Sam Durell #13 - Assignment-Lowlands

The 13th adventure starring CIA troubleshooter Sam Durell was Assignment-Lowlands from 1961. By this point in the series, author Edward S. Aarons had fully embraced the character that would carry him to his death in 1975 after authoring 42 installments starring the Cajun spy.

A romantic weekend with his girlfriend on the Chesapeake Bay is cut short by a phone call summoning Sam to a meeting in a London pub to accept his next assignment. Two days earlier, every CIA operative around the world was put on high alert and told to be ready for something big. That time is now.

After a brief stop in London that provides the reader no insight into the crisis, Sam continues to Amsterdam. Upon meeting his CIA safehouse host, Sam finds the man dying of a rare virus. Before he expires, he sends Sam to the Northern Holland island of Scheersplaat (not on Google Maps - possibly fictional?) to meet a man who unleashed this virus upon the world from a bunker. Naturally, the CIA’s man in Amsterdam dies before providing any pertinent details - just a map to the target location in the Frisian Islands in Northern Holland.

"Operation Cassandra” was an undeployed Nazi bioweapons program during WW2 that has been unearthed and somehow released from an underground lab on a remote island in Holland. This is the kind of thing that would make the Bubonic Plague look like a head cold, and Sam needs to contain it without becoming infected along the way.

Neither Sam nor his CIA colleagues knows who unearthed this buried laboratory of the Nazi virologists, but whoever is behind this is trying to blackmail the USA for money to keep the disease from spreading worldwide. This creates a mystery for Sam to solve while on the ground in Holland. Think Jack Bauer meets Sam Spade.

Sam finds himself face-to-face with the terrorist behind this plot fairly early in the paperback, and he’s one of the best villains I can recall in ages. Menacing and unhinged - but not cartoonish. There are further layers of adversaries baked into the plot - each one better than the last.

I’ve read a handful of Aaron’s Sam Durell Assignment adventures, and this one is by far the best thus far. The plot moves at a great pace akin to an episode of 24 and Sam shows way more personality than usual. The setting was great, and the aspirations of the characters were always logical.

The paperback had elements of a maritime adventure, a hardboiled mystery, and a treasure hunt - all the wrapping of a 1960s spy adventure. If these types of stories broadly appeal to you, you’re gonna love this Assignment. You can get Edward S. Aarons books HERE.