The Nick Carter Dossier: Chapter I: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

Nick Carter Killmaster debuted in 1964 in Run, Spy, Run. Written by Michael Avallone and Valerie Moolman, it was published by Universal Printing & Distribution Corporation, under their AWARD imprint. The last book in the series was Dragon Slay, author unknown, published in 1990. These 26 years span almost the entire length of the Cold War, an extraordinary time in world history that saw the development of the space program and the rise of student power on the one hand, and Third World countries used as pawns in superpower politics and a dangerous arms race on the other.

Nick Carter was a child of the Cold War. Much like his more famous British cousin James Bond, whose popularity the UP&D wanted to exploit, he spent his entire career fighting the evil communists and their stooges the terrorists. Occasionally he would fight the odd megalomaniac ex-Nazi, but killing KGB and the Red Chinese secret service were his bread and butter.

But unlike Bond, who went on to fight lacklustre international criminals (yes UNION, I’m talking to you guys) after the Berlin Wall came down, Nick Carter retired just as the Cold War was coming to an end.

Let’s now take a look at some of the significant events in superpower politics during those 26 years.

1964

• British businessman Grenville Wynne, imprisoned in Moscow since 1963 for alleged spying was exchanged for Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale.
• The Gulf of Tonkin incident takes place. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on US forces.
• FRELIMO launches the Mozambiquan War of Independence.
• Khrushchev is deposed and Brezhnev and Kosygin assume power in the Soviet Union.

1966

• Charles de Gaulle withdraws France from NATO and expels NATO troops from French soil.

1967

• The Six-Day War between the Arab forces and Israel takes place.

1968

• The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia.

• The Brezhnev Doctrine, the right to invade any country trying to replace Marxism-Leninism with capitalism, proclaimed.

1972

• Rapprochement, the normalization of relations between Red China and the US takes place.
• The Munich Olympic Massacre.

Détente between the US and the USSR.

1973

• The OPEC Oil Crisis

1975

• US withdraws from Vietnam.

1979

• The Iranian Revolution: Ayatollah Khomeini becomes the leader of Iran; pro-US Shah ousted.
• The Nicaraguan Revolution: Anastasio Somoza’s pro-US regime ousted, Sandinistas under Manuel Ortega assume power.
• The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan to support the country’s Marxist government.
• Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain.

The Second Cold War begins.

1981

• Ronald Reagan becomes the 40th President of the United States.
• The Gulf of Sidra Incident: Two Libyan Sukhoi Su-22 fighters were shot down by two US F-14 Tomcats off the Libyan coast.

1983

• The US invades Grenada.
• The Soviet Union shoots down Korean Air Lines Flight 007.
• President Reagan announces the Strategic Defense Initiative.

1985

• Mikhail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the CPSU.

1987

• Perestroika announced.

Glasnost opens up the USSR.

1989

• George H.W. Bush becomes 41st President of the United States.
• Soviet forces withdraw from Afghanistan.

1990

• Berlin Wall comes down.

Nick Carter’s missions kept pace with the changing geo-political scenario. In the 60s and the early 70s, Nick was primarily engaged in fighting both the Red Chinese and the KGB. Some of the books from this period are Hanoi, Danger Key, The Red Guard, The Judas Spy, Temple of Fear, 14 Seconds to Hell, Moscow, Ice Bomb Zero, Mark of Cosa Nostra, and The Inca Death Squad. Even when he tackled ex-Nazis, as he did in 1967’s Assignment: Israel, the villain usually turned out to be bankrolled by the Chinese.

Starting from 1975, the authors pitted him increasingly against Arab terrorists. The OPEC Oil Crisis had erupted just 2 years before, and the massacre of athletes at the hands of the Black September during the 1972 Munich Olympics was still fresh on everyone’s minds. Nineteen seventy-five’s The Jerusalem File fit to a T in such an environment, as did 1976’s The Fanatics of Al Asad, and 1979’s Thunderstrike in Syria and The Pemex Chart.

The eighties, the decade of the Second Cold War, saw Nick going after the KGB in a big way. Turkish Bloodbath, The Puppet Master, Norwegian Typhoon, The Outback Ghosts, The Death Dealer, all had the Soviet secret police as the main adversary. Sometimes, e.g., in The Cyclops Conspiracy and Blood Raid, Nick even worked with them, getting their asses out of fire, rubbing their nose in it. As the Cold War rapidly drew to a close, the Soviet Union remained the prime adversary, up to 1990’s Arctic Abduction, the penultimate book in the series. The last book, Dragon Slay, sees Nick working with his old enemy the Red Chinese to stop a hardliner opposing democratization of China.

Stay tuned for the next chapter of The Nick Carter Dossier where I talk about the look and feel of the books.