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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The ABSOLUTE BEST Man from U.N.C.L.E. novel!,
By
This review is from: The dagger affair (Man from U.N.C.L.E) (Mass Market Paperback)
The late David McDaniel, a serious fan of the show himself, wrote what are generally acknowledged to be the very best novels in Ace Book's MFU series, and "The Dagger Affair" is at the top of the list in just about every fan's estimation. He perfectly captures the "look and feel" of the series, right down to the witty little touches (for example, putting U.N.C.L.E.'s Los Angeles office at the address of MGM in Culver City, and basing his Thrush agents on friends of his who lived in San Francisco at the time) and stays true to everything that made MFU so great.
This book is especially notable for McDaniel's exceptionally well-thought-out (and witty!) background for Thrush. It was he who devised the acronymic meaning for the organization's name ("The Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity") which is, to this day, universally accepted by MFU fans and which even received the seal of approval from the show's creators and MGM. His proposed background for the evil organization (having it be a descendant of Professor Moriarty's - yes, THAT Professor Moriarty - cabal) is more apocryphal but still widely accepted by U.N.C.L.E. fans. The novel's premise is especially intriguing: what if U.N.C.L.E. and Thrush had to join forces to defeat a third organization that threatened life on earth itself? McDaniel pulls it off brilliantly and with high style.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Alliance With THRUSH?,
By The devil we all know, from following the "U.N.C.L.E" series, is the diabolically-bent world-conquest club THRUSH. The one we meet here is DAGGER, a nihilistic group of THRUSH rejects who plot to destroy all humanity. The world, they believe, is better off without people contaminating it. This is an idea THRUSH likes no better than "U.N.C.L.E." (what's the point in domination if there's nothing to dominate) so THRUSH actually proposes joining forces with "U.N.C.L.E." until the DAGGER threat is eliminated. "Fanatics are the worst enemies and the worst friends as well," a senior THRUSH operative explains. "We employ a few, for special purposes, but dislike them as a matter of policy. Any man who cannot be bought cannot be trusted." This 1965 book gets high marks from "U.N.C.L.E." fans who note it was written by David McDaniel. McDaniel understood the TV show well, wrote with a flair for the bizarre, and kept the right balance of suspense and humor. This, my first McDaniel novel, was the most enjoyable of the four "U.N.C.L.E." novels I've read so far, in my memory the only novel of any kind I've read which places the table of contents after the first chapter. Is this a thriller worth recommending even to a non-"U.N.C.L.E." fan? It's certainly fun, with the central "U.N.C.L.E." characters Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin at the fore, if a bit thick-headed here. Even their crusty old boss, Alexander Waverly, takes an active part in the proceedings. DAGGER seems a rather haphazard organization to pull off the kind of radical immobilizing technology they do here, and whole sections cry out plot convenience. But you do enjoy the ride, taking in the streets of San Francisco as THRUSH and U.N.C.L.E. together seek out DAGGER's HQ. They even jointly torture a DAGGER agent by stretching him on the cable-car lines and making him run to keep from losing his arms, in a sequence that could be offensive but actually amuses in a twisted way. The best section of the story involves a running gun battle at a warehouse where gas and machine-gun bullets are liberally applied. Previous "U.N.C.L.E." books seemed to keep Solo and Kuryakin apart, perhaps reflecting that the series originally focused only on Solo. Here they work together as a team, trading jokes and radioing each other for help. They still get captured from time to time, an annoying habit of the show McDaniel uses here as well, although more to shift gears than provide villain-narrated plot exposition. Once the villain is established, in fact, little more is heard from him. McDaniel focuses on the more interesting business of developing THRUSH as an ally. For a time it gets quite chummy. Clearly McDaniel could have done up a typical "U.N.C.L.E." plot and everyone would have been happy. But to his credit, he challenged himself and his readers and came up with something special, a whiz-bang lark still worth reading 45 years on.
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