Sea Scrape (Mark Hood #12)

Sea Scrape, by James Dark

April, 1971  Signet Books

The Mark Hood series comes to a close with a final installment that was published two years after the previous one. According to seldom-reliable Wikipedia, Sea Scrape was originally published as The Reluctant Assassin in Australia, but that’s not correct. The cover of The Reluctant Assassin, which depicts a sportscar race, doesn’t reflect any events in Sea Scrape. And also this Worthpoint listing, archiving an old eBay listing, shows a few pages of The Reluctant Assassin, and it’s a completely different book than Sea Scrape. So then The Reluctant Assassin was just a volume of the series that never made it over to the US, same as the earlier installment Spy From The Deep. Meaning that there were 14 volumes of Mark Hood in Australia but only 12 in the US. 

As it turns out, Sea Scrape seems like an attempt at a series finale by J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell; for the first real time in the series there’s an attempt at continuity, with previous adventures often mentioned, and supporting characters not seen for several volumes appearing again. Also MacDonnell even seems to harken back to the first volume, turning in a deceptively slim paperback that reads a lot more slowly than its brief 128 pages would imply; there’s some seriously small and dense print here. Compare to some of the more recent volumes, which were really just glorified novellas. Also the sci-fi elements of the more recent books have been toned down, again calling back to the early volumes of Mark Hood. However for the most part Sea Scrape is a retread of Operation Ice Cap (which itself was sort of a retread of Operation Octopus), only with the far-out elements downplayed. 

As with Operation Ice Cap, the supervillain of Sea Scrape wants to get his hands on a Polaris sub, but whereas the previous supervillain collected such subs, this supervillain only needs one of them. Eventually we’ll learn that the supervillain believes Western Civilization is finished, and thus he plans to destroy it and start a new civilization in its wake. (So essentially his plan is Build Back Bettter a few decades early.) Intertrust has gotten word that someone’s planning to steal a Polaris, but the only lead they have is that this person will be staying in a certain hotel in a ski lodge not far from Intertrust HQ in Geneva(!). Blair, the American head of Intertrust, sends Hood to the hotel to scope things out and see if he can determine who the mystery villain might be. (Fortescue, the British co-head of the agency, also appears in the book, furthering the “gang’s all here for the final volume” vibe.) 

While Sea Scrape is busily plotted compared to some of the more recent volumes, it certainly relies a bit too much on lazy coincidence. I mean for one the setup of the mystery villain being at this particular hotel is pretty lame. But then Hood goes there, and the first person he sees is a goatteed, mysterious man – whom we readers already know is indeed the supervillain of the yarn! This is Count Alexander Pefner, the “Satanic genius” of the cover copy, a self-proclaimed “International Zionist” who ultimately turns out not to even be Jewish, but a guy who has gotten into power by working for various governments, including at one point even the Nazis. More importantly he’s got a hotstuff daughter at his side, a twenty-something man-eater who is “one of the most beautiful and unusual girls Hood had ever seen.” This is Rachel Pefner, who ultimately will be Hood’s sole conquest this volume. 

But you can already see some lazy plotting at work here; intel just happens to know a person of interest will be at this specific hotel at this specific time, and the first person Hood sees there just happens to be the very same man he’s looking for! To make it worse, Hood basically just zeroes in on Pefner, despite no firm evidence he is indeed the madman planning to steal a submarine…and in fact, the entire novel continues on that level, with Hood uncertain until toward the very end that he has the right man. Actually in this first half Hood’s under the impression that Pefner is nothing more than an art thief, and Hood goes back to Geneva with his tail between his legs, upset that he’s let Intertrust down. This despite the fact that he’s had multiple run-ins with Pefner’s henchman, a former Navy crewman named Maitland. 

On the other hand, Hood has found the time to conjugate with Pefner’s horny daughter Rachel. But MacDonnell is very reserved this time – not that this series ever got very explicit – and everything happens off-page. About the only thing we learn is that Rachel has a quirk in that she gets turned on by violence. Before “doing the deed” she’ll slap Hood around, or try to fight him in some manner. Otherwise she’s imperious and doesn’t make much of an impression on the reader. And that ultimately is what separates Mark Hood from its obvious inspiration, James Bond. While MacDonnell turns in fast-moving yarns with just the right does of spy-fy thrills, he fails to ever really create memorable characters. Absolutely none of the villains in this series have been on the level of even a lesser Bond villain, and the female characters too fail to make much of an impression on the reader. 

But then I don’t mean to sound like I’m judging things too harshly. I mean Ian Fleming had a full year to work on his Bond novels, whereas MacDonnell was turning out several Mark Hood books a year, in addition to whatever else he was working on. But Rachel Fefner is a perfect example of how these Mark Hood characters could be so much more than what we get. She’s an imperious man-eater who doesn’t hide behind any pretenses, but she doesn’t contribute much to the tale. And for that matter, Hood pretty much leaves her in the lurch, figuring he’s wasted his time checking on Pefner and heading back to Geneva…only for Blair to suspect that Hood might’ve been onto something after all. 

Another thing that makes Sea Scrape notable is that the second half occurs in Australia, which of course is where the series was originally published. After a bit of investigation it looks like the Polaris sub that might be captured will soon be in Australia, so Hood heads over there to investigate, playing a hunch that Pefner might be involved after all. Blair insists that Hood take along fellow Intertrust agent Tommy Tremayne, last seen in Throne Of Satan. Speaking of supporting characters we haven’t seen in a long time, we also get a random reference to Hood’s karate sensei “Matsimuro.” Presumably this is Murimoto, last seen in The Sword Of Genghis Khan, and MacDonnell just forgot the character’s name. Speaking of random references, Hood also thinks back to the events of Assignment Tokyo, which is ironic given that it was I think the worst volume of the entire series – just a slow-moving dirge. More importantly Hood and Blair refer to Norsgaard, the villain of Operation Ice Cap; even they note the similarity between this current threat and that previous one! 

Humorously Tremayne doesn’t offer much in the way of support. He and Hood race around looking into clues and get in a few firefights, but at one point they’re both easily captured by Maitland and his men, walking into a trap. As ever MacDonnell isn’t much for bloody violence, either, but an unusual element of Sea Scrape is that this time Hood uses guns more than his customary karate and judo skills. That said, there isn’t much action in this one; again, it’s very similar in that regard to the earliest volumes, only with slight sci-fi trimmings. For example, we learn that Pefner has his own island, one that contains a high-tech underworld lair beneath it. Macdonnell doesn’t do much to bring it to life, nor does he much exploit Pefner’s Blofeld-esque penchant for acquiring loyal staff – and disposing of those who disappoint him. 

Another interesting element of Sea Scrape is that Hood kills a woman in combat; he’s already done this before, in, you guessed it, Operation Ice Cap. As we’ll recall, that earlier volume had a very similar scenario in which the madman genius had a super-hot daughter, and the daughter and Hood became enemies once they’d spent some quality time in bed. Well the same thing happens here; Rachel Pefner bears a serious grudge with Hood, given how he rushed out on her in Geneva and such, and also now she’s certain he’s a spy – she’s devoted to her father, you see, but isn’t aware her father is in fact an international terrorist. She is under the mistaken assumption that Hood is an industrial spy. Her fate is pretty crazed, one of the most crazed scenes in the series, involving as it does Hood using the rotating blades of a helicopter as his weapon. Hood even pukes after the job is done. 

The climax is somewhat unusual; Hood follows another hunch that Pefner will attempt to capture the Polaris at such and such a location in Australia, and Hood is correct, though he himself is also captured. We then flash-forward one month and Tremayne’s back at Intertrust HQ in Geneva, puzzling over the situation with Blair and Fortescue. Meanwhile we learn that Hood’s been on the sub all these weeks, kept as a prisoner, but now almost friends with Pefner, who likes to come into Hood’s quarters and chat and play chess and whatnot. Humorously, the dude has no idea what’s happened to his daughter, but the threat hangs there that he might find out and of course Hood will suffer. 

However MacDonnell delivers one of his typically anticlimactic finales; Hood does manage to escape – and I love it that Pefner’s men wear scarlet-colored wetsuits on the Polaris – and gets off the sub, taking out a series of foes in almost casual fashion. And we have yet another volume that ends with all the main villains suffering their fate off-page; this is a recurring gimmick of Mark Hood that’s always annoyed me. It seems like every volume ends with Hood blowing people up from afar, and that’s that. Well, at least this time it’s over and done with, this being the final volume of the series and all, and Hood heads off for his expected vacation at novel’s end. 

Unless I ever turn up Spy From The Deep or The Reluctant Assassin, this will be the last volume of Mark Hood I read, and it was a good enough finale. Overall I enjoyed this series a lot, particularly how MacDonnell kept the plots moving and also doled out just enough of that ‘60s spy-fi vibe I enjoy so much. He also always had a lot of scuba action, which I always enjoy. But as mentioned the villains – despite how wild some of them were – never achieved the level of any Fleming creations, nor did the female characters. However on the other hand Mark Hood is exactly what it should have been: a fast-moving pulp-spy series that focuses on entertainment, never striving to be a “serious” piece of espionage fiction.