This seemed like the perfect book to start and finish while waiting in an airport, so that's exactly what i did, in between shopping for duty-free scotch whisky and checking the gate assignment board at Heathrow that never seems to be updated until twenty minutes before your flight, and then it changes like ten times. I always expect better of you, Britain. I expect that sort of nonsense from O'Hare, even JFK from time to time. Anyway...

As far as Nick Carter adventures go, this is one of the dumber ones. The entire assignment seems like it could have been wrapped up in about fifteen minutes and as many pages, but that wouldn't have been much of a book, so instead, everything is drawn out to near excruciating length. It seems to go around and around in a circle, with people doing stupid things simply because the author needs to fill out some additional pages. So it turns out that plans for the U.S.' Star Wars system have been stolen by a turncoat and sold to the Russians. If the Russian spy who has them makes it back to Moscow, then obviously they will use their knowledge of our new defense system to negate it and launch a massive nuclear strike against America. It is up to Nick Carter, obviously, to make sure the spy never make sit to Moscow.

The first problem, of course, is one of the book simply dating itself. Most of the Carter adventures are more or less timeless. Sure, they refer to current events of the day, but there's never really anything too absurd (the absurdity being reserved for the action itself). But pinning the fate of the entire world on Russia not finding out about the Star Wars program is sort of like an old sci-fi film that gloriously announces that it is set in the far-off, futuristic year of 1967, when we all have jet packs and homes on Mars. Had this book simply said, "They have the plans for our entire anti-nuclear defense system," things would have been fine. But specifically naming the pipe dream that was Star Wars makes the threat, in retrospect, rather difficult to take seriously -- and that's quite a feat in a series that features, among other things, a mad Chinese warlord with an dildo-based orgasm torture machine that makes you orgasm so much that you actually go insane.

But really, that's only the start of the trouble. Nick and his Russian opposite -- usually flanked by a KGB goon squad -- engage in all sorts of spyjinks at the Amsterdam airport when the flight to Moscow is delayed. This includes a number of violent shoot-outs that leave corpses all over the place, yet Nick casually walks away every time without ever being identified or stopped. Look, I know security then wasn't what it is now...actually, it probably was -- that being ineffectual and concentrating on inconveniencing us to make us feel safer without actually making us any safer. But even before 9/11 and the TSA and the liquids ban, there had to be some sort of security, even in a place like Holland, where everyone is a stoned prostitute in wooden clogs.

With the flight delayed, Nick goes off to bed some chick he knows, and the Russians just sort of drive around in circles, going to strip clubs. While this is probably what I would do (not knowing a wanton woman in Holland, strip club is the next best alternative, provided they have a decent bartender), I expect a Russian spy with the secret to Russia's ultimate victory to do something a little more decisive. Eventually, they go back to the airport, and Nick sabotages the plane for another delay. So everyone leaves. Then they go back, and Nick sabotages it again. So they leave. This goes on for a while, and then, eventually, the Russian hatches a ridiculously complex plot to fool Nick Carter, which of course, simply winds up with Nick shooting him dead in the airport.

Thing is, it's not a bad novel. It's all kind of entertaining in that way even the worst Nick Carter novels are. It's just really repetitive. And what's worse, it knows how repetitive it is, as characters constantly remark on why the Russians keep trying to catch the same flight, even after they know Carter is on the job to stop them. "Yes, but changing our plan is exactly what he will expect us to do!" they say, even though he keeps waiting for them at the airport, so obviously he didn't expect them to change their plans. Ahh yes, the ol' "you know that I know that you know" conundrum.

After the sex and violence packed Berlin, this one was a letdown. It's the first of the Nick Carter books I've read that were written in the 1980s, and while there's the seed of a good adventure, it's never really brought to fruition. It needed more subplots, better motivation for the Commies not doing anything, better explanation for Nick playing endless cat and mouse games instead of just killing the guy, and given how important the books wants us to think the stolen plans are, a better reason why there isn't an army of agents trying to retrieve them. In fact, the one other AXE agent who shows up seems about a hundred times more competent than Carter. Maybe next time, Hawk should assign that guy the job and send Carter along as back-up. But then, without Nick making stupid decisions and screwing everything up every step of the way, we just wouldn't have much of a book, would we. Although, frankly, we don't have much of a book either way this time around.

Labels: Espionage, Series: Nick Carter