At their best, tv show novelizations remain true to the heart of the program while adding depth to the characters that can't be accomplished in a series of one-hour episodes. The Avengers hasn't, in the main, enjoyed this kind of success in fiction. The exceptions are Dave Rogers and John Peel's Too Many Targets, and the two Peter Leslie/Patrick Macnee books published in 1965. Other than these books, The Avengers novelizations have suffered from bad writing and the authors' almost complete misunderstanding of the series and of the lead characters.

The Avengers by Douglas Enefer. Counsel Books, 1963. This is the only story featuring Cathy Gale. Since this was published only in the U.K., it has so far escaped my hot little grasp.

Deadline and Dead Duck were written by Patrick Macnee and Peter Leslie, and published in the U.K. by Hodder & Stoughton in 1965 and 1966. Both feature Emma Peel and have the feel of the black & white Rigg series stories. Both were reprinted by Titan Books recently and should be easy to find. Along with Dave Rogers and John Peel's book, Too Many Targets, these are the best of the Avengers novels.

Deadline is an almost conventional spy/crime story. Someone is trying to bring down the government by misquoting the speeches of government leaders in stories published in a newspaper's continental editions. The story shows Steed doing some solid research into how newspapers are published, and there's a good sense of atmosphere into the workings of a big city newspaper's press room. The detail that Leslie/Macnee incorporate into the story about newspaper publication, from typography to editing to transport and delivery, give the story the sort of depth that I wish had been carried into more of the Avengers novels. Given the gritty, semi-conventional nature of the story, I'll almost bet that this was meant to be a Cathy Gale story and then quickly altered when Diana Rigg joined the series.

Dead Duck. (Review to follow)

In the mid to late 60's, Berkeley Medallion published a series of nine Avenger stories in the United States that are remarkable for being horribly bad. In fact, the word "horrible" might even be a kind description. If any of the authors of these tales, from John Garforth to Keith Laumer, had ever watched the show, they cleverly hide the fact behind mish-mashed story lines and inept characterizations. They really have no idea of who Steed, Emma and Tara are. Still, if you collect Avengers stuff, you'll probably want to hunt them out. Of the nine books, only the first four titles were published in the UK.

#1 The Floating Game by John Garforth. Emma deals blackjack on a floating casino run by mobsters and is later kidnapped by a lesbian. Steed is tortured; Emma rescues him. Oh dreary dreary dreary!

#2 The Laugh was on Lazarus by John Garforth. Garforth comes so close to having a good Avengers story here that you almost want to scream when he inevitably screws it up. Are zombies real? Maybe. Dead people keep coming back to life and Steed and Emma keep watch on a cemetery late at night to find out how. As things get interesting, Garforth introduces the vastly unnecessary and shamefully stereotyped George Washington ... a Jamaican agent working with Steed's organization. Oh cringe!! What else happens? Steed is captured, stripped naked and tossed into a cage... with his villainess captor crawling in after him.

#3 The Passing of Gloria Munday , another biggie by John Garforth. But, hey, he comes close again! This story of Steed and Emma's investigation into the murder of a young rock singer finds Emma going under cover as the next uh, Cilla Black? Dusty Springfield? Marianne Faithful? Anyway, Emma's going to be BIG BIG BIG! a STAR! Then, as the plot gets interesting, Emma goes aboard the record producer's yacht and gets chased about by a castrated villain who gets his kicks by wearing a tight rubber suit and carrying a whip. Uh, does anyone perceive a trend here in Garforth's books? Emma jumps overboard and takes a slow swim to England. George Washington again makes an unnecessary appearance. A quick read and toss this one over the side...

#4 Heil Harris by John Garforth. A neo-Nazi party is taking root in England, and it's up to Steed and Emma to stop the Fourth Reich dead in its tracks. Another could-have-been good Avengers story that Garforth messes up by having Steed and Emma act out of character or placed in situations that are not true to the series. Emma goes undercover to join the neo-Nazi outfit and as part of her initiation into the group has to torture a disloyal member. This she does, reconciling herself to the fact that he probably deserved it. Huh?

When John Garforth was deemed to have done all the damage he could to the series, they turned it over to Keith Laumer, who later became a writer people had actually heard of. In place of Garforth's odd sense of perversity, Laumer too often substitutes silly, gimmicky plots that make the worst of the Tara King stories look like gems of modern drama.

#5 The Afrit Affair by Keith Laumer, 1968. Stupid as it is, this might be the best book in the Berkeley series. It features Emma Peel, but the plot is pure Tara King: typical mad scientist trying to take over the world, this time by giving people a drug which turns their speech into gibberish. Clues turn up in pickled herrings and huge foam letters float out of a hotel's HVAC system and drift down the hallways into fluffy piles. The Avengers was a very visual show, and this little bubble gum of a read has some of the best visual jokes and cues of the Berkeley series.

#6 The Drowned Queen by Keith Laumer. The world's first passenger submarine has been threatened, and Steed and Tara are assigned to provide security during the ship's maiden voyage. That's about all I remember, and it isn't worth re-reading to fill in any more juicy details.

#7 The Gold Bomb by Keith Laumer. Boy, this one's bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Didn't Keith Laumer become a respected sci-fi writer or something? Who woulda believed it.... After a mildly promising start with The Afrit Affair, Laumer took a fast plunge and landed in the basement with this, fortunately his last, foray into The Avengers. The plot of The Gold Bomb is so inane it can't be explained, and the book is made worse by Laumer's continual, and crude, harping on the age difference between Tara and Steed (something he does to a lesser extent in the earlier books, but which is carried to an especially obnoxious level in this one). Maybe a youthful Laumer was having a bad pimple day when he wrote these in his high school study hall?

After Keith Laumer took time off to visit his dermatologist, Norm Daniels (who has since written a few pulp spy novels) was brought in to round out the series. Of his two stories, I've only been able to find and read the first one, The Magnetic Man.

#8 The Magnetic Man by Norm Daniels. Another Tara King story with a Tara King slapstick plot: a Chinese magician who uses special effects, especially with toys, to create havoc and threaten our debonair duo. One neat Avengerish scene has Steed, captured by the villain, tied to a bed with a plank above his head. Out of the wall, and down the plank, trundles a little toy tractor with a scoop that dumps water and dirt onto Steed's face, with the villain's threat that the tractor's next load might be acid. Daniels, though, really doesn't catch on to who Tara King is (well, none of these writers know who they're writing about!) and treats her like a secretarial school drop-out who decides to become a spy in between getting her nails done and shopping at the mall. Ah well...

#9 Moon Express by Norm Daniels. I haven't read this one, but if someone can point me toward a copy....

Too Many Targets by John Peel and Dave Rogers, St. Martin's Press, 1990.