Occasionally, Angela will make fun of my tendency to buy used paperbacks even though I have a shelf-full of them I haven't read yet. What she doesn't get is that there is sometimes no choice. There is literally no free will involved.
Old paperbacks sometimes sneak up on you unexpectedly.
See if this doesn't make sense:
I was reading a history book about an armored division fighting near the end of WWII. That made me think of a movie I'd seen on TV years ago also set at the end of the war, in which Allied commanders rescue some rocket scientists from the Nazis and have to dodge both German and Russian soldiers while getting to safety.
I couldn't remember the title and spend 20 minutes googling different things, throwing off my search results because I mistakenly remembered Rod Taylor in the lead role rather than Stuart Whitman.
I finally find the Wikipedia entry for the movie, which tells me there was a novelization written by Michael Avallone, under the pen name Max Walker. Well, Avallone was a great writer who was often contracted to do novelizations or TV tie-in novels.
Naturally, I HAD to immediately track down and buy a used copy of this on Amazon. I think we can all agree that there was no choice in the matter. Why Angela doesn't understand this is beyond me.
Paperbacks. They get you no matter where you are and what you are doing. They're insidious. There is no escaping them.
Anyway, how was the book?
"The Last Escape" is, as I said, set near the end of World War 2. It involves an American O.S.S. agent and some British commandoes rescuing German rocket scientists from an S.S. facility, dodging both pursuing Germans and a determined Russian tank commander as they make their way to American lines. It's a neat premise and the story itself is well-executed, with some exciting (if not terribly realistic) action sequences peppered throughhout the tale. The commandos end up having to take the family of the scientists along with them, forcing them to use extra vehicles and raising the concerns of whether they have enough gasoline to take them to safety.
They also have to worry about a possible traitor in their midst, which adds to the tension.
There's a couple of scenes with appreciable emotional impact. One comes when an Allied agent gives his life by yelling "TRAP!" even though he knows he'll be killed. Another is the reaction of the Russian tank commander when he apparently has the escaping scientist trapped and makes a spur-of-the-moment decision based on simply humanity rather than military necessity.
The action scenes include: snatching the scientists from the Nazi base during an air raid; fighting their way out of an ambush when they try to contact Allied agents who turn out to have been captured; raiding a German supply cache for the gas they need; and the final chase to American lines, pursued by both the main bad guy (a cruel S.S. officer) and the Russians. All the action has a sort of "Rat Patrol" feel to them--fun and exciting without being plausible--but they are effective scenes within the context of the story being told. "The Last Escape" is meant to be a fun adventure story, filled with action and basic but sound characterizations. Neither the movie (which I found on YouTube) nor the book are classics. But both accomplish their goal in being entertaining.
There are two or three places in the book that had a "this is a first draft" feel to them with slightly awkward sentence construction. I suspect that Avallone wrote it under a short deadline. But overall, the book tells the story well and those few moments of awkardness aren't enough to spoil the experience.
[I've learned that this was indeed a rush job. I've been told by author Stephen Mertz:
Michael Avallone was an early mentor & a dear friend. I recall him once telling me that this was indeed a rush job; the contracted writer proved unable to deliver so Popular Library called in MA who in those days was known as "The Fastest Typewriter in the East."
Since the movie is indeed on YouTube, I guess I'm now obligated to review it in next week's post.
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