Mon 9 Oct 2023
A Spy Adventure Review: EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment Sumatra.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
EDWARD S. AARONS – Assignment Sumatra. Sam Durell #38. Fawcett Gold Medal M3139, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1974.
I continue to be amazed at the geographic background Aarons was able to include in all of his CIA agent Sam Durell novels – the sights and sounds of each of the locations the stories take place in. It is possible, of course, that I’m always fooled – I’ve been in, for all practical purposes, none of them– but they all seem real to me, and if I am fooled, that Aarons was faking it all the while by going to library and taking out a huge stack of books, it’s in good way, and I don’t mind at all.
There’s lots of local atmosphere in this one, which takes place, obviously, in Sumatra, where a Southeast Asia diplomatic conference is going on, and Sam’s assignment is to make sure the good Communist leader of one country is not assassinated and replaced by a body double while en route by a bad Communist leader of that country.
Assisting him, and definitely against his wishes, as he prefers to work alone, is a girl named Lydia (blonde and beautiful) who is a trained assassin herself. What follows is a non-stop tale of twists and turns, captures and narrow escapes and deadly double- crosses, from beginning to end.
There’s no need to go into them all. Either you will want to read this book without knowing anything more about it than this, or you’ve already read it and you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Option C, that you aren’t interested in books like this, we won’t even bring up.
It is too bad that the Aarons estate has been so difficult to track down. Several publishers specializing in reprinting old vintage tough guy novels such as this are very very interested. On the other hand, the books were extremely popular, back in the day, and for readers, used copies are still extremely easy to find.
POSTSCRIPT: I forgot to say that the conclusion of this one is as tough and hard-boiled an ending as any that I’ve read in a long, long time.
October 9th, 2023 at 7:44 pm
The series was still going strong even this late and still worth reading, probably the most consistent of Gold Medal’s long running series outside of MacDonald and Prather.
In some ways Aarons was the logical successor to Van Wyk Mason and Col. North in terms of exotic locales and the tough engaging secret agent hero.
I had wondered what was keeping these out of ebook reprint, too bad, they deserve to be back in circulation.
October 9th, 2023 at 9:35 pm
Edward Aarons wrote 42 books in the series, from 1955 to 1976. After his death, “Will B. Aarons” wrote six more. It took some detective work by myself and a few other folks to learn that while Will was Edward’s brother, the book published under Will’s name were actually written by a fellow named Lawrence Hall. He *may* have been an agent for the Aarons brothers.
The trail has sort of petered out from there. Stark House Press is one of the publishers who’d be happy to start reprinting the Sam Durell books, as soon as and if someone could be found who has the rights to them.