Puppet On A Chain – Alistair MacLean, 1969 ★★★

 A Nastier Sort of Thrill Ride

Alistair MacLean knew how to write exciting adventure stories. Deep into the second decade of his bestselling career, he had it down to a formula. Kick things off with a deadly encounter in chapter one, keep raising the odds in every chapter, and never let up on the wisecracks.

Interpol agent Paul Sherman has just arrived in Amsterdam and before he can even leave Schiphol Airport he has already witnessed the gunning down of his main contact, been knocked half-unconscious by an assassin, tangled with a mysterious woman, and clashed with local authorities who can’t believe he’s a lawman.

“Check whatever you like with whoever you like,” he tells a dubious police officer. “I suggest you start with Colonel van de Graaf at the Central HQ.”

“You know the Colonel?”

“It's just some name I picked out of my head. You’ll find me at the bar.”

Re-reading these MacLean books decades after picking them up as a kid, it surprised me how humorous they are, their first-person narrations brimming with sarcastic whimsy. It surprised me here especially, as however true to MacLean’s light-entertainment formula, Puppet On A Chain is one of his darkest thrillers, with a higher-than-normal body count that includes many good guys.

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport as it appeared in the late 1960s, where Puppet On A Chain begins. Sherman, we learn early on, is a nervous passenger from surviving an air crash that left his face deeply scarred. "I don't think your plastic surgeon was really trying," he is told.
Postcard above from https://www.flickr.com/photos/103688802@N02/51922925295

The subject is the drug trade, Amsterdam being a magnet for recreational users sliding into harder substances, specifically heroin. Sherman’s assignment is to ignore the sellers and go after the main supplier. He explains this to a Dutch police officer:

We break them up and the next distribution ring will be driven so far underground that we’ll never find it. As it is, we can pick them up when and if we want to. The thing we really want to find out is how the damned stuff gets in – and who’s supplying it.”

The entire book is set over just three days, which hardly makes sense given how many rocks Sherman manages to uncover. Sherman’s investigatory method is likewise implausible. He ventures out alone at night to see who follows him so he can rough them up for information. By “rough up,” I mean push them off balconies or drown them in canals.

At one point, Sherman explains his working method as pure provocation, going after suspects in hopes they will make a move against him so he can then really work them over. Amassing evidence for use in a trial doesn’t seem to interest him.

Sherman’s rogue manner is at least mitigated by characteristic levity:

“We do play rough, don’t we?” he whispered. Junkies are great patronisers of the violent cinema and their dialogue is faultless.

“Rough?” I was surprised. “Oh, dear me, no. Later we play rough. If you don’t talk.” Maybe I went to the same cinema as he did.

The canals of Amsterdam figure quite prominently in Puppet On A Chain. "Please do not try to provoke too many people in Amsterdam," Sherman is warned. "We have too many canals."
Image from https://canalsofamsterdam.com/canal-district/

One point in Puppet On A Chain’s favor is MacLean’s investment in his setting. Amsterdam really comes alive in his descriptions: the weather, the architecture, the night wind blowing off the Zuider Zee and chilling Sherman as he clings to the roof of a coaster’s pilot house.

Poor Sherman gets beaten to a pulp through the course of the novel. This is a regular element of the MacLean formula where a hero has to earn his way to the finish line with brutal treatment. This of course makes for a satisfying windup when the hero inevitably turns the tables on his abusers.

Here I think MacLean overdoes it, not only because the physical punishment Sherman endures is so excessive even by the author’s standards, but because it begs the question how the guy keeps getting free.

In the last three chapters alone, I counted four times where Sherman is taken prisoner by the bad guys, four times when a simple bullet to the head would have ended things. One even congratulates himself on avoiding the trope of explaining his diabolical plan:

“Classically, my dear Sherman, when a person is in your position and has lost out and is about to die, it is customary for a person in my position to explain in loving detail, just where the victim went wrong. But apart from the fact that your list of blunders is so long as to be tedious to enumerate, I simply can’t be bothered.”

The ancient Dutch custom of wimple-clad women laying out haybales becomes transformed into a macabre rite of death in one of Puppet On A Chain's signature set-pieces. The question seems to be not who is in on this conspiracy, but who isn't.
Postcard by M. ten Kale from https://www.etsy.com/listing/4334386748/antique-dutch-postcard-haymaking-in

But since he obeys the trope of letting Sherman live, the story continues.

Until the last three chapters, in which nearly all of Sherman’s allies die horribly or else turn traitor, Puppet On A Chain manages to be an absorbing read. Twists and turns come hard and often, but with an earned quality about them. There is a mystery about how the drugs are being moved right under police noses which is effectively developed, and several nifty action setpieces.

I especially enjoyed a brief episode where Sherman is racing across the roofs of a warehouse district, sliding across rain-soaked tiles to sneak up on a villain from behind. Sherman’s ability to keep finding his way in and out of trouble helps keep Puppet On A Chain riveting.

A movie adaptation of Puppet On A Chain in 1971 is known by many for a long motorboat chase that startled many moviegoers at the time. The irony is there is no such motorboat chase in the original novel, one of several liberties the filmmakers took.
Image from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066258/mediaviewer/rm1942116864/

Still, you see some of the twists coming and wonder why Sherman keeps missing them. He calls himself out on this several times, an annoying narrative foreshadowing that faithful MacLean readers will recognize as another formula excess of other books, way overdone here:

“God only knows I make more mistakes than you do.” I did, and I was making one of my biggest then: I should have listened more closely to what the girls were saying.

The “girls” are Sherman’s Interpol assistants, a rookie on loan from the French government named Belinda and the more experienced Maggie, with whom Sherman has a strong enough bond to banter freely. Otherwise the guy is rather high-handed with his help, who are depicted more in the manner of giggly interns than police operatives. It was still the 1960s, but MacLean’s patronizing way of describing the women is not only cringey but robs the characters of any real interest.

What does make Puppet On A Chain stand out is its harder tone, and how that gradually seeps into the heart of the story. The title image of a child’s doll dangling from an iron noose is often repeated, until finally the dangling figure is no longer a doll. Many people, we learn, have been transformed into half-dead puppets by a fatal need for a fix.

MacLean at his typewriter in a pensive mood. His interest in writing books waxed and waned depending on his finances. By Puppet On A Chain his interest was more in turning his novels into producible scripts and successful movies. This had been a gold mine for him in the 1960s, but began drying up in the 1970s.
Image from https://www.alex.se/lexicon/article/maclean-alistair?lang=en

All this made me wonder if MacLean encountered any close personal relationships affected by drug use, as the villains are portrayed as alternately ragged, vile, and thoroughly loathsome, killing people not only to protect their business or dispose of deadbeat customers but for the pure joy of it. Even the Nazis in The Guns Of Navarone don’t project this level of malice.

A Goodreads review of Puppet On A Chain describes it as “seat-belt reading,” which comes nearer to the truth than the reviewer perhaps knew. MacLean’s novels were bestsellers in their day, especially at airports, where travelers picked them up for something to take their mind off a long flight. In this sense, it’s hard to rate the novel as less than anything but a success.

You read it and find yourself turning pages marveling at the many implausibilities. Next thing you know, the book’s nearly half over and you can’t wait to finish it. MacLean has done his job again.