Review: Into the Volcano

I've not kept up with this 'blog nearly so well as I had hoped, but I've been busy, so what can I say? Anyway, I just finished Into the Volcano by "Forrest DeVoe, Jr." (the rather florid non de plum of Max Phillips, co-founder of Hard Case Crime). The blurbs on the back promise a mix of James Bond, The Avengers, and (oddly enough) Graham Greene. All this, and heaven, too. The result isn't quite so slam-bang as one could wish, but it works well enough as an homage to the great spies of the 1960s.

The protagonists are Jack Mallory--a macho Texan who knows his way around a whiskey bottle and a woman's heart--and Laura Morse--cool to the point of cold, expert in obscure Martial Arts. They're set up a bit like an American counterpart to John Steed and Emma Peel, except that this pair works for a shadowy secret organization whose motives are more pecuniary than patriotic.

The novel is divided into two halves, "Istanbul" and "He' Konau," and the plot is naturally divided into two phases as well: the initial salvo of action and reaction in Turkey and the final showdown on an obscure South Pacific island. I will not give much of the plot away; there's a somewhat interesting villain named Rauth who has a plan that may or may not involve Turkey's gold supply. Of course, there's more on the line, as he reveals in the (again, Bond-inspired) monologue and (I kid you not)guided tour he delivers to the protagonists once they reach his hideout. But plot's not the point--as with any good 1960s spy thriller (and this one is not alone modeled on, but set in the '60s), the real interest is in the frisson of sex and sadistic violence. Oh--and espionage. But mostly the first two.

For an affectionate mash-up of the great spies of the '60s, Into the Volcano is a curiously joyless affair. It's not that it's poorly written (the prose, as far as it goes, is fine--including a foray into stream-of-consciousness), or that the characters are ill developed. But the whole thing seems to be following the Bond formula so slavishly that it forgets that even Bond, in his heyday, knew how to wink at himself.

One aspect of '60's Bond that the book does convey well (and I know it's not Bond, but the pattern is so obvious that the comparison is inevitable) is in the misogyny. Sure, we've got Laura Morse, Boston Brahman and super-warrior, the American Emma Peel, and she's fairly competent (although the fact that she has a hopeless crush on her partner does a bit to lower her profile). But every other woman in the book, from Mallory's steady lover (a Chinese stewardess who cooks omelets for him in the nude and delivers exposition on Turkey while the two of them are in bed) to the random girl murdered by the villain late in the book, serves simply as a sex-object for the male characters. I daresay this is period detail, but the book isn't light-hearted enough to acknowledge it. In short, it may be the proper tone for a book actually written in 1963; a book published(as this one was) in 2004 needs to be a little more self-aware.

There's another book in the series out--Eye of the Archangel--and the NY Times gives it about the same diagnosis I give this one. Still, I liked Into the Volcano well enough that I'll probably check out its sequel. I just wish I could have liked it more than "well enough."