The Doomsday Bag

Good read of the noir sort. One problem I had was the description of the "pump gun", a name the author seemed to be in love with. He variously described it as a pump shotgun, a double barrel, and an automatic. It can't be all three. While a pump double barrel is technically possible, I'm not sure one was ever made. And pump and automatic would be mutually exclusive, it had to be one or the other.

For that matter, if a double barrel automatic even existed it would be debatable which end would be more dangerous!

If it was a pump shotgun, like any number of police version short barrel pump shotguns, it would have one barrel, and be fired one shot at a time, pumping a new shell with each shot. That being said, it still will do plenty of show more horrendous damage as described in the book without being either double barreled or automatic. show less

From 1953 onward to 1989 for over thirty six years, Michael Avallone penned dozens of Ed Noon novels. This was the twentieth book in the series. For most of the series, Ed Noon was a typical wisecracking gumshoe detective who worked out of an office so small that he called it the Mouse Auditorium. The early Noon novels are great with clever bits thrown in.

In his later Noon novels, Avallone took a page from Ian Fleming and had his detective get called in to handle a case by none other than the President himself. While entertaining, this book which has Noon playing like James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me, is unfortunately quite a few notches below the quality of the other Noon books.

Here, Noon works for the President himself with a show more special pass that allows him access to everything in Washington D. C. Someone has made off with the Secret Service agent carrying the doomsday bag, the football that contained all the launch codes. This one has bombs going off and shootings and kidnappings and secret Russian spies, but it just doesn't have all the fun and joy of a typical Ed Noon book. I think Avallone is a great writer and his Noon books are terrific, but the other ones are better. show less