The Thousand Coffins Affair (1993) - Plot & Excerpts
I read this/these when I was 13 or 14 years old (I've had an attack of nostalgia recently). I was a huge Man From U.N.C.L.E. fan, belonged to the fan club, had posters, I.D.card (for the fan club and of course a U.N.C.L.E. card [LOL:]), I built the scale modes of Napoleon and Illya (how many remember scale models of them?). i even had the early "action figures", not nearly so well made as the G.I.Joe of the same period.So, when Man From U.N.C.L.E. novels appeared, I snapped them up. Unfortunately while some were actually pretty good, others were...a bit weak. This one is one of the weaker ones. Now (as in looking back over the last 40+ years) it puts me in mind of a couple of other "early days" TV adaptions. I read a Star Trek novel that appeared early where the Enterprise struggled along a light speed and the crew had to deal with time distortion. I read a Star Wars novel that came out soon after the first movie where Luke attacked enemies with the force and did other things we learned later were connected with the "Dark Side". Here Napoleon and Illya don't really act like themselves, Napoleon calls headquarters on the phone and "Mr. Waverly" addresses Napoleon simply as "Solo".... no, no, no,.Still, it's an U.N.C.L.E. tie in, so I like on the aforementioned "nostalgia" grounds.
Oh, this is painful! Laughably painful, but painful nonetheless...I can't believe I read these books back in, what, junior high? All twenty of them -- plus the monthly magazine, each of which featured an even worse Man from U.N.C.L.E. "novella." Plotting is awful (which is to say, non-existent), writing is horrible and not only sexist but embarrassingly BAD sexist: "He was worn to the bone, and starved -- and Geraldine Terry had a splendid figure. She was nearly as tall as he but her chest measurements were far more satisfactory and in shaplier evidence. The leather flying jacket now could not conceal the surge of a ripe, womanly body." I can only hope they got better as the series progressed over the next four years, but I don't plan on finding out...Okay, that's enough of this nonsense for a while. I'm going back to good books...
What do You think about The Thousand Coffins Affair (1993)?
If you grew up on "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." television show, then this will be right up your alley. There were some two dozen novels written between 1965 and 1968. This was the first of the series and was written by the prolific Michael Avallone. It wasn't bad and is very reminiscent of many pulp adventures. Solo keeps getting into jams and finding ways out of those jams, battling THRUSH, and solving the mystery of a dead scientist who dressed himself backwards, all while managing to fall in love with a gorgeous U.S. Army intelligence agent.
—Ed Wyrd
