Enter a Hero

Revue by David L. Vineyard

“Maxim Gunn and The Chaos Project” introduces the world to Gunn, Maxim Gunn, Nicholas Boving’s entertaining and clever twist on the cool eyed British hero of lore. Of course it’s impossible to escape the comparison with James Bond, and Boving cleverly manages to play his own clever variations on all the tropes of Fleming’s popular works, but Boving is holding his cards close to his vest and if Gunn occasionally offers a glimpse of Fleming’s world of glamour and danger he also plays --- in a different manner --- some of those same notes that Fleming himself drew on from the rich past of the British thriller while keeping his tongue in cheek with a panache that may remind readers of the late George McDonald Fraser’s cheeky Flashman. Maxim Gunn is no Flashy, he’s true blue, handsome, dashing, and with impeccable manners, but he also manages to touch on that same wealth of earlier heroes from Anthony Hope’s Rudolph Rassendyll and Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond to C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower.

Nor is Boving content to put his man up against anything as tiresome as the Russians, terrorist fanatics, or the usual run of megalomaniacs. Gunn, who is contemplating retiring from the Organization to escape his tiresome boss, the perfectly named Vileman, finds himself arrayed against the beautiful and deadly Wanda Liszt. Seems Gunn killed Wanda’s super criminal father and Wanda and her allies have been seeking revenge ever since. And what revenge it is. Wanda has gotten her hands on the legendary necklace of Sheba, and with it’s powers she plans to seize all of Africa as her own little fiefdom -- but first she has to gather her forces in a splendid set piece of a gothic unassailable castle fortress --- replete with its own version of the Jacob’s ladder that threatened the real king of Ruritania in Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda --- where Gunn, with the help of a former SAS man and a Union Corse godfather, has to literally bring the house down on Wanda’s head.

Tongue firmly in cheek, Boving orchestrates it all with clever byplay, fast action, and a knowing nod to what splendid fun all this nonsense can be if the reader will just relax and go along with it. The author has a real gift for capturing the feeling of exotic locales and creating exciting, colorful, and bizarre dilemmas for his hero to extricate himself from with the proper mix of derring-do and the well placed mot juste.

It all runs as smooth as Gunn’s Lagonda and with the kick of his trusty .357 Magnum, at a rapidly evolving pace and with just the right balance of action, character development, and colorful background and locales. I won’t be giving away too much to reveal Wanda Liszt meets a just end, but I suspect she won’t be quiet long, and Boving hints as much in a clever coda at the books end. It’s no small thing to create a hero as attractive as Gunn (think Stewart Granger in The Prisoner of Zenda) or a villain as wickedly inviting as Wanda, and Boving plays the two off each other with all the right notes. If Maxim Gunn deserves to stand in the company of such heroes as Bond, Drummond, and the Saint, as well as more modern entries like Dirk Pitt or Ted Bell’s Alexander Hawke; Wanda deserves a place alongside Carl and Irma Peterson, Fu Manchu and his daughter, Fleming’s Ernst Stavro Blofield, and of course the immortal Professor Moriarty.

I can’t say enough about Boving’s literate and highly readable mix of old fashioned adventure with a pleasingly gothic touch of what the Scots like to call the uncanny and a whiff of the kind of world threatening science we’ve come to associate with Clive Cussler, James Rollins, and Mathew Reilly’s bestselling novels. Long live Maxim Gunn --- and the good news is there are six more already available. You won’t regret meeting Mr. Gunn, and you will be eager to make his acquaintance again and again.