“In two top-drawer crime capers from 1959 and 1961, a fearless, wealthy crook attempts to pull off a multi-million-dollar heist, and a security guard tries to track down thieves and retrieve gate receipts stolen from a pro-amateur golf tournament.
The late John M. Flynn, who published under the names Jay Flynn and J.M. Flynn, was a prolific American author of crime and espionage novels, occasionally contributing Westerns using the house name Jack Slade. In a career spanning from the late fifties to the late seventies, Flynn penned somewhere in the region of thirty novels, mostly for Ace Books, Avon Publications, Leisure Books, and Belmont Tower.
A former US Army soldier and journalist, Flynn started out as a crime reporter for the Portland Express, also contributing to the San Jose Mercury and other California papers. He is perhaps best-known for his five satisfying adventure novels featuring the distinctive character McHugh, a rough, hard-drinking, two-fisted, Irish-American bar owner and secret agent.
McHugh aside, Flynn’s other notable success was his standalone novel The Action Man, a crime caper published by Avon in 1961 and adapted into the French film Le soleil des voyous (The sun of thugs), directed by Jean Delannoy in 1967. It’s a tough, lean, hard-hitting tale about a calculating businessman and his elaborate plan to make off with over two million dollars of Army payroll from a bank in northern California.”
Nicholas Litchfield’s review of The Action Man and Terror Tournament, a pair of scintillating gems pulled from Jay Flynn’s treasure trove of forgotten novels, is featured today in the Lancashire Post and syndicated to 20 newspapers in the UK. You can read the review here.