The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Pillars of Salt Affair – Bill Pronzini

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Bill Pronzini, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Magazine only lasted twenty-four issues and this was the twenty-third. The cover says December, 1967, but if I remember correctly, it came out a couple of months earlier. Not sure why, but comics and magazines seemed to run a couple of months ahead of the cover date back then.

Each issue featured an U.N.C.L.E. novella and short stories in a hundred-forty-four pages of a digest sized magazine, with an occasional article on some aspect of the show. Robert Hart Davis was the house name assigned to each tale. But even the unsophisticated mid-teenager that I was recognized different styles and story frameworks that told Davis was not a real writer. Some of the writers that furnished these Napoleon and Illya stories were John Jakes, Dennis Lynds, Harry Whittington, and the author of THE PILLARS OF SALT AFFAIR, Bill Pronzini, the only one he did. It was a favorite of mine, and others, because for one thing, it was the longest of the twenty-four, really earning the designation of short novel given to them. It was also just damned good.

Our two favorite agents are in the American northwest to investigate an isolated man-made lake, further isolated by a mud slide that blocked the only road. Crazy reports had come in of water to the area getting brackish all of a sudden before stopping altogether. An investigation found a chunk of solid salt where fresh water had been before. With a guide, the pair hiked up the side of a mountain to find that indeed where there had been a lake was now salt.

Chipping off a sample for later analysis, the three men were attacked as they started down, bullets just missing them as they dived for cover. In the ensuing battle, they kill one man and the other gets away. On the dead man is found a piece of paper with some sort of code. As they are leaving, they find that the lake has suddenly returned to fresh, sweet water!

Back in New York, Alexander Waverly informs them that more of these tests are being performed around the world. They see a shot from a helicopter of another frozen white expanse. By the time a party had reached the lake, in all instances the sole road in to these lonely bodies of water had been mysteriously blocked, the lake was back to normal. Several others with the same clues, brackish water from the taps before stopping, but when checked out, the lakes were back to normal.

It was believed THRUSH was running experiments on some new weapon and U.N.C.L>E. thought they knew who might be the guiding light behind it. A scientist working on a way to convert salt water to fresh had done exactly the opposite. His discovery had been laughed off by the scientific community and he’d disappeared several years before, just the sort of disenfranchised individual THRUSH would cultivate.

Fresh water to salt? One could only imagine the uses a criminal enterprise like THRUSH would put such an invention to, especially since they had an antidote.

The salt chip collected revealed nothing: just plain rock salt. But the coded piece of paper when decrypted gave them the name Teclaxican, Mexico, where a large body of fresh water reside. Possibly the next experiment. Napoleon and Illya head there.

Rereading this one after so many years, over forty at the least, was a lot of fun. As I mentioned earlier, there was only one more issue after that. This was about the series went off the rails with possibly the worst season a series, the third, ever had, with completely stupid story lines. It was possible they were influenced by the Batman series, popular at the time(I loathed it), but the ratings began to tumble and it was eventually canceled midway through the fourth season(the first and that aborted fourth were the best, but the second was far superior to the third). Along about this same time, the paperback series quit publishing new novels, instead publishing books from the separate English series that had never been released here.

An article by gun expert George H. Duckworth on the merits of the U.N.C.L.E. Special hand weapon and it’s attachments used by the agents and five short stories by various writers filled out the issue.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was my favorite show during those mid-teenage years, but I wasn’t the biggest I guess. I remember another guy complaining when the band director told us he wanted an evening practice for an upcoming band contest in Raleigh complaining that he would miss the show(those long ago days before VHS recorders).

FFB: The Doomsday Affair – Harry Whittington

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Forgotten Books, Harry Whittington, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

One moment the beautiful young woman, Ursula Baynes-Neefirth, had been staring fearfully across the bed at Napoleon Solo, the next she was dead as she raised the lei up from around her neck. Napoleon and his partner, Illya Kuryakin, had come to Hawaii to meet her, a Thrush agent wanting to defect. Only two other people besides then knew of their meeting, Alexander Waverly and a man in the State Department.

U.N.C.L.E. was looking for information on a man?, woman?, thing?, organization?, known only by the code name Tixe Ylno. A dying U.N.C.L.E. agent had brought word of it and that it involved some sort of weapon, possibly nuclear. No one knew for sure, only that it was a danger to the world.

Now the defecting spy was dead from a bomb placed in the lei. The only thing he finds in her room is a letter with nonsensical words and a silver whip. Napoleon calls Illya in and the blond Russian develops pictures the other agent had taken with his cigarette lighter camera. Solo had grown suspicious when a young Chinese woman had given her a “free” lei. The little strip developed, Napoleon leaves for the airport to find the lei thrower and Illya, waiting a few minutes, calls the police to report the body, leaves only to be accosted by a Chinese-American man that forces him back into the room, holding him long enough for the police to arrive. Somehow he goes out the window and disappears, leaving Illya to be arrested, with the need to escape before it’s learned he’s an U.N.C.L.E. agent.

The two men pursue two separate paths of investigation: Napoleon tracing down the dead woman’s ex-partner in their show business act before the woman became a Thrush agent and Illya the Chinese-American man, later identified as Sam-Su-Yan, also an agent for Thrush. It’s a race to find the secret of Tixe Ylno before it’s too late.

In re-reading this novel for the first time in forty-five years, I was struck by several things. At that time, in 1965, I was a mere child of sixteen. I had no idea then of who Harry Whittington was, that he was a fine crime writer besides his tie-in work(though that phrase wasn’t in use back then either). THE DOOMSDAY AFFAIR was a little different from others that followed in the series. A little more violence and death than was usual. I compare it to the first season of the TV show where things were a little more serious, most of the rest of the books, excluding the McDaniels of course, were more akin to the second season, a little less serious, but not bad. I don’t really recall any ridiculous stories like the third season.

For a number of years there was talk of an U.N.C.L.E. theatrical film, when those things were more in vogue than now, and one name that was constantly attached to it was Quentin Tarintino. He never made any secret that he wanted to use THE DOOMSDAY AFFAIR as the basis for that film. I’ve not heard anything for years, so one assumes the whole idea is dead.

At sixteen, i also didn’t know from house names. Robert Hart Davis was listed as the author of the Man and the Girl From U.N.C.L.E. novellas in the two magazines. It didn’t take me long to recognize that different authors were writing them. The only one I recognized was Harry Whittington because of his writing style and story structure. I found out later some top guns were involved.

Below are the four that Whittington wrote with the magazine covers.

March, 1966 issue: The Beauty and Beast Affair

July, 1966 issue: The Ghost Riders Affair

September, 1966 issue: The Brainwash Affair

January, 1967 issue: The Light-Kill Affair

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. – David McDaniel

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David McDaniel, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Ace’s Man From U.N.C.L.E. paperback series in the last sixties had twenty-three books before it was ended, David McDaniel’s novels were the best selling of all of them. He had six published and a seventh written that never made it to print, the series being canceled before he turned it in. He missed a few deadlines over the course of the books. By the time he’d finished it, Ace had changed hands and editor Terry Carr was gone, replaced by Donald Wolheim who turned it down. He only found out later that it had already been contracted for and half the fee payed as an advance.

McDaniel was a fan of the TV show from the beginning and it showed in his novels. He built a consistent history for the show and added much that fans consider canon these days. In the first novel, THE DAGGER AFFAIR, he reveals that U.N.C.L.E.’s arch enemy Thrush was formed from the remnants of Professor Moriarity’s criminal syndicate of the late nineteenth century. He gave the Thrush name meaning, the show producers not assigning any as they did with U.N.C.L.E. It became the Technical Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity. He creates two memorable Thrush villains, Ward and Irene Baldwin, having U.N.C.L.E. boss, Waverly, and Baldwin meet during the first world war, long before either was involved with their respective organizations.

THE VAMPIRE AFFAIR came next, considered by most the best of the six, with DAGGER second. In this one Napoleon and Illya investigate the mysterious death of an U.N.C.L.E. agent in Transylvania, found drained of all his blood in a forest. The two agents even have the help of real life Forrest J Ackerman, in the area researching for his magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland. They even run into a familiar Count. Maybe.

THE MONSTER WHEEL AFFAIR concerns a sudden space station that appears in orbit, claiming to be owned by Egypt. How did it get up there and was it a real threat? A humorous disclaimer says that if the Egypt in the narrative bears any resemblance to any real Egypt, living or dead, it’s entirely coincidental.

THE RAINBOW AFFAIR is set in England and McDaniel used the turn to infuse a host of characters, none ever specifically named, into the story. Appearing either briefly, or alluded to, were a certain ancient beekeeper, Steed and Mrs. Peel, Simon Templar and Inspector Teal, Father Brown, Miss Marple, Fu Manchu, and mention of James Bond. The villain here is a bank robber named Johnny Rainbow.

THE UTOPIA AFFAIR has U.N.C.L.E. boss Alexander Waverly taking a forced vacation for health reasons to a place in Australia called Utopia. Illya is his bodyguard and Napoleon takes temporary command of the New York headquarters. Thrush is plotting on both ends.

THE HOLLOW CROWN AFFAIR sees the return of the Baldwins, the two organizations forced to team up against a man named Joseph King, a former U.N.C.L.E. weapons scientist supposedly killed by one of his own inventions. In fact, he’d defected to Thrush and was using his weapon to take over that criminal enterprise.

McDaniels’ seventh novel, THE FINAL AFFAIR, was supposed to wrap up the series. For years, copies of the manuscript have been passed around among fans(I have one). Then it became available as a PDF file on the internet. One wonders if it will ever be converted to the Kindle, although I understand Amazon has finally okayed PDF programming in Kindles. I don’t know whether that counts for those already sold, or just new models. With technology, it wouldn’t be hard to extend that to already sold devices(may be what they do).

Here’s a link to THE FINAL AFFAIR.

The Vampire Affair – David McDaniel

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David McDaniel, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

My second David McDaniel post in a row. The previous was an old read that I decided to use for a Forgotten Friday book post because I was reading this one for the first time in forty-five years. The copy I had was new to me, the British edition of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. novel, THE VAMPIRE AFFAIR, that I stumbled across and got for what I thought was a reasonable price.

The book is one of my favorites of the series, all of McDaniel’s titles really, as well as the unpublished one. He built a consistent history in his novels and was even one of the ones that developed the Thrush acronym. The TV series folks just had it as a name and had never given thought to any meaning of the word. Technical Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.

In his first book, THE DAGGER AFFAIR, it was revealed that Thrush was an outgrowth of the remnants of a collapsed criminal ring run by no less than Professor Moriarity(Sherlock Holmes even appeared in THE RAINBOW AFFAIR). Ward Baldwin was introduced, a contemporary of Alexander Waverly dating back to The Great War, and made a few appearances in the seven novels as an executive of Thrush.

Our two favorite agents are sent to Romania to investigate the death of an U.N.C.L.E. agent believed by local officials to have committed suicide. Waverly had sent him there to check out the death of two peasants found dead in the forest drained of all blood. Carl Endros had been found against a tree, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, no blood in his body or around it, no footprints in evidence. Waverly thought it was some kind of joke and wanted Napoleon and Illya to find who was responsible.

The pair got more than they bargained for. Encounters with a pack of wolves, called off by a mysterious individual who suspiciously looked like paintings of a two hundred year old Count, and later seeming to be immune to bullets, being driven off by two silver knives formed into a cross. Napoleon is suspicious and Illya’s suspicion is tempered by a dose of his old world Russian peasant upbringing.

Neither really believe in vampires or werewolves, so what is really going on. They suspect Thrush, but what might their game be? Why the pose as vampires?

They are aided in their investigations by a real Count, title meaningless these days, named Zoltan Dracula who wants to get into the family castle, sold in 1939, and real life SF and horror fan, collector, Forrest J Ackerman, in Romania doing research for his magazine FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND. The climax has them invading Castle Dracula from lower level tunnels.

It was fun rereading this old one.

GO HERE to reach McDaniel’s unpublished seventh U.N.C.L.E., The Final Affair, to read or download.

New Information On David McDaniel’s The Final Affair

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The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

This came in on my post on The Final Affair and I thought I’d move it up here. Many thanks to Alan Winsron for the heads up and the new information:

“Just ran across this. I knew David McDaniel(his real name, but he went by “Ted Johnstone” in science fiction fandom, for some reason) in the 1970s, and still remember my shock when I heard about his early death. In any case, Gavin Claypool’s Extequer Press(he was a Cal Tech grad, thus the ex-Techer), which had brought out a set of Jerry Pournelle columns, was supposed to publish_ The Final Affair _: he’d gotten as far as typesetting, producing a cover design, making T-shirts(I have one) – and, if you’re right, assigning an ISBN number. Then – as I understood it – he got a cease-and-desist letter from MGM, and while Gavin hoped to work through the issues, I never heard of the project going any further.

“It always seemed to me that McDaniel was wasting his talent for invention and storytelling on an inherently-short-lived TV spinoff, but that ended up being most of his published writing. (He did have an indifferent sf novel-”The Arsenal Out of Time”-published, but that was it as far as I know.)”

Thanks again for the information, Alan. That was more than I’d been able to find out.

FFB: The Final Affair – David McDaniel

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David McDaniel, Forgotten Books, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

THE FINAL AFFAIR by David McDaniel was an almost never was, just barely was book that was originally supposed to be published in the late sixties as a finale to The Man From U.N.C.L.E. paperback series. The series was canceled and the book finally saw publication in November, 1984 from a small publisher called Extequer Press in hardcover. At least that’s what I get from two sources. A third I ran across says it never made it after all.

There is an ISBN number assigned to it(both previously mentioned sources have it), but I’ve never found a copy, not even a cover image anywhere I looked. I’ve searched for years and thought I’d found a copy listed on Amazon for $35. I jumped on that deal, but what I got instead were seven of the old paperback series. I got my money refunded(why would I pay that amount for seven books that I already owned for which I’d paid fifty cents a copy) and kept the books as well.

What I do have is a copy of McDaniel’s manuscript which has been around for years.

McDaniel’s U.N.C.L.E. novels were the most popular and the best selling of the series. Whenever he turned in a finished book, he was given a contract for the next one. THE FINAL AFFAIR was planned to tie up loose ends, since the TV series was winding down, and be the last book(though J. Hunter Holly had one that suffered the same fate; it was later published in a fan magazine). His previous novel had been the last one commissioned by Ace, the publisher just releasing books from the British series that had never seen American release after that.

McDaniel and editor Terry Carr had cooked up the idea of winding things up. McDaniel was several months late with delivery of the book, though, and a number of changes had taken place in the interim. Ace’s founder had died and the imprint was sold. Terry Carr had resigned and the ms was placed in editor-in-chief Donald Wollheim’s hands. He passed since recent sales had lagged and the series was done.

Wollheim later learned the book was under contract and half the advance had been paid. He’d thought it was freelance and admitted he’d have published it if he’d known they already had paid money on it.

Now on to the plot.

McDaniel had built a consistent background over the course of his six published U.N.C.L.E. novels. Their arch-enemy Thrush had evolved from the remnants of Professor Moriarty’s criminal gang after his death at Reichenbach Falls. During WWI, a young Alexander Waverly rescues a wounded Ward Baldwin. Baldwin later on joins Thrush.

In THE FINAL AFFAIR, we learn Napoleon Solo had been married twice before joining U.N.C.L.E. Both organizations had targeted him with potential very young in his life. Thrush sent an agent to get close to him. Joan was her name and they ended up marrying. She was supposedly killed while he was away on military service, instead returning to her life as a Thrush agent. His second wife was killed in a car accident. He reunites with Joan who defects from Thrush.

U.N.C.L.E. manages to plant a virus in Thrush’s three revolving Ultimate Computers, thus destroying most records and throwing the organization into disarray. They learn the location of Thrush Island and launch an invasion.

Things are pretty much over for Thrush after that and U.N.C.L.E. starts making changes as well. Illya Kuryakin returns to Russia and Napoleon Solo becomes the new Number 1 of Section 1.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a paperback edition of this one published. Not likely though. The show is old and most fans are like me, old along with it. Possibly, if the rumored movie by Tarrantino ever gets made(he’s professed a desire to turn The Doomsday Affair by Harry Whittington into a film). But since that rumor has pretty much been dead for a number of years, it doesn’t seem likely to happen either.

The photo here is McDaniel from November, 1974, just a few years before his death.

update: The Final Affair is now available on the net TO READ OR SAVE.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Coin of El Diablo Affair – Walter Gibson

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The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Walter Gibson

This book was intended for the young adult market, though it wasn’t called that back then. Published in 1965, it was written by the great Walter Gibson, a novelette with illustrations by a I. H. Guyer. The publisher was Wonder Books.

That style so familiar to Shadow fans is there and my only problem with it was the length, forty-eight pages in magazine periodical size. Everything seemed rushed and not developed enough. I think a medium length novel would have done the plot more justice.

Napoleon and Illya are in New Orleans are in New Orleans to meet contacts about some new organization called IMP. Both are murdered before hand though and a coin found on one is the only clue. A distinquished looking bust of a man with the words El Diablo over the top and IMP under.

El Diablo is an old legend of a ruler in the Caribbean Islands a hundred years ago. Napoleon leaves to investigate, only to disappear enroute, contact cut off. Illya is sent after to find him and continue the mission.

For such a short work, it has a voodoo queen, a big castle, THRUSH working around the edges, a megalomaniac looking like some Emperor from the past, a giant torturer. As I said, to much packed into such a short piece.

Still, as an U.N.C.L.E. fan, I enjyed a story by Walter Gibson.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Birds of Prey Affair

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The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

It’s the early nineties and Thrush had been defeated twenty years ago, shut down completely. These days U.N.C.L.E. acts more in an advisory capacity. Solo and Kuryakin are still with the agency, though their weapons never use live ammunition anymore, just “mercy bullets.”

The New York headquarters are attacked one day by two men and a small robot. Difficult to bring down, they invade and cause a lot of havoc before finally being stopped. Autopsies show the two men, though human, as bio-engineered beings with thicker skin and strength than normal. The invasion was a distraction to cover up the rosetta stone virus secretly implanted in U.N.C.L.E.’s computers.

The scientist capable of designing such a being is Dr. Shanda McNamara, an unorthodox woman working for a small firm in New Jersey, Envirotech.

Investigating, Napoleon and Illya encounter two old enemies. Thrush is not as dead as thought. Doctors Dabree and Egret run things. Dabree was played by Elsa Lanchester in a TV episode and Egret appeared in a couple, played by Lee Meriwhether and Marion Moses.

Things don’t run as “smoothly” for the two agents as in the old days, relatively speaking. From there, they end up pursuing a lead in the Arctic.

This would have made a good episode of the show. Designed that way I guess. The McNamara character was the “innocent” that always got involved in the TV shows.

The two book comic was written by Mark Ellis(he writes the Outlanders series for Gold Eagle) and Terry Collins. Published by Millennium in 1993, it was supposed to be the beginning of a new comic series. A new story was announced in the back of issue two, The End of The World Affair, but, as far as I know, it never appeared.
Pity. It would have been nice.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Season 1

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The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Season one had twenty-nine episodes broadcast in black and white.

I thought the writing was exceptional, each story a serious tale of spy and espionage. As a teenager during the show’s original run, I ate this stuff up. As a (cough)slightly older(cough) teenager today, the first season holds up surprisingly well.

I don’t know how they did it, but there was an amazing number of stars guesting in these episodes.

The male stars included such as Ricardo Montalban, Cesar Romero, Carroll O’Connor, Slim Pickens, Eddie Albert,  Robert Culp,  James Doohan, and a young Kurt Russell.

Female stars were well represented as well. Elsa Lanchester, Barbara Feldon, Anne Francis, Sharon Tate, Lee Meriwether,  Jill Ireland, and June Lockhart(that would have been between Lassie and Lost In Space).

There were a large number of lesser stars as well sprinkled throughout the episodes.

And then there were a couple of notable pairings.  The Project Strigas Affair matched up a pre-Star Trek William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, not to mention Werner Klemperer thrown in. The Gazebo In The Maze Affair starred George Sanders and Jeanette Nolan as the Partridges, a couple with a mad-on against U.N.C.L.E.

Problems I found were in episode 20, The Bow-Wow Affair. Something must have have during the recording process. In act IV, the first half kept breaking up and repeating every scene, though it straightened out near the end. One other quibble, probably unique to my set, one of the latches on the brief case that holds the set, was broken when I took the plastic wrap off.

Eleven discs in the set, ten for the episodes, one for the special features.

That disc had the original pilot. a documentary about the guest stars in the stories, and one about the making of the show.

I’d heard some of it before, but this went into greater detail. I’d always knew that Ian Fleming had something to do with the development of the show. He was brought in to provide story outlines and name value and was the one who gave Napoleon Solo his name(there was a Solo in Goldfinger), as well as April Dancer, which was used in the later Girl spin-off. The Bond producers weren’t happy and pressured him to leave the show(Goldfinger debuted shortly after the series first aired). Sam Rolfe was brought in and developed most of what we know as U.N.C.L.E. today.

Another thing the show’s producers hadn’t figured was David McCallum’s effect on teenage girls. As the show grew more popular, so did he(I know both my younger sisters doted on him). The original pilot was titled Solo and the show WAS titled The Man From U.N.C.L.E. The Bow-Wow Affair, episode twenty, was the first where  Illya Kuryakin took the lead.

A number of U.N.C.L.E. feature films were released. The first, To Trap A Spy, was made up from the pilot episode(an edited version of which appeared as The Vulcan Affair on the show) and parts of The Four-Steps Affair, with some new footage shot, which was usually the obligatory scenes of Solo in bed with the attractive female star(in another film there was a shower scene). Considering the time(the mid-sixties), there was really nothing salacious about them( darn it), just enough for suggestions.

They kept the original boss, Will Kuluva, and for some reason, Thrush was changed to Wasp.

I enjoyed the first season and am ready to plow into season 2.

How Napoleon and Illya Turned Into Mack Bolan

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Mack Bolan, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

As a teenager, I was a fan of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. television series. Naturally I bought the tie-in novels as they came out. In the late sixties, when Don Pendleton started his Executioner series, I started buying them as well.

I followed Bolan’s one man war against the Mafia through thirty-six novels(Pendleton didn’t write the sixteenth, but that’s another story). After that, Pendleton sold the rights to Gold Eagle and Bolan moved into a different arena, abandoning the war against crime to one with the terrorists of the world. Gold Eagle hired a number of writers to continue Bolan’s adventures in a monthly series with several giant volumes a year.

One such writer was Peter Leslie, author of five Man and one Girl From U.N.C.L.E. novels. I continued to read and enjoy Bolan until I came upon the reason for this post.

I had started reading ANVIL OF HELL, a Mack Bolan giant when I realized it was strangely familiar. That was in April, 1988. I knew right away it was an U.N.C.L.E. novel and which one. THE RADIOACTIVE CAMEL AFFAIR was published in 1966 with Peter Leslie as author.

Gold Eagle’s Bolan novels all have Don Pendleton’s name on the cover. But the copyright page has the actual author’s name. When I checked, there was Peter Leslie.

I offer up below examples to show my point.

Page 183 of ANVIL OF HELL: Gold Eagle, 1988

Chapter Seventeen

The frontier was a collection of wooden huts straddling the dirt road; the border was defined by a barbed-wire fence interrupted by a striped pole with a counterweight at one end. Outside the hut nearest the highway, a squad of soldiers lounged by a trestle table, joking around with a handful of border guards. Soldiers and guards wore British-style khaki uniforms; all of them were African.

Mack Bolan slid the Land Rover to a halt in a cloud of dust and climbed out of the furnace heat.

And:

Page 68 of THE RADIOACTIVE CAMEL AFFAIR: Ace Books, 1966

Chapter 7

The frontier was a collection of wooden huts straddling the dust road; the border was a barbed wire fence interrupted by a striped pole with a counterweight on one end. Inside the hut nearest the highway, a platoon of soldiers lounged, exchanging pleasantries with the frontier guards. Both soldiers and guards wore British-style  khaki uniforms-and all the men were Africans.

Illya slid the Landrover to a halt in a cloud of dust and climbed out onto the road.

The events were shuffled around in the books and Napoleon and Illya’s parts all became Mack Bolan.

I found another such rewritten book with DEAD MAN’S TALE and THE SPLINTERED SUNGLASSES AFFAIR, both works of Peter Leslie. I don’t know whether he did such rewriting with any of his other U.N.C.L.E. novels as I stopped reading Bolan at that point.

They were being advertised as never before published and were in fact twenty year old novels. I realize most Bolan readers might not know they were formally U.N.C.L.E. novels, but I had a problem with them.

And that’s how Napoleon and Illya turned into Mack Bolan.