Another page torn from the calendar. A new month and a new newsletter. Today I thumb through James Mayo’s Let Sleeping Girls Lie, and cast an eye over the Umberto Lenzi’s Oasis of Fear. I also glance at Torn Apart, the 35th book in the Cliff Hardy series.
Book Review: Let Sleeping Girls Lie
Author: James Mayo
Publisher: Heinmann
Published: 1965
Let Sleeping Girls Lie is the second book in the Charles Hood spy thriller series by James Mayo. Mayo is actually the pen name for Stephen Coulter, who allegedly (according to Donald McCormick in Who's Who in Spy Fiction) provided much of the background information on the operation of French Casinos, which Ian Fleming used as a basis for Casino Royale.
Inspired by Fleming's success, Coulter, writing as Mayo, would then start his own spy series, starting with Hammerhead (which was made into a film starring Vince Edwards as Hood), continuing with Let Sleeping Girls Lie, Sergeant Death, Shamelady and A Man Above Suspicion. He would also write books under his own name, like Embassy and An Account to Render.
Let Sleeping Girls Lie is a very frustrating book. There are passages that are absolutely brilliant, including a battle on a road construction site with earth moving equipment, and a piece where Hood is staked out as food for a vulture that has been trained to attack and eat live prey (possibly mimicking how Sayyid Qutb was tortured in prison in the 1960's as outlined in the BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares). It's spine-tingling stuff. As a spy fan I couldn't be happier, and at this point in the novel (about halfway), I was thinking 'was this one of the great unsung '60s spy novels?' The answer is no. The story ran out of puff there and then.
There is a plot thread, which is introduced at the start of the book, in the first chapter actually, about a unique disease known as 'the laughing death'. The villain of the piece, named Zagora, uses 'the laughing death' to control legions of women who are drawn to him as a prophet. How Zagora uses this disease to control the women is never truly explained. As the story goes on, it is alluded to again and again, and Hood even postulates a theory about where it came from and how it spreads, but it is never really resolved. In fact, at the end of the novel, the reader cannot even be sure that the heroine, Tiara Evenly, does not have 'the laughing death'. It's all very much up in the air.
And furthermore, Zagora is never brought to justice. In fact, he disappears from the story at the halfway mark, with only his minions left to battle Hood. The promised confrontation between hero and villain never happens, and in its stead is a mad dash through a women's beauty treatment salon. So instead of battling the Zagora, Hood draws back curtains on scantily clad or naked women covered in mud packs and beauty creams. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a cheap bit of titillation, but I also expected a final tussle and a neat resolution to the story. Instead, I got the literary equivalent of a brief glimpse of nipple.
Another failing in the story is the travelogue aspect. Vivid, detailed description of a city’s sights and sounds, in the right hands, is a fine thing. It immerses the reader in the story. The early description used by Mayo / Coulter in France is quite okay. The story moves fast, and the characters don’t stay in one place for too long. But the last third of the story is set in Venice. And here the repetition of the descriptions starts to wear very thin—endless canals and bridges and water taxis. By themselves, each description is well-written and evocative, but when they are stacked on top of each other, it slows the narrative down to a weak-kneed crawl. It only picks up again for the last ten pages for a spirited but (as I have already carped on about) unsatisfactory resolution.
The most disappointing thing about Let Sleeping Girls Lie is that it did start off so well. For it to crumble away to nothing seems like a wasted opportunity. There is no debate that Coulter/Mayo is a good writer. It's there to be seen. I'd guess— and that's all it is, as I have no information to base this on, other than the book itself—was rushed to be completed. The ending is truncated without resolution and the editing could have (and should have) been tighter. That reeks of a story rushed to meet a deadline to me. But I guess we'll never know.
Ultimately this is a poor book in the series described as 'the slickest of the SuperBonds'. I'd give this one a miss.
Film Review: Oasis of Fear (1971)
Country: Italy
Director: Umberto Lenzi
Starring: Ray Lovelock. Ornella Muti, Irene Papas, Michel Bardinet, Jacques Stany, Umberto Raho, Antonio Mellino
Music: Bruno Lauzi, Claudio Fabi
AKA: Dirty Pictures, An Ideal Place to Kill
Original Title: Un posto ideale per uccidere
Oasis of Fear starts with a young couple, Richard Butler (Ray Lovelock) and Ingrid Sherman (Ornella Muti) holidaying in London. As London is more liberated than where they come from, they go to a sex-shop to buy two dozen porn magazines, which they intend to sell, to cover the expenses of their holiday. They also buy some 45rpm recordings of people having sex.
If I may interrupt the synopsis at this stage—and maybe it's because I live in an age where pornography is so rampant, and easy to access, especially on the internet, I find nothing remotely erotic about listening to another couple have sex. I am sure those who have lived in share-houses will agree with me. Who would buy a record of sex sounds? Maybe those crazy '70s Italians?
Anyway, these kids have bought this porn which they intend to sell from town to town as they trek through Europe. They sell it all and indulge in wild hedonistic holiday hi-jinx. That is, until they run out of money. To refill their coffers, they decide to take a 'Do It Yourself' approach with a Polaroid camera.
They try pass some of their homemade porn to a cop and get busted. For their crime they are forced to leave Italy. But before they can leave, they’re robbed by gypsies. Richard and Ingrid try to leave, but have no money for fares. When they run out of petrol it gets worse. They plan to rectify this by stealing petrol from the nearest villa. They are caught in the act, by the lady of the house, Barbara Slater (Irene Papas).
From here, the story does a u-turn from a swift moving EuroCrime thriller to a quasi Gothic chiller with a hint of Giallo thrown in. Ultimately, the film is entertaining, but somewhat of a dog's breakfast—not really sure what it wanted to be. But, if you a fan of Umberto Lenzi, then you'll find a lot to enjoy here—and the performances from the cast, especially Irene Papas, are quite good.
A Quick Mention: Torn Apart
Author: Peter Corris
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2010
“Why don’t we get together and have a drink and a yarn?”
I don’t know how many Cliff Hardy novels Peter Corris penned in his lifetime. I have over 30 of them. And Torn Apart is number 35 in the series. I don’t read them in order. I bounce around a bit as I find them in second hand bookshops. Cliff has slowed down some since the early novels. He’s lost his PI licence, had a heart attack (and bypass surgery), and recovering from a gunshot wound. This story kicks off when Cliff meets his second cousin, Patrick Malloy who is a dead ringer for Cliff. When trouble comes calling, the question is, were they after Cliff or Patrick.
Torn Apart is a short sharp thriller, but like the lead character it’s a little tired, and I doubt it would win any new fans to the series. But I guess if you’ve been reading the Hardy series as long as I have, books like this are comfort food, sorta like slipping into your favourite comfortable pair of jeans.
Peter Corris passed away in 2018.
Yours in the Spirit of Adventure
That’s the end of this week’s newsletter. I hope you’ll consider subscribing, and I’ll be back in a week or so with more nonsense from inside the walls of Pentridge Prison. Until then, take care, David.
Australian adventure author, David Foster, writes under the pen names James Hopwood, A.W. Hart, and Jack Tunney. He has written seven novels, and his short fiction has been published in over 50 publications around the world.
David’s artwork has appeared in group exhibitions in Echuca, Shepparton and Bendigo. His one act play, Future Shock, was performed at Echuca Arts Centre in 1984.