Peking

Secret Mission #1

by Don Smith

Phil Sherman is asked to help by the State Department. It would mean a chance to get back at the Chinese government and make his company a nice profit. He was to help in the sale of the latest computer to Czechoslovakia, knowing it would be repackaged to China for work in a nuclear research facility. It was rigged with explosives.

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Don Smith


Don Smith (August 2, 1909-January 11, 1978) was a Canadian writer of detective and spy fiction. He is best remembered for his Secret Mission series of novels, starring the businessman-turned-spy Phil Sherman.

Smith was born Donald Taylor Smith in Port Colborne, Ontario. In 1934-1939 he was a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star in Beijing and he piloted a fighter in the Royal Air Force during WWII. He was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross for his participation in the Dieppe Raid in 1942.After the war he lived in Morocco and Majorca, manning different businesses before becoming a full-time writer in his 50s.

source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[John Pringle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the fact that The New York Post, Buffalo Evening News, and writers like Adam Hall and Edward S. Aarons all gave great raves for Don Smith’s “Secret Mission Series,” these books are pretty much forgotten now. Of the few user reviews Don Smith’s books get, they are usually mixed, which is bizarre considering the quality of the writing. Phil Sherman is an amusing and very likeable character, believable and methodical, well educated and well traveled — often described as more private eye than spy. I read one review that considered him the type of chap likely to be found in a grubby strip club, smoking from a hookah pipe and guzzling whiskey. Well, perhaps. While Sherman doesn’t lack charm and sophistication, there is a seedy side to him. He certainly likes the ladies, and always seems to win them over. In the first book, SECRET MISSION: PEKING, Sherman is pushing fifty, but you wouldn’t know it by his robust sex drive. And while this book might, initially, be light on action, it still has a riveting story about a plot to destroy China’s main atomic facility, raising questions over the morality of the US interfering in China’s nuclear weapons program. Smith carefully builds the tension, while fleshing out his characters, and although he doesn’t inflict much physical pain on Sherman, he does have him agonize over his involvement in the bomb plot that will cause death to hundreds of innocent people.

What I particularly like about the "Secret Mission Series" is that the writing is very refined. Descriptively, Smith is very good, whether describing people or places. He can neatly bring you up to speed on the political situation in a nation, or give you a brief history lesson without it seeming like he’s reciting from an encyclopedia. There is a deftness to the dialogue and depth to the characters, and when you start one of Sherman’s missions, there is never a good place to stop reading. Don Smith is one of the most underrated authors of the 60s and 70s. He didn’t always get it right. The Tim Parnell books are very good, but they come off as fairly sordid novels. With the “Secret Mission Series” he got it just right. The books are just as good as the Sam Durrell novels, if not more fun.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up three books in the Secret Mission series in a Maryland thrift store for 50 cents each. I liked this one most for its depiction of giant IBM computers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The rest, in which a computer salesman stands up to KGB interrogation and manages to get a young Chinese woman to fall in love with him, is hokum, but enjoyable. Note also the plug in the back pages for a series of sexy spy comedies about The Man From T.O.M.C.A.T.

[Wyatt Szeles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent book