NICK CARTER – Suicide Seat. Charter, paperback original, 1980.

   Nick Carter, Killmaster, has his hands full this time. He’s n the trail of a gang of white slavers who have accidentally made off with the beautiful virgin daughter of a world-powerful OPEC sheik. And on Nick Carter’s trail is an international gang of terrorists who are apparently intent on wiping out every single agent employed by Carter’s secret government organization, AXE. (*)

   Now, unfortunately, AXE itself has been axed, disbanded by some top-level White House worrywarts, and its former director, David Hawk, has disappeared, no one knows where.

   Mexico. New York City. Washington, DC. Monte Carlo. Zurich.

   Mame Ferguson. Angela Negri. Traudl Heitmyer. Lotus Fong.

   By page 111 it was when I really knew I’d had enough. Angie’s been kidnapped again, and Nick Carter’s been left for dead.

   Except.

   He isn’t dead.

   He does have a little bit of a headache, perhaps.

   Personally, I think the guy’s nuts. Back on page 70, after being briefed rather briskly by Senator Lovett about the missing sheiklette, he abruptly heads for the bathroom and climbs for safety down the outside wall of the hotel. From four floors up.

   Why?

   Don’t ask me.

   How the hell would I know.

(*) Offhand, I can’t tell you what AXE stands for, but if you’d really like to know, maybe someone knows and can tell us both.

–Reprinted in slightly revised form from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 4, No. 5, Sept-Oct 1980.

UPDATE:  Nick Carter in this case was a writer by the name of George Warren, who also wrote two other in the Carter series, along with a small handful of paperback originals from Brandon House, Playboy Press and the like.