Book Review: THE LIST by Nick Carter (Universal-Award House, Inc., 1976)

• James Fritzhand writing as Nick Carter

My right foot was already moving seconds before I fully realized what I was doing. The flying kick saw my instep meet British accent’s temple in a single bone-jarring thud. He gave a shrill agonized scream, one composed of both pain and surprise. Then he dropped to the sauna floor. The Smith & Wesson flew through the air, clattering loudly as it hit the wooden boards. At that split second Eastern Europe threw himself around my neck, pressing his thumbs into my windpipe.

Nick Carter travels to Hong Kong to buy, for $200,000, a list of every ChiCom intelligence agent working in the West and the Soviet Union from Poy Chu, a Chinese double-agent. But a Chinese spy is already on the case. Nick arrives at the rendezvous, a bath-house, only to find the double-agent’s throat slit from ear to ear, and two KGB thugs waiting for him. Nick beats them to a pulp and escapes with only one clue: a ticket stub, with Tuo Wan pencilled across its back, pointing to the Fung Ping Shan Museum of Hong Kong University.

Nick comes to know that Tuo Wan was a 2,000-year old Chinese princess whose body, encased in a jade armor suit, was on display at the museum, on loan from the People’s Republic of China — was, because it is now en route to Burma where it will be displayed in a muesum in Rangoon. He connects the dots and realizes that the microfilm is hidden inside the suit. Nick gets a seven-day visa from the Burmese government. He then goes to Maco on an excursion.

On board the Hong Kong-Macao hydrofoil, Nick meets an attractive young archeeologist named Katherine Holmes. They team up, and travel to Burma.

But the killer who offed Poy Chu is still on their trail. So are the two KGB agents Nick had a run in with at the bath house. Events hurtle towards a bloody climax at a ruined temple complex where Nick finally comes face to face with the Chinese assassin and the mysterious mastermind behind the killer…

The List is one of the best Nick Carter books I’ve read. It packs a solid plot that’s not complicated, but not too simplistic either, exotic locations, martial arts, and a twist ending that, although can be sniffed out very fast, has a nice spy-flavor to it.

There are a couple strikes against it, though. For one, Nick is again portayed as being not a very good spy. He trusts people too easily, and is caught by surprise not once, but twice.

Second, the cover blurb is 180-degree opposite of the actual story. It reads, “Every American intelligence ageint in the Orient was on the list — each a target for assassination. Unless Killmaster could get the list first!. But the list is of Chinese agents, not American agents.

Still, a solid, if not strong, entry in the series. There have been worse.