From the Small Screen to the Printed Page, Part 1

 

TV tie-in novels still exist, of course, especially those for franchises such as Star Trek or Doctor Who. But prior to the days when DVDs and streaming videos allow us to watch our favorite shows whenever we want, just about every TV show had tie-in novels written. Everything from The Partridge Family to Mannix could be found on the paperback spinner racks. Sometimes they were original stories and sometimes they were expanded versions of specific episodes. In either case, they were a way to revisit the shows we loved when watching the actual episodes wasn't an option.

In the 1960s, the publisher Whitman produced a series of hardcover tie-in novels marketed at kids and young adults. I've written before about the two I read and loved as a kid myself. As an adult, I've occasionally run across a Whitman in a used book store and I always snatch it up and read it.

Actually, in the case of Hawaii Five-O: Top Secret (1969--written by Robert Sidney Bowen). I bought it from a fellow member of the Facebook Men's Adventure Paperbacks of the 20th Century group. But however I got my greedy hands on it, I've read and enjoyed it.

I'm always impressed by the quality of the Whitman books. There is never any indicaiton that they are writing down to their young audience. The stories are invariably well-crafted and, when violence is a legitimate part of the story being told, they don't shy away from dead bodies.

In fact, Top Secret starts with a dead body--a missing scientist who is found in the trunk of a wrecked car. He was murdered. But before he was murdered, he was tortured. The fear is that he was forced to spill technical information about a new secret weapon before he was killed.

The wrecked car was obviously meant to be crashed in a spot where it was unlikely to be found. But the bad guys are unlucky in this regard. The car is quickly found and there's even a witness who saw it racing out of a nearby neighborhood not long before it crashed.

McGarritt and the Five-O crew get to work. The ensuing story does have a few brief action scenes, but it's structured as a procedural, with McGarritt methodically and intelligently following up leads to find the killer and recover the secret information before it can be smuggled out of Hawaii. 

The villains are members of a Red Chinese spy ring and we get several chapters told from their point-of-view. This is to set up the fact that the leader of the ring treats his underlings like dogs (that's even one of his favorite insults) and depends on fear to keep them in line.

This turns out to be important. As he progresses with the investigation, McGarritt has to interview a low-level crook who has supposedly gone straight. Later, he must question a clever local crime boss. Finally, he verbally spars with the spy ring leader himself. McGarritt senses that he might be able to use the questions asked of the leader to turn the leader's underlings against him. 

In each case, McGarritt quickly assesses the other person and quickly comes up with a different interrogation tactic for each of them. In the case of the spy, McGarritt's questions are designed not to get answers from the bad guy, but to play on the fear he's seen in the eyes of one of the underlings.

The end result is an entertaining and engrossing police procedural, with the main character properly portrayed as a cop who uses his intelligence and experience to close his case. If you ever run across this one (or any of the Whitman hardcovers) in a used book store, do what I do and snatch it up. You'll be glad you did.