Books: Skuldruggery and High Technology

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The pursuit starts in London, where Spenser's enterprise is not viewed with unalloyed joy by Scotland Yard. After a couple of sanguinary melees, he is joined by Hawk, a smooth, totally amoral black man and sometime adversary of Spenser's (Promised Land) with a taste for fancy duds, birds of all stripes and Taittinger champagne. (Spenser quaffs Amstel beer.) The chase leads to Copenhagen and Amsterdam and on to a tingling denouement at the Olympic Games in Montreal. Parker, who has described himself as "a reformed academic," knows his cityscapes. He also has a wry wit and an attentive ear for dialogue. Indeed, the sayings of Badass Hawk constantly upstage Spenser. Told of the Liberty leader's plan to save the Dark Continent for the white man. Hawk drawls: "He got a big job. I hear there's quite some number of Nigras in Africa."

TECHNICIANS OF DEATH by Tony Williamson; Atheneum 246 pages; $8.95

The technicians of the title are versed in every form of extirpation, but mostly the kind of death that goes with, for or by heroin. A Palestinian terrorist group sets out to finance its operations by taking over distribution of all the stuff from Southeast Asia's poppied Golden Triangle. Which is fine with the Bangkok-based tycoon who controls the trade, Chung Li, known as the Scorpion. Chung has decided that Thailand is no longer safe for an honest pusher; he seeks another line of work. "I wish." he says in the novel's opening sentence, "to purchase a country." The acquisition—Kuwait?—may be possible, if not peaceable, with the $10 billion cash value of the dream dust Chung can assemble.

At this point, the FBI, the Israeli intelligence service and other concerned agencies get wind of the great horse trade. They decide to divert the dope by sending in Lee Corey, a versatile (The Doomsday Contract) G-man, impersonating Terrorist Leader Carlos Ramirez Sanchez, a.k.a. the Jackal. Scorpion and pseudo Jackal go off to collect 9½ metric tons of crude opium. British Author Tony Williamson's account of their buying trip into the Triangle—stalked by the real Ramirez—is wild, high adventure. It is topped by the American's solution of the shipping problem. With some Bangkok bullyboys and a few qualified if reluctant technicians led by a former U.S. Navy commander turned junkie, he pirates a submarine that had been abandoned by the Americans in South Viet Nam, torpedoes a pursuing gunboat, loads the sub with the H and, after a horripilant transpacific odyssey, attempts a rendezvous with the U.S. Coast Guard. Throughout, Agent Corey finds time for good food, wine and silken Thais. He deserves to surface elsewhere.

A STENCH OF POPPIES

by Ivor Drummond; St. Martin's Press 192 pages; $7.95