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Post by cromagnonman on Jan 20, 2017 23:46:31 GMT
There is a certain irony in the fact that if the world's intelligence agencies were anywhere near as clever, capable and efficent as they would have us believe then the chances are few of us would have any cause to suspect that they exist. But to err is to be human. And as recent events in the United States have demonstrated spooks are every bit as human as anyone. Just as prone to petulant temper tantrums, political partisanship and errors of judgement. That said it is debatable whether any real spy could survive very long being quite so human as the heroine of this book. Katy Touchfeather is an air hostess. But she is not just any old trolly dolly. She might be walking the aisles of a BOAC DC-10 one day but equally she's just as likely to found doing the same for Pan-Am the next. She might even be seen as a sari wearing stewardess on an Air India flight the day after. You see Katy's day job is the perfect cover for her other role working as a secret agent for the mysterious M-like figure of Mr C W Blaser of 32 Pandam Street. Quite how Mr Blaser manages to arrange for her to be on the flight rosters of half the world's carriers simultaneously without anyone finding it in the least bit suspicious is never explained. But that's just one of the conceits you have to swallow to enjoy this book. Katy's assignment this time around is to keep an eye on a boffin called Bill Partman as he travels to India to deliver some lectures. Someone is leaking classified information from the weapons research facility where Partman works and it is Katy's job to determine whether Partman is responsible. The instantly smitten Katy undertakes this task with commendable enthusiasm and ends up getting far far closer to Partman than was Mr Blaser's intention. On the return flight disaster strikes when Katy's plane is hi-jacked and diverted to Colonel Nasser's Egypt where Partman is kidnapped. Shortly afterwards Katy herself is abducted in Rome and subjected to the old cigarette end-on-sensitive-area routine. After this the action shifts to the United States where events contrive to put Katy on the case of Partman's mysterious Howard Hughes-like employer, the reclusive Roger Garastan. Just what is it that connects Garastan with the murder of a former air hostess in Chicago, the activities of an international terrorist called the Eunoch, and the delicate balance of the Cold War arms race? The answer is only revealed when Katy penetrates Gerastan's Ken Adamsesque facility deep in the Californian desert. Any novel of this sort naturally invites comparison with Ian Fleming. This book is far more dated by its fashions and attitudes and non pc terminology than any of the Bonds are. The exotic settings aren't anywhere near as vividly evoked by personal experience either as they are in Fleming's work. New York might as well be Nuneaton for all the bearing it has on the plot. But Sangster has an engaging chatty style to his prose and is certainly to be commended for attempting a first person narrative in the guise of a member of the opposite sex. I'm not sure that the man filtered Katy with her "hair, which is reddish...eyes which are greenish, and...chest which is largish but firmish" and who harbours "every hostess" dream of marrying a millionaire doesn't actually put the cause of feminism back a generation rather than the opposite, but its a laudable attempt at progressiveness all the same I actually ended up enjoying this book a whole lot more than I thought I was going to. The climax is really really good and compensates for some pretty duff plotting and slipshod characterization earlier on. Katy is simply far too stupid to sympathise with for much of the book. She falls head over heels in love with Partman before the plane has finished crossing the Channel, is in bed with him by suppertime and composing her letter of resignation to Mr Blaser by the next morning. James Bond at least had the good grace to take ten books to get to this stage, whereas Katy has managed it by the end of chapter three. She then succeeds in getting herself kidnapped, and while I'm not about to complain about her having to sit around in her knickers it adds little to the plot and was inserted I suspect for the benefit of a hoped for film version. Admittedly it does bring her back into contact with two of Partman's kidnappers but rather than concluding that it would be best all round to try and ascertain what they know gung-ho Katy instead allows one to escape and blows the other one's head off. When she subsequently encounters the escapee again in Chicago and is ordered to follow him she loses him. Katy also concludes that it is a good idea to go down to Partman's top secret weapons research facility and start blabbing to his colleagues in the local public bar about how Partman had told her all about the place. She's genuinely surprised and put out when the security people arrive and cart her off. At times Katy is so incompetent that it can be hard to credit that this isn't a spoof. "Never more than three away from the bottom of the class" in every subject bar languages by her own admission, she is vain and vacuous, supercilious and catty. Convinced that there isn't a man alive who doesn't fancy her (except for the imperturbable Mr Blaser, of course) she dresses accordingly because "there's not much point in carrying the equipment I do if I'm not prepared to use it". And yet despite all these shortcomings and unappealing traits when push really comes to shove Katy morphs into a surprisingly resourceful and appealing action heroine. Whether it be in poleaxing goons with Red Indian war clubs, undertaking sabotage or staging impromptu hi-jackings of her own Katy comes through with aplomb. And it goes without saying that she's a dab hand at the old stockings and suspenders Mata Hari routine. Modesty Blaise she most definitely is not, but for all her failings I'm every bit as smitten with Miss Touchfeather as she herself would naturally expect me to be. And I've ended up far keener than I thought I would be to discover exactly what it was that this Katy did next. (A very public tip of the hat to David Riley for supplying me with the Odhams volume. Thanks DR).
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Post by pulphack on Jan 21, 2017 9:04:37 GMT
I have always preferred Katy to Modesty Blaise in print (Modesty is the newspaper strip queen, for me), and I generally agree with what you say. I didn't find the characterisation that slipshod, personally, though I do think the plotting betrays JS's scripting roots, being fairly standard and designed for a 90 minute slot. I've always thought the second book better, mind you. I think you may find it so.
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Post by cromagnonman on Jan 22, 2017 14:38:26 GMT
I mentioned a film version in the review. With Sangster's background being what it was it had to have been a consideration whilst he was writing the book. And with his heavy Hammer association it's difficult to resist the temptation to cast it in terms of the personnel of the period. Despite the engaging photo of Julie Ege on the cover of the sequel - and the dedication of the book to her - she isn't really my idea of Katy at all. Isla Blair fits Sangster's description down to a T, although its a sure bet she would have played the part as far less of an airhead. I could see someone like Hammer stalwart John Richardson in the role of Partman, Milton Reid as the Eunoch with dear old John Le Mesurier as Blaser. And Hammer all time great Charles Gray as Garastan. Might not have been great but it would have been a helluva lot of fun.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 22, 2017 20:35:42 GMT
I have always preferred Katy to Modesty Blaise in print (Modesty is the newspaper strip queen, for me), and I generally agree with what you say. I didn't find the characterisation that slipshod, personally, though I do think the plotting betrays JS's scripting roots, being fairly standard and designed for a 90 minute slot. I've always thought the second book better, mind you. I think you may find it so. Can you really compare those two? I read the Modesty novels ages ago, but I remember them as being kind of a perfect adventure novel. In retrorespect a bit too wholesome – but my memory may be faulty - with a large cast of secondary characters. A kind of family-friendly version of Bond. Still remember characters like knife-throwing Willie and secret agent man Tarant, but am hazy on the plots. I wanted to re-read them but kind of fear, that they have aged badly. But the Katy novel – I only know the first one, the German edition – did strike me as maybe unintentionally parodistic. It did miss Modesty's international flair and the sense of adventure. I am a big fan of JS, read his too short autobiography. Taste of Fear and Paranoic are still my favorite films of his. I guess both would put todays audiances to sleep, but I love them unconditionally.
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Post by pulphack on Jan 24, 2017 8:13:32 GMT
Fair point, Andy: they are very different in their intent. I always tend to put that caveat in whenever I write or talk about them as Katy and Modesty tend to get lumped together purely because there were so few female spy and adventure heroines at that particular time. In truth, they do have different aims as novels. I just have a block on O'Donnell's prose because of preferring the strip, I think, so I never get the love for Modesty in print. I wouldn't say that Sangster's was aiming at parody per se, but I do think he was aware after the John Smith novels that the whole genre was teetering on the edge, and that may have been lurking. As I may have said elsewhere, many of the straight spy novels of that period tend to teeter on the brink, intentionally or not, because of the inherent daftness of much of the plots and made-up organisations. For me, JS keeps the right side of the line, but maybe a translator wasn't so sure?
I agree about Sangster's early thriller scripts - those Hammer suspense pictures may be in thrall to Hitchcock, but I have to admit that I find them more entertaining than what Hitch was doing in the sixties (I like his films up to the mid-fifties, and Frenzy is one hell of a last great hurrah. Let's gloss over Family Plot...). I fear the only young people who watch B&W films are movie students now, though having said that a few years back I was in a cafe in Ilford when Ice Cold In Alex was on TV, and one of the teen schoolkids waiting for a burger held forth at great length to his mate about what a great film it was and why he liked it, and watch for this bit... hang on, we can't go yet... so there are some out there who still watch!
CM - you know that if Hammer had actually made Touchfeather they would have ballsed it by casting Julie Ege instead. It would have been all wrong, but her contract needed to be seen out, the first choice pulled out, etc...
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Post by andydecker on Jan 24, 2017 12:29:10 GMT
After some wrangling with Php*t*b*ck*e* I managed to upload this.
Translated title: The Lady flies to Hell
Translated title: The Lady in the Golden Caskett
You are right, pulp, one tends to forget that female spies at the time were mainly relegated to the sexploitation corner. The Baroness etc. Frankly I don't think that today's Killer Lady's which you seemingly have in every second american thriller are more realistic then Katy was, but that's the times.
I actually can't remember spy novels with female heroes. Sure, there were often good secondary characters, like in LeCare's Smiley novels, Allbury also wrote some good female characters. But a female hero could only be in a campy sort of way. Weird.
I finally watched the Man from Uncle remake these days. As a new version of the tv-series it was terrible and a waste, but as a retro-spy-movie it was quite enjoyable. The female characters managed IMHO the fine line between the demands of todays increasingly limited gender-understanding and the historic time. But it is a good example what a boy's club this genre used to be back then.
Come to think of it, Sangster's heroine in Taste of Fear is pretty groundbreaking in that regard.
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Post by pulphack on Jan 24, 2017 14:51:00 GMT
Ooh, thanks for the covers! So of their time one expects to see Peter Wyngarde peeping around the corner...
Yes, it's funny how commentators praise female heroes in thrillers now and sniff at the sixties when each is equally as artificial. And indeed, it does seem that leading lady role was confined mostly to exploitation - apart from Katy, Modesty, and James Eastwood's Anna Zordan (who only had two or three books - I have one, which is very good) I can't think of any leading female roles in 'serious'/'straight' espionage thrillers at that time. Times have changed in that respect, at least a bit, but I do think it's been one stereotype swapped for another, each equally as idealised in their own ways.
I haven't see the UNCLE remake yet, but have had half a mind to (which is more than I've had most of the last year full stop)as it sounded like it was less a reinvention than an excuse for Guy Ritchie to make a 60's movie using a few well-known character names to bring in the punters and the finance. His movies are usually a bit empty, but visually rather good. A bit like the old analogy on a Chinese takeaway - you love it, but feel emoty and want another half an hour later.
But yes, I can see how it would reinforce how much of a boys club the genre was - still is, I think. I suspect spying per se might be a boys club thing, as women seem too bloody sensible to dick around like that most of the time... (I use the phrase after reflection, too)
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Post by andydecker on Jan 24, 2017 22:19:23 GMT
You are spot-on about Ritchie. I wasn't sold on his Holmes either. The best thing about MfU was actress Elizabeth Debicki who played the villainess Victoria Vinciguerra. Straight out of Edward S.Aarons with a bit of a Hitchcock Blonde.
It really is funny about the Boys Club mentality. I can remember how I groaned when they made M a woman in the Bond movies. What was the point? But in hindsight they should have done such things more often. Of course it is a matter of talent and craft. In Nikita - the Peta Wilson version - I could believe as the deadly secret agent. In characters like Sidney Bristow or the many movie heroines not so much.
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Post by cromagnonman on Feb 11, 2017 15:44:06 GMT
If anyone's interested: Radio 4 is running a dramatisation of Peter O Donnell's THE SILVER MISTRESS all next week at 10.45am (repeated 19.45pm). You can't really do justice to a 250 page novel in five fifteen minute episodes of course, but previous efforts have still been pretty entertaining as I recall. And Daphne Alexander is vocal coolness itself as the unflappable Modesty Blaise.
This is the one where MB gives Tarrant the arduous chore of smearing her all over with grease for her battle with the unbeatable Mr Sexton. That'll have some people choking on their corn flakes come friday morning I imagine. Just pity the poor s*d in the sound effects department who had to realise it.
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Post by leegoldberg on Sept 2, 2017 4:05:03 GMT
I'm delighted to announce that Brash Books (www.brash-books.com)is re-releasing Jimmy Sangster's two TOUCHFEATHER books in ebook, trade paperback and audio editions -- starting with TOUCHFEATHER in January. Here's the cover: Lee Goldberg Publisher, Brash Books
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Post by leegoldberg on Sept 2, 2017 4:06:31 GMT
Those German covers are, um, amazing in their own way.. I can't recall anything matching those scenes in the books -- but they are grabbers.
Lee Goldberg
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Post by pulphack on Sept 2, 2017 8:40:15 GMT
That's great news, Lee. They deserve a new hearing/reading. Will you be doing any more Sangster novels if they shift units?
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Post by leegoldberg on Sept 7, 2017 5:22:38 GMT
Yes, starting with TOUCHFEATHER, TOO. Then we'll move on to FOREIGN EXCHANGE and PRIVATE I.
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Post by pulphack on Sept 7, 2017 17:28:12 GMT
That's splendid, Lee - the John Smith books are wonderfully bleak and downbeat whilst still being wryly funny.
Of course, istead of asking the stupid question I could have just looked at the Brash Books site - which I since have - and found this out. It's a cracking imprint, by the looks of it. Some great crime fiction there.
And run by someone who doesn't mind answering idiots who could have answered their own question with some brains...
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Post by andydecker on Sept 7, 2017 17:43:38 GMT
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