Nick Carter 010
Istanbul
by Nick Carter (Manning Lee Stokes)
1965 Award Books
Despite the back cover synopsis it is just about drug smuggling. And spoiler alert, by the way, though one should expect the ex-addict informant bedmate of a spy to not live through these things.
AXE agent Nick Carter is assigned to assassinate four people connected to the drug trade in Turkey. His adventures bring him from an adult theater to a high rise building to the desolate Syrian border.
The writing style varies wildly, making me wonder if it was punched up by some incompetent editor. The scenes dealing with action and plot are well written, but the transitional scenes have weird, poorly written asides. With lots of exclamation points!
Then there are the sex scenes. The wordage used is weirdly explicit and unerotic, like they aimed for a double entendre and missed. Hitting the red target, plunging into the red cave, etc. There's a lot of pleasure/pain, love/hate, sex/combat dichotomy going on. Presumably they thought James Bond was too much a gentleman so they had to rough it up a bit.
A decent little action novel. The best parts are the combat in the desert when Carter is strapped to a camel and run with a herd of goats over a minefield, and the aftermath every time Carter uses Tiny Tim, his stock of atomic grenades.
It's a really dumb idea to tattoo all of your spies with the agency logo.
