The Avengers by Julie Kaewert

 

(pb; 1998: movie tie-in novel, based on Don Macpherson and Sydney Newman’s screenplay)

 

From the back cover

“She’s Dr. Emma Peel, an auburn-haired beauty clad in black leather and boots. He’s John Steed, the immaculately dressed dandy with the trademark bowler and umbrella sword. Together they’re the hippest, sexiest, and oh-so-deadliest duo of secret agents the world of international espionage has ever produced. They are. . . the Avengers.

“It’s called the Prospero Project: an ultra-top secret program conducting weather-control experiments with contributions from the eminent Dr. Emma Peel. Now someone has sabotaged the project, aiding a sinister group of conspirators who hope to control the weather as the ultimate weapon of world domination.

“The saboteur: one Dr. Emma Peel. Agent John Steed has been summoned to the Ministry by Mother to infiltrate the ominous Wonderland Corporation. To do so, Mother has assigned to Steed the most dangerous of partners: the irresistible Emma Peel. Is she suffering from a split personality? Or, even worse, does Emma Peel have an identical double, an exact replica who will use her lethal beauty for pure evil? Steed and Peel have only forty-eight hours before the detonation of massive weather bombs in every major city will signal the beginning of the end of the free world. With time already running out, the Avengers must learn the shocking truth before they themselves are terminated by the diabolical leader of the Wonderland Corporation. . . or by Mother Herself!”

 

Review

Avengers (1998) is a whimsical, flirty spy-action movie tie-in read with a touch of the strange, keeping with the tone and structure of the original 1961-1969 television / ITV show. Lots of unspoken heat between Dr. Emma Peel and John Steed in this iteration, with Kaewert providing plenty of their interior emotions behind their cool, sometimes icy dialogue. Unfortunately, the editors of the theatrical version didn’t see fit to put Don Macpherson and Sydney Newman’s screenplay up on the screen; it might’ve made for a better film, helped update Avengers for then-modern audiences. Solidly written and fun, this movie tie-in might appeal to fans of the show and/or the 1998 movie, who want to see what the filmmakers originally intended for it (its original running time was 115 minutes; the theatrical, only available version was trimmed to 89 minutes).

 

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The source film was released stateside on August 14, 1998. Jeremiah S. Chechik directed the film from a screenplay by Sydney Newman and Don MacPherson. The theatrical film was a studio/Warner Bros.-cut version of film at 89 minutes; its original running length was 115 minutes. According to the film’s Wikipedia page, “Warner Bros. has no plans to release a director's cut or special edition in any form, despite the fact that director Jeremiah Chechik has offered to recut the film for free.”

Ralph Fiennes played John Steed. Uma Thurman played Dr. Emma Peel. Sean Connery played Sir August de Wynter.

Patrick Macnee, who played John Steed in the original television / ITV 1961-1969 series, played “Invisible Jones.” Jim Broadbent played Mother. Fiona Shaw played Mother. Eddie Izzard played Bailey, one of de Wynter’s thugs. Black Grape/Happy Mondays vocalist Shaun Ryder played Donavan.

Escape from New York: Volume Two by Christopher Sebela and various artists

 

(pb; 2016: second graphic novel in a series of four. Collects issues #5-8 of the limited-run Escape from New York comic book. Publisher: Boom! Studios.)

 

From the back cover

“After making it through the madhouse of Florida, Snake Plissken gets on a plane, only to be thrown out over Siberia, returning him to a battlefield he thought he left behind. Continuing the story that picks up right where the classic film left off, writer Christopher Sebela (High Crimes, Welcome Back) and artist Diego Barreto (Iredeemable) drop the classic antihero into the middle of a brand-new Cold War.”

 

 

Review

In the also titled Escape from New York: Escape from Siberia, Snake is dropped (with a parachute) into all-too-familiar, war-torn Leningrad, site of his previous, pre-crime military assignment. There he is forced to join a U.S. military unit led by Major King, an icy and sly woman who takes an instant dislike to Snake. Not only that, the helmeted and metal masked soldier known as Texas Thunder, with his spiked metal suit, is in the unit as well. Who is Texas Thunder? (Read and find out!).

When Snake winds up in Tunguska, site of a famous meteor crash, he and his reluctant and sociopathic scientist fellow traveler (Bulgarov) encounter a dangerous cult, whose goals and upcoming ceremony may prove fatal to Snake and Bulgarov.

Vol. Two/Siberia, like Vol. 1/Florida, is an excellent, tone- and character-true (thus far) follow-up to the original Escape (1981), with its wild characters, humor. The artwork is good as well. This is a fun, fast-moving and bursting-with-action read, one with a cliffhanger finish. Followed by Escape from New York: Escape to New York.

Jack: Secret Histories by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2008: first book in the Young Repairman Jack trilogy, 2008-2010)

 

From the back cover

“Ever come across a situation that simply wasn’t right—where someone was getting the dirty end of the stick and you wished you could make things right but you didn’t know how? Fourteen-year-old Jack knows how. Or rather he’s learning how. He’s discovering that he has a knack for fixing things. Not bikes or toys or appliances—situations. . .

“It all starts when Jack and his best friends, Weezy and Eddie, discover a rotting corpse—the victim of a ritual murder—in the fabled New Jersey Pine Barrens. Beside the body is an ancient artifact carved with strange designs. What is its secret? What is the secret of the corpse? What other mysteries hide in the dark, timeless Pine Barrens? And who doesn’t want them revealed?

“Jack’s town, the surrounding Barrens, his friends, even Jack himself. . . they all have. . . Secret Histories.”

 

Review

Set in 1983 (Return of the Jedi is in its first theatrical run), Histories is a fun, well-written, era-specific and humor-laced paranormal-flirtatious mystery surrounding the New Jersey Pine Barrens and Jack’s usually quiet hometown. When he and his friends discover a strange box—which leads to the discovery of a corpse—and other secrets, many of them held by those close to Jack, Weezy and Eddie.

Histories might run a bit long for genre-familiar and/or older readers (I’m part of that group), but considering it was written for younger readers (according to Amazon, grades 6—9) and that it has two direct sequels (and numerous older-Jack sequels) its length might be appropriate. Anyhow, it’s a good, hints-at-Jack’s-powers-and-acumen prequel to other Repairman Jack books, unnecessary but worth reading if you’re into this type of book, a fan of Wilson and/or his Repairman Jack works, and don’t mind an ending that explicitly teases further character interactions and mysteries connected to Histories’s events. Followed by Jack: Secret Circles.

The Night House by Jo Nesbø

 

(hb; 2023: YA novel. Translated from the Norwegian by Neil Smith.)

 

From the inside flap

“In the wake of his parents’ tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. His sleuthing leads him to an abandoned house in the Mirror Forest, where he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear. . .

“She’s going to burn. The girl you love is going to burn. There’s nothing you can do about it.

“When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence—and preserve his sanity—as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursing his destruction.

“Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.”

 

Review

House starts with a horrific, reader-hooking and icky-slurp bang and, with its tightly written and horror-effective set pieces, maintains that character-building (and sometimes twisty) pace throughout the book. The key twist at the end, noted in the book’s cover-flap description, likely won’t surprise seasoned genre readers, but it works and Nesbø makes fresh use of it in House. Set around 1990—filmmaker/FX artist Tom Savini’s remake of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) has recently been released— Nesbø’s House is a great, truly horrific-at-times coming-of-age read, one worth owning for those who appreciate turned-on-their-head terror tropes. Fans of Stephen King's early work, Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel, 1962) might especially enjoy House.

The Touch by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1986: third book in the Nightworld Cycle, aka Adversary Cycle. Originally published as a standalone novel, later incorporated into said Cycle.)

 

From the back cover

“After a dozen years of practicing medicine as a family physician, Dr. Alan Bulmer discovers one day that he can cure any illness with the mere touch of his hand.Although he tries to hide his power, word inevitably leaks out, and soon Alan’s life begins to unravel. His marriage and his practice crumble. Only rich, beautiful, enigmatic Sylvia Nash stands by him. And standing with her is Ba, her Vietnamese gardener, who once witnessed a power such as Dr. Bulmer’s in his homeland, where it is called Dat-tay-vao. Ba knows too well that the Dat-tay-vao always comes with a price. And Alan has only begun to pay.

(This edition includes the short story ‘Dat-tay-vao,’ prequel to The Touch, which tells the story of the events bringing the Dat-tay-vao to the USA.”)

 

Review

Touch, the third thematically (and later character-)linked book in F. Paul Wilson’s Adversary Cycle, is an excellent fiction read/thriller, with its vaguely supernatural/warm humanity Good versus violence/darkness theme, fully realized/complex characters, sly humor, warmth and steady-build, vividly described situations and physical locations. Touch doesn’t begin to come together until three-quarters of the way into it, and when it does, it truly pays out, with a few instances of brief splatterific gore and violence.

My favorite character in Touch is Båo, whose devotion to those he cares about as well as his balancing of light and (sometimes violent) darkness provides the balance I wish other characters in this book had, e.g. Alan Bulmer, people-dumb and addicted to dat-tay-vao (“the Touch”) who’s so naïve, he almost makes Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) look cynical. At several points, I mentally retitled Touch as Mr. Smith Gets a Healing Power.

While reading Touch, I didn’t see any specific links to the first two Adversary novels The Keep and Reborn. One reddit user (schlam16) has noted that “the [Adversary] finale, Nightworld [1992] also draws in Repairman Jack from The Tomb [1984], and characters from The Touch.”

Great read, The Touch, worth owning. Followed, story-wise, by The Tomb.