11. Kick Start by Douglas Rutherford

cover design by Phillip Castle

I'm quite pleased with this discovery.  I took it from a free box solely on the Fontana reputation and period.  Turns out the Rutherford was a fairly prolific men's adventure writer, but I guess we could say lesser-known.  His particular angle was that most of his works featured cars and motorcycles.  This isn't really my thing, but the bulk of this book was quite good so that I will definitely keep my eye out for his books in the future.

It started off in a slightly low-brow way that set off my alarm bells.  The main character, Valentine Kroll (cool name) starts off bluntly stating how we wanted to pull off a specific crime.  There was a lack of subtlety as well as the dropping of several brand names (he refers to his watch as his "Breitling wrist chronometer" on page 1) that made me glad it was quite a thin book as I thought I would be in for a surdose of that particular brand of stupid British 70s masculinity and faux prestige (cough Ian Fleming cough).  Fortunately, once the action starts, much of that drops away and we get a pretty entertaining adventure that though truncated, approaches a Desmond Bagley level of situation with a post-earthquake dam about to explode.

Kroll's particular skill is his motorcycle riding and maintenance and ostensibly for money but more likely for the thrills, he devises a plan to check in for a flight to Rome from Heathrow, than race back to London to rob a fading movie star of her famous diamond and then back to the flight.  It's a cool idea and though I am not a motorcycle guy, I got quite into all the details of the driving and the mechanics.  It won't be too much of a spoiler to say he gets away with it as far as Rome where the real plot begins.  He gets nabbed by Interpol who need his specific skill to sneak into a valley in Tunis where there has just been a terrible earthquake and find an Israeli spy and steal the deadly bacteria he was trying to sell there.  The extra cool twist is that there is a giant dam that has been damaged by the earthquake and risks collapsing at any moment.  You can anticipate, I am sure, where the motorcycle comes into play.  It doesn't disappoint.

This still is a 1970s man's action book, so there are a few unpleasantly sexist tropes (like the movie star disappointed that he was only there to steal the jewel and not rape her).  The location and the treatment of the Tunisians was relatively informed and respectful.  Rutherford fought in North Africa (and was in Monte Casino!) in World War II and his descriptions are vivid and convincing.  The plot gets a teeny bit goofy near the end (let's join the British tour bus party to avoid our pursuers!) but in a fun way.  I dug it!