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The Mutilators
Gold Medal s1238
Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
2 people want to read
About the author
Basil Heatter
38 books2 followersBasil Heatter, the son of radio commentator Gabriel Heatter, was born on Long Island on March 26, 1918. He attended schools in Connecticut, then went abroad when was 16 for a two year travel stint through Europe. Returning to America, he went to work for a New York advertising agency. He enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and during WWII served as a skipper on a P.T. boat in the Southwest Pacific. Besides being a news commentator himself, Heatter wrote twenty novels of intrigue and adventure—beginning with "The Dim View" in 1946, the story of a young PT boat skipper—as well as several non-fiction works revolving around his love of the sea. In fact, he lived for years off Key West on his own self-built sailboat, The Blue Duck. He passed away June 12, 2009, in Miami, Florida
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December 19, 2024
The French-Algerian War took place between 1954 and 1962 and was the last dying gasp of the French Colonial Empire, following France’s retreat from Vietnam. This conflict claimed, depending on what estimates you rely on, between half a million and one and half million Algerian deaths. It was a bloody, vicious war, fought with torture, massacres, and displacement camps housing two million. Approximately one million French-Algerians also known as Pieds-Noirs who had been born in Algeria fled to France at the end of the war, leaving a lasting demographic impact on both Algeria and France.
‘The Mutilators” opens with a ski resort accident at Chamonix, France, as trust fund playboy Adam Crown jumps into a gondola after seeing an old friend, Mouche Perrier. Getting in the Gondola and having to be rescued from hanging by a thin cable for hours was the result of an impulse. So was offering her a stay at his Swiss getaway when he knew two bad guys were after her and she admitted to arms smuggling. And Mouche was smuggling to the Algerian rebels, recalling bitterly how the French tortured her brother, a medical student, with electric wires attached to his testicles. Since he had no secrets, there was nothing he could do to stop the torture and mutilation. In the end, he walked into the sea.
Crown falls for Mouche and takes her to Marseille to meet Clendenning, who explains he was a former CIA spook, fired from the agency, but now on a mission to make 100 million by selling arms to whoever is willing to pay. It just happens that Crown and Clendenning are doppelgängers and Crown can return into Switzerland on his own passport and then pose as Clendenning to make an introduction for Mouche. Crown, who had no real connection to the Algerian war becomes involved on behalf of Mouche, chasing her across France and Spain, saving her from a torture cave where even her genitalia were pierced by knives, and himself smuggling the arms on a small boat and then by boat across the Atlas Mountains.
It is a well-written adventure story that feels at first like an espionage tale until you, as the reader, realize that neither Crown nor anyone else involved is on the payroll of any spy agency. They are merely freelancers, mercenary arms dealers, motivated by money, by friendship, and, in the case of Crown, his undying love for Mouche, who feels morally compelled to follow through with the arms shipment. There are shifting loyalties and suspicions here, but it is primarily an adventure story.
‘The Mutilators” opens with a ski resort accident at Chamonix, France, as trust fund playboy Adam Crown jumps into a gondola after seeing an old friend, Mouche Perrier. Getting in the Gondola and having to be rescued from hanging by a thin cable for hours was the result of an impulse. So was offering her a stay at his Swiss getaway when he knew two bad guys were after her and she admitted to arms smuggling. And Mouche was smuggling to the Algerian rebels, recalling bitterly how the French tortured her brother, a medical student, with electric wires attached to his testicles. Since he had no secrets, there was nothing he could do to stop the torture and mutilation. In the end, he walked into the sea.
Crown falls for Mouche and takes her to Marseille to meet Clendenning, who explains he was a former CIA spook, fired from the agency, but now on a mission to make 100 million by selling arms to whoever is willing to pay. It just happens that Crown and Clendenning are doppelgängers and Crown can return into Switzerland on his own passport and then pose as Clendenning to make an introduction for Mouche. Crown, who had no real connection to the Algerian war becomes involved on behalf of Mouche, chasing her across France and Spain, saving her from a torture cave where even her genitalia were pierced by knives, and himself smuggling the arms on a small boat and then by boat across the Atlas Mountains.
It is a well-written adventure story that feels at first like an espionage tale until you, as the reader, realize that neither Crown nor anyone else involved is on the payroll of any spy agency. They are merely freelancers, mercenary arms dealers, motivated by money, by friendship, and, in the case of Crown, his undying love for Mouche, who feels morally compelled to follow through with the arms shipment. There are shifting loyalties and suspicions here, but it is primarily an adventure story.
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