Full Metal Wheelbarrow

Star Surgeon by Alan Nourse. 138 pages.

Dal Timgar is the first non-human to train as a doctor on Hospital Earth. But there are those among the higher ranking Doctors who don't want an alien in their ranks and Dal's quest for the coveted Star that will mark him as a qualified doctor is far from easy.

I'd wanted to read something by Nourse for some time, as I'd heard good things about him from sf readers on Usenet, but I'd never been able to get hold of any physical books of his. So I was pleased to find some of his works as free ebooks.

Solid, old-fashioned space opera in the style of Andre Norton.


Last Day In Limbo by Peter O'Donnell. 236 pages.

Another escapade for Modesty Blaise and her sidekick Willie Garvin.

This time Modesty and her friend John Dall are nearly kidnapped, while Willie plots revenge on the people who traumatised his girlfriend. As tends to happen in this type of story, the two things turn out to be closely linked….

The build-up of the story was good, as these books generally are, but the final showdown seemed to lack the punch we'd come to expect from O'Donnell.

The Impossible Virgin by Peter O'Donnell. 267 pages

Another adventure for Modesty Blaise and her sidekick Willie Garvin. This time they're up against a criminal mastermind called Brunel who's seeking a gold mine in Africa - and to destroy Modesty's friend Sir Gerald Tarrant.

The book was written in 1971 so the reader has to keep that in mind when encountering such cringeworthy parts as Modesty declaring she's not a "dyke" because "all my hormones are working properly". But that aside, this is an enjoyable Bond-esque adventure story.

 A Taste For Death by Peter O'Donnell. 284 pages

Modesty Blaise by Peter O'Donnell. 237 pages.

For those unfamiliar, probably the easiest way to describe Modesty Blaise is as a sort of female James Bond. It's not an entirely accurate description, but it does give the basic idea.

Like Bond, this first Modesty book was written in the mid-Sixties, and that sometimes causes more cognitive dissonance than if it were set far longer ago, because the society depicted is enough like the present to seem familiar but different enough to jar quite badly at times, especially in the way everybody smokes incessantly and in the attitudes toward women. Although Modesty herself is a strong and independent character, the men around her don't always recognise that.

If you can cope with that and the sometimes unnecessarily detailed descriptions of clothes and furniture, there's a pretty good adventure story in there. Modesty has retired from a life of running an extensive criminal network and is now living respectably in England. So when Sir Gerald Tarrant approaches her to do a job for the British Government, she is reluctant - until he reveals to her that her former sidekick and friend Willie Garvin is in great danger and gives her the information she needs to save him. Things get more complicated from then on and there are fights and snappy dialogue and plots and counterplots. Great fun for the most part.