Assignment, Bangkok

Sam Durell #33

by Edward S. Aarons

It was a simple assignment; find out what is causing two Thai tribes to be at war again after so many years. But from the moment he arrived in Bangkok, it has been nothing but trouble, starting with being thrown into a small cell in the back streets, left to die for no apparent reason.

Genres: Espionage

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

AKA Paul Ayres, Edward Ronns.

Edward Sidney Aarons (September 11, 1916 - June 16, 1975) was an American writer, author of more than 80 novels from 1936 until 1962. One of these was under the pseudonym "Paul Ayres" (Dead Heat), and 30 were written using the name "Edward Ronns". He also wrote numerous articles for detective magazines such as Detective Story Magazine and Scarab.

Aarons was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and earned a degree in Literature and History from Columbia University. He worked at various jobs to put himself through college, including jobs as a newspaper reporter and fisherman. In 1933, he won a short story contest as a student. In World War II he was in the United States Coast Guard, joining after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He finished his duty in 1945, having obtained the rank of Chief Petty Officer.

Reviews

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up Assignment Bangkok merely because of the title. I knew nothing of Edward S. Aarons before reading this short spy novel. The characters are not completely made out of cardboard, but they're pretty close. Nonetheless, the story is crisp and fast paced. And as this is number 33 in Aarons's series about CIA agent Sam Durell, I suppose it means he had managed to maintain an edge with his writing about the same character over and over and over.

As I wrote, it's the title that grabbed my interest. It's a story about Bangkok and Thailand, written during the last stage of the Vietnam War, when Thailand was still a major staging point for American spies and the military. Aarons floods his passages with Thai terms and descriptions that don't seem all that far from actuality. The ever present smell of jasmine bushes, for example, is one such accurate bit of atmosphere he imparts. But at other times, things seem off. Yes, he's describing Bangkok and northern Thailand from the perspective of 1972. But why do all his names for Thai characters sound Chinese, Vietnamese, or even Burmese? And why does it start out, of all places, in a house owned by a Thai named Uncle Hu? I couldn't get Uncle Ho out of my mind every time Hu was mentioned.

Did Aarons ever actually visit Bangkok and Thailand? I'm not so sure. There are some strange gaps, here. I do see that the author used his interest and background in history to research his books very, very thoroughly. So maybe that is what he did, here.

Are Aarons's Sam Durell novels worth reading? The series begins with Assignment to Disaster, written in 1955. So, yes, there is enough in his style and content to keep me engaged. If just for a little while. Maybe longer.

[David Frazier · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you've ever seen a James Bond film, especially from the classic Sean Connery and Roger Moore eras from the 1960s to the 1980s, you already know the formula for this novel. A lone agent travels is sent on assignment to an exotic locale, engages in comic banter with his bureaucratic superiors, catches wind of a major criminal plot (ostensibly against Western interests), moves from action scene to action scene as he gradually penetrates the secret criminal activity, finally infiltrates the gang / small private army of a criminal mastermind, destroys the mastermind's base in massive explosions, then as everything is in flames faces off against the criminal masterminds one by one, as they lay bare their evil schemes in explicit detail, then he kills the criminal masterminds in dramatic mono a mano combat scenarios, and finally as he beds his superhot female sidekick, he receives a call from the head of his intelligence agency for debriefing. In truth it is very easy to imagine it as a film.

For a very good and not so meta review of Edward Aarons' "Assignment" series novels see Paul Cornelius's excellent reviews.

The difference between Aarons' Sam Durrell novels and Fleming's James Bond novels, aside the obvious that Durrell is American and works for the CIA, is that Aarons stuck fairly closely to the era-specific politics of the Cold War and never invented a non-affiliated, and purely evil criminal organization like Spectre.

Aarons spent a certain amount of effort to evoke authentic locales, though it's hard to say how authentic this local color actually si. The novel's scenes of Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and northern Thailand near the Laos border are all plausible here, though riddled with a few nagging inconsistencies. According to a short bio of Aarons in "American National Biography" published by Oxford University Press in 1999, Aarons' novels "were most often set in the faraway places that Aarons researched on annual trips in search of new and vivid material." That said, many of the place names and character names are a random mix of Chinese, Vietnamese, and whatever else. "Luk" is the only vaguely Thai name in the novel. Descriptions of Bangkok and the overall geography is however not too bad, though this could also be the result of the careful study of guidebooks.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exagerated but a fun read.