24. The Green Wound by Philip Atlee

Philip Atlee's Joe Gall series is quite well respected by fans of manly spy and crime fiction from the '60s and '70s. I read The Canadian Bomber Contract, which I took a little less seriously as the anachronisms and cultural assumptions hit a bit closer to home for me (it took place in Montreal). It was also later in the series and I think was getting a bit more over the top. Also, The Green Wound was recommended as one of the better in the series. For whatever reason, I approached this one a bit more seriously.

Atlee is a good writer with some great turns of phrase. He uses some colloquial language of the time but it rarely becomes so pervasive that it is annoying. Rather it fits in with the rest of his style and gives the book a slightly poetic prose that can be quite entertaining to read. He also has some great locations and situations. Here, the bulk of the book takes place in a small southern town that is basically under the control of one man and fairly stable. No problems really, but another plot thread leads the CIA to send Gall here to check some suspicious stuff out and he undercovers a plot to overthrow the power structure by secretly enfranchising the black population and voting in black leaders. A pretty neat idea and the way it goes down is quite cool. Of course, the actual power behind this move is not some civil rights organization, but an evil external force that wants to bring down the U.S. and this is just the beginning of a larger campaign of destabilization.

The problem with this book, though, is that the main plot, which I just described only makes up about 60% of the book. There is all this complex and unnecessary cruft of Joe Gall's past and the machinations of the intelligence organizations in the government and Washington and it's all very roundabout so you have no idea of where the book is going until about two-thirds of the way in. And then when you do have a better picture of what the main story is, the situation in the town is suddenly broadened into a much bigger conspiracy involving white slavery and the caribbean islands and the reader is jumping from place to place chasing after the big baddie. It all felt a bit disjointed and unsatisfying. I think maybe that readers of the time, especially ones who followed Gall in a series enjoyed that kind of stuff, but it was just distracting to me. I would have much preferred it focus on the story in the town and the local politics. The description of the black side of town and the way the power structures were laid out and the riot that followed the election were all really top-notch. Atlee has it in him, he just didn't seem to be motivated to focus his skills into a single superior story. But that may have been a factor of what the audience wanted at the time.

Not a terrible book by any means and if I were stuck in an airport or some remote hotel I could do a lot worse than have a Philip Atlee book at hand.

42. The Canadian Bomber Contract by Philip Atlee

I found this little gem at Nerman's in Winnipeg. It was in the Action section (the existence of which gives me hope for the world) among a bunch of other Philip Atlee books featuring Joe Gall. I was only aware of them because Lantzvillager had asked me to find a specific one (The Green Wound Contract, which I later did find, but in the Vintage section and under the title The Green Wound). All the covers looked interesting, but I picked this one because of the Canadian content. Hell, the inner blurb reads "Joe had seen plenty of violent cities, but in Montreal, sudden death, maimings, stabbings and bombings seemed to be part of the scenery." so you know I had to get it.

Most of the book takes place in Montreal, Quebec City and the Niagara Falls, with a brief trip to Toronto. Atlee seems to be one of those adventure writers who writes because he went somewhere. He spends a lot of time describing specific details, either geographical or cultural, that you get the strong sense he actually witnessed. Though I was only 2 in 1971, and his perspective was very much the anglo outsider, he seems to have captured Montreal very well. The following passage confirmed this to me:

"While I was walking through the dawn streets of Toronto toward police headquarters, I reflected that the town might be the financial headquarters of Canada, but that in comparison to Montreal it was an ugly and dowdy place, lacking both charm and beautiful girls..."

Some things never change.

It's a fun, quick read because of the location and the crazy sexism (he basically tells women what to do and they do it, for the most part). But the plot seems like an afterthought, plopped on like a shovelful of wet cement. And the final reveal was so stupidly obvious and preposterous that I had guessed it about halfway through but couldn't actually believe he would try and go through with it. Despite that, it's not a terrible read. The protagonist is a tough guy and deals out summary justice for the CIA, but he's actually kind of liberal, sympathizing with the draft dodgers (the ones who apply themselves to society but are just against war) and deserters and arguing with his boss about these issues. The badguys and the druggie hippie barefoot rebel crowd among whom they insinuate themselves are quite entertainingly portrayed. The writing can be flip, which sometimes is distracting and other times puts forth darkly humourous little gems like this:

"I had been married shortly once, but it went bad when I discovered my wife in the sack with a neighbor, whom I beat to death immediately with a small portable radio. That's not as hard as it sounds; those little plastic jobs have some good handholds on them."

Excellent use of the semi-colon there.

This is something like #19 in the series, so I suspect that Atlee was mailing them in a bit, delivering just enough location, sex and patriotic violence for his audience. I read that early in his career while convalescing in an Oregon hospital bed, after a Korean war wound, he was approached by the CIA. They offered him money if he would put certain biases in his books, which he refused to do. I'd never heard of that practice. It bears looking into.

I'll read another Joe Gall, but probably look towards the earlier books.