Forgotten Books: Baron Sinister -- Joseph Hilton

I've already spoken of my affection for spy fiction back in the '60s, and another of the lower-level series that I read was one about Bart Gould, President's Agent.  The first book in the series was written by Joseph Hilton, and the rest by Joseph Milton.

A guy can find himself going down some strange rabbit holes when looking things about writers on the Internet.  Joseph Hilton, it turns out, is Joseph Hilton Smyth, who started out in the pulps and in the '50s and '60s did a number of paperback originals, including at least three for Gold Medal (including the pseudonymous [and anonymous] I, Mobster). But he's a lot more interesting than that.  Back in the late '30s, Smyth and some others bought a number of magazines, including North American Review, Current History, Living Age, and a hefty interest in The Saturday Review of Literature. 

Where did a pulp writer get the money for such a venture? Well, he was more than a pulp writer. He was involved with magazines from almost the beginning of his career.  But back to the movie. He got it from the Japanese, that's where.  He and his partners were paid a lot of dough to buy magazines and spread Japanese propaganda.  Since this was before WWII, Hilton didn't suffer a lot for it, as far as I can tell. He was later involved with The Saturday Review again.

Okay, but what about Joseph Milton?  Well, the Catalogue of Copyright Entries credits Baron Sinister to Joseph Hilton Smythe (with an e).  Other books in the series, however, were written by different authors.

Whew.  I've digressed enough.  What about the book itself? Well, I remember that the first book in the series was pretty entertaining, but this one was kind of dull.  Several workers in the American embassy, people with no secrets to divulge and who don't do any important work, have disappeared.  Gould is sent to Austria by his handler (a sort of imitation of Mac in the Matt Helm books) to find out what happened to them.  Gould is suave and sophisticated, much more Bond than Helm, but he does kill without compunction more than once.  The sinister baron wants to restore the monarchy in Austria and there's some stuff about funneling scientists to Egypt to work for Nasser. Not much happens, really, but the local color is very good.  

There's not a lot to recommend here, though things do pick up in the last 1/3.  There's even a short sword fight.  Still, not top shelf.  I should have read the first book in the series again.