The Bang Bang Birds (Philip McAlpine #3)

The Bang Bang Birds, by Adam Diment
December, 1969  Bantam Books
(Original UK publication September 1968)

This was the final installment of the Philip McAlpine series to be published in the US, but at least it went out with a bang, so far as the cover goes, at least: this paperback edition sports one of the greatest covers ever. And for once it sort of illustrates a moment in the book, but as ever author Adam Diment is too busy buzzkilling all the entertainment factor with his pissy, dour, oh-so-cynical narrative tone. This one might be even more cynical and acerbic than the previous two, despite having the most pulpy villain and plot.

Diment was hyped as the “new Ian Fleming,” but as I mentioned before he isn’t nearly as gifted or talented an author. This is mainly because it’s clear that Ian Fleming actually enjoyed writing the James Bond novels. One doesn’t get that impression from the McAlpine books. Rather, you get the impression that Adam Diment hates the entire genre – not to mention the riff-raff who would even read such garbage – and goes out of his way to piss on everything. Any opportunity for some fun, colorful entertainment is constantly avoided or ignored; narrator Philip McAlpine is such a cynical ass that he’ll even find a way to bitch about a naked young woman. And here’s another way to put the entire series in perspective: In this one, McAlpine goes up against a global ring of mod cathouses which employ hot spy babes, many of whom prance around in jackboots and nothing else, toting submachine guns. And McAlpine brings along his pregnant girlfriend. It’s all such an inversion – or nonunderstanding – of what the average fan wants from this genre that it’s no wonder this was the last one to make it to the US.

There isn’t much pickup from the previous volume; when we meet narrator Philip McAlpine he’s in New York, working with the American Intelligence agencies in an outfit called Hun Sec 3. The angle of this outfit is that it’s computer-based, so McAlpine’s role is to collect all the communiques sent in by British agents and put them into the database. We get that old-school distrust of computers and gadgets, and I always appreciate these vintage reminders that once upon a time automation and “android brains” were dismissed as not nearly as dependable as human intelligence. McAlpine’s been sent here by Quine, his cunning boss in British Intelligence, and now reports to General Eastfeller of the US Army. The dialog of Diment’s American characters doesn’t always ring true; there’s a scene where Eastfeller calls in McAlpine for a talk, and at times it sounds like two British characters in discussion. The only problem is that Eastfeller has been presented as your stereotypical, cliched, “Commies are everywhere” American Cold War general, as if he’s stepped right out of Dr. Strangelove.

Meanwhile McAlpine has a new girlfriend: Marianne, a brunette model type. As McAlpine helpfully informs us, “I was immediately attracted to her because she was beautiful.” He’s already been with her for a bit before the novel begins; long enough, we’ll gradually learn, to knock her up. Oh but McAlpine also has a busty blonde secretary in his Hun Sec 3 office, Wendy, and he’s constantly putting down her offers for sex. I mean she’s beautiful and all, but McAlpine just can’t be bothered, as he’s afraid after one lay she’ll be planning their wedding. And he goes on and on explaining his reasoning to us. Shockingly, this won’t be the only time McAlpine turns down an offer of sex. At length one realizes this is indeed a spoof or at least piss-take on Fleming; there’s a part where McAlpine is taken on a tour of the Hun Sec 3 gadgets factory, a total parody on the Q sequences in the Bond movies, with gadgets like a trick lighter, a transistor radio that turns into a bomb, and etc, and he mocks them all, refusing to use any of them save for an AR-16 machine gun.

Though by contract he’s bound to a desk job only, McAlpine is asked to do a “favor” for Quine: deliver heroin to a junkie agent. He does the job, going into a dingy Manhattan bar, only for someone to pull a gun on him. McAlpine’s been taking all sorts of training, we’re informed, thus he’s able to duck and dodge and come up firing. Only, the guy with the gun turns out to be a fellow agent and this has all been a test from the General. McAlpine, despite the contract, is to go back onto the field: the General wants him to look into these Aviary Clubs that have sprouted around Europe, “kind of a super-charged Playboy Club” sort of thing. Basically high-tech, high-society brothels, run by a very Flemingesque individual: Count Vitconne, a hirsute Frenchman who likes to wear purple togas, showing off his copious red body hair and his pupil-lacking eyes. Diment will do his best to fumble this memorable creation, too.

The Aviary Clubs are hosted by lovely young women from around the world, and as part of the fee you can take them to a room upstairs or keep them for yourself for a few weeks. It’s all very Jeffery Epstein-ish. Vitconne is fantastically wealthy and has turned the Clubs into veritable feasts for the senses, with sci-fi esque imaging that changes the entire look of the interiors and also a top-tier chef who can whip up any obscure dish you could think of. The General despises the Clubs because they’re perverted and dirty, of course – again, he’s a walking cliché – but also more importantly because important men go to these Clubs (they’re insanely expensive to join) and Count Vitconne is likely getting info from these men. When scientists and other types who are privy to US secrets go up into one of the rooms of the “birds,” as the hookers are lovingly called, many of them begin to blab freely about classified data shortly after the adult activities have transpired. McAlpine is to infiltrate the main Club, in Stockholm, and get the list of all Americans who have visited the place.

McAlpine is to pose as wealthy young Boston heir Lexington Sullivan, Junior, with unlimited funds at his disposal. McAlpine’s already been studying the guy, practicing his voice and whatnot, so now it’s just a matter of going over there in his fab mod clothes, hobknobbing with all those sexy birds – and the real Lexington is known as a lady-killer, thus McAlpine will be expected to do his share of scoring as part of his cover – and fool the Count long enough to get the list. Sounds like a surefire Bondesque spy-pulp yarn, doesn’t it? Yep…then Marianne informs McAlpine’s she’s pregnant, and he decides to bring her along…to get a handy abortion in one of those Swedish clinics. For some strange reason I didn’t chuck the book at this point, likely because the cover’s so nice and my copy’s fortunately in mint condition so I didn’t want to damage it. But yeah, this is the one where McAlpine takes his pregnant girlfriend along with him. Oh, and a “.36 revolver with built-in silencer and telescope.” Actually he doesn’t take the latter along on the job, he leaves it in his apartment in New York, but I wish he’d taken it instead, even though such a thing couldn’t possibly exist.

We get more cursory catering to the Fleming form: even though McAlpine is a “fairly qualified pilot,” he still feels Bond-esque pangs of anxiety during the flight to Stockholm. The Fleming vibe is very strong in the ensuing sequence, as McAlpine is taken on a tour of the Stockholm Aviary Club, with nude women walking around and rooms that change décor and atmosphere in seconds, thanks to tricky light projection that’s never fully explained. The “birds” are all dressed in a variety of revealing costumes, including an actual Nazi She-Devil who leads around a Jewish guy on a leash (she only appears long enough for the shock factor). Meanwhile, McAlpine/Diment somehow finds a way to describe even the naked women in cynical, acidic tones. You almost get the impression the narrator is like an immortal vampire or something, just bored with humans in general, not a 20-something British spy in the height of mod fashions. Even the dude from Operation Hang Ten would think McAlpine was an arrogant prick.

But the Aviary Club is so cool sounding that it manages to capture the reader’s interest, despite the narrator’s constant dismissal of everything. At one point the entry foyer turns into a veritable Valhalla, complete with a tall, perfectly-proportioned and beautiful blonde in a sort of Classical World getup (McAlpine actually refers to her as a “blonde beast,” folks); next it’s turned into a reception hall complete with a half-nude Indian gal behind the front desk. McAlpine finally shows a little bit of a libido when he feels up one of the birds while riding in an elevator, but it’s all conveyed so vaguely that I didn’t know what the hell even happened. Here he’s taken into the presence of the Count, resplendent in his purple toga, and there follows another catering to the Fleming form as the Count delivers a long speech to the latest Club member, Lexington Sullivan, aka McAlpine. 

Sadly though the Aviary Club isn’t exploited nearly as much as it should be. Folks there’s honestly a part where one of the birds tries to get friendly with McAlpine, and he turns her down, actually informing us in the narrative that he has “plenty of sexy in my life without charming, practiced little professionals.” The girl actually has to pressure McAlpine into doing the deed (which is rendered off-page, as usual), saying that if they don’t it will look suspicious to the Count, who monitors everything. I mean even the brothel whore has to remind our “super spy” hero that he’s supposed to keep his cover identity intact, and she doesn’t even know he’s a spy! She later shows him around the Club and introduces the titular “Bang-Bang Birds.” These are the brothel gals who guard the orgies that occasionally go down in the clubs; per the cover of this US edition, they perform this role fully nude save for a pair of knee-high jackboots, carrying submachine guns to finish the look. Sadly, the author does absolutely nothing to exploit these characters. But then, the entire novel – and pretty much the entire series – is one missed opportunity after another.

McAlpine doesn’t spend too much narrative time in the Aviary Club. Instead it’s back to the apartment with Marianne, and also he gets in the occasional car chase; turns out some mysterious Russian agent is after “Lexington,” trying to kill him. Occasionally Diment cuts over to third-person for the sequences with this agent, and these are the best-written moments of the novel because at the very least they get us away from McAlpine’s pissy narration. Also these parts are very Flemingesque, and again makes one wonder if Diment were intentionally spoofing the style. With the caveat that Diment is more “British” in his tone than Fleming was, and also that, despite writing around a decade earlier, Fleming was actually more risque. Not to mention clearly more invested in his writing than Diment is. Reading The Bang Bang Birds, it’s no mystery why Diment dropped out of writing after the next volume (and became a recluse): he was already bored, and clearly so, while he was churning out this one.

McAlpine’s plan to get the list from the Club involves a huge batch of LSD and some amyl nitrate. He gets these from a hippie in a Stockholm bar, and unleashes them – with Marianne’s assistance – during one of the Club’s orgies. Here our hero again sort of has some off-page sex with one (or possibly two) birds, though he himself is a little affected by the LSD which has been dosed into the wine. He basically shrugs this off, as well as the amyl nitrate chaser, long enough to crack the safe and make his escape via helicopter. Meanwhile the Count, so heavily built up as a menacing villain, sits navel-gazing on a bed, hammered by the acid trip. It’s all so lame and anticlimactic. Despite his successful escape McAlpine gets captured, and is himself drugged, whisked across the world to the Tangier Aviary Club…and the Count interrogates him with LSD. Even here, in a dingy jail, McAlpine manages to score with a pair of birds, first asking them to join him in his trip and then having an off-page three-way with them.

This is as exploitative as the novel gets, as Diment has been saving his most egregious buzzkilling for the finale. That Russian agent has also been captured, and amid much fanfare the Count announces that he and McAlpine will have a gladiator fight to the death. So a pretty much nonchalant McAlpine has his “last meal,” then goes out to the arena…and defeats the Russian in like a sentence. There’s absolutely no suspense, no tension, no exploitation of the entire pulpy conceit. It’s like, “well I’d been trained in knife-fighting, luckily, so I knew what to do,” and after a couple ducks and dodges he’s felled his opponent. Then his ass is saved by a friendly bird, and he makes his escape, telling us in the conclusion that it all was, of course, yet more plotting via Quine that got him here, and also Marianne finally got that abortion at some clinic while the two were off on vacation.

And this would be it for McAlpine for a couple years, not returning until Think Inc. in 1971. I’ve got the UK paperback of that one and will read it eventually, at least to see how the series ends. Now you might ask, if I dislike this series so much, why am I reading it? And that’s a damn great question. Here’s the answer – back in the early days of the blog, I’d usually buy every volume of a series that caught my interest, before even reading a single installment. This is what happened with the Philip McAlpine books. I got them all about nine years ago, collecting them before reading them. With age comes wisdom, though (not that I was exactly “young” nine years ago), so these days I don’t go to the trouble…I get one, and if I don’t like it I don’t get any more. If I’d just read The Dolly, Dolly Spy when I got it, I wouldn’t have tracked down the others.