David McDanielCritiques

A silly camp addition to the U.N.C.L.E. novel series that is U.N.C.L.E. in name only. You could easily switch out the character names and it wouldn’t make much difference. I don’t know who these two guys were in this book but they weren’t the Solo and Kuryakin I know.

It’s only saved by the last 30 pages when the culprits behind the nefarious goings on are revealed (although this feels a bit tacked on) and we get some U.N.C.L.E. style action at last.

The fourth of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. tie-in novels sees our favorite agents teaming up with the members of their traditional nemesis organization, Thrush, to combat a new threat to mankind.

This is a fun read in which the obstacle they need to overcome is little more than a footnote in a nicely observed examination of how the two different organizations operate and the connections between them.

David McDaniel is best known for his "Man From U.N.C.L.E." novels. This might be his only SF novel. Written in 1967 it fits nicely into the slew of adolescent SF books published in the "Golden Age" of SF.

If I had read this as a teen I would give it 4 stars. It's a young man's space adventure. There's plenty of danger, a good buddy and a smart beautiful woman to keep him in line. What more could you ask?

Napoleon was SO cool and I so wanted to be him until I realized I didn't.

This is easily the best-written one of the series so far - good balance of characters, nice mystery, excellent atmosphere. Now I wanna watch the Vincent Price episode again.

A rather surprisingly good tie-in, with a clever spy-fi device and my favorite plot twist yet - working with Thrush!

Another visit with Ward Baldwin and his wife Irene. Even though they are key members of THRUSH, they are most enjoyable. They certainly have a very dry sense of humor that adds a subtle kick to the story. Baldwin and Alexander Waverly know each other from way back and get along with other despite the fact they are on opposite sides of the fence.

I admit that I hadn't expected a story about Vampires to be one of the best of the group!

A dead agent in Rumania, the body drained of blood? Waverly suspects a prank, but when confirmation arrives, he knows he must send his two best agents out to find out what is going on in the Transylvanian Alps.

Stoic, no nonsense Illya is considering silver crosses. Illya's Russian background is a problem, too, in a country which has no love for their northern oppressors. Oh yes, lots of problems here. Not to mention vampires, giant wolves. . . .

Napoleon is looking for solid, logical -- that really isn't a huge flying bat -- answers. Meeting up with the last of the real Dracula family is a bit of help. Maybe. The cameo appearance by Forrest J (no period) Ackerman is delightful, too.

I loved this line:

Napoleon usually left the more guttural Slavic tongues to Illya, who possessed a native ability to pronounce interminable strings of consonants as if vowels were an unnecessary bourgeois luxury.

Vampires, Cold War spies, THRUSH . . . this is a delightful, fun read.

Finally!

The Dagger Affair has all the elements to make a good 'episode' for the series. The characters are far more in line with their television personas and the story itself played out like a true show. The book is even laid out in the same pattern as the one hour shows. This one was a lot of fun to read!

There's a new organization in town. DAGGER is so much of an impending danger that UNCLE and THRUSH join forces to bring down the madman behind a scheme to send humanity back to the Stone Age. We meet a high ranking THRUSH official with an unexpected link to Mr. Waverly and learn what the acronym stands for (which was never mentioned in the series). U.N.C.L.E. -- United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. THRUSH -- Technical Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity. Is that fun, or what?

And the Thrush employed nurse named Robin? I suspect not a lot of people realize that the American Robin is actually a member of the thrush family of birds.

I loved the snarly attitude of the San Francisco branch of UNCLE and his implications that Solo and Kuryakin did little more than have gunfights and leave bodies lying around in New York. They didn't do things that way in San Francisco. They expected cooperation with the police here.

All in all, this was a fun read. For the first time, it made me really want to pull out the shows and watch them as well.

(A note on my star grading for these books. I am giving this one a 5 stars, because within its little subset of books, this is by far one of the best. I do not equate it with the 5 stars I've given to the first and second volumes of the Cambridge Ancient History books, though. Books have to be rated within the realm they occupy.)

Just re-read this for the umpteenth time and I still love it. Mr. McDaniels must have had fun working the other fictional British fictional mystery characters into the story.

This is the first of David McDaniel's U.N.C.L.E. books. I enjoyed it a lot more than the first 3 books.