Dr. Death (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #100)

Dr. Death, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1975  Award Books

This was the first of two volumes of Nick Carter: Killmaster written by the mysterious author Will Murray designated as “Craig Nova” in his landmark Killmaster article, in the The Armchair Detective (volume 15, number 4, 1982). But as mentioned in the comments section of my review of the other “Nova” installment, The Nichovev Plot, it appears that the real Craig Nova disputes this and says neither book was written by him. So we either have a case where it’s just some other writer of the same name, or Will Murray was perhaps given some bad info. In instances like this I just assume J.D. Salinger wrote the book. (Plus there’s a scene where Killmaster dreams he’s standing in a field of rye!! Okay I made that up.)

The paperback itself is stuffed to the gills: we’ve got the title story Dr. Death for the first 160-some pages, followed by Run, Spy, Run, which was the first volume of the series. After that we’ve got a reprint of an original pulp-era Nick Carter tale. But as with the final volume, I’m assuming Dr. Death got the vaunted “100th volume” spot just out of sheer luck, as there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about it. Like Dragon Slay, it’s really just business as usual, with Nick Carter – who now narrates the tale for us – going about the latest globe-spanning espionage case.

But it’s just “Carter,” now; gone is the “Nick” of the earlier, Lyle Kenyon Engel-produced years. Only the women who are about to hop in bed with him refer to our narrator as “Nick.” Killmaster would still be referred to by his last name when the series switched back to third-person narration in the mid-‘80s, but I kinda prefer the casual “Nick” of the ‘60s installments. Not that any other sane person would give a damn about such trivialities. Also the gadgets have been whittled down; Carter himself just sticks to his trusty trio of Wilhelmina (the Luger), Hugo (the stiletto), and Pierre (the gas bomb), and the plentiful gadgetry of the Engel years is gone. Strangely though, Carter’s two companions have all the gadgets, even though one of them’s the enforcer for a Chinese tong and the other’s an AXE stringer agent.

The title I found to be very misleading: “Dr. Death” gives connotations of some super villain Killmaster will go up against, sort of like the Mr. Judas of yore. But the titular doctor is an elderly Frenchman whose nickname was given to him back in World War II due to his skills with explosives; now he’s the head of some underwater weaponry research project and he’s been abducted by the OAS, a fascist French terrorist group composed of former soldiers. So Dr. Death is actually a victim, not a villain, and it’s another of those times where I assume the writer was catering to an already-devised title and plot and just failed spectacularly to reap the potential. I mean if you title a friggin’ book Dr. Death, you put a friggin’ Dr. Death in it! It’s not rocket science, is it?

Anyway the dude’s named Dr. Duroche and Carter is informed by a typically-gruff Hawk (who as ever has called his top agent away from his latest sex-filled holiday romp) that Duroche was on the tip of some groundbreaking underwater weaponry work. Whoever has him has issued some threats and the concern is all of the US’s offshore oil rigs will be destroyed. Carter when we meet him is in Tangier, meeting up with an old French intelligence contact named Remy. True to the lurid trappings of mid-‘70s Nick Carter, the meeting takes place in a “hashish club” with a hotbod brunette doing a strip dance in the background. Whoever this author is, he (or she?) is truly a gifted writer, bringing people and places to life with aplomb.

Remy does the heavy lifting of informing Carter of this latest threat, which means that his plot function has been fulfilled and he’s expendable – and true to staple a couple guys with Sten guns barge into the club and start blasting. “Nova” has successfully worked in the hot dancer throughout this scene, with her sexual gyrations increasingly distracting Carter and Remy, to the point that she’s half-nude when the bullets start flying and soon she’s got blood all over her suddenly-bared breasts. This sequence ends with a nicely-handled surprise reveal where the dancer turns out to be a chacter that’s integral to the plot. As with The Nichovev Plot, the violence might be intermitent but when it happens it’s very gory, with Remy’s head exploding and showering blood and brains everywhere. 

Soon Carter is aligned with lovely young Michelle Duroche, daughter of Dr. Death – the nickname, by the way, rarely if ever used in the actual novel – and they run into another trap; Carter has some acquaintance here in Tangier and figures he can use the guy’s club as a safe house, but enters through the rat-infested secret tunnel to find his friend tortured half to death. He takes out the torturers and gets a few clues from his dying friend, and then it’s off to the more pressing concern: sex with Michelle Duroche. I can’t recall how explicit the previous installment from this author was, but this one goes for more of a lyrical and metaphorical approach, with lines like, “Secret female places of her body opened to me.”

We do get the firm understanding that Michelle is practically insatiable, and she’ll serve as Carter’s prime female companion throughout the novel. Unfortunately though there’s nothing much memorable about her character. The other main female character is a lithe Chinese gal named Li-Chen, who has much more sparkle to her character, trading one-liners with Carter even when bullets are flying. Initially she appears as a potential threat, tailing Carter and Michelle as they make the long flight back to DC so Carter can meet with Hawk. Soon enough we learn that Li-Chen is part of a major Chinese family, aka a crime tong, and she’s here to represent the family, which has a vested interest in many of those offshore oil rigs that have been threatened. Even more ridiculously, Li-Chin – who you won’t be surprised to know is a kung fu “mistress” – has vast resources at her disposal, including gadgets like earrings that serve as radios.

Li-Chen doesn’t properly enter the narrative until the action moves to Puerto Rico, where the author gives the novel a bit of a horror vibe – again, similar to in The Nichovev Plot. Various plot contrivances have Carter looking into a leper colony, and we’re treated to a late-night sequence in which he enters the nightmarish compound and starts grilling some poor deformed guy who is missing some of his limbs. It’s all very Island Of Lost Souls as a group of lepers try to kill Carter, some of them armed with knives but most of them just reaching out to touch him, as they’re contagious and could Carter himself into a leper. This is where Li-Chen makes her big appearance, wiping out leper-creatures with her Sue Shiomi skills.

Surprisingly though, the author holds off on the expected shenanigans between Carter and Li-Chen; instead he goes back to his hotel for some off-page stuff with Michelle. She is jealous of Li-Chen but grudgingly gives in to Carter’s insistence that Li-Chen will be helping them out now. Another new character is introduced here, more interesting than any of them: Sweets Hunter, a black AXE stringer who owns a boat and has a fondness for chocolate, hence his nickname. He also has a host of gadgets, including a necklace with beads that are actually mini-grenades. Sweets is given more personality than any of the characters, and what with him and the similarly-memorable Li-Chen it’s like Carter is a guest star in his own novel.

The final third takes place in Martanique, where the OAS have headquartered themselves in a volcano, an element that’s almost casually handled. Instead more focus is placed on the Mardi Gras that occurs outside while Carter and team discuss their plans inside a restaurant. Soon enough garrishly-costumed celebrants come in, separate the group…and make off with Michelle. This sequence does feature the memorable image of Carter blowing away men in papier mache animal masks. But “Nova” pulls a fast one on readers; Carter and Li-Chen stage an assault on the OAS HQ, and after blowing away a few soldiers they’re caught and are taken to the OAS leader. Here Carter learns that one of his comrades was really a traitor all along, but what’s annoying about it is that we learn Carter’s already figured this out, without the reader being aware of it, and has devised a backup plan.

Thus Carter and Li-Chen just stand there smugly while an off-page Sweets runs amok in inside the OAS compound, blowing up computers with his mini-grenades. Hell, Carter even informs the OAS boss that he’s called in the army – again without the reader being aware of it until this very moment. It just all comes off like lazy deus ex machina, made all the worse by the fact that Sweets, a one-off character, does all the heavy lifting while the series protagonist just stands there. Indeed the big climax isn’t very, uh, climactic, with Carter and comrades escaping the HQ bunker while gas-bomb Pierre kills everyone unlucky enough to be stuck in there. Then we have Carter in scuba gear and chasing after that former comrade who has been revealed to be an enemy, dishing out payback with his stiletto.

We of course learn that Li-Chen and Carter will be hopping into bed soon, but at this point Dr. Death comes to a close, and on a dour note at that, with a former comrade now turned into shark food. But overall Dr. Death is competently written and fairly fast moving, though it lacks the fun charm of the Engel years. I guess the greater mystery is who wrote the damn thing. There is something vaguely familiar about the writing style, so maybe it was just one of the usual Killmaster writing stable who somehow got misattributed by Will Murray when he researched the series. Probably we’ll never know.

Finally, the book features what I believe is called a stepback cover; here is the uncredited painting of Killmaster on the inner cover: