I was MEANT to Read This Book!

 

I only recently started watching old episodes of Danger Man (titled Secret Agent when broadcast in the United States) on a streaming service. I like Patrick McGoohan a lot as an actor in his roles in Ice Station Zebra and various times he played the murderer in episodes of Columbo. But Danger Man wasn't rerun when I was growing up and I had just never gotten around to watching it.

I've enjoyed the few episodes I've seen so far and like McGoohan's portrayal of an intelligent spy who outthinks his opponents and only resorts to violence when he absolutely has to. He's a sort-of anti-James Bond, rarely using lethal force and rarely trying to seduce the Girl-of-the-Week. In fact, I did a little bit of research into the show and discovered that there's apparently only one episode in which he shoots someone, though he did kill in other ways on a couple of occasions. 

So when I stumbled across this tie-in novel in a used book store, I pretty much felt obligated to buy and read it. The Exterminator, written by W.A. Ballinger, was published in 1966 and now here it was, with Patrick McGoohan on the cover just staring at me!

I mean--seriously. I JUST start watching the series and then I JUST happen to see a 54 year-old tie-in novel in a book store? The Gods of Used Books were obviously telling me something.

So I bought it and read it.

The author portrays John Drake (McGoohan's character) well, capturing the sense that he's smart, alert and always thinking. He accepts that this is a job where he is obligated to kill the villain, but his distaste for this is made obvious. 

The story--an original one not directly based on any of the TV episodes--is a good one. Drake is tasked with finding and killing a Communist assassin called the Exterminator. The action takes place in Sicily, where Drake's effort to figure out which of two suspects is the Exterminiator is interrupted by such events as a fight with an octopus and a Mafia-planned kidnapping.

All this is great stuff. The author, though, depends on ending paragraphs with overly-dramatic sentences a little too often. For instance, we are reminded countless times that a new bit of evidence can be interpreted to mean either suspect is the Exterminator; or that a double-agent who is probably the Exterminator's next target is in great peril. Most of the time, the prose is straightforward and readable, but there are moments where it gets too over-the-top. Variations of sentences such as "It was a moment of truth--and a moment of death!" are repeated a bit too often.

When Drake discovers the identity of the Exterminator in the book's climax, I suspect that many readers will already have guessed it--not by picking up on clues as much as just following the logic of dramatic storytelling. 

But, even with its flaws, the novel does its job. It allows us to follow along with a character we like as that character has yet another adventure.