Thu 20 May 2021
EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment Bangkok. CIA agent Sam Durell #33. Gold Medal, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1972.
If the listing before the title page is correct, this is #33 in Aarons’ long-running Sam Durell series. Durell is the Cajun-born CIA agent whose adventures ranged over three decades of world disorder, from the dark, dismal days of Europe soon after the Iron Curtain began, on through the era of deep-trenched US involvement in Southeast Asia, and beyond.
His mission in Thailand in this book is on three levels. Ostensibly he is in Bangkok as part of an economic/agricultural advisory team. He thinks he’s there to retrieve another agent who has been investigating revolutionary forces in the northern part of the country. Soon after his arrival, however, he discovers that opposing forces know more about his real mission than he does.
In other words, Durell is in deep trouble from the very first paragraph on. And this is an action story, through and through. And once again, Aarons’ eye for exotic, picturesque detail does not fail the reader: this is a part of the world I have never been in, and probably never will be, but as far as it’s possible, I feel as though I’ve just returned from a prolonged visit there.
Unfortunately, I think that with this number of entries in a single series, Aarons’ zest for a spine-tingling story might have been beginning to fail him. There are plots and subplots, but none of them seem to amount to much. Durell and his cohorts in espionage simply have too easy of a time of it (even though they would never say so themselves, if you ever had a chance to ask.)
All the ingredients are here, but in this book, I think Aarons was only going through the motions.
May 20th, 2021 at 10:36 pm
Bang town!
May 21st, 2021 at 12:20 am
somehow the author’s name seems very familiar though i don’t think I have ever read him.
May 21st, 2021 at 12:24 pm
Aarons’ Sam Durell series was extremely popular here in the US in the 60s and 70s. I don’t know how they fared in the rest of the world. Edward Aarons wrote 42 of them before his death. His brother supposedly wrote another six, but in reality they were farmed out for someone else to write. You couldn’t go into a used paperback store back then without finding a long shelf full of them.
Greg Shepherd at Stark House Press tried to track down reprint rights, but the trail ran cold a few years ago. That’s too bad, because even though I gave this one only a middling review, the books were among the best of the various spy adventure series at the time.
Aarons also wrote a few dozen standalone mysteries, but I expect they’ve generally been forgotten by anyone who doesn’t read this blog.
Search for the word Aarons in the box somewhere in the right hand column, and quite a few reviews of his work should show up.
May 21st, 2021 at 12:52 pm
I’ve been meaning to hunt some of these down, as I’ve heard good things, so it’s been interesting to read the reviews here.
Am I right in saying, Steve, that they’re fairly larger-than-life, sort of ‘spy-fi’?
May 21st, 2021 at 1:51 pm
They’re certainly not as serious minded as John le Carre novels, that’s for sure.
On the other hand, it’s been a long time since I read a John le Carre novel, just to let you know where my head is at.
May 21st, 2021 at 9:16 pm
I preferred Aarons and Durrell and Marlowe and Drum to Hamilton or Atlee when it came to paperback original international intrigue. I will grant that the Durrell books sometimes lose impact toward the end, and too often he didn’t nail the landing, but overall the Aarons Durrell books are what I am looking for in international intrigue, exotic locations well researched and realized, fast action, beautiful women, and complex real world plots with a bit of Bondish world saving thrown in once in a while.
No series this long can sustain too high a level, and there is a downturn later in the series that is fairly obvious, but as pulp/paperback adventure spy jinks went it was hard to beat Aarons, and I find the Durrell works much more enjoyable rereads than some of the more critically acclaimed books that strangely seem more dated than Aarons and Durrell read today.
I was always a little surprised that no one jumped on the Durrell bandwagon during the Bond craze. It would have worked well as either a television series or film series and I can see a number of actors creditable in the Durrell part (a friends suggested Michael Ansara, which strangely seems a good idea though I always saw Durrell as Zachary Scott).
May 21st, 2021 at 10:07 pm
Strangely enough, as you say, both work for me as well.