Thu 23 Feb 2012
Archived Review: ANDREW YORK – The Fascinator.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
ANDREW YORK – The Fascinator. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1975; Berkley, US, paperback, 1976. First published in the UK by Hutchinson, hardcover, 1975; Arrow, UK, paperback, 1977.
James Bond is not dead. It’s taken me a while to discover it, but Jonas Wilde, with many years of service to British Intelligence already behind him, is the logical successor.
He’s not as flamboyant a character perhaps, but Wilde is very much a deadly adversary, and he possesses quite the same remarkable fascination to women. Trained agents they may be, but soon enough they become sexual objects to be toyed with as well. Fascinating.
Actually he’s retired at the beginning of this one, fed up, torn loose, and lost in the soothing touch of Spanish sangria. A puzzling task presented by Israeli Intelligence under duress reawakens his faculties, however, and when he agrees to become the bodyguard for an Arabian potentate yachting in the Mediterranean, no amount of clever plotting or overwhelming firepower can sway him from the job he was hired for.
He’s an indefatigable one-man task force, but after he’s trapped by an explosion in an underwater cavern with the wounded prince and his number one consort, all you can do is hold your breath during yet another attempt at escape. (B plus)
[UPDATE] 02-23-12. I did not realize it at the time, but this was the last adventure of Jonas Wilde, or at least the last one that Andrew York, one of several pen names of prolific author Christopher Nicole, wrote up about him:
The Jonas Wilde series —
The Eliminator. Hutchinson 1966.
The Co-Ordinator. Hutchinson 1967.
The Predator. Hutchinson 1968.
The Deviator. Hutchinson 1969.
The Dominator. Hutchinson 1969.
The Infiltrator. Hutchinson 1971.
The Expurgator. Hutchinson 1972.
The Captivator. Hutchinson 1973.
The Fascinator. Hutchinson 1975.
The first of the paperback covers was from Lancer. The others shown were published by Berkley. One of the covers has a #1 on it, suggesting that they were trying to ride the “men’s adventure” bandwagon started with Don Pendelton’s “Executioner” series for Pinnacle. To go along this theory, some of the books have “Jonas Wilde: Eliminator” across the top of the covers.
February 23rd, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Call it serendipity, if you will, but I saw J. F. Norris’s review of THE PREDATOR on his blog yesterday just after I’d been browsing through my copy of The MYSTERY FANcier and seen this one written by me 35 years ago. I knew the book gods would be on me something fierce if I didn’t post this, and right away!
Paperback reprints of the series are not especially hard to find online, but the good news is that Ostara Books have begun to put them out again in their Top Notch Thrillers line. THE ELIMINATOR has already been published, and THE PREDATOR is on the schedule for real soon now.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:12 am
Thanks for the plug, Steve. A nice sneak preview of THE FASCINATOR for me as I make my way through these books in order. Jonas Wilde is great. He seems a lot more real to me than most of the comic book secret agents that imitated the movie version of Bond who is so very different from Ian Fleming’s original Bond. I’m planning to review the entire series and will have them all done by the end of this year.
How strange to put a #1 on the sixth book. What was the purpose of that?
February 24th, 2012 at 2:00 am
I have no idea. It doesn’t make sense to me, either. I may be wrong, but I think Berkley did the same thing when they reprinted Richard Stark’s Parker series. If I remember right, they put numbers on them, but also in the wrong order.
February 24th, 2012 at 7:43 am
Off the subject I guess, but I think “The Deviator” would make a great nickname for a prizefighter…
(*wink*)
February 24th, 2012 at 12:26 pm
I discovered this series last year. Picked it up thinking it would be a British imitation of The Destroyer, getting an imitation James Bond instead.
The movie, Danger Route, based on the series, stars Richard Johnson who played Bulldog Drummond in the same era. Not a bad flick, but certainly not great.