series, which apparently screened in the US in the syndicated TV market under that title. The Secret Agent name was used for the later one-hour episodes to avoid confusion with the half-hour episodes, which were being shown by a different network.

It's the half-hour episodes which state that Drake works for NATO.

[pulphack]

I've just read The Exterminator and Storm Over Rockall again for the first time in years. I have no idea why, but just felt seized by the desire to revisit. Both are prime Baker - good meat and potatoes thriller writing, spare and driving. I preferred ...Rockall as there is some good sixties London feel to it, and one of Baker's patented 'look at this dodgy hipster nightclub' scenes, albeit not one recycled from another book (as far as I know!), and Exterminator has a bit too much Scilian travelogue for my taste, and with the 'surprise' denouement comes on like an episode of US TV spy show rather than the quintessentially British John Drake. I can imagine McGoohan in ...Rockall a lot more easily (and I like the Eskimo factotum-cum-sparring-partner). Solid unpretentious enjoyment that is missing from thrillers these days*, that have to be hyped up by the writer at publisher demand (or is that just me being cynical) - but then I guess sales dictate how that goes. If you have them (I'm looking at you, Ripper!) and haven't revisited, I'd recommend.

(*that's probably why I tend to read new writing that isn't genre shelved, perhaps)

[andydecker]

Another one.

Wilfred McNeilly writing, published in 1966.