When it came to men's adventure fiction in the early seventies, the cream of the crop were Marlowe's Earl Drake novels. These are all actionpacked, fast-reading stories. Drake, the man without a face, was originally the most hardboiled of bank robbers, but in busting out of a Florida psych hospital, he arranged for plastic surgery. Later, he met Erickson, who worked for some secret government agency and, in return for Drake's work on secret missions to Cuba and other exotic locales, arrangements had been made for the govt to look the other way at Drake's past. Most of the time he lives on an out of the way ranch in Nevada with Hazel, the big, redheaded Dynamo.

This "Operation" takes place in the Bahamas and, when Erickson, needs someone to break into safe deposit boxes in a bank vault, who better to turn to then Drake. From explosive bank robberies to manhunts on a small island, hoodlums, running gun battles, a killer masseuse, a kinky drug filled party, inefficient government bureaucracy, and a jailbreak, this book is jam packed with action. It has an easy late sixties/ early seventies feel. And there are humorous moments when Drake tries to find the secret agency he contracts with. Overall, this is another terrific fun read. Once you pick it up, you better not have anything else planned for the night. ( )

From the man who wrote "The Name of the Game is Death," I really expected more. In the aforementioned book, the main character is a murdering sociopath with ambiguously homosexual tendencies who was sexually aroused by violence. The character was the definition of antihero. But in the subsequent books, the character of Drake (resurrected in this new incarnation to make a few extra bucks, I'm sure) is quite frankly neutered. Marlowe makes an attempt to retain some of the original hardboiled-ness, but it's not really that effective. The later novels end up being lukewarm adventure stories at best.

I've read some of the other Drake "Operation" books, but this one was worse than most. The story involved a bank job in Nassau to steal mob records detailing head members, secret bank accounts, and the like. Drake escapes after the heist (leaving his government-employed partner in a Nassau jail) and takes the goods back to the States, but can't offload them to the proper authorities because of the government spook arrangements. So then he and his lady-friend go back to Nassau to bust his partner out of jail.

And while the narrative sounds like it could be interesting, the execution was ho-hum at best. I was never very interested in the characters or the book--mostly because the story seemed to be a meandering excuse to tie together a lot of other previous stories. Multiple characters make reappearances, and Marlowe devotes a considerable amount of time to explaining what happened in earlier adventures.

With all that taken into account, I think I'm done with reading Dan J. Marlowe for a while. I have one Marlowe book still on my shelf, but it's not a Drake story. So maybe that story will redeem him. I certainly hope it does, because I was disappointed by this last one. ( )