The Phantom - The Assassins!

The Assassins is the fourteenth installment of "The Story of the Phantom" and was written by Carson Bingham for a 1975 release. Under George Wilson cover filled with arcane images, this was adapted from "The Thuggees" by Lee Falk and Wilson McCoy from way back in 1949. 

This one begins with wee a bit of humor when the Phantom finds a young woman dipping her toes in the waters around the Skull Cave and finds out that Guan has plotted to arrange for him to get a mate. This prompts the Ghost Who Walks to head to America to find his true love Diana Palmer who it turns out is flying to meet him. Her flight is hijacked by a baddie named Kali with the intention of kidnapping her and just as soon as the Phantom arrives, he's on the case of rescuing her from a murderous gang called "The Assassins", a remnant of the ancient Thuggee cult from the Middle East. She is taken to a remote island and held captive in an ancient Crusader castle. The attempts to collect a ransom for Diana are foiled by the Phantom, but just as soon as that happens a new wrinkle appears. 

Prince Tydore of Tydia and his daughter Naja are the next victims of the cult, and the Phantom tries to stop these predations in hopes of finding a clue to Diana's whereabouts. There is much hemming and hawing and a great deal of plotting by the assassins who we know by names such as Curly, Crewcut, and Pinhead. Eventually the Phanom takes Naja to the Skull Cave for her safety then he pretends to be the King and is mistakenly kidnapped by the villains and taken to the island where Diana is being held. But before he can rescue her, he must confront a deadly gorilla named Toto and survive the blades of a demonic idol.

The Phantom in this story is quite fallible, quite unlike his presentation in other stories. In fact, he makes so many mistakes in his tactics that I began to wonder if Diana was doomed myself. Nesting the one kidnap story inside the other created a pacing problem in the small novel in that we lose track of Diana's story for a very long time. And the "Assassins" for their part seem only capable of killing their own when captured. Often, they capture people when it seemed to me killing them would have been more prudent. I know that in a novel of this kind such random murder would be difficult to promote, but it does undermine the real nature of their threat. This is a swift breezy read, ideal for a single sitting But, it's low on the list of Avon novels to date.

There's one more to go when the Phantom must confront Lee Falk's own The Curse of the Two-Headed Bull in the final of Avon's "The Story of the Phantom" novels. 

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