Customer Reviews

Contact Mr. Delgado (Ulverscroft Large Print Series)

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Contact Mr Delgado was the first book published with Harvey Landon as the lead character. There were two more published with the last of the three appearing about ten years after this 1959 written adventure. Most of Pattinson's male lead characters are fairly similar, so you may not have even noticed if you were reading them between different Pattinson books. There's nothing wrong with the story, it'll pass the time adamantly, as most Pattinson books will. You pretty much know what you're going to get when you open one up if you've read others. Basically if you haven't they are either set at sea on a ship crossing a large part of ocean, a Richard Stark style crime novel, either that or a basic espionage novel usually set in South America or Cold War era Eastern Europe.

With Contact Mr Delgado we've got a combination of initially a South American espionage tale, which for the second half turns into a survival onboard a ship tale as Harvey Landon hopes to survive a trip from Argentina to Philadelphia. He's a carrying a letter of vital importance (this was written in the days before telephones and e-mail) that will change a civil war and net him $5000 once he hands it to Mr Delgado in New York. However he'd made a few mistakes before working out how he would get to the USA, and those mistakes may have followed him onboard. He's also infuriated a war criminal who is also his supervisor on the ship. Nothing new at all, but Pattinson was a pretty decent quality author, even though you pretty much know what you're going to get, it's still enjoyable enough to get to where you know the story is going to end up. Although the book is nothing that you'll be telling everyone you meet in the days ahead that they must read this.

I'd rate Contact Mr Delgado at three and a half stars, a worthwhile read if you've read the better stuff first. The best Pattinson novels in my opinion are Ocean Prize, Feast of the Scorpion, Avenger of Blood, Blind Date, Homecoming, The Silent Voyage, Skeleton Island, The Time of Your Life, Away With Murder, The Murmansk Assignment, Obituary for Howard Grey, Crane, The Animal Gang, Spoilers, The Golden Reef, A Car for Mr Bradley, Bavarian Sunset, The Sinister Stars, Fat Man from Colombia, the Spayde Conspiracy and Life Preserver.