Ashes to Ashes

Ashton Ford #1

by Don Pendleton

Ashton Ford, spy, naval officer, scholar, adventurer, and a man who can see the future, is hired by a beautiful woman, and although warning bells in his head signal disaster, he cannot resist helping her

Genres: Occult Detective

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1986

About the author

Don Pendleton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 12, 1927 and died October 23, 1995 in Arizona.

He wrote mystery, action/adventure, science-fiction, crime fiction, suspense, short stories, nonfiction, and was a comic scriptwriter, poet, screenwriter, essayist, and metaphysical scholar. He published more than 125 books in his long career, and his books have been published in more than 25 foreign languages with close to two hundred million copies in print throughout the world.

After producing a number of science-fiction and mystery novels, Don launched in 1969 the phenomenal Mack Bolan: The Executioner, which quickly emerged as the original, definitive Action/Adventure series. His successful paperback books inspired a new particularly American literary genre during the early 1970's, and Don became known as "the father of action/adventure."

"Although The Executioner Series is far and away my most significant contribution to world literature, I still do not perceive myself as 'belonging' to any particular literary niche. I am simply a storyteller, an entertainer who hopes to enthrall with visions of the reader's own incipient greatness."

Don Pendleton's original Executioner Series are now in ebooks, published by Open Road Media. 37 of the original novels.

Wikipedia: Don Pendleton

Reviews

[Dan Banana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, enjoyable not on my read the next one now list.

[Call me Jeeves · Rating 1 out of 5]

I kept falling asleep listening to the book. So I had to back each time to make sure I didn’t miss anything. It was a real sleep fest. Not the great first book in the series . I have a or most of the available to go through, but I’m not sure I want to start them.

[rndgmoat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well that was interesting.

Let's start with the cover, which is what drew me in. A glorious piece of paperback art, featuring a cutout and a full color illustration suggesting lots of sex and action. Coupled with the breathless back cover blurb, I knew I was in for a wild ride. However, while the book mostly lives up to its gonzo potential, its also one of the more idiosyncratic and bizarre works of pulp fiction I have yet encountered, a book that stubbornly resists becoming a pure guilty pleasure wtf-fest.

Our protagonist and first-person narrator is male adolescent fantasy Ashton Ford. He's a former naval intelligence officer/computer hacker/private eye who is handsome, sexually desirable, and laughably competent in all manner of spy/James Bond-ian ways, all while also being a great tennis player who drives a Maserati. Oh, and he's also a psychic. And he cures nonorgasmic women with his supernatural gifts. What's that? Those last two things seem to have been just kind of sort of slipped in there? Huh, how about that.

Anyway, Ford gets himself in what is, at its core, a classic PI story that's probably been retold a hundred times. It focuses on Karen Highland, a beautiful woman poised to inherit millions, kept captive in her house of luxury along with her somewhat dodgy shrink, the scheming trustee who stands to lose it all when she ages into her fortune, and his alcoholic/nymphomaniac wife. Karen's parents died under suspicious circumstances; now, on the cusp of finally getting her hands on the money and kicking out the deadbeats, she starts acting quite odd. Oh and I forgot! She's also being haunted by a spectral presence which resembles an unknown elderly woman! Of course Ford gets mixed up in the whole thing before inevitably solving it and giving the solution over brunch.

At at its core, this is a pretty classic mystery novel with a supernatural twist, and it isn't a bad one. However, the book is dragged down by two features--(1) Ford's constant monologuing about all manner of batshit new age psychic nonsense that, based on the author's comments, seem to be nothing more than a contrived opportunity for Pendelton to lay out his gauzy metaphysical musings and (2) a constant interruption from the narrator (Ford) that awkwardly and meta-textually comments on the very "book" we are reading. These are bizarre touches; given the number of typos and the book a minute production rate of Pendelton, I'm guessing no human editor ever laid eyes on this thing.

So anyway, it's bizarre book--a work of male escapist fiction with some meta touches and constant sermonizing. I'm totally unsure of the expected audience but I guess I enjoyed this curiosity overall.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad. Basically an Archie McNally without the Archie. I would be willing to give another a try. I like the para-psychology aspect too.

[Mike Dean · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Michael David · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not Mack Bolan, but I like Ashton Ford. I think I'm a bit like him, only that he's more debonair. Pendleton was quite funny with this novel, though.

[Timo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very different from every other Pendleton thing I have read or heard.
Written in nice chatty way with paranormal twist and loads of pseudo-science. Funny and good.

[Chris Toney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining pseudo-science.