Butler 1: The Hydra Conspiracy by Philip Kirk

Butler 1
The Hydra Conspiracy
by Philip Kirk (Len Levinson)
Leisure, 1979

One of the worst novels I've ever read by one of my favorite authors. Not even any camp value, just a dull grind to a word count.

Butler is a CIA agent who gets fired for his objections to the agency's interventions in South American. He's recruited, via plot convolutions, to join a secret international conspiracy The Bancroft Institute to oppose a secret international conspiracy Cobra. This takes the first half of the book.

The second half has Butler being hired as head of security for a billionaire, getting involved in a military coup, and defusing a nuclear bomb. Butler occupies a weird place on the spectrum between le Carré and The Man From B.O.N.E.R. - the plot is too sparse and bad to be serious espionage, not enough sex to be a farce, and not funny enough to be parody.

Speaking of sex, three scenes, the first two fade to black shortly after beginning. Not enough for a spank book or sex farce, but present and creepy enough to overwhelm the other elements. To say it doesn't age is well is an understatement, as Butler's main seduction move is to hope she doesn't press charges.

The writing, especially the first half, felt like the author was blocked, kept typing through it, and didn't go back to revise. Butler wanders around not doing anything, conversations go in circles with speakers repeating things back to each other for pages, just completely aimless.

The series ran twelve books, with Levinson doing the first six. The later ones are strangely more collectible, probably smaller print runs, but I'm guessing it's more for the covers than the content.

Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/3rrlKex