Uncle Target: A Gripping Spy Action Crime Thriller from a Master of the Spy Novel (Harry Maxim Spy Thrillers Book 4) By Gavin Lyall

Cheap and cheerful, like Alistair MacLean and Desmond Bagley. Set in the deserts of Jordan recovering a prototype British tank, this is a book where a square-jawed man kills or is killed. An easy disposable read. From it, though, I found the Wikipedia biography and Guardian obituary of Gavin Lyall to be fascinating. A former journalist, like many good genre writers, he would take a long time to write a novel (unlike MacLean who reportedly wrote from 5am to 1pm for a month to bang out a book). This is because he would ruthlessly research, even testing things like can you make bullets by melting lead in a saucepan and can you set a plate of petrol alight from the muzzle blast of a pistol fired atop of it etc. He published his findings as pamphlets for the Crime Writers Association, and those I'd *love* to read. 304 I was distinctly unimpressed with Harry Maxim’s final adventure, written in Gavin Lyall’s studied hand. This time our Harry is back in the SAS, but still seconded to the MOD or the SIS or some such Whitehall organisation. He’s finally hitched up with Agnes Algar, but he’s still married to the army. When a terrorist kidnapping goes wrong, Harry is called in because he once had dealings with the victim, the Jordanian Colonel Khalid. Harry’s attempt to break the siege results in the Colonel’s death. Meanwhile, in the Colonel's homeland, a military coup is rising in the south and Khalid held the secret location of a new British tank, loaned for manoeuvres, a vehicle which may just redraw the battlelines of combat. Did he reveal it under torture? Maxim is dispatched to Jordan in a botched attempt to find out.

There is too much happening in this dull adventure which is part committee room drama, part low-key espionage, part reimagining of the old Humphrey Bogart film Sahara, as Harry Maxim tries to escape the rebel troops by driving a tank through the Jordanian desert. The action passes in brief sentences. People get shot. Things blow up. Things break down. Meanwhile the bigwigs in London prick a map with multi-coloured pins and drink whisky. Agnes does the most ingenious stuff all on her own, but not a single page of it merited any kind of joy. A very formulated piece which includes much technical detail but forgets to include any excitement, tension or terror. There are subthemes aplenty and that doesn’t help the telling which needs to be slimmed down. By splitting the narrative locations, Lyall fails to concentrate on either the London backstabbing or the Jordanian scrambles, so neither succeeds. Even the final pages lack any sense of an ending. The novel just stops.

An inauspicious exit for Major Harry Maxim.

304 In the end, it was a tank book complete with some tank fighting. This is one of a series of books by the author featuring the same character, Harry Maxim, a British Army officer with SAS training who apparently repeatedly finds himself as the guy who has to do something about something. Entertaining read, complete with the competing scenes in London as officialdom tries to find out what's going on and what to do about it running parallel to the on site experiences of Major Harry Maxim with an international cast of characters and scenery. I probably won't be tracking down more of this British series, but only because the series is not one that would hold my interest given that he doesn't put tanks in every book! 304 Absorbing as usual, with the action scenes in the desert well complimented with the bureaucratic tangling in London. Sadly the last of the series... 304 Very strong spy novel. 304

Excellent

I first read this many years ago and it is just as good as I remember. The characters are well written and convincing. I particularly like the way Harry’s personality is revealed - partly through his actions, partly through the observations of others, and partly through his interior monologue that reveals the doubts and uncertainties that his outer confidence and skills hide from the world. It is interesting to get a glimpse into the attitudes of the different groups - army, spies, Whitehall and politicians - and, whilst this was written a long time ago (pre mobile phones - what a difference that can make to a plot!) I doubt the fundamental attitudes have changed that much.

A very good read. Now I want to re-read the others in this series 304 The blurb to this fourth book in the Maxim Series is misleading - it wasn't televised as The Secret Servant; that was based on the first book in the series and is available separately.
After previous novels take Harry Maxim (and often the redoubtable Agnes from MI5) to Germany pre-the fall of the Wall, Washington and the mid-West, Goole, Rotherhithe and other such exotic places, this excellent thriller finds Harry accidentally rescuing a highly secret British prototype tank, trapped by rebel forces in the Jordanian desert.
Tanks do not normally float my boat, to mix my metaphors, but Lyall's writing had me sitting there, in the tiny cramped and claustrophobic space as they raced for the border, pursued by the rebels who want to sell its secrets to Moscow, challenged by Israelis offering to help and watched from above by American satellite technology, making them the military-termed Uncle Target of the title.
Agnes meanwhile, is discovering the source of the leak which had passed on the position of the hideout in the ruined Crusader fort, and battling the forces of Pass-The-Parcel in the Whitehall corridors of power in a desperate attempt to get them to help get Harry and his crew back. When I wrote to Lyall many years ago saying how much I'd learned about tanks through the book, he drily commented that I'd have learned a LOT more if his wife (Katharine Whitehorn) hadn't reined him in!
His demise was a great loss to the intelligent English thriller genre, and more than thirty years after they were published (pre-internet, pre-mobile phones - however did we manage?) I can still laugh aloud at his sardonic wit, marvel at his elegant prose and deeply enjoy his varied Whitehall characters. 304 Harry Maxim knew his mission: destroy an advanced tank and get back home to Agnes - only for it to becomes a desperate journey across the desert while she tries to figure out how a kidnapping gone wrong could be the key to saving him. Lyall will keep fans of military fiction entertained with this enjoyable adventure brimming with tactics. Can Maxim get him and his men home in one piece, or will they be the ones that end up getting demolished? 304 A bit of a shame that this is the end of the series. There were some loose plot threads it would've been nice to seen woven into a finished tapestry. 304 Picked up in a give a book, take a book library inside a phone box on Gozo, Malta. Of course.

A spy novel without much spying in it: Major Maxim finds himself in command of a prototype tank, trying to bring it to safety through the desert in the middle of a revolution, while the security services back home look on helplessly. Pacy and full of convincing technical detail. 304

Gavin Lyall · 8 review

Televised as The Secret Servant this thriller features Major Harry Maxim whose mission to Jordan changes from a simple demolition job to an epic run for freedom. A woman's unofficial line of enquiry into his activities leads to the heart of the matter and a change in the direction of his fate. Uncle Target: A Gripping Spy Action Crime Thriller from a Master of the Spy Novel (Harry Maxim Spy Thrillers Book 4)