The Set-Up:  

To align with the television show, this book begins in the apartment that Max and 99 share, as a now-married couple.  The Chief is there going over the assignment for them.  As to also  align with the television show, there are multiple traps hidden around the apartment, which The Chief keeps receiving the brunt end of as they go off due to his own routine behaviors.  

The Chief’s message is that they’ve received a secret communication from KAOS that their top assassins have been called to Washington DC to participate in a sort of seminar at an undisclosed meeting place.  They do know that the assassins will be on a train leaving Washington for New York City, but whether they go  through to NYC or switch trains or transportation methods along the way, Control does not know.  The prize target for Control is one specific assassin, Arbuthnot, their top international assassin who will lecture the top US assassins on recent advancements in the assassination game. They want him alive for reprogramming (Control reprograms but KAOS brainwashes). Get Arbuthnot and they can reprogram him and learn all of his KAOS assassination secrets.  The Chief makes this clear: find them all, but focus on Arbuthnot, and take them alive.  To this end, The Chief hands Max the world’s only Coolidge-head penny.  On it Coolidge has a headdress of feathers and upside down it looks like Abe Lincoln standing on his head.  The penny is a ‘communication neutralizer neutralizer,’ which is good because if Max tried to contact Control he would likely be thwarted by KAOS’ communication neutralizer.  So, this neutralizes that, because when it is rubbed it will send a signal to Control and they will be able to locate Max and then bring agents to capture the assassins.  The Chief suffers a few more wounds by traps in the Smart household and leaves Max and 99, as they prepare to pack for the trip.  The assignment is a joint one, which is never explained, but just a given, that they would work on it together.  They find the train, the 1476 Miami Beach Local which is the train to New York City, because with the winter schedule all trains go to Miami Beach.

Story:  This would be the final book in the Get Smart run by Johnston and the cracks are still showing.  On the plus side, he is used to the material and is fully in the voice of the television show.  But plot wise, we would need to put ourselves in the late 60’s for an explanation to a plot that ends up being more reflective in an episode of Scooby-Doo.  The train ride allows Smart to meet some colorful characters, like a Senator and a "lady wrestling" group.  Deciding who is and who is not KAOS gets easier as all people in line for the dining car walk through the door to the dining car and fall presumably to their end through the open door to the ground.  Max and 99 figure out the trap before perishing and go to tell the conductor who pulls a gun on them and leads them to the engineering car, which has the train being piloted by none other than Arbuthnot.  A couple things are pointed out here; the KAOS agents are all taking turns playing engineers, even assassins are kids at heart, and KAOS takes exception to Max deriding their choice of timed dining car door to eliminate all other drivers. They feel hurt, the plan was quite detailed and 99 says Max should apologize for the slight, and he does.  The bigger lesson is upon meeting Arbuthnot that he is a germaphobe, he faints at the sight of Control agents, due to their germs.  This would be running theme through the book, as well as copious use of hand cleaners and other antibacterial items including spraying Max and 99 with disinfectant.  Which is a tad bit coincidental to be reading during the whole Covid lock down and pandemic.  Another final recurrence was Max’s insistence on flipping the Coolidge head penny and nearly losing it on the train as he would eventually drop it.  99 is aghast at the cavalier nature he treated the most important possession but Max stubbornly continued the flipping.

The train does take a stop, at an abandoned old mining town, the ghost town of the title of the book. The town is named Los Angeles, which was given by a bunch of folks from Iowa and Nebraska and then moved west and took the name out there. 

Max and 99 are doomed to their death and brought to the saloon in the ghost town, across from the hotel.  There they meet Arbuthnot again and 99 tells Max to rub the coin as they can have Control pinpoint their location.  Max defers, saying that since they noticed them as Control agents this location could be a trap, or an interim stop to their final destination.  That may be sound logic but does not excuse Max deciding to flip the coin while meeting with Arbuthnot.  As it turns out, Max drops it again and as it rolls along the wood floor Arbuthnot orders the others to spray it and its germs, and when they do the coin falls beneath the floorboards. A chunk of the remainder of the book is finding the coin.  But immediately Arbuthnot orders them eliminated and that is done via sending them to an old mine and dynamiting the entrance behind them.  It would be doom for Max and 99, but that’s the point where the book series attempts to get Fonize over that shark.  Yes, it is here where Max and 99 encounter a ghost.

So, nine books in, here we are.  Scooby-Doo and the ghost town.  A real ghost and his mule.  And not to throw the 50 year spoiler alert out there, but suffice to say, they never disprove the ghosts, they’re real.  They are briefly provided backstory and motivation.  The prospector and mule were trapped in the mine looking for the gold and when he got to the pearly gates the “fella’ there asked where the gold was, he replied he had not found it, the fella called him a butterhead and said don’t come back until you’ve found the gold.  This makes the prospector suspicious of any one coming along and finding the gold ahead of him, so once Max explains they are  secret agents (“Like the Pinkertons”) and that by helping them they will be able to get rid of KAOS and keep the gold safe. The prospector is never given a name but the mule is, his name is Madame DuBarry, and there’s a story behind that too, but, oh, nevermind.  Suffice to say, the ghost and his ride are indeed ghosts and have the unfortunate   Achilles Heel of being unable to perfectly control when they appear and disappear; the prospector can disappear by waving his right arm and Madame DuBarry by swishing his tail.  They also were prospecting when they were trapped in the mine, and the prospector is worried about Max and 99 jumping their claim.  The story is that they died in the mine but were cast into roaming the mines for eternity or at least until they find the gold.  And the mule seems to understand them and has an attitude and his Hee Haws, like Fang’s barks, appear to be understood by the prospector and Max, at least at times.   They escape the KAOS-inspired rock slide by having the mule kick the slide clear.  This was after Max wasted a couple R&D gadgets, the first was a pellet bomb to be placed in keyholes, which Max threw away and stepped on and all it did was blast a hole in the ground.  The other was a skeleton key with a laser beam which could have helped if Max hadn’t discarded it, and then upon retrieving it because there is a laser beam got to it too late as the battery died.

Once the four of them (Max, 99, Prospector, and mule) are out they decide to set a camp in the nearby hills, some jokes about food, and as the prospector is leading them back down the hill he disappears when he waves them forward.  And then reappears, disappears again, and then the mule gets annoyed by Max and waves its tail to disappear.  As dawn breaks, Max and 99 find out they were already in the middle of the town, but are spotted by Arbuthnot on his morning jog, and try to escape him.  As Arbuthnot semi-predicts, Max leads 99 on a convoluted escape route through the town which ends up with them locking themselves in the jail.  Cue the sad trombone.  And so it goes like that; the mule appears to help bust them out of jail after a way too long discussion with the guard bringing them their meal.  Max offends the mule again and it disappears again,dropping them to the ground but then reappears.  Things go like that.  There is also a side conversation throughout the book about Max taking umbridge with 99’s “frankness’ when she questions one of Max’ dumb ideas.  They do make it to the saloon, but Max thinks he sees the penny under the floor in a part of the saloon far from where the penny actually dropped.  After a lot of noise and breaking a chair and other things to dislodge the floorboard Max sheepishly notes that what he saw was not Coolidge but rather a reflection of his own face from a long dropped pocket mirror. MAx then becomes convinced that there is something below the floor, he guesses a wine cellar and begins looking for a secret trap door - secret because if it wasn’t secret they would have found it.Unfortunately, all of Max’s stomping disturbed Arbuthnot during his morning seminar, Safe Cracking - A Moral Confrontation with the Establishment, and alerted them to come by.  Once recaptured, Max and 99 (Madame DuBarry had disappeared again, or as Max surmised, found the secret trap door) are led by Arbuthnot to the bank to be locked in the safe.  Before locking them in, Arbuthnot grills Max, thanks him for being the amusing entertainment for their seminar, that they were all laughing at his bumbling.  He locks Max and 99 in the dark vault and leaves.  The mule reappears shortly and after establishing that Max has either a vivid imagination or learned to interpret the mule’s hee-haw, they plan their escape. Max reasons that the vault is old and can be toppled and tries several times to break through the door, something the mule was going to do but waved its tail as he prepared to kick down the door and disappeared again.  After Max continually beat himself up slamming feutaly into the door, he leaned on the back wall and it crumbled down.  Free from the bank they see all the assassins go into the saloon and eavesdrop hearing Arbuthnot saying what Max identifies as a closing speech.

Max reasons that maybe there is not a wine cellar under the saloon but rather a vein of the gold mine.  So, they head back in and meet up with the prospector and mule.  Unfortunately, Max lights a lantern despite the prospectors warning and an explosion blocks their exit again.  “That’s how I got stuck in here.” the prospector laments, but then goes on a long speech about how nice it will be to have human company with him forever since they are now blocked in and unable to get out. They try to find their way under the saloon and the prospector is helping but not helping by sending them down wayward passages, and they pass the remains of many who perished in the mine; grim but attempted to be handled in a comedic manner (remains of as brass band that got trapped in the mine because they couldn’t march backwards…) Max confronts the prospector on his stalling and gives him the ultimate threat; “We will stop believing in you….and you know what happens to ghosts when people stop believing in them.”  The story reaches its denouement when they find themselves under the saloon sorting through thousands of lost pennies for the Coolidge Head Penny, when Max and 99 have the idea to stack the pennies, put the mule on top, have Max get on the mule, have the mule kick, and then Max will break through the floor.  The plan works as devised and Max and 99 climb out but the prospector and mule decide to remain in the mine.  The saloon is deserted, KAOS is gone, but in town they hear the train boarding back to DC; just in time they board it.  And we’re now in that 10 page range where William Johnston is the expert at wrapping up the whole thing.  And wrap it up he does, some action, some jokes, call backs and a big bow on the end.  After overpowering the conductor with a karaoke kick, Max and the assassins meet up in the lounge car and a pistol changes hands a few times, Arbuthnot is afraid of germs, but eventually (with two pages to go) has 99 and Max at gunpoint and the end is near.  Then they hear thunder, which grows louder and happens to be the lady wrestlers that took a tumble out the train at the beginning of the book. (we know how to take a fall…) they are seeking revenge on KAOS and beat the assassins to a pulp.  Max explains who they are, tells them that not only will the wrestlers not get sued, but will likely get a medal, and they happily volunteer to overpower the engineer and take them all back to DC.  Max and 99 get a chance to relax under the secure protection of the lady wrestlers and a couple paragraphs from the end all is happy.  But...then the prospector and mule reappear and say they want to go to DC too, and will live with Max and 99.  99 is not happy with this being the way to start their married life, sharing an apartment with ghosts, but Max advises it could be worse, it could be relatives.  And with that the long journey of William Johnston’s stories of the life of Maxwell Smart, comes to its conclusion.

Overall  

Yes, it was time to drop out with this book, not only would the show be going off the air soon, but any tie-in bump would be a decreasing gain for the Get Smart franchise.  Give Johnston credit, he keeps things moving along, this book does not re-tread on old grounds, it’s a new idea which as mentioned was straight out of Scooby-Doo.  Ghost town, ghosts, a salty prospector, and interaction with KAOS agents with quirks.  In this case the top assassin and his germ fears.  A funny way to end the series when reading it during a pandemic.  There are asides for Max and 99’s recent married life, and the usual odd references (Abbott And Costello meet the werewolf on the Planet of the Ants) which shows that Johnston was still in there swinging. And that random A&C reference was likely a quiet homage; perhaps Scooby-Doo’s popularity in 1969 was the publisher’s goal with this book, but Johnston executes the idea more like an Abbott and Costello ghost story.  But on the down side, the plot was skinny and there was a lot of padding, scenes and dialogue could have stood with a decent editor but even with the fluff it barely came in at the requisite number of pages. And not that a ghost story needs to stand up to the rigors of a detailed fact check, but by this point in the series Johnston drops a head scratcher but moves right along to the next thing.  I’m still wondering how KAOS got away with killing a train full of dignitaries with only the lady wrestlers surviving.  But, hey, let’s not have a few details get in the way of a good time.

And ultimately, to serve as a recap of the whole book series, that’s what this was, a good time.  The book approach is a slower payoff than an episode on TV but allows for more creativity and story-levels on order of a movie.  In the hands of Johnston you had a pro; the writing was creative and fresh, he displayed why he was a go-to for these types of assignments.  I  am no expert on all of the TV series episodes but the plots here were creative and stood alone and apart from the series. My personal favorite would go with And Loving It, a spirited adventure on an island in a mysterious castle, followed by the worldwide missions of The Perilous Pellets, the shipboard romp for the invisibility serum of Sorry Chief.  I can pick at dips in quality along the way, but if you’re in a vacation house and any one of these are stashed in a nightstand, they will be worth the lazy day or two they take to read. And if you have kids, read them to them or if they are over 10 have them read them, some of these things are dated, but they still deliver goofy, dependable fun.  As for William Johnston, glad to have the pleasure of meeting your whole series.  I can drop in on the Sweathog book next..

By the Numbers:

Pages: 7-154

Chapters: 11

Control Agents: Agent 99

Non-Control Side Kick:none - well, maybe the lady wrestlers

Non-Control Absent-minded Side-Kick:Ghost Prospector with ghost mule (Madame DuBarry) and ghostly lantern

Baddies: KAOS Arbuthnot, all of KAOS’ top US assassins

R&D Gadgets: Coolidge Head Penny as a communication neutralizer neutralizer, skeleton key with laser, keyhole explosive

Operator Gag:None! This one goes end to end without the operator, mostly due to the communications neutralizer.  

Review by Brian DiMarco

© 2020 Brian DiMarco