Reviewed by DAVID VINEYARD:         


JEREMY LLOYD – The Further Adventures of Captain Gregory Dangerfield. Michael Joseph, UK, hardcover, 1973. St. Martin’s Press, US, hardcover, 1974. No paperback edition.

    Tock, tock, tick, tack, tock went the keys of the ancient Remington typewriter, and on the crisp white foolscap paper, marked only slightly by the tea stain on the top right hand corner, appeared in bold black type the startling information, THE GAME IS UP, MR. GATES, A NEW DETECTIVE NOVEL BY HENRY POTTS.

Captain Gregory Dangerfield JEREMY LLOYD

   Henry Wordsworth Potts writes detective stories, and none too successfully, that is until he borrows a typewriter, an old Imperial, to finish his latest opus, and discovers the machine is haunted.

   Much to his surprise his fingers leap across the keys and type out The Further Adventures of Captain Gregory Dangerfield, and a voice, strikingly like that of George Sanders, informs him that he is now under the control of the late P.W. Arnold, author of the Dangerfield series, and will not only write the book, but live them.

   And with that his everyday life at the boarding house at Ranliegh Road in Streatham becomes rife with international adventure, beautiful scantily clad women, and dastardly villains with Potts now dashing about in Dangerfield’s Bugatti Royale — the one given him by King Zog of Roumania…

   By turns increasingly funny, and increasingly mad, the book follows our poor Mr. Potts as he is plunged into Dangerfield’s world replete with super-villains, femme fatales, deadly traps, and increasingly embarrassing situations — like when he washes ashore on a tropical beach:

    “It was Zola,” penned the Author, “the girl whose message for help he had answered, and now her beautiful tear filled eyes shone with relief, and making the sign of the cross over her magnificent bosom, which strained for release beneath the thin material of her shirt, she waded into the surf to help the one man in the world who could save her…”

    “But Captain Gregory Dangerfield,” said P.W. Arnold admiringly, “with his incredible powers of recovery had already got his strength back, and holding Zola with his arms of steel, while she rained kisses on his handsome salty lips, he carried her to shore.”

    In any other circumstances Mr. Potts would have enjoyed Miss Martin’s attentions, but her hot kisses, some of them on his spectacles, made it hard to see.

    The Author, ignoring his plight, continued, ‘And so, looking like a Greek god, bearing Aphrodite in his arms, Dangerfield’s magnificent bronzed naked body emerged from the sea.”

    Mr. Potts spluttered and his heart missed a beat. He’d been pleased to hear he was bronzed; but naked! He clutched tightly to Miss Martin, he mustn’t put her down. But he certainly was naked … this was already an extremely dangerous situation.

   And in the true tradition of thrillers and spoofs things go from bad to worse for Mr. Potts, but at the same time he begins to rather enjoy being Captain Gregory Dangerfield.

    Sitting down in front of the old Imperial, and fighting the feeling of vertigo that assailed him as he remembered Mrs. Harris’ cleavage, he held out his hands and resigned himself to his fate.

   The Further Adventures of Captain Gregory Dangerfield is a pleasant romp through the fields of thriller fiction with Mr. Potts and his more pneumatic neighbors, a fine collection of super villains, and the ever inventive P. W. Arnold keeping the pot and Mr. Potts boiling.

   Jeremy Lloyd may be more familiar to you as the blonde Englishman who appeared on Laugh In and worked on the show as a writer.

   I don’t know that this one will be for all taste, but in the right mood and for anyone who has read enough of these, you may actually be sorry to see the last of Captain Dangerfield. I’d certainly rather spend an evening in his company (and that of Mr. Potts, P.W. Arnold, and the beautiful Zola and Mrs. Harris) than many of the tiresome lot of special forces louts who stumble through today’s thriller fiction.

    “Dangerfield,” said P.W. Arnold. “Caught by surprise, recovered and applied the Kemelmann Nerve Hold, known as I have mentioned before, to only one other person.”

They don’t write ’em like that anymore. Maybe they never did, but at least they wrote this one, one of those small treasures that you find in the rummage sale, and never forget.