James Meese painted a nicely evocative cabaret dance scene for the cover of Captive in the Night, originally published in 1951 with this Crest edition coming in 1956. Dancers tend to hit the stage precisely when shootouts are imminent. Have you noticed that? Anyway, foreign intrigue is on the slate, as Donald Stokes weaves the tale of another gringo caught up in international unrest. The setting this time is Algeria, where main character Blair Hansen takes a job helping a local bigwig exploit a fortune in iron ore only to have the caper go sideways when he runs into old flame Mari Lander and her nineteen-year-old daughter Céleste, who’s consorting with a member of the Arab underground.
This is a typical tale of its type in the sense that an American will be central to events of historical importance, but most such novels aren’t written at nearly the same elevated level. The drama is high and the action swift, as nothing Hansen does goes quite according to plan in the powder keg of Algiers on the brink of a violent eruption. We doubt anyone of Arab descent will love this book—nearly all novels from this period have aged poorly in terms of understanding that colonialism is just a stand-in word for invasion, but considering how this tale eventually shakes out you don’t feel too negatively toward Hansen. In revolutions, when in doubt blow some shit up. It works in adventure novels too. Stokes did a bang-up job here.
