THE TREMBLING EARTH CONTRACT

Philip Atlee's Joe Gall series of men's adventure paperbacks ran from 1951 to 1976 for a total of twenty-three novels featuring the CIA's top contract killer. I'd never read a Joe Gall novel until recently, although I've had a couple of the paperbacks sitting on my shelf for quite some time. 

I took the plunge and gave THE TREMBLING EARTH CONTRACT a read the other day. The tenth Gall adventure was published in 1969 and it shows its' age. The title sets you up to expect Gall up against some type of menace involving earthquakes but nothing could be further from the truth. The "Trembling Earth" of the title refers to the type of soil to be found in the Southeastern United States, an area in which The Republic of New Africa, a para-military organization ala The Black Panthers, is buying up land and business in the hopes of establishing a new, independent country for dispossessed African Americans. The Republic recruits Vietnam veterans and other young men, trains and arms them and then sends them out to wreak havoc throughout the white dominated Southern states. 

Gall is a target of one of these hit teams in the opening pages of the book wherein he meets Melissa, an attractive young attorney who has come to Gall's Arkansas retreat to offer him a job as a security consultant with a giant Houston based law firm. Gall is tempted by both the offer and the woman but he's loyal to the CIA who has given him the assignment of infiltrating the Republic of New Africa. 

As a black man.

That's right folks, Joe Gall dons an Afro wig and takes a drug which darkens his skin and somehow manages to pass as an African American, fooling an entire army of black men. What, the CIA didn't have any qualified African American operatives in 1969? It's like that scene in SILVER STREAK where Gene Wilder tries to pass as black with help from Richard Pryor. It's hilarious because in no way does the white Wilder come across as a black man. I guess Gall was somehow more convincing. Hell, he even fools Sarah, the pretty young black woman who takes him to the Republic's hidden training base.

If you can swallow this insanely un PC concept, the story is not bad at all. The action moves at a good clip with Gall managing to thwart a multiple assassination plot during Mardi Gras and later escaping from his swamp prison when his real identity is eventually uncovered. 

But then Atlee throws in an incredibly rushed action scene in the last two (!) pages of the book in which a small army of Republic troops launch an assault on Gall's home forcing Gall and Melissa to arm themselves and return fire before Attlee abruptly ends the book in the middle of the action. It just stops. I wonder if Atlee had a page and/or word count that he absolutely couldn't exceed and thus, whenever that limit was met, that was the end of the book, no matter what was happening on the page. 

I dunno the real reason (or if there even is one) but everything stops fast enough to give a reader whiplash.

So, politically incorrect narrative gimmick and stop-on-a-dime ending aside, Joe Gall proves to be an interesting enough character for me to try another book in the series. On the American 1960s paperback spy series scale I'd rank Gall behind Matt Helm and Sam Durell and ahead of Nick Carter. 

Worth checking out if you're not easily offended by horrific racial tropes. Remember, this was written in 1969. That doesn't excuse the mess but it does provide some context for explanation.