What's presented by publisher Leisure Books as a classic '70s disaster piece is actually a hard boiled, hard man action thriller! You'd think from the back copy that Colonel Malone is charged with enforcing martial law in the face of disaster, but really he's on a drunken bender through Kuna, the smallest and most fictional of the Hawaiian Islands, that just happens to intersect with a planned heist of a mob casino by the would-be revolutionaries of the Hawaiian Liberation Front ... all while that damned tsunami rushes across the Pacific at 500 miles per hour. Tyler writes with a clear eye, especially as concerns the HLF members and their doomed scheme, but the book as a whole reads like a fix-up, with the tsunami sections bolted on to push the casino plot to feature length. We get pages and pages, for example, on minor character Captain Nakamura and his impending death by tidal wave, while the actual climax is over before it's begun and several other named characters are left in limbo.
The cruelest twist of the knife involves a big, big spoiler - the big wave never arrives! Those of us with a thirst for apocalyptic destruction need look elsewhere for our fix, sadly. If you're looking for some smut though, there's a corker of a scene starting page 118!
2/4
Leisure Books, 1975
Martin Wallace Tyler was the pseudonym of Peter McCurtin (1929-1997), a prolific paperback author who lived in New York City and was so much of a writer that he used quite a few pen named. His novels were issued by Belmont-Tower Books, Dell Books, and Leisure Books from the 1970s to the 1990s. He was also Leisure’s resident editor, and also allowed other authors to use his name as a pseudonym.
ReplyDeleteExcellent info! There's some strong skill in Tidal Wave even if the structure is slapped together, which makes sense from a working pro like McCurtin.
DeleteMartin Wallace Tyler was a pen name used by this novel’s actual author Peter McCurtin (1929-1997), who was one of Leisure Books’ main writers. McCurtin was so prolific that he had his paperback novels issued under his own name and other assorted pseudonyms. His novels were published by Belmont-Tower, Leisure, and Dell. In addition, he allowed other writers to have their novels issued under his name. It’s known as ghost writing. McCurtin was also Leisure Books’ resident editor. He was published in the adult western, crime, horror, historical, and mainstream fiction genres. He wrote most of the Sundance adult westerns as Jack Slade. Born and raised in Ireland, the author lived in New York City.
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