Fifth in the John Eagle Expeditor men's adventure series from the 1970s.

This is the best John Eagle Expeditor book yet. We learn a bit more about Mr. Merlin's past in this one, as well as the fact that he has (had, by the end of the book) a doppelganger he set up in Scotland as his public face, while he lives in seclusion in his Hawaiian volcanic lair. John Eagle is sent to an island off the coast of Ecuador where some Nazis have set up a business providing old, rich men with new testicles. Merlin believes it to be nothing more than a con job, but as Eagle's investigation proves, the process actually works. While on the island he encounters a female Israeli Nazi hunter with a death wish. Together, they end the threat from the island. Eagle also hears tantalizing rumors that there is a secret Nazi village in the titular Valley of the Vultures where Hitler's son may be living and that the Nazis have a group of seven highly trained field operatives collectively known as the Murder Club. As Part One of the novel ends, Eagle is poised to escape from the island.

Part Two begins. Eagle has apparently escaped from the island because he is being paradroped deep in the Ecuadoran jungle on a mission to discover if there really is Hitler's son living in that German village. Along the way, Eagle rescues an Indian woman and is in turn rescued by her when some natives capture him. That's all a bit forced, but I guess the author had to find a way to inject a love interest into the second part of the book, since the German femme fatale was killed in he first half. Eagle eventually gets to a mountaintop overlooking the valley with a sniper rifle and watches a man arrive via helicopter in the village and give a speech. The man -- minus the Hitlerian mustache -- is a dead ringer for his old man, and he's apparently a damn good orator because as the novel ends, Eagle has decided to take him out. And thus ends Part Two.

I have a few qualms about the book, despite my enjoyment of it. I suspect the author may have been running out of wordcount, because both halves of the novel end on cliffhangers, or at least right at the cusp of being finished. It's an interesting technique, but I really did want to see Eagle escape from the island, at least. The ending is made more powerful for stopping where it does, but I had been expecting Eagle to do the deed then be hunted through the mountains by the Murder Club that had been already established as being preeminent boogeymen. Alas, we don't get to see either of those things, and the Murder Club seems to have been introduced as a bit of a red herring.

Most of the John Eagle Expeditor books stick to a formulaic plot structure and similar tone, but there are a few stand-outs and this is one of them. Valley of the Vultures has a very different structure, tone, and ending than the others. It also happens to be my favorite so far. I know that Paul Edwards was a house name used by several authors and I suspect this one was written by a different author than the first four. Highly recommended.

Review copyright 2008 J. Andrew Byers ( )