The literary character of Nick Carter first began life as a serialized detective in the same vein as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. This would have been, if memory serves (and it rarely does these days) right around the turn of the century. That would be the 19th to 20th. I so often forget that we just turned another century, and so I suppose simply saying "the turn of the century" could now refer to that as well.

Carter enjoyed a rich and somewhat popular run as a Victorian era detective before fading from the scene. He was resurrected in the 1960s, this time as a rip-off of Ian Fleming's James Bond. Nick was among a whole slew of similar superspy "pulp novel" characters that popped up during that era. His adventures proved wildly popular and span well into the hundreds of books. They grew increasingly lurid and sleazy, leaving Nick Carter the undisputed king of base, disgusting, sexually explicit, morally bereft, excessively violent trash. In other words, they sure were a lot of fun -- provided you weren't especially sensitive about, well, much of anything.

The Carter books were written without author attribution by what I assume was a regular stable of contributors and probably some occasional freelancers. As such, the quality and style of the books varies wildly from one to the next, but you sort of need that unpredictability in a series that lasted so long. Although some books build upon events and characters from previous books, none of them create so rich a mythology that you have to worry about showing up in the middle of things and not being able to figure out what's going on.

In the 1990s, Nick Carter enjoyed a third revival, this time as the member of a popular teen boy band involved in a dastardly international scheme with the Russians to send another boy band member into outer space.

Temple of Fear is the first Nick Carter book I read, and it was a heck of a way to start the series. Because it's fun to keep track of these sorts of things, Nick Carter gets laid by the end of the first chapter, and a few pages later, he is being tied up by three sexy Japanese spies disguised as girl scouts. This is all meant, in a typically roundabout way, to get Nick over to Japan where he must track down a notorious British agent who has betrayed his country and started working for the Russians. The plot: assassinate the emperor of Japan, and then make it look like Chinese radicals living in Japan are responsible. In order to weasel his way into the organizations plotting this dastardly deed, Nick assumes the identity of a washed-up, drunken reporter who has a knack for getting the right information.

If you are going to be offended, then Temple of Fear will probably weed you out, though it's not the worst of the worst (by far). There's tons of gory violence, a fair amount of sex (there would be much more as the series progressed), and of course, most of the women are deceitful. Such is the life of a spy. The book is good at establishing a few genuinely likable character (like the young female Japanese spy who helps Nick out), then killing them in the most horrific and gruesome fashion. If nothing else, it makes the book exciting because you never know who is going to be killed. It also really gets you hating the villains, who are, of course, evil in the extreme.

This book made me think about superspies in general, everyone from Bond to Nick Carter to Secret Agent Super Dragon. It seems like the people they work with are always being captured and executed in disgusting ways, and the spies themselves are always being captured and escaping only through sheer dumb luck. This happens all the time. I mean, Nick Carter can't go ten pages without getting captured. James Bond spent more time in Blofeld's prisons than he spent in bed with sexy female agents. Everyone is always getting captured, and they only accomplish their mission through luck and bizarre coincidental circumstances.

It made me start wondering if maybe the best spy in the world isn't really all that good at his job. I mean, I'm no international man of mystery, but sometimes even a monkey could avoid falling into the traps guys like Nick Carter fall into. Come on! Half the time, he's walking around all smug going, "Yep, this is a trap all right," and then he gets trapped, they beat the shit out of him, and that's that. He only escapes because something unexpected and lucky happens. I mean, what the hell kind of plan is that? I'll get captured, stripped, and tortured, then tied up by an expert knot tier, thrown into a room with no windows or vents, and I will have no chance of escape. But hopefully, they will throw in a severed head, and I can use the blood and hair oil to lube up my binds and slip free!

Well, you may think it sounds dumb to pin the safety of the free world on the minuscule off-chance of being given a severed head covered in oil, but it works for Nick Carter.

The only thing in which we can take solace is that the super-villains of the world are as goofy as the heroes. Every damn one of them has to start their speech to their captured superspy with the phrase, "I could kill you right now..." and of course, they never do. Instead, they put them in some room with one guard, because they always want the spy to see "the great plan come to fruition" and "the destruction of your country." Look, just kill the damn guy! Because if you don't he will use a severed head to escape a concrete room and then bring your whole empire crumbling down.

But of course, what fun would it be if that's how things went? You can't just shoot Nick Carter after you catch him. What the hell sort of adventure book would that be? It's like people who complain because guys in action films never reload their guns. Well, you know why they don't reload? Because that would be boring to watch (never mind that half the time people say this even though the guys do reload). Would you rather watch a guy load clips into his gun or empty them into his enemy?

Temple of Fear is a pretty good read. It's offensive racially and sexually, but not so much that I think most people won't be able to get over it. You just have to remember that it was the height of the Cold War, and this was simply the way people thought. It's an interesting and amusing look back, and if you have nothing better to do than be offended by some long forgotten espionage book, then you have all sorts of other things you should be worried about instead. But politics aside, Temple of Fear delivers fast action, a wildly convoluted and simple to follow plot, sex, and tons of violence. If you want more from a book than that, then you should be reading James Joyce instead of Nick Carter books. You should read Joyce anyway, but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying Temple of Fear.

Labels: Espionage, Series: Nick Carter