SSG: Spy/Spec-Ops Group discussion

Talk of your James Bond, your Dirk Pitt, your Mitch Rapp, your Jack Reacher...how many action-hero tough guys do you know, who would allow themselves to be turned into heroin addicts in order to complete an assignment?

Well, that's what author Philip Atlee has in store for his protagonist ('Joe Gall') in one installment of this fab 1960s adventure series. It takes place in, 'The Death Bird Contract' (1966).



Hell yeah, this is one series I'm eager to delve into.

Atlee's trademark style is on-site, authentic-to-location details. Food, drink, customs. His hero, "Joe Gall" is a major badass who only accepts the most lucrative of assignments. The rest of his time he spends holed up in a luxurious retreat in the Ozark mountains.

Here's a description of Gall in one of the books:
“You are a greedy-guts, companero, like me. You want the best of everything; the best wines, the most attractive women, the clean overhead smash in tennis…. And you do these things well, almost with a Spanish style. But the flaw is always there. You are trying to sneak around the edges of your society, an anonymous man getting the best of it. Without making any obeisance to its smug gods of mass stupidity, automation, and regimentation…. You would appear to be, although you have not told me so, some kind of roving executioner in the holy name of Democracy. You think you can do this, as part-time work, and nurture your soul in an Ozark Mountain retreat. Not so, Josef. If you work in an abattoir, you get blood on you.” (The Silken Baroness Contract, page 53)

The first four titles are said to be the best; but really all of them can be enjoyed unabashedly.

The Canadian Bomber Contract
The Skeleton Coast Contract
The Silken Baroness Contract
The Green Wound
The Paper Pistol Contract
The Death Bird Contract

I'm adding all these picks to our group bookshelf...there's around twenty titles. By the way, its another series with great, lurid, 'chauvinist' cover-art!