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Charles Hood #6
Asking for It
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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August 22, 2021
There is something horribly half-baked about Asking for It, the final of James Mayo’s six Charles Hood thrillers. Firstly, it’s much shorter than all the others; second, there is no direct assignment for Hood; third, it is written in the first person. On the face of it, none of these restrictions should have any direct bearing on the shortcomings of this novel, that they do serves to suggest Mayo was bored with his character and wanted a change of authorial direction. I can almost imagine Mayo [or Stephen Coulter, his real name] sending in a manuscript to his agent and a reply coming back stating: “Very nice, James, but the publishers really want another Charles Hood.”
The inclusion of our hero, who dictates the shenanigans of the story into a Dictaphone tape, is entirely superfluous. There is no Circle or MI6. Instead a brief explanation is made at the outset: Hood has been on an assignment to Panama and before his return has chosen to do a little fishing on Lake Nicaragua, holing up in Managua. Hood’s extraneous dictation is for the benefit his superiors, but he holds nothing back, is disparaging about everything and everyone and recites the official document as if he was writing a book [Ah Ha!]. Worse, he even includes sluttish remarks about the Senior Officer of the typing pool, a certain Wynyfrede P. Proxmire, who he knows will be transposing his equally sluttish musings. The local Circle man in Nicaragua is Jack McGinnis – I don’t know if it is just me, but almost every name in this book appears to be deliberately misspelt – and Hood passes him a favour because he has a plane to catch.
The favour turns out to be Matilda Roebuck, sensual, beautiful, deadly and a magnet for trouble and troublesome men. She wants somebody to protect her from her step-father. He must have a serious attitude problem because McGinnis turns up a corpse and Hood is arrested before he can catch his flight. Cue a Philip Marlowesque detective story featuring a safe deposit box, stolen forged Bearer Bonds, stolen jewels, escaped ex-cons, escaped lunatics, hardmen, tough men, femme fatales and a ventriloquist whose dummy does the killing.
The flavour of the piece is downright peculiar. Hood doesn’t endear himself to anybody. His debut dictation involves the pornographic description of a young busboy who he believes would make a perfect bedpartner for Miss Proxmire; he proceeds to relate in embarrassingly frank detail how eroticised the young lad would make her. Hood continues in this vaguely titillating vein throughout much of the novel, a vivid and not very welcome extension of Mayo’s less courteous moments of the previous five novels. Hood always had an easy eye and his seduction technique was obvious, but he’s so blatant here it overpowers the whole story. This is a pity as, despite the awkward structure, the plot and its incidents are terrifically well realised and in the main, the first-person telling aids our understanding of Hood’s character. Except this doesn’t read anything like the Charles Hood we’ve come to know and like.
He’s rude, self-serving, obnoxious and obscene. The cultured, man-about-town on a mission is in there somewhere, but he only occasionally surfaces; generally Hood has sunk to the level of his seedy, threadbare, surroundings. Nicaragua is painted like a wild west town and the protagonists like gunslingers, we even have bandit moustaches and clever gun-tricks. Hood meets a cacophony of crazy characters who are all out to acquire the key to a safe-deposit box packed with riches. As with any decent detective yarn, the reader has a hard job keeping up with the twisting plot.
However, Mayo spoils this semblance by having characters appear when and where it suits him, not through any investigation of Charles Hood. This is perfectly encapsulated by a scene where Hood and the delicious Matilda go nude bathing and she suffers sunstroke. This conveniently occurs right beside the dilapidated mansion of master forger Doctor Kinley and it becomes apparent she has faked the illness specifically to lift the safe deposit key from the house. Yet at no point has Matilda ever directed Hood towards this location. They come across it by pure accident. Even if she had known it was nearby, Hood doesn’t and she takes a huge gamble expecting him to discover it. Implausible explanations are a staple of bad detective fiction. This example rankles with me. Additionally, the links between the characters are tenuous and Mayo has to include unseen and unspoken persons to conclude his snakelike exposé. The cast is largely innocuous. They all tote guns and chuckle with impunity.
Well, I suppose you want to know if the thing’s any good.
Accepting the constraints of the novel’s structure – the cassette tape idea is justified by a sole red herring – I’d have to say it’s a decent enough punt for a crime thriller. It has a cat’s conundrum of a plot, a lot of toing and froing, some well-realised investigation, a few dead bodies, a contretemps with the police, a couple of violent escapades and it ends on a point of regret and indecision for the hero. The ingredients are certainly worthwhile fare. What doesn’t work is Charles Hood’s [Mayo’s] insufferable dictation, which slows the action and allows the writer to character assassinate his hero. Hood becomes quite detestable and self-serving, even worse, he lacks any sense of humour. Having removed the outrageous, fantasy driven plots of the earlier novels, as well as the memorable, malignant villains, Mayo only has Charles Hood left to play with and he isn’t making an impression on anyone.
I’ll give a thumbs up to the scheming Matilda Roebuck, a foxy siren straight out of Dashiell Hammett, and the scene with the ventriloquist is genius, but other than that I’m struggling to get excited about this novel. Asking for It is a disappointing finale to a series of novels which promised much, but as it progressed, failed to deliver on its contract. The thrills and suspense might remain, but the narrative drive of worldwide menace thwarted by a globetrotting hero has gradually been eroded and Charles Hood’s adventures have become borderline sex-capades with a hint of viciousness and a tawdry list of associates.
The inclusion of our hero, who dictates the shenanigans of the story into a Dictaphone tape, is entirely superfluous. There is no Circle or MI6. Instead a brief explanation is made at the outset: Hood has been on an assignment to Panama and before his return has chosen to do a little fishing on Lake Nicaragua, holing up in Managua. Hood’s extraneous dictation is for the benefit his superiors, but he holds nothing back, is disparaging about everything and everyone and recites the official document as if he was writing a book [Ah Ha!]. Worse, he even includes sluttish remarks about the Senior Officer of the typing pool, a certain Wynyfrede P. Proxmire, who he knows will be transposing his equally sluttish musings. The local Circle man in Nicaragua is Jack McGinnis – I don’t know if it is just me, but almost every name in this book appears to be deliberately misspelt – and Hood passes him a favour because he has a plane to catch.
The favour turns out to be Matilda Roebuck, sensual, beautiful, deadly and a magnet for trouble and troublesome men. She wants somebody to protect her from her step-father. He must have a serious attitude problem because McGinnis turns up a corpse and Hood is arrested before he can catch his flight. Cue a Philip Marlowesque detective story featuring a safe deposit box, stolen forged Bearer Bonds, stolen jewels, escaped ex-cons, escaped lunatics, hardmen, tough men, femme fatales and a ventriloquist whose dummy does the killing.
The flavour of the piece is downright peculiar. Hood doesn’t endear himself to anybody. His debut dictation involves the pornographic description of a young busboy who he believes would make a perfect bedpartner for Miss Proxmire; he proceeds to relate in embarrassingly frank detail how eroticised the young lad would make her. Hood continues in this vaguely titillating vein throughout much of the novel, a vivid and not very welcome extension of Mayo’s less courteous moments of the previous five novels. Hood always had an easy eye and his seduction technique was obvious, but he’s so blatant here it overpowers the whole story. This is a pity as, despite the awkward structure, the plot and its incidents are terrifically well realised and in the main, the first-person telling aids our understanding of Hood’s character. Except this doesn’t read anything like the Charles Hood we’ve come to know and like.
He’s rude, self-serving, obnoxious and obscene. The cultured, man-about-town on a mission is in there somewhere, but he only occasionally surfaces; generally Hood has sunk to the level of his seedy, threadbare, surroundings. Nicaragua is painted like a wild west town and the protagonists like gunslingers, we even have bandit moustaches and clever gun-tricks. Hood meets a cacophony of crazy characters who are all out to acquire the key to a safe-deposit box packed with riches. As with any decent detective yarn, the reader has a hard job keeping up with the twisting plot.
However, Mayo spoils this semblance by having characters appear when and where it suits him, not through any investigation of Charles Hood. This is perfectly encapsulated by a scene where Hood and the delicious Matilda go nude bathing and she suffers sunstroke. This conveniently occurs right beside the dilapidated mansion of master forger Doctor Kinley and it becomes apparent she has faked the illness specifically to lift the safe deposit key from the house. Yet at no point has Matilda ever directed Hood towards this location. They come across it by pure accident. Even if she had known it was nearby, Hood doesn’t and she takes a huge gamble expecting him to discover it. Implausible explanations are a staple of bad detective fiction. This example rankles with me. Additionally, the links between the characters are tenuous and Mayo has to include unseen and unspoken persons to conclude his snakelike exposé. The cast is largely innocuous. They all tote guns and chuckle with impunity.
Well, I suppose you want to know if the thing’s any good.
Accepting the constraints of the novel’s structure – the cassette tape idea is justified by a sole red herring – I’d have to say it’s a decent enough punt for a crime thriller. It has a cat’s conundrum of a plot, a lot of toing and froing, some well-realised investigation, a few dead bodies, a contretemps with the police, a couple of violent escapades and it ends on a point of regret and indecision for the hero. The ingredients are certainly worthwhile fare. What doesn’t work is Charles Hood’s [Mayo’s] insufferable dictation, which slows the action and allows the writer to character assassinate his hero. Hood becomes quite detestable and self-serving, even worse, he lacks any sense of humour. Having removed the outrageous, fantasy driven plots of the earlier novels, as well as the memorable, malignant villains, Mayo only has Charles Hood left to play with and he isn’t making an impression on anyone.
I’ll give a thumbs up to the scheming Matilda Roebuck, a foxy siren straight out of Dashiell Hammett, and the scene with the ventriloquist is genius, but other than that I’m struggling to get excited about this novel. Asking for It is a disappointing finale to a series of novels which promised much, but as it progressed, failed to deliver on its contract. The thrills and suspense might remain, but the narrative drive of worldwide menace thwarted by a globetrotting hero has gradually been eroded and Charles Hood’s adventures have become borderline sex-capades with a hint of viciousness and a tawdry list of associates.
October 22, 2010
An old school 70s thriller, this features Charles Hood (“James Bond’s successor”), a secret agent who happens to be in Nicaragua when a fellow agent is killed. Determined to solve the mystery, Hood gets mixed up with the dead agents buxom assistant, a girl who might or might not be an escaped mental patient and a rich menagerie of vicious thugs. Told in a breakneck style (and utilising a terrible device wherein Hood is dictating the book by tape to a secretary back in London - including breaks for new tapes and beer), this has everything you’d expect - it’s sleazy, the attitude to women is poor, the sex scenes are quite coy and the violence surprisingly explicit. It’s also frustrating because whilst some of the sections, male-female interaction especially and some of the dialogue, are risible, they’re interspersed with some very well written pieces and the plot, as complicated as it is, ticks along nicely. Until the ending, which is so unexpected and out of place from what’s gone before, I thought there’d been a printing error (and lost this a star for those last two pages alone). Based on this, I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of Mayo (the pseudonym for Stephen Coulter).
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