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Mission: Impossible #1
Mission: Impossible
THE IMPOSSIBLE MISSIONS FORCE....
is headed by a silent man named Dan Briggs. With his seductive partner, Cinnamon Carter, he takes on the espionage jobs too dangerous or difficult for any other agency to handle. This time, in two Nazi masters of evil, he meets more than his match....
is headed by a silent man named Dan Briggs. With his seductive partner, Cinnamon Carter, he takes on the espionage jobs too dangerous or difficult for any other agency to handle. This time, in two Nazi masters of evil, he meets more than his match....
142 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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102 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 17, 2022
To my unending surprise, one of the two reviews of this book was written in 2016! The whole guilty pleasure (which is really the only pleasure) in reading any of these half-century old tie-ins is supposed to be the Howard Carter/Hiram Bingham thrill of re-discovering something that's been lying buried all this time, all but forgotten by modern man. And yet there it is - a 2-star review from "Tommy" that's less than three months old!
And of course, he's right - this is a 2-star book at best. These are by definition terrible, quickly-written knock offs meant to sucker in fans of whatever TV show was popular at the time for a quick 60 cents. That's right - 60 cents, or as I called it at the time, two weeks allowance.
UPDATE: And since writing the above, another SIX reviews have been posted - why in God's name is anyone (other than me, of course) still reading these stinkers?? :)
Anyway...our library recently had a used book/DVD sale, and I picked up the first season of "M:I" for a buck or so, and have literally been using them to help me fall asleep on those nights when I'm having trouble drifting off. The cover of this book is a scene from the very first episode - thank God the world of the 1960's had so many villians who kind-of-looked-like Martin Landau! :D
And of course, he's right - this is a 2-star book at best. These are by definition terrible, quickly-written knock offs meant to sucker in fans of whatever TV show was popular at the time for a quick 60 cents. That's right - 60 cents, or as I called it at the time, two weeks allowance.
UPDATE: And since writing the above, another SIX reviews have been posted - why in God's name is anyone (other than me, of course) still reading these stinkers?? :)
Anyway...our library recently had a used book/DVD sale, and I picked up the first season of "M:I" for a buck or so, and have literally been using them to help me fall asleep on those nights when I'm having trouble drifting off. The cover of this book is a scene from the very first episode - thank God the world of the 1960's had so many villians who kind-of-looked-like Martin Landau! :D
September 18, 2020
It was everything promised on the back cover: Exciting and Fast-paced. It read like an episode of the old television show on which it was based.
It wasn't "great literature", but I didn't expect it to be so. It was just a fun read that let me enjoy an "episode" of an old television program. It also read like fan fiction in some ways. There were flowery descriptions of the characters, nicknames used rather than names (Rollin was called "the actor" far more than by his name, for example) and there was even some "shipping" between Cinnamon Carter and Dan Briggs.
I'm really looking forward to reading the other books I've picked up by this author in this series, which have the more familiar Jim Phelps heading up the team.
If you enjoyed this television series and can get your hands on a copy of this book, I'd recommend giving it a read.
It wasn't "great literature", but I didn't expect it to be so. It was just a fun read that let me enjoy an "episode" of an old television program. It also read like fan fiction in some ways. There were flowery descriptions of the characters, nicknames used rather than names (Rollin was called "the actor" far more than by his name, for example) and there was even some "shipping" between Cinnamon Carter and Dan Briggs.
I'm really looking forward to reading the other books I've picked up by this author in this series, which have the more familiar Jim Phelps heading up the team.
If you enjoyed this television series and can get your hands on a copy of this book, I'd recommend giving it a read.
September 18, 2020
It was so clearly based on the old television shows and was a fun read. It read like it could have been an episode, complete with tiny "oh no moments" to increase the suspense.
My sister and I read it out loud to each other, something we haven't done since the Harry Potter books were new, and that added to the fun even as it reduced the likelihood of spoilers.
I enjoyed it and we plan on reading the others in the series, just for the nostalgia of it.
My sister and I read it out loud to each other, something we haven't done since the Harry Potter books were new, and that added to the fun even as it reduced the likelihood of spoilers.
I enjoyed it and we plan on reading the others in the series, just for the nostalgia of it.
August 27, 2019
TV tie-in. Always a good read for the fans o a show, First season characters. enjoyable read.
January 11, 2023
A fun cloak and dagger book, tightly written and quickly paced. Although I'm a fan of the show I don't feel it's necessary to have any knowledge of the franchise at all to enjoy the book.
May 25, 2025
I’m working through it read by Archieve to me, I don’t feel like reading anymore then a robot can just read it to me.
October 23, 2016
A suspenseful read and a welcome complement to the first season of the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE series. Dan Briggs, Rollin, Cinnamon, Barney, and Willy all prove themselves invaluable to the success of the mission. Author Walter Wager, writing under the house name John Tiger, does an admirable job and elevates the oft-scorned TV tie-in novel by bringing to the pages a thorough knowledge and an obvious enthusiasm for the series and its characters.
The impossible mission is to get into a banana republic ruled by a military junta where two notorious Nazi fugitives are holed up. Worse, the Nazis have developed a gas called Dexon-9 that destroys the mind, turning its victims into imbeciles and vegetables. The junta wants to use it on its neighbors, but the Nazis--Messelman and Dersh--entertain hopes of using it in the Fourth Reich they will help establish. Briggs and Co. are assigned with destroying the gas and with bringing Messelman and Dersh to West Germany to stand trial for war crimes.
The book reads just like an episode of the series, with disguises, deceptions, and intricate plans that sometimes go awry. Barney provides the technical know-how and Willy the muscle. Oh, and Cinnamon the sex appeal. You'll have to read the book to find out how she ends up in Messelman's bathtub nude, bound, gagged, and with a swastika scrawled on her belly in lipstick! All part of the plan and of a day's work for Cinnamon, though days like that never made it on television in 1966!
The book is a rollicking read at only 142 pages and with an abundance of one-line paragraphs (which Wager uses to great effect). The book never drags and qualifies as an unputdownable page turner. There are a few wrinkles, however, one of which is Wager providing brief background stories for the IM Force that strip away some of the mystery (even if this novel is not necessarily canonical). Do we need to know that Dan is from Oregon and lost his family in a car accident? Or that Cinnamon has a crush on Dan?
The novel's greatest shortcoming was paradoxically a strength that inadvertently ended up weakening the book in the end. Wager's characterization of Messelman is so well done that this unrepentant Nazi becomes a sympathetic and pitiful figure. We are allowed to hear his thoughts and to appreciate just how human he is, frustrated at how low life has brought him, relegated to living in a third-world country, fearful of the Israeli terrorist group Shin Bet which he believes is attempting to assassinate him, dreaming of a return to glory. One never roots for Messelman, but one understands his humanity. With several references to Adolf Eichmann, I suspected Wager was drawing on Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" thesis. If so, Messelman was an apt personification of it. Messelman is the novel's most compelling figure.
The book does veer away from the television script near the end, as the IM Force, which on TV take pains to avoid killing, are responsible for 144 deaths and 38 survivors left in a vegetative state. Worse, at the end they gloat openly before their vanquished foes--Rollin and Barney take bows, Cinnamon curtseys, and Willy "grinned, clasped his hands over his head in the boxer's traditional victory signal." What the--? This was more the boisterous A-Team than the staid and sober Impossible Missions Force!
But those minor missteps didn't cloud my enjoyment of this very fun, exciting, and well written novel. Highly recommended for fans of the series. Three more novels followed, but only the fourth was written by Walter Wager, who turned his talents for espionage and intrigue towards writing a whopping seven novels based on the Robert Culp and Bill Cosby series I Spy.
Life imitates Art: Wager writes near the novel's close that "Rollin Hand managed to restrain a smile of triumph, but he was delighted by the success of his performance. It was worthy of a Broadway Tony Award or a Hollywood 'Oscar,' he told himself proudly." Martin Landau, who played Rollin on television, won the Oscar in 1995 for his performance in Ed Wood.
PS: The novel's cover photo showing Steven Hill as Dan Briggs with a gun pointed at Martin Landau is a still from the series' excellent pilot episode.
The impossible mission is to get into a banana republic ruled by a military junta where two notorious Nazi fugitives are holed up. Worse, the Nazis have developed a gas called Dexon-9 that destroys the mind, turning its victims into imbeciles and vegetables. The junta wants to use it on its neighbors, but the Nazis--Messelman and Dersh--entertain hopes of using it in the Fourth Reich they will help establish. Briggs and Co. are assigned with destroying the gas and with bringing Messelman and Dersh to West Germany to stand trial for war crimes.
The book reads just like an episode of the series, with disguises, deceptions, and intricate plans that sometimes go awry. Barney provides the technical know-how and Willy the muscle. Oh, and Cinnamon the sex appeal. You'll have to read the book to find out how she ends up in Messelman's bathtub nude, bound, gagged, and with a swastika scrawled on her belly in lipstick! All part of the plan and of a day's work for Cinnamon, though days like that never made it on television in 1966!
The book is a rollicking read at only 142 pages and with an abundance of one-line paragraphs (which Wager uses to great effect). The book never drags and qualifies as an unputdownable page turner. There are a few wrinkles, however, one of which is Wager providing brief background stories for the IM Force that strip away some of the mystery (even if this novel is not necessarily canonical). Do we need to know that Dan is from Oregon and lost his family in a car accident? Or that Cinnamon has a crush on Dan?
The novel's greatest shortcoming was paradoxically a strength that inadvertently ended up weakening the book in the end. Wager's characterization of Messelman is so well done that this unrepentant Nazi becomes a sympathetic and pitiful figure. We are allowed to hear his thoughts and to appreciate just how human he is, frustrated at how low life has brought him, relegated to living in a third-world country, fearful of the Israeli terrorist group Shin Bet which he believes is attempting to assassinate him, dreaming of a return to glory. One never roots for Messelman, but one understands his humanity. With several references to Adolf Eichmann, I suspected Wager was drawing on Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" thesis. If so, Messelman was an apt personification of it. Messelman is the novel's most compelling figure.
The book does veer away from the television script near the end, as the IM Force, which on TV take pains to avoid killing, are responsible for 144 deaths and 38 survivors left in a vegetative state. Worse, at the end they gloat openly before their vanquished foes--Rollin and Barney take bows, Cinnamon curtseys, and Willy "grinned, clasped his hands over his head in the boxer's traditional victory signal." What the--? This was more the boisterous A-Team than the staid and sober Impossible Missions Force!
But those minor missteps didn't cloud my enjoyment of this very fun, exciting, and well written novel. Highly recommended for fans of the series. Three more novels followed, but only the fourth was written by Walter Wager, who turned his talents for espionage and intrigue towards writing a whopping seven novels based on the Robert Culp and Bill Cosby series I Spy.
Life imitates Art: Wager writes near the novel's close that "Rollin Hand managed to restrain a smile of triumph, but he was delighted by the success of his performance. It was worthy of a Broadway Tony Award or a Hollywood 'Oscar,' he told himself proudly." Martin Landau, who played Rollin on television, won the Oscar in 1995 for his performance in Ed Wood.
PS: The novel's cover photo showing Steven Hill as Dan Briggs with a gun pointed at Martin Landau is a still from the series' excellent pilot episode.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Want to read
September 28, 2018Synopsis: the basis for the TV series. Dan Briggs and Cinnamon Carter take on two Nazi masters of evil.
March 24, 2014
A very interesting book from an adaptation point of view, more so than as a thriller. Commissioning editors worked for publishing houses, not for the producing companies of television shows, so fidelity to the original and writing a great book were secondary to getting the book out of production and into the spinner racks for fans to buy. This leads to some terrible books of questionable fidelity to the series.
Walter Wager is a different story in that he writes with more skill than many of his work-for-hire colleagues. His I, SPY and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE books in most ways feel like unaired episodes of those series. The outlines of this story could be turned into a typical episode. To bulk out the story length to novel length, Wager gives the back stories of the regular characters, never done in the series, and of the bad guys as well, something done in a short sentence in the series. These then become part of his word variety. For example, he decides that the leader of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) was raised in Oregon. That character then after becomes "the Oregonian." This grates. Wager also follows the unfortunate strategy of one sentence paragraphs when setting a scene. These fail to have the impact he tries to achieve and tends to emphasize some of his worst sentences.
There are certain mistakes that someone outside of the studio might understandably make, but those in the know, or have thought enough about their favorite show to notice, will catch. Barney Collier's race was never acknowledged in the series, but he is several times called a "Negro" in the book. The series producers made a point of never having the regular characters kill anybody, rather putting a villain in such a situation that his fellow villains may kill him (nearly always, him) instead. Wager was not aware of this, presumably, for there is a body count approaching 150 people by the end of this story (144 in an explosion caused by the IMF, and a couple of others along the way). This just seems wrong, as does the inevitable escape at the end. It is drawn out, overly complicated. That may serve a novel, but it goes against the practice of the series.
The cliche "close but no cigar" applies, but because of Wager's skill as a novelizationist, the emphasis is on "close."
Walter Wager is a different story in that he writes with more skill than many of his work-for-hire colleagues. His I, SPY and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE books in most ways feel like unaired episodes of those series. The outlines of this story could be turned into a typical episode. To bulk out the story length to novel length, Wager gives the back stories of the regular characters, never done in the series, and of the bad guys as well, something done in a short sentence in the series. These then become part of his word variety. For example, he decides that the leader of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) was raised in Oregon. That character then after becomes "the Oregonian." This grates. Wager also follows the unfortunate strategy of one sentence paragraphs when setting a scene. These fail to have the impact he tries to achieve and tends to emphasize some of his worst sentences.
There are certain mistakes that someone outside of the studio might understandably make, but those in the know, or have thought enough about their favorite show to notice, will catch. Barney Collier's race was never acknowledged in the series, but he is several times called a "Negro" in the book. The series producers made a point of never having the regular characters kill anybody, rather putting a villain in such a situation that his fellow villains may kill him (nearly always, him) instead. Wager was not aware of this, presumably, for there is a body count approaching 150 people by the end of this story (144 in an explosion caused by the IMF, and a couple of others along the way). This just seems wrong, as does the inevitable escape at the end. It is drawn out, overly complicated. That may serve a novel, but it goes against the practice of the series.
The cliche "close but no cigar" applies, but because of Wager's skill as a novelizationist, the emphasis is on "close."
February 14, 2016
This book was really tough for me to get through, it isn't that long but it really felt like it. the characters were flat, the story was only moderately interesting, and also, i get it she is beautiful and you want to be with her stop shoving it down my throat every 3 pages.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews