Customer Reviews

Assignment Treason (Curley Large Print Books)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this 2nd "Assignment" book, Gold Medal 568 released in April, 1956 we meet a Sam Durell on the dodge and run, labeled by his own CIA Section K a traitor.

Allegedly he has stolen a file from the 4th floor without clearance, and will sell the file for money to clear a massive gambling debt. This ruse may fool the opposition but as any Sam Durell fan knows, this is not how our CIA man works. But for almost 160 pages we have to read through all of this, with Sam wearing the label: traitor.

Ok, so he did steal the file, and he does shoot his best friend, Art Greenwald, and he does beat up his boss, General Dickinson McFee, but hey, we know it is all for some greater purpose. We believe in 'ole Cajun'. As the book ends we see a character from the first books get what's coming to him. See, we knew all along 'ole Cajun' was innocent of all charges. And you will too, when you read this novel.

As far as the Sam Durell series goes, this book is just middle of the road reading, because it is difficult to sell Sam Durell as a traitor to his reading public. The book is well written, with realistic background of the 1950's with the McCarthy-like characters in this story. There actually exited people back then who wanted to "drop that atomic bomb" and blow the rest of humanity away; leaving America undisputed king-of-the-hill. But reading this one 50 years later just doesn't have the chill that reading it in 1956 might have provided.

I have almost a complete library of 'Assignment' books so any Durell novel is well worth reading, but this one for me, while good, is just middle of the road. Read it and see what you think. I grew up in the 1950s and these Fawcett mass market paperbacks were on all the bookstore racks, sold like 'hot cakes' and still make great reading not only for us oldtimers but for the new comers as well.

Semper Fi.

This is the 3rd of the Sam Durell books. Durell is sent to Russia to stop a renegade general known only as "Z' from launching WW3. His mission brings him into contact with a group in the underground who are loyal comminuists looking to stop Z.
The 50s mix of dedicated American agent working with loyal Communists is a nice switch from the usual red-hatng fiction of the era. Aarons does a good job of maintaining suspense until the end when Z is finally finished and Durell is trapped by the MGB (50s KGB).

The Russians want her. The Chinese want her. The Iranians want her. The US wants her and sends Sam Durell after her and into a dark world of murder and suspense and torture. Durell is caught in a danger filled adventure that has many enemies and few friends and those he is unsure of. Was the lovely Tanya really on the moon and returned? Find out as Sam faces several foes and falls into the hands of the sinister Madam Hung for the first time. And this was written in 1976 - two years before the US landing on the moon. Good stuff. I give it five .38 Specials.

Coming after ASSIGNMENT: DISASTER, and ASSIGNMENT: TREASON, this is the 3rd Sam Durell book, Gold Medal #621, released in November, 1956. And from this reviewer's vantage point, it is the best of the three.

Starting with a night parachute drop outside Leningrad, Sam meets up with underground people, then quickly moves on to Moscow. Every step he takes seems to be taken also by Russian secret police. To escape the police and carry out his mission he is forced to move on closer to Kharkov in the middle of an off-limits missle base.

The time period is of course what we commonly called 'cold war' back then and the Russians have ICBM missle sites all over their country. Sam has a map of the locations and needs to get this map back to Washington. One high ranking Russian wants to loose an ICBM without permission or authorization in hopes of bringing on nuclear confrontation and war with the western countries in general, America in specific. Working with these few Russian renegades, Sam needs to bring about a satisfactory solution for both Russia and America.

Though I've read many of the books in the Durell series, I find this one to be one of the more realistic ones, due to Sam being continuously in the field, and behind enemy lines. Though in book three Sam's character is not yet fully developed we see enough of his mettle to know he is our kind of agent.

If you have any interest in entertaining, historical espionage fiction, then this book may be of interest to you.

Semper Fi.