Sun 1 Nov 2015
Mystery Review: JAMES DARK – Hong Kong Incident.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
JAMES DARK – Hong Kong Incident. Signet D2935, paperback original; 1st US printing, August 1966. First published in Australia as Assignment: Hong Kong by Horwitz Publications Inc., Australia, paperback, 1966.
There were in all 16 recorded adventures of undercover spy Mark Hood, of which this is one of the earliest. The author of all but one of the Hood books, ostensibly James Dark, was J. E. Macdonell, who according to his Wikipedia page, “wrote over 200 novels, in at least 7 different series under several versions of his own name and several pseudonyms.” In Australia, where Horwitz was based, the Mark Hood books were published under Macdonnell’s own name.
The gimmick for Mark Hood was that he worked undercover as an international playboy, as as such, according to the Spy Guys and Gals website, he was an expert in “Auto racing at Le Mans, karate competitions in Tokyo, sail fishing in the Bahamas, and, most famously of all, one of the greatest living cricket players in England.”
This was the first one I’ve read, and in Hong Kong Incident, of the skills above, he shows off only auto racing (in Chapter One), plus karate or some other Asiatic fighting ability. I’ll have to take the other website’s word for it about any of the other talents.
The reason he’s in Hong Kong is to be there where a Chinese dissident crosses the border and get him safely to Geneva. The first he does; the mission goes wrong when it comes to the second. Otherwise, of course, there wouldn’t be a story, which when it finally gets around to it, is about keeping a Chinese submarine from blowing up part of the American fleet. Before that the story takes place in a rice paddy, an ancient Chinese cemetery and a couple of exotic bars, with ladies in them to match.
Dark is OK with short action scenes and quick descriptions of local countrysides. He’s not so good in placing the action in a grander scale: Dark seems to know Macao, Hong Kong, and Kowloon in particular, with China looming somewhere across the border, but to me, the setting was all one big jumble. His characters? One-dimensional at best.
On the other hand, Dark’s other books, many written under Macdonnell’s real name, are naval adventures, and here he really seems to know what he’s talking about. The last third of this book would be grand stuff, I think, for fans of naval fiction, naval personnel, naval armament and the like. I don’t happen to be one, but I got by. Overall, I’m glad this one was only 128 pages long. I don’t imagine I’ll read another.
The Mark Hood series —
Spy from the Grave, 1964. [No US edition; written by R. Wilkes-Hunter]
The Bamboo Bomb, 1965.
Come Die with Me. 1965.
Hong Kong Incident. 1966.
Assignment Tokyo. 1966.
Spy from the Deep. 1966, No US edition.
The Throne of Satan. 1967.
Operation Scuba. 1967.
Operation Jackal. 1967. No US edition.
Spying Blind. 1968.
The Sword of Genghis Khan. 1967.
The Invisibles. 1969.
Operation Ice Cap. 1969.
Operation Octopus. 1968
The Reluctant Assassin. 1970. No US edition.
Sea Scrape. 1971.
Except where there was no US edition, all were published by Signet as paperback originals in this country. Dates are those of the US editions. (In some cases the US edition came before the Australian one.) Books published the same year are listed alphabetically, so this list may not be completely correct chronologically.
November 1st, 2015 at 11:29 pm
Many long years ago I read a couple of these and thought they were pretty good. I reread one more recently (THE SWORD OF GENGHIS KHAN) and thought it wasn’t so hot. https://billcrider.blogspot.com/2007/11/sword-of-genghis-khan-james-dark.html
November 2nd, 2015 at 4:21 am
It’s interesting to recall how many spy books flooded the racks in those days, just as young-adult dystopia does today, wizard fiction did a few years ago, vampires before that……
November 2nd, 2015 at 2:53 pm
I seem to have read all of these and was suitably impressed for what they were, a cut above many of the paperback original spy series here other than the big names like Hamilton, Atlee, and Aarons.
The Naval business reminded me of Philip McCutchan (Cmdr. Esmonde Shaw, Simon Shard, Halfhyde, Convoy, and as Duncan McNeil the James Oglivie series) whose work sold much better in hardcovers, and if he was not as good a writer as McCutchan (who was a first rate suspense novelist — see COACH NORTH), or as original, he was equally good at orchestrating the maneuvers at sea.
Le Mans style racing featured in several books so it would seem another area of expertise for Dark though I don’t recall Cricket getting anything but a mention. Curiously at the time it would be more likely for an Australian series like this to mention Cricket than most British thrillers. Raffles was the last of the great Cricket playing thriller heroes once Bulldog Drummond showed a penchant for rugby.
I’m a little surprised to see I read the whole series since I usually only read a few and moved on so I must have seen something in them. That said, they ran under 60,000 words and you could finish one in forty five minutes of uninterrupted reading about like a Carter Brown.
For what they were they delivered a bang for the buck, featured some decent local color, and the Naval expertise raised them a bit above the fray.
November 2nd, 2015 at 5:02 pm
I believe I bought all of these back when they were first being published in this country. My college roommate recommended BAMBOO BLONDE to me — I still remember the cover as he was showing it to me — but when I finally had time to read any of them, I found that I’d already tired of the spy craze that the James Bond books had brought on.
It’s strange but I think I’d have liked this one better back then than I did now.
They are quick reads, as David said. I think I took more time putting this post together than in reading the book itself.
November 2nd, 2015 at 9:55 pm
Just for the fun of it, I went looking online for a copy of Spy from the Deep. 1966, No US edition. I borrowed the cover image from the SPY GUYS AND GALS website, but I found only one copy offered for sale, and that in the $30 range.
They may have been a day in my life when I might have gone for it, but those days are over, Right now I’m try to implement a policy of three books out for every book in. It’s almost like going on a diet!