Monday, February 18, 2019

Hambledon again

Alias Uncle Hugo (1952) is one of the lesser Tommy Hambledon stories by "Manning Coles," nevertheless thoroughly enjoyable. It is set early in the Cold War. As an espionage tale it does require a willing suspension of disbelief but it is funny and at the expense of Soviet Communism. From the end-paper:
With gusto and good humor Tommy Hambledon, that intrepid sleuth and foreign agent, is off again on another round of frantic adventure. His assignment from British Intelligence is to rescue one small boy, the future king of a mid-European country, from the Russian school in Poltava. Tommy punches a hole in the Iron Curtain, rushes boldly through a series of tricks and traps while acquiring and shedding a variety of disguises on the way, and eventually makes his contact, only to find himself cornered—surrounded and challenged as he never has been before. Always the master of the sizzling pace, Manning Coles has written an exciting yarn of chase and adventure which has the added feature of being wildly funny. From the first of his impersonations as Comrade Commissar Peskoff to Alias Uncle Hugo, Mr. Coles' Tommy is a reader's tingling delight.

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