Friday, November 19, 2010

John Eagle Expeditor #2: The Brain Scavengers


John Eagle Expeditor #2: The Brain Scavengers, by Paul Edwards
May, 1973  Pyramid Books

Manning Lee Stokes serves as Paul Edwards  for the Expeditor series once again, dropping us back into John Eagles life a month after the events in the first volume of this series. And once again Stokes delivers a novel as if from another age, filled with terrain description straight out of Jack London and reeking of a male chauvinism unheard of even in the rarefied world of '70s men's adventure novels.

And like the first novel, The Brain Scavengers takes forever to get going. Its also longer than the average mens adventure novel, coming in at 220 pages. Stokes could've cut a lot of this stuff; indeed our hero John Eagle doesn't even appear until page 60, and the entire novel is basically him preparing for his mission.

In a way The Brain Scavengers is padding in its worst form; Stokes fills pages by hopping from one characters POV to another, but it's all immaterial because their thoughts and actions have little bearing on the novel. In particular he wastes a lot of space detailing the life of Suthinya, a gorgeous (of course) Russian scientist who lives in a hidden base in the midst of Siberia; here Suthinya heads a team who has extracted insane scientists from the US and other capitalist countries, where they aim to repair the damaged brains and coax the newly-sane scientists to work for the USSR. But rather than providing details on her scientific methods, Stokes instead focuses on Suthinya's romantic woes with a Russian commander.

It takes our heroes endless pages to discover this latest commie threat and devise a plan of action. Mr. Merlin, wheelchair-bound director of the Expeditor program, calls in his one and only Expeditor: John Eagle. Again the rudiments of Eagles training and prep are glossed over, and hes sent out into the Siberian wasteland. Once more in his chameleon suit and armed with his needle gun and trusty bow and arrow, this time Eagle has a new gadget: a nuclear grenade which can destroy six square miles. But the novelty factor of the previous volume is gone.

Indeed, the action half of the novel goes down without any big fuss; Eagle treks through the frozen wasteland, kills a few Russian soldiers, and gets into the hidden base. But then he meets Suthinya, and here the novel appropriates all the lurid charm youve been waiting for. For Suthinya has already rebelled against her Communist leaders and wants to escape with Eagle, only she fears him, and in fact threatens to break down entirely. So what does Eagle do? Realizing that women are the weaker sex," he knows that only one thing will calm down this complete stranger: bed medicine. Yes, Eagle takes Suthinya into a side room  moments after meeting her  and coaxes her into sex, where his manly passion will of course subdue her womanly fears. I couldnt believe what I was reading!

Of course it works, and Suthinya comes out of it worshipful of Eagle and ready to help him in any way possible. But really, that's about the extent of the action in the novel; even the escape is handled in a perfunctory manner, with Suthinya doing the big work while Eagle waits, using her credentials to smuggle the nuclear grenade into the depths of the hidden complex. Eagle himself only pulls off a few kills, and I must mention he comes off like a heartless bastard this time out, killing everyone  even those he promises not to kill  in order to accomplish his mission.

At any rate, this was Stokess last Expeditor novel for a while, so I'm hoping the next author opens up the series a bit more.

3 comments:

Jason L said...

Hey another great review of a long forgotten series. I have a bunch of these Expeditor book but have never read them. I have to get my hands on Justin's MoV mag and find out more about this series.

I have some suggestions for other series that might help you plumb the depths of "Glorious Trash":

Psi-Man by David Peters (Peter David) - virtually unreadable but hilarious

The Guardians by Richard Austin (Victor Milan)- sort of a post-apocalyptic strike force. Milan wrote for many series including Stormrider, Outlands, and Steele

The Outrider by Richard Harding - Another PA series

Joe Kenney said...

Thanks for the note! All of those sound pretty interesting, especially Psi-Man. Justin's MoV mag is about as rare as the first Folio editions of Shakespeare, it seems...but his latest issue of the Paperback Fanatic (#16) has a long and great article on the post-apocalyptic men's adventure genre.

I too have a bunch of the Expeditor books...actually, I think I have all of them. So I am duty-bound to read them through. I'm hoping Stokes's exit from the series will prove a boost!

Felicity Walker said...

The one book I have by Victor Milan is Cybernetic Samurai. It’s got cool ideas in it and has an interesting story, and is very 1980s, but at the same time it’s quite depressing and has an assholish vibe to it. I can’t say I’d 100% recommend it, but if you’re forewarned, you might be able to enjoy the good aspects of it.