Showing posts with label Handyman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Handyman. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Jefferson Boone, Handyman #4: The Swiss Secret


Jefferson Boone, Handyman #4: The Swiss Secret, by Jon Messmann
September, 1974  Pyramid Books

At this point Jon Messmann has essentially turned Jefferson Boone, Handyman into a mystery series; what little action that does occur in The Swiss Secret is over quick and also bogged down by Messmann’s nigh-endless sentences, lacking any of the tension one would expect from such scenes. The main “action” of this fourth installment concerns Jefferson “Jeff” Boone, the Handyman, trying to figure out why two billion dollars has disappeared from a few Swiss bank accounts, and what nefarious means the money will be used for. And also there’s a girl who seems to fall in love with Jeff and incessantly nags, doubts, and disobeys him throughout the entire novel. I mean it’s like they’re already married. 

There’s no pickup from the previous volume, but then there hasn’t been much continuity in Jefferson Boone, Handyman. Jeff (as Messmann refers to him) is in Paris taking a vacation – or “holiday,” as he refers to it. I realized one of the things I don’t like about this series is that Jeff Boone, ostensibly a roving freelancer for the US government, doesn’t even come off like an American. He’s constantly saying stuff like, “I haven’t a gun,” and the like. I guess Messmann’s trying to convey that Jeff has a continental background or whatever, but Americans just don’t talk like that. It almost gives the impression that the series is British, and the sluggish pace, nigh-endless-sentences, and penchant for quoting poetry doesn’t help things. 

Well anyway, Jeff’s in Paris when we meet up with him, taking a well-deserved vacation. And of course he’s managed to pick up some chick: Meredith Pryor, a daughter of minor British royalty. Here we get Messmann’s patented “sex scene where you don’t know what’s really happening” material, with Dean Koontz-approved stuff like “cresting waves” and whatnot instead of the hardcore filth us sleazebags want. All this takes a sudden detour when Jeff and Meredith go to dinner at a bistro, and some guys with guns come in, and Meredith is killed in the crossfire. 

Here The Swiss Secret takes on its mystery vibe. Jeff will spend the rest of the novel trying to figure out if and why Meredith was involved with a scheme in which a combined two billion dollars have been snuck out of a few Swiss bank accounts. Messmann adds some pizzaz to the storyline with the appearance of Dianna (yes, with two “ns”), whose memorable intro has her blasting away at Jeff with a .38 while calling him a “rotter.” Again, the book just seems British. But then, Dianna herself is British, and what’s more she’s the sister of Meredith Pryor (and of course the daughter of Lord Pryor), and she’s after Jeff for revenge – info on the underground has it that Jeff and Meredith were working together on something, even though they weren’t, and thus the assumption is Meredith was killed because of Jeff. 

Messmann seems to have been inspired by Goldfinger, what with the Jill and Tilly Materton bit of the dead sister and the surviving sister who is now hunting the killers for revenge. Messmann’s even more overt with the girl’s name, ie “Dianna,” as in the ancient goddess of the hunt Diana. In fact it’s a wonder Messmann doesn’t have Jeff refer to The Golden Bough in this one, I mean something like that would be right in-line with our “phallic and literate” hero. But as mentioned in previous reviews Jeff’s a prick when it comes to women; the previous volume in particular featured him being a total ass for no reason. Messmann turns the concept around this time; Dianna as mentioned starts off literally shooting at Jeff in her intro, and will spend the rest of the novel fighting against him. 

The funny thing is, Jeff isn’t nearly as much of a dick toward Dianna as he was to the girl in the previous book, so it’s like Messmann increased the sexual hostility on the female front but toned it down on Jeff’s side. Granted, Jeff does spend the majority of The Swiss Secret telling Dianna to go home and leave it to the experts, and also he’s constantly pulling her out of the fire due to her stubborness. Otherwise Messmann tries to develop a belabored “love” deal between the two, with Dianna growing feelings for Jeff and constantly nagging at him for being “cold” and not opening himself up and etc. Indeed the lame finale has Dianna pulling a number where Jeff will have to chose between his “cold” devotion to duty or his feelings for Dianna. But once again the poor “full breasted” brunette is in over her head and Jeff must once again save her dumb ass. 

That I think is the main drawback of The Swiss Secret: Dianna is one of the more annoying female characters in the series, and Messmann spends too much time on her. This is because his plot doesn’t give him much else to work with; literally the entire book is Jeff chasing clues to find out why two billion was stolen, who stole it, and what the money will be used for. But this only causes even more friction between Jeff and Dianna, because Jeff is relatively certain that Dianna’s father was in on the plot, along with Meredith. Messmann foreshadows Meredith’s treachery at the start of the book, with the mention that Meredith has “small breasts;” per my doctorate paper on men’s adventure, only traitorous, evil, or ugly women have small breasts in this genre. Regardless, Dianna spends the novel trying to prove Jeff wrong. And meanwhile making a mess of things; for example, one of the novel’s few action scenes has Dianna getting caught by some bad guys in Paris, and Jeff has to go to her rescue, leading to a fight in the back alleys of Paris that honestly lacks any tension due to the protracted way Messmann writes. 

The same holds true for the lovin’. When Jeff and Dianna have their expected conjugation, something which actually occurs a few times throughout the novel, it’s rendered in overwrought prose like this:


Eventually Jeff deduces that the two billion is going to the Libyans, leading to a mention of Qadafi, almost as if we’re reading a men’s adventure novel from a decade later. But even here there’s no major action scene; as mentioned Jeff must save Dianna, leading to another Bond-esque bit where he must swim across a dark sea and infiltrate a Libyan boat and rescue Dianna before torpedos destroy them all. After this we have another fizzling action bit where Jeff and Dianna try to get to Lord Byron before the bad guys do; even here Dianna shows her stubborn foolishness, and also Messmann has wasted so many pages that he rushes through this climax to the point that it’s almost comical. 

Overall The Swiss Secret was my least favorite installment of Jefferson Boone, Handyman yet. I get the impression that, given that he was writing The Revenger at the same time (plus other stuff, I’m sure), Jon Messmann was getting a little exhausted with the whole “men’s adventure” scene. 

 I wonder if Pyramid Books was also getting tired of the series. Not only is the cover design different from the previous three volumes, but that doesn’t even look like Jefferson Boone on the cover. It looks more like Dakota! That was from a different publisher, but still. I wonder if the uncredited cover art for The Swiss Mystery was originally commissioned for a different series entirely.

Monday, January 17, 2022

Jefferson Boone, Handyman #3: Murder Today, Money Tomorrow


Jefferson Boone, Handyman #3: Murder Today, Money Tomorrow, by Jon Messmann
August, 1973  Pyramid Books

The third volume of Jefferson Boone, Handyman is a little better than the previous two, because Jon Messmann backs off on the “international terrorist” angle and delivers a mystery plot that’s more in-line with his cerebral protagonist. It was kind of hard to buy the whole Jefferson “Handyman” Boone concept in the earlier books; as I wrote, he just came off a bit too much like “James Bond meets Frasier Crane” to be believable. Messmann also slightly tones down on the introspective musings, which is a help, but he also turns way up on the casual misogyny. 

Again, I don’t virtue-signal lightly (or ever, really), but in this case there’s no other word for it but misogyny. Messmann is kind of a creep in how he typically treats his female characters, as has been noted in reviews of his other novels (as well as in the comments sections). And I’m not talking about how he objectifies them, how he always mentions their breasts – I mean I encourage stuff like that from my men’s adventure authors; these books should come straight from the male id. What I mean is how many of his male protagonists are just total assholes to women. Constantly putting them down, snipping at them, mocking them, etc. Murder Today, Money Tomorrow goes further in this regard than any previous Messmann novel I’ve read, with the ultimate effect that Boone (or “Jeff,” as Messmann most often refers to him in the narrative) comes off as a dick, and the “taming of the shrew” angle ultimately makes no sense in the context of the book. 

There’s no pickup from previous volumes, and in fact Messmann gives a bit more background on Jeff this time. Not too much, but in dialog Jeff relates how he decided to become an international “handyman” after the murder of his diplomat father. In fact we’re told his dad was “killed right in front” of Jeff. This volume overall really ties into Jeff’s past; when we meet him he’s waiting in the dark in rural Virginia for a childhood friend named Roger Van Court, an eccentric guy Jeff never really liked. Jeff’s dad and Roger’s mom were apparently having a bit of a fling when the two boys were kids, and Jeff would spend every Christmas at the Van Court estate. And we’re really in the upper-crust world of the filthy rich; this series has always traded on the jet-set world, and Murder Today, Money Tomorrow makes it clear that Jefferson Boone grew up in the lap of luxury. This of course makes his current role as a total bad-ass a bit hard to buy, but whatever. 

That bad-assery is displayed posthaste, though; first Boone is approached by a “truculent” young blonde with an “elfin” build who appears to be with Roger. Jeff immediately dislikes her, for reasons Messmann never really makes believable. She’s protective of Roger, clearly, but Jeff suspects her of foul play or somesuch. Roger does appear, but only momentarily, as some guys with guns show up and start blasting at him. In the pitch dark Jeff manages to turn the tables, killing off the thugs with his pistol. Here Messmann introduces a new gimmick to the series: Jeff drops a “little gold toolbox” onto one of the corpses. In other words, the calling card of the “Handyman.” Meanwhile, both Roger and the girl have fled. Jeff goes back to DC for some good lovin’ with a chick he’s been checking out at cocktail parties over the past few years; Messmann develops this curious subplot where the girl, Fran, she of the “full-bosomed, long-legged loveliness,” wants to be Jeff’s steady, but the relationship is broken off within a few pages, due to jealousy. Fran calls Jeff up next morning and discovers another girl on the line. This is Cassie, the “elfin blonde” who was with Roger the night before; she’s lost Roger as well, and will hang out with Jeff for the duration to find him again. 

The funny thing about Money Today, Murder Tomorrow is that the back cover makes it clear that Roger Van Court, a geologist, has made a discovery that could lead to a new form of power. However, Jefferson Boone spends the entire novel not knowing what it is Roger’s discovered, nor why so many people are trying to kill him. Even more ridiculously, Cassie herself has no idea what Roger was up to, even though she’s spent the past year as his companion. The two had an “understanding,” one that Messmann plays out as a lame mystery for almost the entire novel. But it’s clear that she and Roger were close, and a recurring bit is that Jeff is just unable to see Roger being with this cute blonde with an elfin build…however, when Cassie comes over to Jeff’s pad and takes off her coat, Jeff sees that “the little elf had magnificently high, full breasts.” 

Poor Cassie can’t catch a break from Jeff or Roger. She goes around the world with Jeff, who treats her like shit the entire time. Putting her down, mocking her, disparaging her relationship with Roger. He’s constantly on the attack, too; I lost count of the number of times Messmann used the dialog modifier “tossed off” when Jeff spoke to Cassie. But then Roger was a dick to her, too, a condescending one at that. She’s from backwoods Tennessee (or maybe it’s West Virginia; Messmann can’t seem to make up his mind), and Roger met her while on one of his research trips. He took a cotton to her, took her under his wing; it was a podunk town and everyone always took Cassie for granted until Roger Van Court came along. But, we learn, he tried to give her culture, giving her books to read, teaching her how to act in “polite society,” etc, etc. Now that’s “mansplaining” folks. And of course done without any apology; indeed, Jeff is quite pleased with the progress Roger made on the otherwise rednecked Cassie! 

But see that’s the thing. Nowhere does Cassie act like a dumb hick, or do anything stupid, or do anything that would make Jeff dislike her. And yet Jeff does dislike or at least distrust her, and goes out of his way to attack her at all times. It makes him seem like a total asshole, and what’s weird is that you get the impression that Messman doesn’t think he is an asshole. I mean we aren’t talking like an anti-hero sort of deal here. Jeff is the hero, no questions asked. So he takes Cassie under his own wing and they follow the vague leads on where Roger could be holed up, and why. Given this, Cassie has a greater part in the narrative than previous female characters. But it’s a strange relationship for sure, and Jeff’s attitude toward Cassie would certainly get him canceled in today’s “believe all women” world. 

It soon becomes clear that Roger is into something deep and is hiding for a reason. Jeff is constantly followed; even when going to pick Cassie up, driving back into Virginia, he’s tailed by some goons, managing to lose them in some salt flats. It gets to be annoying, though, because every time Jeff gets close to Roger, the guy will either run away or send an emissary in his place, to the extent that it almost takes on the tone of a Monty Python skit. Roger’s sought out Jeff, though, because Jeff’s “Handyman” status has become legedary, and also even as a kid Jefferson Boone was known for his fortitude. The action is infrequent, but always handled in a realistic matter when it happens, however as usual Messmann never dwells on the gory details. After encountering a few random thugs, Jeff deduces that Portugal had something to do with whatever Roger was into, so he and Cassie head there. 

The jet-setting Eurotrash stuff is pretty thick, here; as I mentioned before, Jefferson Boone, Handyman is more akin to the trash fiction bestsellers of the day, a la Burt Hirschfeld and the like. Messmann shows restraint, though, in that Jeff does not conjugate with the ultra-hot, ultra-stacked beauty Maria De Vasquez, whom he first sees getting into a fancy vintage car outside of a restaurant. Through various plot developments, Jeff has settled on Maria’s wealthy uncle as someone who might know what Roger was up to. De Vasquez seems to have walked out of a Bond novel, a man of such wealth that he retains his own retinue of enforcers and who has a garage filled with priceless vintage cars. Even here though the battle of wills with Cassie is played out; De Vasquez invites Jeff and Cassie to a party at his villa, and Jeff keeps imploring Cassie not to go, telling her she’ll be “out of her league” and “make a fool of herself” in front of all the jet-setting Euroscum. Seriously, the guy’s a dick. 

But the “Pygmallion” stuff is only reinforced when Cassie, wouldja believe, comes out of her room ready for the party…and it’s as if she’s become an entirely different woman. She has just one dress – bought for her by Roger, of course, for when he took her to socialite parties! – and she’s gotten her hair done, and she of course manages to hold her own at the party. Indeed she holds it so well that Jeff finds himself ignoring super-stacked Maria to keep checking on Cassie! Now all along Cassie’s been telling Jeff there was “more to the story” so far as her relationship with Roger went, and that night she finally tells Jeff it all: due to a “childhood incident,” Roger was no longer able to, uh, rise to the occasion, thus he and Cassie had a sort of “student-teacher” relationship and nothing more. And folks you better believe she’s ready for some good lovin’. She and Jeff go at it in a fairly explicit scene that for once doesn’t play out with the Hirschfeld-esque metaphors and analogies of previous such scenes. 

And meanwhile, Jeff still ponders this unfathomable case, this “increasingly multifaceted rigadoon with death.” Yes, that’s actually a line in the book. I don’t think even prime-era William Shatner could’ve delivered that with a straight face. (Orson Welles probably could’ve…and then he’d take a thoughtful puff on his ever-present cigar.) Finally, on page 147, Jeff learns that Roger was in-line to a breakthrough in “thermal energy.” This he learns from his State Dept. contact Charley Hopkins. And, of course, De Vasquez and his minions are out for it. This leads to a nice action scene where Cassie gets in on it; a country girl, she’s more than familiar with handling a rifle, and uses one to blast apart some thugs they chase while Jeff handles the car. As I say, she’s a likable character, making Jeff’s treatment of her seem even worse…though of course by this point they’ve been to bed a few times together, so at least he’s nicer to her. 

This proves to be the action highlight of the novel. As befitting the mystery thriller Murder Today, Money Tomorrow really is, the actual climax plays out more on a suspense vibe. Jeff and Cassie return to Roger’s home, where they learn exactly why thugs were constantly popping out of the woodwork to tail them. In other words there was a traitor in Roger’s life, and this character is dealt with in an entertaining – if predictable – finale. And it’s also worth noting that Jeff pitchforks a guy in this climactic sequence. It’s also interesting that Cassie knows her fling with Jeff has a limited lifespan; at novel’s end she wants one more roll in the hay, then she’s off to live her life. 

But man, there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t even cover here…like the bit where Jeff and Cassie go back to Cassie’s home town and run into some rednecks there. And other stuff on Jeff’s highfalutin childhood and jet-setting life in DC. As ever Messmann packs a lot of prose into the small, dense print of the book, clearly trying to write a “real” novel instead of the third installment of an action series. And I have to say, I think he succeeded this time. It won’t float everyone’s boat, but Murder Today, Money Tomorrow was pretty entertaining…if you can put aside the main character’s rampant misogyny, that is.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Jefferson Boone, Handyman #2: The Game Of Terror


Jefferson Boone, Handyman #2: The Game Of Terror, by Jon Messmann
June, 1973  Pyramid Books

Well, it’s been four years since I read the first volume of Jefferson Boone, Handyman, and really I meant to get to the series sooner, but given that I was also reading The Revenger I guess I just didn’t want to mix my Messmanns, so to speak. Because really both series are written so similarly, Messmann going for this pseudo-Burt Hirschfeld style, with overly-introspective heroes and plots that hinge more on suspense than violent action. What makes Jefferson Boone, Handyman slightly different is the James Bond vibe, with “Jeff” (as Messmann mostly refers to him in the narrative) going around the globe in the capacity of a freelance troubleshooter.

This one’s a little more action-centric than the first one, but not by much. This is mostly due to the threat Boone faces: a consortium of terrorists who have come up with the novel idea of blackmailing the people they’re about to attack. “Terror for profit,” as Jeff thinks of it. Again we get a sad reminder of how terrorism wasn’t so commonplace at one time; early in the book, when hired by a trio of British, German, and Israeli intelligence directors, Jeff sits through a lecture – complete with slideshow! – going over the history of the terrorism movement, with a focus on the then-recent Munich Olympics disaster. Obviously this long-running sequence is here to fill pages and meet the word count, yet at the same time Messmann’s cleary trying to inform his readers on who terrorists are and how they operate.

Before that though we get a taste of the sub-Hirschfeld vibe Messmann employs for this series; Jeff is at a lush spa in Austria, summoned there by a mysterious telegram. He has been getting friendly with a hot American tourist named Judy, but there’s been no hanky panky yet. All of it is written like a trash fiction paperback of the day. Finally we get the blood and guts we’ve been waiting for when a visiting orchestra turns out to be a bunch of terrorists in disguise, gunning down innocent spa-goers. Jeff gives chase in his red Mustang – which he transports around the globe with him on cases, so the thing must have a helluva lot of miles on it – leading to a nicely-done action scene of him blowing away the two terrorists with his .357. After which we get a reminder of why I called Jefferson Boone “Frasier Crane meets James Bond” in my review of the first volume, as Jeff rumintes, immediately after blowing away the two thugs:

Senseless things were only senseless to those restricted by the normal, conventional framework of thought. It was one of modern man’s problems, the language of ideas and the language of words, too often an uneasy fit. Words, he grunted, willing accomplices to the deceits of the mind, more often than not protecting the rigidities of our own concepts and definitions.

I mean you ponder thoughts like this over a snifter of brandy, not when you’re driving away from a violent gunfight in your red Mustang. It gets even more goofy, as Judy pouts that Jeff abandoned her, basically calling him out as a coward. Once she overhears the management discuss “the crazy American who chased the terrorists,” her thoughts have changed – and into Jeff’s bed she hops for some long-delayed sex. But like last time Messmann continues with the Hirschfeld vibe even into the sex scenes, relaying it all via metaphor and turns of phrase, save for errant mentions of “the warm wetness of her” and the like. Oh and humorously, the ladies here all fall hard for Jeff’s custom-made “Handyman” business cards, immediately figuring it has something to do with international espionage. Not a single one of them think that it means he’s an actual, you know, handyman.

The men who summoned Jeff to the spa finally arrive, apologizing for the slipup on dates – they wanted to prevent the terrorist hit at the spa, which they’d gotten intel on, but it happened sooner than they could arrive. These are the three intelligence directors mentioned above, who treat Jeff to the slideshow while they relate the latest terrorism menace. They believe it’s affiliated with Black September, but Jeff will gradually learn that the terrorists are from all over the globe, running into Japanese ones, Irish ones, and your standard-model Arabic ones. Jeff doesn’t want the job, as he doesn’t “do” terrorism, so to speak, finding it too big a job for one man. But he keeps flashing on that attack at the spa, the innocents killed, and he changes his mind – and by the way there are lots of condemnations of terrorists in the book, but Jeff’s admonishments of them as “dirty bastards” and the like just doesn’t have much bite.

There are parallels to the Stark series this time, what with Jeff shuttling around Europe in his Mustang. The guy puts some serious mileage on the car. He acts in the capacity of a freelance terrorism-stopper, or such; the only lead the directors have is that a travel company owner named Jim Costa, an expat American on the French coast, might be a target of the terrorists, given that he ignored one of their threats. So Jeff drives on over and we get another Hirschfeld bit where he comes across a beautiful brunette trying to save her boat from being smashed at the docks during a fierce thunderstorm. They have a quiet moment in the nearby cabin and bat eyes at each other, and next day Jeff discovers that the babe is the daughter of Jim Costa. Her name is Angelique, and Messmann skillfully brings her to life, but he’s guilty of that hoary old cliché; she could be The One who captures Jefferson Boone’s heart after all these years of unshackled cocksmanship.

Speaking of which, the expected sex scene is slightly more risque, but again on the “intellectual” tip, with mentions of “curled flocces” and the like; I admit, that one sent me to the dictonary. Meanwhile Jeff just sort of walks around Costa’s premises to make sure no terrorists are attacking him. He also finds the time to have friendly philosophical arguments on the nature of terrorists with Costa’s Egyptian second in command, Aran. You’d think that an Egyptian guy arguing over the viewpoints of terrorism might set off alarm bells for Jeff, but nope. Instead we get more ruminations like:

The idea [of organized terrorism] assumed too much. It assumed the simultaneous existence of a single idea on the part of essentially diverse groups, the existence of a concept, a sick, perverted, horrifying concept but a concept nonetheless and he didn’t see these [terrorists] as conceptual thinkers. It couldn’t be entirely discounted but it didn’t fit, either…

Good grief, just kill someone already! We do eventually get a nicely-rendered sequence where Jeff’s called to another part of the French coast where a potential attack might happen. He oversees security of the beachside party, unable to find any weak spots…realizing too late he’s completely overlooked the friggin’ ocean. And like a second after his realization a retrofitted PT boat comes along and starts shooting at the partiers. Jeff again gives chase in his Mustang, following along the hilly roads with his lights off, and gets the terrorists when they’ve stopped to refuel. Again we have a rather bloodless but suspenseful scene as Jeff kills a handful of men with his .38. This part features the odd capoff where Jeff apparently considers taking a piss on the corpses:

He reached a hand inside the little pocket at the front of his trousers, held it there for a moment and then withdrew it. No one would come for them. They would lay unclaimed, all of them, and the gesture that had crossed his mind would be wasted.

Oddball moments like this are otherwise few and far between. For the most part it’s very much on the trash fiction tip, with verdant description of the Eurotrash surroundings, and lots of ponderings about the nature of terrorism and the like. But Jeff isn’t the sharpest, folks, because it soon becomes clear to the reader exactly why no one’s yet come to kill Jim Costa. Yet Jeff continues with his security detail, falling hard for Angelique on the side. What makes it all particularly lame is that Jeff has nothing to do with the finale, by which I mean he isn’t on the scene. Long story short, the terrorists take over a school in Bonn, threatening to kill the kids if demands aren’t met. But our hero’s all the way over on the French coast and all this is relayed via phone – a lame, copout “climax” for an action novel. 

Instead it continues on the suspense angle, as Jeff has finally figured out who is behind the terrorist ring. He ends up holding a gun on this person, but when his threats are laughed at, Jeff leaves with his tail between his legs…then realizes two can play at the terrorism game. In what is intended to display that Jefferson Boone’s just as tough as his enemies, Jeff kidnaps Angelique and threatens to kill her if the terrorism in Bonn isn’t called off. This leads to a lame denoument in which the main villain’s killed off by someone else, and Jeff gets in a brief fight with his underling. By novel’s end Angelique informs Jeff that he’s just as much a bastard as the terrorists he claims to hate – we’re to understand the two were in love, so this is supposed to be crushing, but at this point the novel has become a wearying read and you just wish everyone would go away, already – but Jeff shrugs it off and hops on a plane. Next stop America, for some more sex with Judy, from the opening chapters.

The Game Of Terror just sort of goes on and on, and in that regard as well it’s similar to Stark. I still say the Revenger books are superior because they’re at least shorter, but ultimately Messmann’s wordy, literate style is at odds with the fire and brimstone the men’s adventure genre demands. And I’m starting to think he didn’t write the almighty Sea Trap; maybe he did the initial manuscript and series producer Lyle Kenyon Engel hired some unknown contract writer to fix it up into the pulpy, depraved masterpiece it became – because honestly I have a hard time believing that the same author turned out this slow-churning book.

Monday, March 21, 2016

Jefferson Boone, Handyman #1: The Moneta Papers


Jefferson Boone, Handyman #1: The Moneta Papers, by Jon Messmann
April, 1973  Pyramid Books

Jefferson Boone is a different kind of agent. If you like a little culture with your killing, a hero who’s literate as well as phallic, the Handyman’s your man. -- From the back cover

The same time he was writing The Revenger, Jon Messmann also turned out another action series that ran for six volumes: Jefferson Boone, Handyman, which on the surface is more along the lines of the spy-fi Messmann wrote for the Nick Carter: Killmaster series. Style-wise the series is more similar to The Revenger, with an intellectual hero given to lots of introspection and rumination. He also likes to occasionally quote from say Boethius or Dante, which results in a strange protagonist; Jefferson Boone is pretty much James Bond meets Frasier Crane. 

Boone (or “Jeff” or “Jefferson,” as Messmann arbitrarily refers to him in the narrative) is a sandy-haired stud who works out of DC and performs odd jobs for the government. His dad was a diplomat, and we learn in quickly-relayed backstory that Pop Boone once complained to his son about all the red tape that prevents diplomats from effecting change in the international arena. What was needed, said old Boone, was a sort of “handyman” who could fix all the leaks and whatnot. Apparently from this off-hand comment young Jeff decided that he himself would become the Handyman.

He’s apparently been quite successful, for as we meet him he’s in a posh apartment in DC, with another in New York, and drives a new cherry red Mustang (which he has flown around with him so he can drive it wherever he goes). His custom weapon is a .357 Magnum but he carries a Colt automatic target pistol as a backup piece. The “phallic” stuff mentioned on the back cover comes into play posthaste, as Jeff scores with some gal who takes him to a fancy DC party. But Messmann as ever is in a Burt Hirschfeld style this time, relaying all of the frequent sex scenes via analogy, metaphor, and purple-prose. There’s hardly any descriptive material at all, even though Jeff gets laid a bunch. Messmann actually wrote harder stuff in his Nick Carter books.

In fact, Messmann’s work could very well provide the answer to the unasked question: What if Burt Hirschfeld had written men’s adventure novels? The style is at times so similar as to be mysterious, even when it comes down to the plotting. For like Hirschfeld Messmann is all about the slow burn. Jeff’s assignment this time has him looking up an old platonic friend named Dorrie whose mega-billionaire dad, dead now, was about to turn over some important land to the US. Dorrie is game to sign over the deeds, but two couriers who have been sent to her in Italy have turned up dead. The State Department tasks Jeff with being the latest courier, and getting “The Moneta Papers” signed. 

This simple plot drags on over the course of 190 pages of small, dense print. My guess is the book is around 80,000 words or so, but then I’ve never been good at estimating word count. Let it just be said that The Moneta Papers is way too long and lots of it could’ve been whittled down; The Revenger books are also pretty densely-written, with lots of incidental rumination and whatnot, but at least those books are shorter. Maybe Pyramid Books demanded higher word counts, who knows. But instead of ramping up the action and etc to fill the space, Messmann instead just goes for lots of slow-burn and long-simmer sort of stuff. 

Anyway, Jeff heads on over to Venice, his portable bar in tow. An attempt is promptly made on his life, a car trying to ram him as he drives along the Italian countryside. Things get more interesting when Jeff meets Dorrie – only he discovers, gradually, that it isn’t really Dorrie. Rather it’s a “ringer” who looks very much like Dorrie, laughs at the same jokes, shares the same memories, and otherwise walks and talks just like the real thing – save for one peculiar difference. This particular Dorrie doesn’t appear to realize that she and Jeff have never had sex. Playing the girl along, Jeff takes her back to his apartment – and proceeds with boffing her.

The nympho ringer just loves it, and while she begs for more Jeff grabs her by the hair and demands answers. This leads to a knock-down, drag-out fight, during which the fake Dorrie manages to escape – and is never seen again. Messmann just forgets all about tying up that loose end. Understandably puzzled, Jeff the next day meets the real Dorrie, who is living in a posh villa with her new beau Umberto Fiando, heir to the Fiando automobile fortune. But what has concerned the State Dept is that Umberto is a loyal follower of Cesare Gallermo, a regular modern-day Mussolini, and they’re worried that once Dorrie and Umberto are married, by Italian law all of her possessions are also owned by Umberto, and he’ll give those highly-important lands over to his pal Cesare.

The Hirschfeld/trash fiction vibe continues as Jeff hangs out with Umberto’s jet-setting crowd, among them the dark-eyed Marie-Claude, a French-Italian beauty who is bored due to her billions but clearly wants to get freaky with Jeff. After lots of boring Formula 1 race car stuff – during which another attempt is made on Jeff’s life, this time via an “accidental” crash – Jeff heads with Marie-Claude over to her summer house for some more “phallic” shenanigans. But again it’s more on that poetical tip:

She trembled under him and he felt her surgings and he drew away from her and she cried out in protest, but only for a moment as he caressed her openness until she sighed and surged again, each movement of her abdomen like successive waves on a shore, coming nearer and nearer to the high-water mark.

If that doesn’t sound like Burt Hirschfeld, I don’t know what does.

The climax plays out in a ski lodge in the Italian Alps. Jeff has gotten Umberto’s father to reveal that Umberto has been denied the family fortunes, thus he’s “more air than heir,” per Jeff. And thus, he really is part of Cesare’s plotting and is only marrying Dorrie for her wealth and those important lands. But the game is now out in the open, and Umberto has taken an unwitting Dorrie to this lodge, which is under guard, with the veiled threat to Jeff that if he comes after her, Dorrie will die. For his part, Jeff still wonders how complicit Dorrie is in all this. Later he will discover that Umberto, a former doctor, has been drugging her with truth serum and extracting info from her. But the reader will have long ago come to this conclusion.

Among his skills Jeff is also talented at disguise. He makes himself look like an Italian, goes by the name Guido, and even in this manner manages to pick up a hot-to-trot babe, this one an American gal on vacation named Edie. Jeff poses as a man of the world, using the naïve but sexy Edie as a way to throw off the blue-blazer-wearing thugs who have surrounded the lodge, on the lookout for Jeff. And guess what, Jeff ends up hopping into bed with Edie as well, especially given how she keeps throwing herself at the Italian lothario. Another vague, Hirschfeld-esque sex scene ensues.

But this one has a fun finale, as Jeff decides to hell with it and comes clean with Edie, suddenly speaking without his fake Italian accent. He tells the girl who he is and why he’s here, and after getting over her shock Edie agrees to help – and wants a bit more lovin’. In fact she wants to come visit him in his pad in New York after all this! A very Bond-esque scene follows the next morning, as Jeff takes out several thugs while skiing down a dangerous pass. He sets up one of them as his own corpse, thus fooling all and sundry into believing that “Guido” is dead, his disguise having been ruined.

The actual climax though is mostly dialog. Messmann again writes the novel like it’s a “real” book, and perhaps he hoped for the success and popularity of a mystery series along the lines of Travis McGee or something. Jeff outs Umberto as a murderer, which ends up breaking poor Dorrie’s heart. He then confronts Cesare and tells the man the US lands – and Dorrie’s fortunes – are no longer his, and also makes him promise to drop out of Italian politics.

And that’s that – Jeff makes amends with Dorrie (Jeff is more heartfelt than many of his men’s adventure contemporaries, and indeed turns back before leaving to make sure Dorrie has forgiven him for exposing her lover as a fraud) and heads back to New York – just in time for more of that good lovin’ courtesy his new guest Edie.

Overall The Moneta Papers was mostly enjoyable, though the introspection and rumination did serve to slow down the proceedings. And yet, as with The Revenger, despite the measured pace Messmann is still capable enough of a writer to make the reader invested in the story. He’s also very good at description, and brings the Italian countryside to life. This only serves to further lend the book more of a trash novel vibe and less of a men’s adventure one.