Thursday, May 13, 2010

#20: The Canadian Bomber Contract by Philip Atlee

Nullifier Joe Gall is back, in less exotic climes as he slips over to Canada to stop the bombing of Niagara Falls in Philip Atlee's The Canadian Bomber Contract.

I pick up and read Atlee's work wherever I happen to come across it, so I am not reading these in any particular order.  Somehow, this is the first one I have read set in the 70s. The others I have read have taken place in the 60s and feature a lot of content that would not be PC by today's standards. You kind of know what to expect from Atlee after a while, and this one is no exception as the cover features Joe Gall punching out a hippie while a couple of admiring women look on. 

But Gall seems to have a bit of a hangover from the swingin' 60s and is somewhat melancholy throughout.  He actually only beds about half the women he meets on first sight (although to be fair, one was talking about Women's Lib an awful lot) and at the end makes a surprisingly compassionate speech about accepting draft dodgers back into the fold. 

A more tired and philosophical Gall than I had read before, although the storytelling was only moderately interesting next to a lot of nice descriptives of daily experiences in Canada.  I suspect Atlee had spent a lot of time there at some point, and is more worth reading on those merits.

I found this for one dollar in the White Rabbit used bookstore in Muncie, Indiana.

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