The Passing of Gloria Munday

The Avengers #3

by John Garforth

Can Emma Peel further her career as lady spy by becoming a top pop singer idolized by millions?

There was more to singer Gloria Munday's death than simply murder, and so Steed puts Mrs. Peel on the job. Luckily she can belt out a song with bazazz, because by stepping into Gloria Munday's shoes she can find out a thing or tow.

Only she doesn't count on taking a nine-hour swim in the deep blue sea with an unscruplulous sadist at her heels while Steed is locked behind stout prision bars.

The Passing of Gloria Munday is an original adventure based on ABC-TC's world-famous thriller series, staring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg.

The End.

Genres: Mystery

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

I spent thirty years as a local government officer – in libraries and the arts, beginning in London and ending up in Blackburn as a Principal Officer. Simultaneously earning more money from a career as a hack novelist and journalist to support a wife and three children.

I took early retirement in the 1980s and ran the Theatre of the Unemployed at Tamworth Arts Centre for the next seven years. This ended when my leading professional actor died (see the Sam Whitbread thread of my Ankerside novel).

It is a convention that local government officers cannot be active in local politics. My political activities of the 50s and 60s (CND, Committee of 100) had ceased, especially as I climbed the career ladder. But in the 1990s I resumed local politics, becoming first a borough councillor and then a county councillor. What might be called a gamekeeper turned poacher.

I wrote 16 hack novels – television spin-offs, ghosting and the like. I wrote 17 plays over the years but most of them for specific occasions or specific casts or to meet specific regional arts association criteria.

Reviews

[Alex Sarll]

I didn't even know - though should maybe have guessed - that there had been novels about Steed and Peel until I happened across this in the wonderful Crouch End Oxfam. One can only assume the range wasn't too closely policed, because there's a lot here the TV series would never have attemped. Steed walking through the middle of a mod/rocker riot! Homosexuality! Gimp suits! The North! Even the Steed in prison bit, while the Cathy Gale era went in that direction fairly frequently, feels much grittier here. Essentially, a lot of subtext from the show becomes text - though even then, it has a glorious confusion to it. So there's a pirate radio DJ called Ellis Dee (DO YOU SEE?)...but he's part of a plot by the religious right?
And then, you get a chapter from the point of view of a black supporting character. Non-whites didn't get much of a look in on the TV Avengers - felt to clash with the timeless Englishness they wanted to evoke. So, potentially a good thing to break with that here...but the relevant section is, shall we say tactfully, very much of its time.
Also, the denouement happens within walking distance of my house. Which is not a part of London I can ever see making the deeply stylised world of the show.
In summary: WTF? Fun, though.

[Cassandra Elise · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've been a fan of the Avengers for twenty years, having grown up watching reruns of the show on various cable networks and then on my own DVDs. Back in my obsessive period when I was watching the show every day and writing my own fan fiction, I discovered that there had been a series of pulp novels produced at the height of the show's popularity in the States. Naturally I tried to get a hold of them, and I ended up with this book and a Tara King novel. Fortunately for my naive teenage self, I never got to read them before heading off to college, and these abominations sat for another 15 years on my bookshelf, gathering dust. If I had read it then, I would have been scarred for life. As it is, I was triggered multiple times.

The Passing of Gloria Munday has as much to do with the television series as the god-awful 90's movie. The characters of John Steed and Emma Peel are present, but their personalities are so altered that you could easily give them different names, remove all references to the Avengers from the cover, and pass it off as another 10-penny pulp novel.

Take, for example, the opening chapter. Steed rams his Bentley into a girl who runs in front of his car, shouting, "They're trying to kill me!" Anyone who's seen the show will know that Steed is always gallant when it comes to a damsel in distress, but in this bizarre universe he yells at the clearly distraught female for injuring his car and ruining his chance of winning the race he's in! It then takes him another few pages to realize her life is in danger, even though she keeps reiterating that someone's trying to kill her.

Then we have Mrs. Peel, who seems to have taken on the personality of Mrs. Gale. She's serious, judgmental, snaps at Steed, and makes comments in her head about how she's tired of Steed putting her life in danger. Emma is an adventurous thrill-seeker, loves being an amateur agent, and finds Steed's behavior amusing. In another scene, she complains about how she hates partying and would prefer to curl up with a book for the night. Clearly the author never watched the "Girl from A.U.N.T.I.E" where Emma stumbles out of a party at dawn, clearly inebriated and barely clothed!

The author seems to have never seen an episode of the Steed and Peel era in his life and instead gives us a novel based on his assumptions on how the characters would behave and what the story line would be. Speaking of story lines...if all pulp novels were as risque as this piece of dreck, it's no wonder parents were protesting the sale of them to kids! It's almost as if the author was given a list of verboten things he could NOT write about, and he instead decided to include every item in his book! The novel includes orgies, mentions of adultery and pedophilia, multiple scenes of BDSM, two racial slurs, racial and religious stereotypes, sexual harassment, and drug use. Steed and Emma both get propositioned, and Emma's is not even subtle. The guy simply asks, "Hey, you wanna have sex?" Emma politely tells him "no thanks." If she had accepted I would have thrown out the book and put it in my DNF pile. As it is, I only finished this novel because it was so short, and I needed one more book to finish my yearly reading challenge.

I'll echo someone else's comment: stick to the television show. Or go read my fan fiction I wrote as a teenager. It was riddled with plot holes, but at least it resembled the Avengers.

[Adam · Rating 1 out of 5]

This novel was published when The Avengers TV show was at the height of its popularity, but it's no substitute for even a single episode of the show--no, not even the crap ones.

The first three pages or so are somewhat promising, hinting that perhaps a quirky, hair-raising adventure may follow, but no such luck. John Garforth here strays so far from the tone and general trappings of the show that, remove the key names from the two protagonists, and you'd be hard pressed to identify this as a Steed-n-Peel story. And sadly, Mr. Garforth felt the need to stereotype one particular class of people and villain-ize them in a manner completely uncharacteristic of The Avengers, crassly pandering, it seems, to the anti-establishment prejudices of the era in which it was written.

[Mark Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. OK. This book is hard to describe. It is absolutely bonkers. Crazy and funny. Full of 60's topical references I didn't get--looked up some of them (thank you Google). Emma becomes a pop star. Steel races cars. The villain is into bondage (rubber suit and gas mask). The American Christian evangelist wants to foment revolutionary strife in Britain to tamp down the isle's communist leanings. There's a black Jamaican hipster who works with Steed and beds a powerful female executive. Could anyone ask for more?

[Murray Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let me start by saying I'm a fan of the avengers, I found this book at a library book sale and got it because it was from the time the show was on tv. However that being said The Passing Of Gloria Munday didn't feel like an avengers story, it felt like a bad 60's spy novel, with Steed and Mrs. Peel just being thrown into the story. It was ok, but you better off just watching on episode of The Avengers.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not terrible, but just isn't able to fully capture the vibe of the TV show.
It's all too grim, cynical and political and Steed and Mrs. Peel spend too much of the book separated.

A few new characters are introduced to make up for the TV show's slight supporting cast and they are fun, but this feels a bit too much like the author had a spy story sitting in a filing cabinet and dug it out when he was offered the Avengers gig.
It's an awkward fit.

[Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the Avengers, and I've watched every episode 3+ times, so I decided to branch out into other forms of media. as others have noted, this book is tonally different from the show; it's more explicit about the kinds of things that the show would reference obliquely or not at all (violence, sexuality, incarceration, racism). it's more "cool" than "quirky." Steed and Mrs. Peel were so effortless because of the actors even more so than the writing; it would be pretty impressive for someone to capture that in writing. here, there's not much in terms of insight into the characters. it was interesting to think about how the show might have handled this material.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Avengers was always an off-the-wall kind of show, and this book takes it too new levels. Steeds Car race to Blackpool, a pop singer who jumps out of nowhere as Steed is racing to say she is going to be killed, Emma Peel going under cover as a pop singer; a pirate radio station run by an American bondage loving activist; Steed in jail and so much more. Altogether a crazy over the top spy novel with everything except the kitchen sink.
Written in the late 60's, the characters of Steed and Emma Peel are captured well but there are times when the transitions form one scene to the next are extremely jolting and require a re-read to make sure you have not missed anything.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Avengers novelisation - not the US comics, but a stylish British 1960s TV action series, starring Patrick Macnee (as Steed) and Diana Rigg (who I met once when I was a child, as Emma Peel). The TV series is better than the novelisation in general, but this is notable for keeping the two of them apart for almost all of it, as Steed is undercover in prison while Emma is doing the investigating. Anyone who has enjoyed the original series, or its follow up from the 1970s with Joanna Lumley as the New Avengers would probably enjoy this.

[Robert D · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story was disjointed causing the reader to make assumptions about how and why something just occurred, and often jumped abruptly between characters. Steed's starts as being off the books, with his investigation of Gloria Munday who was killed after asking for his help to save her. When Steed does find out the larger plot of what's going on the higher ups in his organization still refuse to become involved despite a very real plot to try to overthrow the British government.

[Gonzalo Oyanedel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entretenida si te gusta el estilo del programa que la inspiró (que es mi caso). No mucho más.

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good fun based on the classic TV series. Taught, fast moving, loose plotting. A jaunty little novel. Read it in an afternoon to revisit the 1960s world of agents Steed and Peel.

[Mesembryanthemum · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a stinker. This book has nothing to do with the TV show, other than the names of the main characters. The self-proclamed "hack writer" author clearly never saw The Avengers. Even worse, he didn't even try to write a story. He just created random content that doesn't make any sense, just to have as much pulpesque prose as possible.

I don't believe in destroying books, but I'll make an exception for this one. I cannot bear the idea of someone else finding it and reading it.

[Linda]

Fun if you are old enough to remember the series.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pop singer Gloria Munday is murdered and Emma Peel goes undercover to investigate.