DIVIn Spain for a wedding, Drum must rescue the kidnapped bride/div DIVAlthough a fugitive from twenty-six world governments, Axel Spade has minimal trouble crossing the border into Spain. Though briefly arrested, the guards let him go when they learn the identity of his future father-in-law: Colonel Santiago Sotomayor, whose name can open the lock of any Spanish dungeon. And so Spade and his best man, Washington PI Chester Drum, cross the frontier./divDIV /divDIVSotomayor is not thrilled to see his daughter become the sixth Mrs. Spade, but he has given his begrudging consent. The wedding party comes off like any jet-set gathering, complete with one of the fiancée’s ex-lovers making threats against Spade’s life. But one key piece never arrives: the bride. She has been kidnapped, and to get her back, Drum and Spade will pit their wits against the toughest thugs and slipperiest bureaucrats that Fascist Spain has to offer./div

DIVDrum confronts a senator to save the life of a drunken old friend/div DIVWhen Chester Drum knew him, Jack Morley was a Washington player, just a few promotions away from becoming Secretary of State. A bad divorce and a nervous breakdown later, Morley has hit rock bottom, and works in Paris for the Army ghoul squad, confirming the deaths of World War II soldiers long ago reported missing in action. Morley is content to spend the rest of his life wallowing in the bottom of a Pernod bottle, until word gets out that he is blackmailing a US senator—an accusation that could cost him his life./divDIV /divDIVThough disgusted by his old friend’s drunkenness, Drum agrees to make Morley’s case to the senator. Blackmailer or no, Morley has stumbled onto a conspiracy that dates back to the end of the war. If Drum can’t get to the bottom of it, Morley won’t be the only one to die./div

DIVProtecting an actor takes Drum into the seedy underworld of psychedelia/div DIVTerminal illness and regret go hand-in-hand. Two months ago, Amos Littlejohn was in the prime of life, and had plenty of energy to be enraged when his pregnant daughter was abandoned by her husband, matinee idol Ahmed Shiraz. Now stricken with leukemia, Littlejohn is near death, and beginning to regret taking out a contract on the actor’s life./divDIV /divDIVHe hires international private eye Chester Drum to call off the hit and protect Shiraz until his life is safe. On his first night on the job, Drum’s partner takes a shotgun blast meant for the actor. Wanting nothing more than to wring Shiraz’s neck, Drum follows him to Europe, where he must contend with assassins, beatniks, and the powerful effects of an experimental drug called LSD./div

DIVA sadistic KGB colonel hires Drum to locate a dead man/div DIVAxel Spade would not have liked the way he died. An international fugitive, Spade would have preferred being gored by a bull or gunned down by Interpol to dying quietly in his bed. But a weak heart claimed him in his sleep, and so Chester Drum, Washington PI and the closest thing Spade had to a friend, scatters his ashes in the Atlantic./divDIV /divDIVDrum’s old flame, Marianne Baker, is by his side, but she leaves before grief has a chance to reignite their faded passion. That night, Drum is awoken by a KGB operative who has kidnapped Marianne. Axel Spade is alive, the agent insists, and he wants Drum to find him. To save Marianne, Drum will do the impossible, and bring Axel Spade back from the dead./div

DIVAn old flame’s fiancé is missing, and only Drum can save him from the Soviets/div DIVChester Drum will never love another woman the way he loves Marianne. After years of on-and-off romance, he tells her that his work as a private detective is too dangerous for him to ever marry, so she ends the affair and moves to West Berlin, to report on the Cold War from its front lines. There she falls in love with Quentin Hammond, ace foreign correspondent, and Drum is happy for her until her new man disappears behind the Iron Curtain. She telegraphs for help, and Drum is on the next plane./divDIV /divDIVHammond was close to winning the scoop of the century, by cooperating with an exiled East German dissident to tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall and free thousands of people from the other side. Before they could complete their audacious scheme, though, the Stasi kidnapped them. Only Drum has the skills to go behind the wall and return with the man who’s stolen the woman he loves./div

From 1968 to 1977, Spain experienced a boom in horror-movie production under a restrictive economic system established by the country’s dictator, Francisco Franco. Despite hindrance from the Catholic Church and Spanish government, which rigidly controlled motion picture content, hundreds of horror films were produced during this ten-year period. This statistic is even more remarkable when compared with the output of studios and production companies in the United States and elsewhere at the same time. What accounts for the staggering number of films, and what does it say about Spain during this period? In Sex, Sadism, Spain, and Cinema: The Spanish Horror Film, Nicholas G. Schlegel looks at movies produced, distributed, and exhibited under the crumbling dictatorship of General Franco. The production and content of these films, the author suggests, can lead to a better understanding of the political, social, and cultural conditions during a contentious period in Spain’s history. The author addresses the complex factors that led to the “official” sanctioning of horror films—which had previously been banned—and how they differed from other popular genres that were approved and subsidized by the government. In addition to discussing the financing and exhibiting of these productions, the author examines the tropes, conventions, iconography, and thematic treatments of the films. Schlegel also analyzes how these movies were received by audiences and critics, both in Spain and abroad. Finally, he looks at the circumstances that led to the rapid decline of such films in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By examining how horror movies thrived in Spain during this decade, this book addresses a sorely neglected gap in film scholarship and also complements existing literature on Spanish national cinema. Sex, Sadism, Spain, and Cinema will appeal to fans of horror films as well as scholars of film history, European history, genre studies, and cultural studies.

DIVA missing politician sucks Drum into the three-ring circus of Cold War Germany/divDIV On the eve of becoming a vice-presidential candidate, Fred Severing vanishes in Germany, where he made his name twelve years earlier during the madness that followed World War II. To find the American, his party hires globe-trotting private detective Chester Drum, and it isn’t long before Drum’s investigation lands him in the Rhine River along with an elderly war criminal. /divDIV /divDIVDrum is meeting with Wilhelm Rust, a mid-level ex-Nazi, when Communist spies storm their boat. Drum jumps into the river, taking Rust with him, and inadvertently saves the ex-Nazi’s life. His investigation may be all wet, but Drum isn’t one to quit. Finding Severing will mean lying to West Germans, East Germans, and Nazis, and perfecting the triple-cross that is the favorite pastime of European Cold Warriors. /div