In 1989 a midlist writer named Jack Bickham published the
slim suspense novel Tiebreaker. It
was the first of six novels featuring aging professional tennis player, current
teaching pro, sometime magazine writer, and former CIA asset Brad Smith. Brad
is a step beyond the tail of his career and, after investing his prime years’
winnings unwisely, earns a living as a teaching pro at a club in Richardson,
Texas. The novel’s opening is too good not to share—
“The
last thing I had on my mind was somebody breaking into my condominium and
dragging me into the past.”
It wasn’t on his mind because he was playing the
finals of his tennis club’s first annual Richardson Charity Tournament against
a hotshot college player acting like John McEnroe and threatening to clean the
court with Brad. A battle between age and arrogance. When Brad makes it home,
so both he and the reader can discover who and what is going to drag him into
the past, he finds his old agency contact, Collie Davis, watching a western on television
with a beer in his hand.
The agency has an assignment requiring Brad’s specialized
credentials; a young Yugoslavian tennis star named Danisa Lechova wants to
defect to the west, but her passport has been confiscated, and the UDBA (Yugoslavia’s
version of the KGB) is openly watching her. Brad agrees, reluctantly, to act as
Danisa’s go-between for the defection, using his cover as a tennis writer.
The Brad Smith novels rank as my favorite featuring a serial
character. Brad is uniquely American. He does odd jobs for the agency due to a perceived
debt he owes—
“ask
not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”
—but he often doesn’t like the assignments, or the
agency’s work overall. In a sense he is supporting the lesser of two evils—meaning
the CIA against the KGB and the Soviet Union. He is a patriot, but it stops somewhere
short of murder, coups, criminality, and E. Howard Hunt. He has a conscience
and a well-defined ethical awareness that is unique to spy thrillers. He is
also likable, admirable, mostly, and has more trouble with women than imaginable.
The novels, and Tiebreaker
is no exception, are written in both first and third person. Brad’s perspective
is in first, and an assortment of characters, including good guys and bad, are
in third. The alternating perspectives give the novel a hybrid feel—Brad’s
narration is more closely related to a private eye novel with social commentary
making it more personal, and the third person expands it into a broader and larger
suspense-spy story.
The tennis is an integral element to the story, and it
is described so well it becomes a secondary character—
“Somehow
I got my Prince composite on the yellow blur and bounced it down the line,
hitting the back corner, close. He glided over to get it and I thought I saw
the angle and guessed, chuffing up toward the net.”
The suspense is expertly designed around the story
questions—a clue is identified, but its impact and relevance is not revealed
for several pages. It is done without any annoying tricks or contrivance. The
characters—both Brad Smith and the secondary folks—are well defined without any
doubts about motivation or outcome. There are no crazy monsters, or unexplained
actions. Everything is logical and smooth.
I like Tiebreaker and its five sequels so well that I re-read the entire series every few years, and if I was any more weak-willed I would probably read them more often.
What an enjoyable review. You are so funny. I love this one so much. By the way, I think re-reading favorite books is the mark of a secure person. It shows you have no need to prove anything to anyone. "So what," you'll say, where someone to scoff at the idea of re-reading favorites over and over. "Clearly you are not a reader. A true reader always has a set of favorites." Great work Ben. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Kara. Bickham's Brad Smith novels are certainly among my favorites. I also tend to re-read Jack Higgins, the best of Alistair MacLean, 1980's and 90's David Morrell, Ed Gorman, Desmond Bagley, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut you know that, and now my inbred reading habits are known to the world.
Just picked up cheap copies of the whole series at Amazon plus a Jack Bickham western called Gunman's Gamble. Thanks for the tip!
ReplyDeleteMichael, I hope you like them. Let me know what you think. I have Gunman's Gamble as one half of an Ace Double, but I haven't read it yet.
ReplyDelete