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Charles Hood #1
Hamerhead
5th Pan print edition paperback vg++
- GenresEspionage
Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 17, 2018
El problema de este "siguiente James Bond" es que ya hay un James Bond y no hay tanta diferencia entre Charles Hood y James Bond como para justificarlo. Además el malo es muy sofisticado y todo, pero ¿por qué hace lo que hace?¿Cuál es su motivación?¿Por qué hay McGuffins que no se usan? Al menos fue entretenido y, recordando por qué abandoné este libro have años, fue porque entonces mi inglés no era tan bueno y me cansé. 3 jumbitos, un Renoir, un Renault y un Reming Ton Award.
April 29, 2018
Hammerhead by James Mayo is the first book in his Charles Hood spy series. Mayo is a pseudonym for Stephen Coulter and he wrote a number of novels under both names. There were 5 books in the Charles Hood series. I became interested in trying it when I saw Mayo's name listed at the back of another 60's spy novel I'd read, The Dolly Dolly Spy by Adam Diment. Since I started re-reading the James Bond books, I've become interested in this whole genre; the larger than life spy set in the 50's and 60's.
Charles Hood is a cultured man, specialist in the arts (Paintings especially) who works for the Center, a group of powerful men who are based in London. As well, he has an arrangement to work for the British government, Special Intelligence Service. This story starts with a bang and never lets up.
Hood is asked to investigate Espiritu Lobar, a secretive billionaire, who is suspected of trying to infiltrate secret NATO war plans for the enemy. This journey leads Hood from Paris to Nice where Lobar has a yacht on which there may be secret communication, spy and engineering equipment.
As well, Hood has been trying to help a man he met in Paris, right at the beginning, a cat burglar named 'Tookey' Arthur Tate, who disappears before Hood can help him.
The story is light on plot but heavy on action, kind of a poor man's James Bond. Hood moves from one crisis to another, his life often in danger, and leaving a trail of bodies behind him as he tries to solve the mystery of what Lobar wants and keep the free world safe. Definitely of its time, an entertaining, action-packed spy thriller. I will be trying to find the other books in the series (3 stars).
Charles Hood is a cultured man, specialist in the arts (Paintings especially) who works for the Center, a group of powerful men who are based in London. As well, he has an arrangement to work for the British government, Special Intelligence Service. This story starts with a bang and never lets up.
Hood is asked to investigate Espiritu Lobar, a secretive billionaire, who is suspected of trying to infiltrate secret NATO war plans for the enemy. This journey leads Hood from Paris to Nice where Lobar has a yacht on which there may be secret communication, spy and engineering equipment.
As well, Hood has been trying to help a man he met in Paris, right at the beginning, a cat burglar named 'Tookey' Arthur Tate, who disappears before Hood can help him.
The story is light on plot but heavy on action, kind of a poor man's James Bond. Hood moves from one crisis to another, his life often in danger, and leaving a trail of bodies behind him as he tries to solve the mystery of what Lobar wants and keep the free world safe. Definitely of its time, an entertaining, action-packed spy thriller. I will be trying to find the other books in the series (3 stars).
August 2, 2021
I have a secret love for Charles Hood. Six-foot, good-looking, ex-boxer-fencer-rower-skier-shooter, epicurean, bon viveur, antique expert, womaniser, agent for the British Special Intelligence Service, a man whose wanderlust brought him only to the attention of the Circle, that cabal of great industrial companies whose interests sometimes coincide, sometimes conflict, with British policy; always, always a man in trouble.
James Mayo (a pseudonym for Stephen Coulter) was an acquaintance of Ian Fleming. They worked together briefly for the Royal Navy Intelligence division and continued an association as journalists working for The Sunday Times. According to our friends at Wiki, Coulter / Mayo helped Fleming with some of the background details of Casino Royale. Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve never seen this in print. Anyway, Mayo also wrote thrillers. I read a couple of his pre-Hood 1950s efforts a few years back. They were nothing like Fleming’s output. Raw, dirty, grimy, set amongst the underbelly of society. The heroes all have a streak of vanity and a hidden vicious, violent nature which would reveal itself at opportune moments. They are resourceful men, who think logically, utilise all their knowledge to advantage, exploit others for gain, use women for pleasure; ultimately they take risks and trust in their skills and fortitude to succeed. They are, if you like, traditional men’s men.
Charles Hood is cut from this cloth, even if he’s distinctly of the public school class. He’s a smooth talking, cool customer of a gambler, as easy on the eye as the Monet’s he worships, as satisfying as the lobster thermidors he consumes, as refreshing as the ’52 Chablis he guzzles. He’s also as rough and tough as James Bond, maybe more so. He may inhabit a world of luxury and privilege, but the people he discovers within it are as grisly and single-minded as the ruffians of the street. Hood is equally at home quaffing champagne for breakfast on a gorgeous yacht, necking cassis in a snivelling Nice strip club, hobnobbing with politicians or scrapping with hoodlums. A wag at The Sunday Citizen described him as “the slickest of the super-Bond’s” and that’s not far wrong.
Hood is in France on the instructions of George Conder, an S.I.S. superior, to investigate Espiritu Lobar, a Arakanese shipping magnate renowned for extravagant tastes and feared for his mercilessness business dealings. So callous is Lobar’s attitude his rivals refer to him as Hammerhead. Conder, though, has secret intelligence on the man. All is not what it appears in Lobar’s ordered world. Top of the list of intrigues is the unusual sailing activities of his enormous yacht, the Triton; second is his abusive treatment of individuals; third, his shady, piratical past. Indeed Lobar does read like a modern day buccaneer. He’s a huge man with a bronzed physique, a horrific scar from a near fatal lynching and an eye which, rather than being lost, has simply lost a lid and hence stares constantly, menacingly, at its targets.
Lobar is indeed up to tricks: his yacht is equipped with a unique second hull, the lower section of which is hollowed out to contain a small submarine bay. The yacht has sailed the Mediterranean, releasing the sub to lay specialised Soviet counter-defence equipment which will nullify NATO’s seaborne tactical response forces. When Hood pays the magnate a discreet pre-emptive visit in Paris, he finds Lobar absent, but instead encounters Tookey Tate, a burglar petrified of someone or something inside Lobar’s apartment building. Tate vanishes and Hood’s suspicions are aroused.
Using a Gainsborough painting for bait, Hood travels to the Cote d’Azur to meet Lobar in person. The trip turns into an adventure of nightmare proportions. Lobar’s instructions have changed and he’s desperately attempting to maintain his elegant façade while struggling to control Zarubino, a rogue, chameleon-like circus mimic. Zarubino – or Andreas as he’s being called – is to impersonate Richard Calvert, British ambassador to NATO, in an attempt to steal the organisation’s defence plans.
Andreas – or Zarubino, take your pick – is the worst of the Triton’s stewards, clumsy, ill-disciplined, a sexual deviant and a bad gambler. His odd behaviour, as well as the reaction of his paymaster, intrigues Hood. So too does the sensual African nymphomaniac Ivory, who seduces our hero with an aphrodisiac. So too does the ever watchful chief steward Perrin. So too does the playful ingenue Sue Trenton. So too does the frightening, deformed strongman Golos, the obdurate chauffeur, the concealed door in Lobar’s office, the emptiness of Lobar’s villa, the whole enveloping quietude of Lobar’s gorgeous surroundings. Everything is too neat, too convenient.
The narrative builds well through the first third. We meet the main players. Reservations surface. Clues are dropped. There’s a little stealthy investigation. There’s some sex-play. There’s a hefty dose of location name-dropping. The atmosphere’s are gaudily fascinating. The novel doesn’t exactly go awry at this point, but Mayo does begin to force needless moments of action on us. They come thick and fast. I don’t mind it. The events are well-described, taut and terrifying in the telling. Hood is more than capable in a fight, a gun battle or a car chase. And there are an awful lot of them. The story begins to pant and blow quite a bit towards the end, as if Mayo himself was out of breath. Scenes become shorter and less defined. They also seem to be less relevant. This is a minor disappointment. I love a good action sequence and I enjoyed what I read, but I do want violence to be necessary. For instance, the fight Hood becomes embroiled in to escape the Triton is pure exploitation, a needless example of overkill. Similarly, a confrontation in an abandoned car garage and a peculiar incident where our hero becomes nailed into a coffin are visceral and gripping, yet they don’t move the plot forward. Far better are the moments of pure horror: Hood discovering Tookey Tate imprisoned, his mouth sealed shut with wire staples; Golos maliciously crushing a pig’s head; the intense savagery of Lobar’s countenance.
Mayo struggles badly over the role of women in the novel. They are objects of the first degree. Three whole scenes revolve around women stripping. Lobar keeps a small harem on his yacht to entertain his guests. Every female is gorgeous and available, is ogled and enjoys it. You probably wouldn’t get away with that kind of writing today. It doesn’t help that Mayo has neglected to include a central female character vital to the plot. There is a woman for Hood, but she’s a romanticised barmaid. The person who should be the focal point – Ivory – is virtually written out after Hood reaches dry land and Sue Trenton, while provided with a motivation, never arouses the hero’s amor. She merely becomes bait in the first of three denouements which conclude the novel. Fleming, despite many faults writing female characters, did not neglect the fundamentals of his entertainment.
Hammerhead is a fun and exciting read. My criticisms are probably unfair, perhaps because I always want so much more from the writers who followed in OO7’s wake. I would certainly recommend Charles Hood and a debut novel is always a great place to start. It has superb locations, a swift and stylised action-packed narrative, a clutch of interesting, sexy or gruesome personalities, as well as a reasonably believable conspiracy, filled with the prerequisite intrigues, resolutions and plot holes. You can’t really ask for more than that in a spy thriller.
James Mayo (a pseudonym for Stephen Coulter) was an acquaintance of Ian Fleming. They worked together briefly for the Royal Navy Intelligence division and continued an association as journalists working for The Sunday Times. According to our friends at Wiki, Coulter / Mayo helped Fleming with some of the background details of Casino Royale. Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve never seen this in print. Anyway, Mayo also wrote thrillers. I read a couple of his pre-Hood 1950s efforts a few years back. They were nothing like Fleming’s output. Raw, dirty, grimy, set amongst the underbelly of society. The heroes all have a streak of vanity and a hidden vicious, violent nature which would reveal itself at opportune moments. They are resourceful men, who think logically, utilise all their knowledge to advantage, exploit others for gain, use women for pleasure; ultimately they take risks and trust in their skills and fortitude to succeed. They are, if you like, traditional men’s men.
Charles Hood is cut from this cloth, even if he’s distinctly of the public school class. He’s a smooth talking, cool customer of a gambler, as easy on the eye as the Monet’s he worships, as satisfying as the lobster thermidors he consumes, as refreshing as the ’52 Chablis he guzzles. He’s also as rough and tough as James Bond, maybe more so. He may inhabit a world of luxury and privilege, but the people he discovers within it are as grisly and single-minded as the ruffians of the street. Hood is equally at home quaffing champagne for breakfast on a gorgeous yacht, necking cassis in a snivelling Nice strip club, hobnobbing with politicians or scrapping with hoodlums. A wag at The Sunday Citizen described him as “the slickest of the super-Bond’s” and that’s not far wrong.
Hood is in France on the instructions of George Conder, an S.I.S. superior, to investigate Espiritu Lobar, a Arakanese shipping magnate renowned for extravagant tastes and feared for his mercilessness business dealings. So callous is Lobar’s attitude his rivals refer to him as Hammerhead. Conder, though, has secret intelligence on the man. All is not what it appears in Lobar’s ordered world. Top of the list of intrigues is the unusual sailing activities of his enormous yacht, the Triton; second is his abusive treatment of individuals; third, his shady, piratical past. Indeed Lobar does read like a modern day buccaneer. He’s a huge man with a bronzed physique, a horrific scar from a near fatal lynching and an eye which, rather than being lost, has simply lost a lid and hence stares constantly, menacingly, at its targets.
Lobar is indeed up to tricks: his yacht is equipped with a unique second hull, the lower section of which is hollowed out to contain a small submarine bay. The yacht has sailed the Mediterranean, releasing the sub to lay specialised Soviet counter-defence equipment which will nullify NATO’s seaborne tactical response forces. When Hood pays the magnate a discreet pre-emptive visit in Paris, he finds Lobar absent, but instead encounters Tookey Tate, a burglar petrified of someone or something inside Lobar’s apartment building. Tate vanishes and Hood’s suspicions are aroused.
Using a Gainsborough painting for bait, Hood travels to the Cote d’Azur to meet Lobar in person. The trip turns into an adventure of nightmare proportions. Lobar’s instructions have changed and he’s desperately attempting to maintain his elegant façade while struggling to control Zarubino, a rogue, chameleon-like circus mimic. Zarubino – or Andreas as he’s being called – is to impersonate Richard Calvert, British ambassador to NATO, in an attempt to steal the organisation’s defence plans.
Andreas – or Zarubino, take your pick – is the worst of the Triton’s stewards, clumsy, ill-disciplined, a sexual deviant and a bad gambler. His odd behaviour, as well as the reaction of his paymaster, intrigues Hood. So too does the sensual African nymphomaniac Ivory, who seduces our hero with an aphrodisiac. So too does the ever watchful chief steward Perrin. So too does the playful ingenue Sue Trenton. So too does the frightening, deformed strongman Golos, the obdurate chauffeur, the concealed door in Lobar’s office, the emptiness of Lobar’s villa, the whole enveloping quietude of Lobar’s gorgeous surroundings. Everything is too neat, too convenient.
The narrative builds well through the first third. We meet the main players. Reservations surface. Clues are dropped. There’s a little stealthy investigation. There’s some sex-play. There’s a hefty dose of location name-dropping. The atmosphere’s are gaudily fascinating. The novel doesn’t exactly go awry at this point, but Mayo does begin to force needless moments of action on us. They come thick and fast. I don’t mind it. The events are well-described, taut and terrifying in the telling. Hood is more than capable in a fight, a gun battle or a car chase. And there are an awful lot of them. The story begins to pant and blow quite a bit towards the end, as if Mayo himself was out of breath. Scenes become shorter and less defined. They also seem to be less relevant. This is a minor disappointment. I love a good action sequence and I enjoyed what I read, but I do want violence to be necessary. For instance, the fight Hood becomes embroiled in to escape the Triton is pure exploitation, a needless example of overkill. Similarly, a confrontation in an abandoned car garage and a peculiar incident where our hero becomes nailed into a coffin are visceral and gripping, yet they don’t move the plot forward. Far better are the moments of pure horror: Hood discovering Tookey Tate imprisoned, his mouth sealed shut with wire staples; Golos maliciously crushing a pig’s head; the intense savagery of Lobar’s countenance.
Mayo struggles badly over the role of women in the novel. They are objects of the first degree. Three whole scenes revolve around women stripping. Lobar keeps a small harem on his yacht to entertain his guests. Every female is gorgeous and available, is ogled and enjoys it. You probably wouldn’t get away with that kind of writing today. It doesn’t help that Mayo has neglected to include a central female character vital to the plot. There is a woman for Hood, but she’s a romanticised barmaid. The person who should be the focal point – Ivory – is virtually written out after Hood reaches dry land and Sue Trenton, while provided with a motivation, never arouses the hero’s amor. She merely becomes bait in the first of three denouements which conclude the novel. Fleming, despite many faults writing female characters, did not neglect the fundamentals of his entertainment.
Hammerhead is a fun and exciting read. My criticisms are probably unfair, perhaps because I always want so much more from the writers who followed in OO7’s wake. I would certainly recommend Charles Hood and a debut novel is always a great place to start. It has superb locations, a swift and stylised action-packed narrative, a clutch of interesting, sexy or gruesome personalities, as well as a reasonably believable conspiracy, filled with the prerequisite intrigues, resolutions and plot holes. You can’t really ask for more than that in a spy thriller.
June 4, 2017
Charles Hood #1: “Hammerhead” by James Mayo. Hood’s cover is an art dealer with many other talents. He works for a British intelligence group known as the Circle. Hood had dealt with Espiritu Lobar before in his capacity as art dealer, and when the Circle believes the man is running a spy organization, they send Hood to meet with him on the pretense of selling more art. Lobar has the nickname Hammerhead because of his similarity to sharks by the same name, and if Hood isn’t careful, he could be eaten. Lobar is after much more than just spying this time. He has a man working for him that is a genius mimic, who can imitate anyone, and Lobar has his eye on the British Ambassador, Sir Richard Calvert. The story moved slowly but when there was action, it was fast, and good. There just wasn’t enough of it. Over all it was too slow, and that was a negative. The curious tone of this, seeing as it was a men’s action novel in the spy genre, was the lack of sex. There were some sexy scenes, but no sex. Usually our hero is jumping into bed every chapter, if not every few pages, but not so with Charles Hood. In fact, at one point a beautiful girl slips him an erotic pill, more commonly known as Spanish fly, but he walks out on her. In another case a woman takes him to her room to seduce him, but again, he begs off and leaves her in a state. Now I’m one who believes sex in books slows the pace down, so I don’t mind the lack of sex in a story, but I think this may be why the books never truly caught on with spy fans.
May 16, 2021
I first heard of James Mayo from the ads at the back of the original Ian Fleming James bond paperbacks that I've been reading, and I'm so glad I picked this up. Hammerhead goes down just as well as Casino Royale and From Russia with Love, non stop action and a gritty protagonist who's as sharp witted and smooth talking as James Bond is. I'm hooked already and can't wait to get my hands on the sequels.
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