Robert B. Parker (2) (1906–1955)

"Passport to Peril" is a Hard Case crime book by the *original* Robert B. Parker (if you want a laugh, look it up on Amazon and see how many negative reviews it got from people pissed off that it's not the Robert B. Parker who wrote the Spenser books). It was a nifty little spy/espionage novel taking place after WW2. John Stoddard is traveling to Hungary to investigate what happened to his brother, who was last seen parachuting out of a plane in the area. On the train, he meets a beautiful woman named Maria, who is looking for her boss, who was supposed to be on the train. Her boss's name is Marcel Blaye, and Stoddard immediately knows something is wrong, since he's traveling on Blaye's passport that he bought in Geneva, not realizing it's a murdered man's passport. Maria has an envelope that Blaye intrusted to her, an envelope full of names that Russians and Germans and everyone else under the sun seem to be after. It was pretty interesting.… (meer)

Passport to Peril was one of three spy novels written by Robert Bogadus Parker Jr., the original Robert Parker. He was, as his daughter explains in an afterward, "first and foremost a newspaper man." He was a war correspondent and reported from the front lines throughout World War 2. He also worked extensively with the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, particularly in Budapest.
This story takes place shortly after the war ended and after Eastern Europe was overrun by the Soviets. The narrator of the story is one of the young innocents with no intention of getting caught up in the spy game. As he explains, "It wasn't until the Orient Express was nearing the Hungarian frontier, about two hours out of Vienna, that I found I was traveling on the passport of a murdered man." Wow. What an opening to the story!

It so happens that Maria Torres sits down in the train car with the narrator, John Stodder, thinking that she is meeting up with her employer, Marcel Blaye. It turns out though that Blaye never made it to the train and Stodder bought a false passport from a contact that had belonged to Blaye only with Stodder's picture now in it. To make matters worse, it turns out that Blaye was selling secrets from German scientists who had survived the war to the Soviets. And, Stoddard has not a clue what those secrets are or why they are important.

It is a well-told story, particularly the beginning as Stoddard tries to figure out what he and Maria have gotten themselves into with the Soviets after them, the Germans trying to re-establish a Fourth Reich, and the American spies are there too. There is plenty of intrigue here and gunfights. It is also remarkable how early this was written and how much spy fiction came after
Most of the action takes place in Soviet-controlled Hungary and Parker does a great job of capturing the life under Soviet domination with

locals afraid to speak their minds and secret police everywhere. Even the cocktail waitresses at the nightclub were fearful to say anything that could be misconstrued. It was not a happy time in Eastern Europe to say the least. Parker points out that for many of the peasants there was not much difference between Soviet and German control.

All in all, it is a fine addition to the Hard Case Crime series.… (meer)

John Stoddard is traveling from Vienna to Budapest just after WW II to see if he can locate his brother, a navigator in a plane that was forced down after it ran out of fuel, calculations for which John had been responsible. Unable to obtain a visa from the Russians, John pays for a forged passport and visa only to discover on the train that a young woman thinks he is someone else and he has the passport of a man wanted by several governments because of some information he has and who was killed just before John left the country. Soon the Russians, OSS, and ex-Nazis are chasing John around trying to discover what names were in the envelope that the murdered man had given to the girl.

This is by Robert Bogardus Parker who died in 1955, long before Robert Brown Parker wrote his Spenser novels, and it's based in part on his personal experiences in eastern Europe (although the use of the formal Sie instead of Du when the German boss is talking to his underlings was a little jarring.

Amusing story but nothing great. Interesting that it was republished by Hard Case because it doesn't really fit with their normal run of titles.… (meer)