The Set-Up: It opens: “It was a typical spring morning in New York City.” Shortly thereafter the oddity on a Manhattan street of a phone ringing without a visible phone around. We meet the mighty protagonist, described as slight and neatly dressed, in Maxwell Smart.  He takes the call in a phone booth, is interrupted by a woman who then calls the police, the policeman talks to the Chief and then dismisses the woman who exasperatedly lets out a “Mad!” and we are off.  Max gets his non-branded sports car from a parking garage, fires off artillery by mistake and heads to Control Headquarters.Get Smart! was released as a tie-in for the debut of the TV Show and came out before anyone would have a sense of the flow of the show, so the book may well have been an introduction too.  The author, William Johnston as noted above, sets his story in NYC which would indicate that he likely had not seen any finished episodes of the show and wrote the book the summer before the show aired, again probably off of a show description and maybe some draft scripts.  That’s all conjecture, but as he would align the books to the TV show more and more as the book series progressed we can assume that he was not working with a fully realized and finalized profile.  It might also be that the book was not carefully vetted as it was a marketing item and a way to move some branded product and get a little buzz going about a new series.  As it would turn out the book was quite successful for this genre and would lead to a nine book series over the next four years, all books written by Johnston.  There was even a comic book series which I have not read and do not include with this series of reviews.  

After going into the NYC Control HQ with the lead of corridors, closing doors, telephone booth, and secret pass knock on the Chief’s door, we get to the assignment.  Max, being next due for an assignment, gets him the call.  The plot is given in the Chief’s office through a basic outline as would be the formula for all of Johnston’s books in this series, we get the assignment, the location, why it threatens the fate of the world, who he will work with, and who he will need to look out for. For this one, Rose Blossom was a simple checkout clerk at the A&P when she attempted to put together a build-at-home computer kit for her nephew’s birthday.  The attractive Miss Blossom instead created Fred, a robot who may or may not look like Rock Hudson and talk like the old Charlie Chan movies Miss Blossom watched while building him, but was definitely named after her late cocker spaniel and seemed to have achieved the singularity.  He can talk like old Charlie Chan reruns but otherwise makes the same sound when thinking: peep-a-dotta, poop-a-dotta, dippa-dotta-boop.  Control had a note where Fred says that since he is equipped with the knowledge to allow one nation to control all the others, he was running into hiding. Max would have to find him before Control's nemesis did.  KAOS?  No, not in this book.  Here the nemesis is a KAOS clone known as FLAG, which stood for Free Lance Agents Amalgamated, and became FLAG because they have a problem with spelling.  And if you’re missing KAOS, never fear, this would be FLAG’s sole appearance and KAOS would reign for the other eight. So, with that as the set-up you get a sense of the level of comedy and intellectual humor that would follow.

This book does not have Agent 99 in it, the Chief only makes an appearance at the beginning and end, as well as frequent cameos via Max’s shoe phone.  The shoe phone gag leads off with Max getting the assistance of a NYC police officer when a woman thinks he’s “mad” for talking into his shoe.  The cost of this assistance is the officer making a half hour shoe call to his mom in Brooklyn.  Control Headquarters is in the city, hidden away and Max and the Chief having trouble with the secret code of the day is established.  And this being 1965 there is even a Beatles reference.  Upon learning his assignment, Max is teamed with Fang, Agent K-13, a Control Agent dog who Max communicates with by being able to translate his “rorfff” – always a single “rorfff” and always translated by Max into long explanations.  Fang appears to be smarter than Smart but has the fatal flaw of running and hiding at the hint of danger.

Along the way Max touts his agent intuition on being able to ferret out FLAG agents, but this intuition is invariably incorrect. We are also introduced and reintroduced to a Russian tourist named Boris and a ‘beautiful brunette’ named Noel .  Both keep reappearing, and in a not-so-spoiler kind of way, both are FLAG agents.  They appear to always be a step ahead of Smart with plans which fall apart and fortuitous escapes by the trio of Smart, Blossom, and Fang. Boris and Noel  keep reappearing, with Max never doubting that Boris is telling the truth about being a tourist from Zinzinotti, Alabammy, and Noel  being someone that looks familiar - something about Paree, Illinois and the Summer of ‘61 and orange ping pong balls - but not enough for Max to connect the dots each time she shows up in a new spot.  Author William Johnston lets the reader know the gag by describing her as “looking a lot like…” each time she reappears.  Max plays his hunches and breaks into the U.N. in the offices for the country of Zamporangowatsiabunalumpornaland and then Zambrosia, without finding Fred there.  One step ahead, Blossom advises they should check the much more appropriately named Fredonia for the robot. Fred is spotted and slips in and out of the possession of the agents, offers some Chan-level wisdom, but mostly wants to be allowed to be left alone despite the bribes offered by the agents: Noel  offering him love and romance, Max offering him money (around $14) and Boris offering him a comfy gig in Siberia.  Max’s shoe phone also makes multiple appearances to save him, and this book establishes the book series’ recurring joke about Max having ongoing arguments with the operator that answers the phone.

Did I mention the U.N.?  that’s where they first run across Fred and the protagonists, and after that there are runs through New York; a bar, a backroom casino, apartments, office buildings, and a few trips in the East River, including a ride with a double agent in a submarine that was made of orange ping pong balls.  Oh yeah, the orange ping pong balls, and Max’s case from the summer of ’61.  That’s a running gag too. We learn of the first two rules of secret agents: 1) never leave your code book at the lunch counter, and 2) No names.  The would you believe gag comes in too, working from the battalion of troops from the Fifth Armored Division to fifty motorcycle cops and a troop of Boy Scouts to a troop of Girl Scouts armed with rock-hard girl scout cookies.

In the end, we get the sense Mr. johnston reached his 150 page word equivalent, and the whole thing runs out of steam at an IBM clone company’s NYC headquarters, TC&S (Typewriters, Computers, and Stuff) where Fred worked his way to CEO in one day and Noel is his assistant.  In an act of his humanoid singularity (my words), Fred rejects the varied offers of Boris, Max, and Noel, and chooses to not help one nation but help all nations by returning to the UN.  As is the wont of these types of books, the wrap up is done within a couple pages so before you can ask “What in the name of Greta Thunberg is going on here?” the book is done, Max is calling the Chief to tell him Fred got away but won’t be in the hands of the bad guys, and Max shakes hands with the FLAG agents (or ex-agents as the case may be, but hey, they were free lance, anyway..) in a end-of-the-day clock punch similar to Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog in the old Looney Tunes cartoons.

Final tie-up; Miss Blossom is flirtatious throughout, looking for a single guy who looks like Rock Hudson, ah, the innocent 60’s.  She makes passes Max’s way but he’s all business and at the end she decides to desert him in New York City.  Max was too focused to notice the women he’s on the adventures with is a recurring theme too, and the Max Smart in this book establishes much of the character that would follow him through the series.  I’d peg him as dumber here than in other books, there are the occasional deductions that worked in the TV series, but downplayed here; everyone appears smarter than Smart.  I’d make an assumption that this book may have been written before the TV series character was established and Johnston was working off the basic shorthand: “Smart is dumb” and went with it from there.

Overall: Plot was there like linguini, long but thin, and there were laughs along the way. But there was a lot of mis-alignment with the TV series. Sure, we had the shoe phone, the interaction with the Chief, and Max’s skills, but in hindsight it reads like a fishing experiment with one arm tied behind his back. In general, the book is a spy spoof, a satire of bureaucracies and those within them.  The gag is they are super secret and have “fate of the world” implications but the people in these roles are not the international suave characters from a James Bond movie, they are the good guys and bad guys more likely to be reflected in Adam West’s Bat-man or more accurately, an episode of The Monkees.  And their good/evil organizations are run by the same mundane rule books that the local accounting department has. Or again, more accurately, the DMV. That juxtaposition is the joke and Johnston works very hard to keep tossing in moving plot points, as if he was delivering all of this in an action thriller format.  No series spoiler, but the pacing would drop as the books progress, Max becomes more of a mirror of the TV show, and Agent 99 fills the female foil role which is occupied early in the series by someone he’s trying to protect.

I will hit on another assumption; he was feeling his way around on the character development but was also getting input from the show side to make sure certain touch points were included. So that is where the balance occurs; as straight spy satire, unconnected to the TV show, this one is a good effort but just does not balance the absurdity with the thrill ride.  And the missing ingredient is the “Get Smart Universe” which would make all the pieces fit.  That’s the drawback; much of this reads well without a visually imaginative focus.  There is a lot in the book, and it keeps throwing stuff at you in lieu of a clear linear plot path.  Good, but it would get better as Johnston was more certain of the terrain.

By the Numbers:

Pages: 9-159

Chapters: 10

Control Agents: Fang (K-13)

Non-Control Side Kick: Miss Rose Blossom: A&P check-out counter, creator of Fred

Baddies: FLAG (“Free Lance Agents Amalgamated”): Noel and Boris

R&D Gadgets:

Operator Gag: Calls police on him in NYC.  Also offers a sweepstakes trip-to-Europe prize.