Masterstroke

I Spy #2

by John Tiger

A brilliant madman has invented a foolproof, detection-proof scheme to bring America and its allies to their knees with one press of a button. He calls it: MASTERSTROKE.

The only men with a faint chance of stopping MASTERSTROKE are Kelly Robinson, whose ne'er-do-well charm hides a nerve of steel, and Alexander Scott, the quipster with a computer mind - the I SPY team. Their one slim - but well-rounded clue - a red-headed Chinese beauty, recent companion of the enemy mastermind, who shows a suspicious yet for Kelly...

Meantime, the hand moves toward the button that activates MASTERSTROKE...

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

Reviews

[Philip · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, we know these books are gonna be bad, right? Mid-60’s TV tie-ins cranked out about once a month and selling for sixty cents – you don’t expect John le Carré. But there is so much going on here that it’s worth examining for a minute or two.

First, there’s an extensive early scene set in Taipei (where I lived for the end of the 70’s and all of the 80’s), so kudos for that. Not many people were writing about Taiwan back then, so give "John Tiger" (a pseudonym used by Wager for his "I Spy" and "Mission Impossible" books) credit for choosing an exotic locale and making the pre-internet effort to at least look at a street map and read a tourism brochure so that he gets most of his facts and locations right.

That said, there is really no reason for our heroes to actually go to Taiwan in the first place, so it comes across largely as an effort to include a foreign setting just to keep with the style of the TV show itself, because the rest of the story (rightfully so, from the POV of the plot) takes place in San Francisco and New York.

But getting back to Taipei - the one glaring inaccuracy is that shortly after Robinson and Scott arrive at the US embassy there, the building is hit by a Communist Chinese rocket attack, which is just laughable. Nationalist control of Taiwan (including full martial law) was so tight back then that there could never have been a brazen attack of that sort. But even if we're willing to accept that as a necessary plot point (although it isn't at all), it turns out the rocket hit the wrong office, and so instead of killing our heroes and the CIA station chief, it “only” kills the Chief’s secretary next door. And horribly so: "half the bones of her body broken and twenty wounds leaking her bright-red life's fluid onto the scorched straw rug." Yet a mere two pages later, everyone is enjoying a fancy dinner at the Grand Hotel, discussing Chinese food and culture and engaging in the cringe-inducing banter that bogs down every conversation, with no mention of or thought given to the poor dead secretary.

And it's in this throwaway depiction of women throughout the book where things start to get creepy. Yes, it’s the swinging mid-60’s, but even as an artifact of its time I found this somewhat disturbing in its political uncorrectness. God knows I'm no prude, but there are just way too many unnecessary descriptions of women’s busts (one totally irrelevant description of a topless dancer in a strip club goes on for two full pages), and you begin to understand how perhaps Bill Cosby got caught up in the whole “no doesn’t really mean no” thing. (There’s another scene where the non-Cosby character goes back to a girl’s apartment and basically gets her drunk and talks her into sex – all in that cool “I know you really want to" way that lands people in jail these days.) Anyway, it’s just interesting and a little scary to read what was apparently considered okay back then.

One final point on the writing itself. Aside from being pre-internet, the book was obviously also written in the pre-finger quote days, since Tiger/Wager just quotes the hell out of everything that vaguely resembles slang or jargon. Some examples from just the first 40 pages:

...code name of this secret “operational team”...
...the international “big picture”...
...fashion models they’d been “shooting” for Vogue...
...the “security “ left something to be desired...
...functioning under diplomatic “cover”...
...the CIA “station chief”...
...disappeared and then “surfaced” three weeks later...
...the intelligence people had “bugged” the room, which Scott later "swept"...
...his “naïve” American colleagues...

And my personal favorite for both its odd punctuation and total lack of correctness:

He asked the bellboy which of the local “topless” nightclubs had the shapeliest girls. Dr. Liang might be a mass murdered, but he wasn’t “queer.” You had to hand him that.

What can I possibly say?

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Multi-media characters sometimes have multiple lives. In the books, James Bond has one life but quite another in the movies. The same is true of Batman, Matt Helm, Tarzan, and virtually every such character. This is seldom true of novels about television characters, which usually follow the series fairly closely. The I, SPY books written under the name John Tiger are a rare exception. Walter Wager keeps the only regular characters, makes them reasonably recognizable, but changes virtually all the details by adding the name of their agency, giving them a boss, sending them on adventures that take place in multiple countries per book (the series had them in just one country per episode), giving them skills they lack, and in this book have them work and lead hordes of CIA agents in San Francisco and New York. The characters and their jobs are familiar, but everything else is different. Kelly Robinson even smokes cigars, not cigarettes.

If we do not dock stars for this, my evaluation becomes a matter of how well Wager did his job. He did it rather well. He created quite a good plot, interesting and functional secondary characters, and can give others who have a single scene a rich interior life. He has found a style to tell this story that really works: readable, informative, and insightful. He does something that the series, shot on location, did very well, and that is make the places visited by the agents seem real even to a native. In fact, he does this better than the series. He does drop occasional hints in a few meta-commentary moments that he seems himself as being better than this material and makes some not very good inside jokes such as mentioning one of Bill Cosby comedy routines. Bill Cosby, for those who do not know, was one of the series stars. A point off for these, and another point off because, when all is said and done, this is just another sixties spy novel. It does not transcend the genre.

For those interested, there is a paraphrase from ROMEO AND JULIET on page 67.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had been on my "to read" shelf for ages, and I finally got around to it, partly because the writer was good enough to create stories that made some excellent movies.
Sadly, that skill wasn't on display here.
Some of the sexist stuff in the book would have been marginally okay when the show was on the air, but things like the weird Carol Doda [a real person] interlude was just...really strange. The very odd and totally unprofessional sex scene between Kelly and the young woman just felt creepy, even by the standards of the 60's. It was clearly there just so there could be a hot romance between Kelly and the girl, but it didn't feel natural at all, especially since Kelly was about to use her to make contact with the scientist.
The humor in the book felt off-kilter, like the author was trying to replicate the repartee between the two characters in the TV show, but with not quite the right feel for it.
The actual plot started off being really interesting, but it became apparent that the good guys only won because the Chinese villains were so incompetent or, in the case of the scientist, looney as a march hare.
Even with that, and even with the good guys following all of the clues that the scientist blurted out, there was a problem with the resolution, which involves three different ways to trigger a hidden bomb. The problem is that nobody ever actually resolved the third way, which involved a suicide button-pusher. Nobody ever said he would be coming from the submarine, and in any sensible spy setup, he wouldn't, because that would involve the sub getting close to the bomb again. So, with the resolution as portrayed, a few hours after the close of the book, an underwater H-bomb went off and destroyed a bunch of the ships in San Francisco harbor.
I don't think that's how Mr. Wager meant the ending to be read, but that IS what he left hanging.
So, it wasn't absolutely horrible, and I did finish reading it, but this book was a disappointment.

[Gary Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wager's World and Welcome To It!

Another good, fun and always engaging novel, but a spy novel in name only. A better description would be Walter Wager's wise and witty observations on the world coupled with a poor man's Thrilling Cities, as Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott tour Jamaica, Formosa, San Francisco, New York, and Mexico City, visiting jazz clubs, art galleries, exotic restaurants, and upscale hotels (e.g., the Mark Hopkins in Frisco).

Wager, who by day was editor of Broadway's esteemed Playbill, was moonlighting as a pulp writer, hence the nom de plume John Tiger. But Wager being Wager, the big city sophistication slips in frequently, which only added to my enjoyment, but which also left me a little vexed as the I Spy vibe I was looking for was taking a back seat to Wager's editorializing on the SoHo jazz scene ("The music at the Five Spot was cool and inventive and brilliant, and the wonderfully intelligent black man at the alto-sax was spinning out wonderfully intelligent jazz" (96)),the merits of San Francisco ("probably the most sophisticated city on the West Coast of the United States" (42)) and the losing '64 presidential candidate ("It was that inscrutable Oriental 'cool'--right out of Fu Manchu--or was it one of those early Barry Goldwater pictures?" (48)).

MASTERSTROKE--all caps in the novel, though not an acronym--is "the People's Democratic H-Bomb," thirteen feet long, five feet wide, and with a ten megaton kick. Red Chinese scientist Kuo Liang created it, and the Chicoms--as the Chinese Communists are referred to throughout--plan to detonate it off the California coast, creating a tidal wave that will destroy San Francisco's harbor. But that H-Bomb is more a "maguffin" in this story, an excuse for Domino--as Robinson and Scott are dubbed--to follow the fascinating Kuo Liang from city to city, from sleazy strip club to sophisticated jazz club.

Every spy yarn must feature feminine pulchritude. Enter Dolly Chan: "the redhead who was [Kuo Liang's] last girl before he left the United States--the girl mentioned in the dossier. The Barnard senior with the Irish mother and the Chinese father, you remember, the one he was insane about--or close to it" (68-69). Dolly is later described "like a cross between the wife of a New Frontier senator and the mistress of a Greek shipping magnate" (82). The Domino agents believe Kuo Liang will seek out Dolly, thus she's a vital connection. Kelly's meeting with her, however, leads to a romance--an occupational hazard among super-spies--well described by Wager: "Robinson felt her stirring, pressing, breathing urgently in his arms. This spontaneous romance was against at least four CI.A. rules, and he was sure to lose several merit badges and his Good Conduct Medal if the bureaucrats down in Virginia learned of the violation. He must remember not to tell them; it was unlikely that Dolly Chan would report it in the Barnard Alumnae Bulletin" (86).

This is my third Wager novel, following Mission: Impossible and the first in his I Spy series, I Spy. An observant reader will pick up on his stylistic quirks like the one-sentence paragraph and using epithets to describe characters. I'd be a rich man if I had a nickel for every time Wager described Kelly as "the tennis bum," though "the Californian" (often qualified with handsome, languorous, etc.) began to predominate by the book's end. Alexander Scott gets more variety, being described variably as "the Negro scholar from Philadelphia," "the former Rhodes scholar," but mostly as simply "the trainer."

Wager also shamelessly name drops, which I again admit to enjoying, though it can go over the top. I could see Wager grinning at his typewriter as he banged out these passages bursting with boldface names: "'He reads good stuff--James Baldwin, Art Buchwald, Faith Baldwin, Truman Capote, Zsa Zsa Baldwin, Sports Illustrated'" (28) and "'That's a quote from old Karlo Marx, the Big Daddy of world revolution. Sort of a political combination of Jellyroll Morton, Bix Biederbeck, Charley Parker and the Modern Jazz Quartet all rolled into one, so far as the Communists are concerned" (97). Orrin Keepnews, Tom Wolfe, Helen Gurley Brown, and Captain Kangaroo also merit mentions. James Baldwin, by the way, has been mentioned in every Wager book thus far. I'm now watching for his name in every novel like I do for Hitchcock's cameos in his movies.

Speaking of film, Wager reveals he's an erudite film buff with numerous mentions of film stars and producers. One of my favorites was a description of Kelly making a flip remark "with bluff, phoney intimacy--pure Jack Carson swagger" (93). Being a fan of Carson, I knew exactly what Wager was conveying here. Chapter 17 opens with a wonderful contrast of how the climax of the novel unfolded with how Daryl Zanuck would have filmed it for an audience of "thirty-nine-year-old 'teenagers'" (138). Yowtch! Doesn't Wager know that crack likely described a large percentage of his readership? (Me among them at 49!)

Wager does cast a critical even condescending eye on the popular culture's embrace of espionage, with the superspy's standard bearer coming under direct attack: "The other telephone on the San Francisco CIA chief's desk rang, and after a few seconds of listening to the voice at the other end Cotler offered it to Kelly Robinson. James Bond would have smashed the instrument to pieces with one fabulous karate chop. That would have been senseless, but awfully colorful. Robinson, a simple spy who hated ostentation, just took the phone" (52).

In a scene that made me smile, Wager takes a whack at the fourth wall:
"'Here we go again,' the tennis bum grumbled.
"'Where?' the husky Philadelphian answered.
"'How would I know? Wherever a schizophrenic Chinese physicist in the New York area goes shortly before three o'clock in the morning. It could be Basin Street East to see Bill Cosby do that funny Jonah and God routine, or a Jersey City tattoo parlor or the Bronx Zoo" (61).

The novel is set squarely in 1966. Wager was writing for a contemporary audience, making no attempt to avoid dating the novel as authors with delusions of timelessness do. This is a strength as the book often serves as a time capsule from '66. For example, he notes the unrest in Central American nations and dedicates a paragraph to "the horrible October 1965 mess in Indonesia." Mentioned along the way are Dean Rusk in a Senate hearing, Bill Russell coaching the Celtics, David Brinkley, Hubert Humphrey, Martin Luther King, and "the Texan" (i.e. LBJ).

SPOILERS AHEAD. Mastersroke is a book where the journey is what matters, because the destination is anticlimactic. It's as if wager knew he had to bring this baby in for a landing and he dutifully goes through the motions of the raid on the Chicoms' Mexican hilltop hideout. Bombs explode, machine guns chatter, and concussion grenades do whatever they do, leaving glasses cracked and blood dribbling out of noses and ears. The espionage game is unmerciful and ugly, and Wager doesn't hold back, writing wince-worthy descriptions of the violence, especially in the "killing" of a Chicom submarine that drowns all its personnel and leaves it a broken and battered shell on the ocean's bottom.

But staying true to the tropes of television, the novel closes on a lighthearted note, welcome relief after the sudden onslaught of carnage in the novel's late chapters. Wager clicked with the characters of Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott and wrote five more I Spy novels after this one. I hope to read 'em all, as spy adventures as much as for Wager's appealing style and insights into the world he inhabited.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, I just love cheap paperback TV adaptation novels from the 60's. This one is particularly entertaining, as John Tiger (or whatever his real name may have been) took this assignment as an opportunity to plant his tongue firmly in a camp cheek.

He pulls postmodern tricks in the narrative, speaking frequently about "if this was one of those spy movies, James Bond might have destroyed that telephone with a quick karate chop." He has Kelly Robinson (played on TV by Robert Cult) muse about possibly going to a New York nightclub to catch Bill Cosby and his act about Noah and God - Cosby was the actor playing Alexander Scott on the show. (I never actually watched I Spy, which is probably a shame, but it aired after my bedtime when I was 7.)

The plot is ridiculous - a red Chinese physicist has constructed a hydrogen bomb, and it's hidden in a submarine off the coast of San Francisco, where it will be detonated and cause a typhoon which will wipe out 1 million people. Robinson and Scott are summoned from a relaxing job in Jamaica to fly to Formosa, then San Francisco, then New York, then Mexico City over the course of a few days trailing that scientist. Robinson, of course, gets a girlfriend during the course of trying to stop the bomb. Scott may have had sex in Jamaica, but is all business during the rest of the novel.

There's a scene where, after cringing at the leftover beatniks in Greenwich Village in 1966, the physicist, Robinson, and the girl visit the 5 Spot, the Village Vanguard, and the Blue Note all in the same night, seeing one musician named Cannonball (presumably Adderley) and also Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (I think that was the year Chuck Mangione was in that group). I would have loved to be there myself.

It all flies along briskly, with plenty of humor, lots of deaths, a few atomic weapons fired, and the Communist plot defeated. Hope that doesn't spoil it for you.