Wed 20 Nov 2019
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.
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.
November 21st, 2019 at 10:14 am
If I might interject: I was surprised to learn recently that Carter is one of the longest-lived fictional characters in modern publishing. 1886. Quite a history.
The radio serial however, is surprisingly, terrible. It’s so far from being a favorite with me, that I will turn it off or switch stations rather than endure it. “Nick Carter, World’s Greatest Detective”. Ugh. And the mysteries are clumsily and ham-handed.
But it is interesting to see how long this detective has been around.
November 21st, 2019 at 11:35 am
Nick did have to reinvent himself a couple of times to last as long as he did. I enjoyed the radio show when it was on but what did I know. I was only eight at the time.
November 21st, 2019 at 12:04 pm
I am with you, Steve, a kid who liked it, mainly because of Lon Clark and Charlotte Manson whose voices and on air chemistry. In any case, it ran a dozen years, so that counts for plenty, not personally though.
November 22nd, 2019 at 4:01 pm
I had the pleasure many years back of watching and listening to a re-creation of an episode of the NICK CARTER radio series, with Lon Carter himself in the title role. This was at one of the annual radio conventions held in the CT/NJ area back then. I remember him a spry, well-dressed gentleman, with a good sense of humor.
I’d like to think Charlotte Manson was there too, but I have to confess that my memory is a little shaky about that. But yes, Barry, on the radio they made an excellent pair.
I’ll have to listen to one of the stories to see what I think about one of those now.
November 21st, 2019 at 12:05 pm
Addendum: I thought the title was Nick Carter, Master Detective.
November 21st, 2019 at 6:39 pm
Good catch, thanks!
November 21st, 2019 at 8:42 pm
The Award and Charter series quality depended on the individual writer. Of the Award titles the Manning Lee Stokes titles tend to be better (the Mike Avallone ones were heavily rewritten by the editors).
Charter featured a wide variety of well known names including the late Bill Crider, and many well known today — several of them who pop up here fairly often. They also included none other than mainstream novelist Craig Nova, though not, as the old wives tale goes, Harper Lee of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
November 22nd, 2019 at 9:57 am
George Warren’s biggest success was probably Children of the Lion, the Biblical/family saga series he wrote for Bantam (through Book Creations Inc.) as Peter Danielson. He wrote the first 15 of those, which must have sold pretty well for it to run that long. (For information’s sake, Hugh Zachary wrote #16, 17, and 18 in the Children of the Lion series, and I wrote #19, the final book. If Bantam had renewed the contract, the plan was for me to continue writing them, but that wasn’t to be.)
November 22nd, 2019 at 9:58 am
By the way, I’m sure I read SUICIDE SEAT but don’t remember anything about it. I do recall that I enjoyed another Nick Carter that Warren wrote, THE DOOMSDAY SPORE.
November 22nd, 2019 at 4:07 pm
Thanks for the additional information about George Warren, James. All I could find out about him was his bibliography in Al Hubin’s CRIME FICTION IV. His name is too common for me to have found anything more on my own. It’s good to know that he had a lot more success with the Children of the Lion series than with what I found in Hubin, which truthfully I didn’t find all that impressive.
November 25th, 2019 at 8:41 pm
I can still remember finding a copy of Run Spy Run, the first of the Killmaster series at a local newsstand in 1964. Over the years I managed to acquire all 261 volumes of the series ending in 1990. It is indeed an uneven series. A woman in the editorial offices of one of the publishers told me that some of the books were good and others were not as good. I suspect that a number of the readers didn’t care and read every single one. I read every one for awhile and then gave up.
I managed to meet a number of the writers and even had some of my copies autographed. I remember being at a cocktail party for members of the Mystery Writers of America and mentioned that I was interested in the Nick Carter Killmaster books. Bruce Cassiday, who was standing nearby told me he had written one of them so I arranged to send him my copy of the title he had written to be signed, I think it was Manning Lee Stokes who signed several of his contributions to the series, in one of them he wrote “at last, a real live reader!”
November 26th, 2019 at 1:20 am
I can’t imagine anyone reading all of the Nick Carter books, but they did sell an awful lot of them. And it goes without saying that some were better than others. As for me, I’ll have to let someone else tell me which is which. I have no desire to tackle the job myself.