Professional Tennis, Amateur Spying: Jack M. Bickham’s Brad Smith Thrillers
The six Brad Smith espionage thrillers,
published by Tor between 1989 and 1994, are Jack Bickham’s most mature work. The
critics were enthusiastic. The New York Times’ thriller review columnist, Newgate
Callendar, was a consistent champion. He compared the Smith books to Dick
Francis’s mysteries: “Bickham is doing for tennis what Dick Francis has done
for horse racing.” He called the books, “skillful,” “smooth,” “highly
enjoyable,” and “exciting.” Wes Lukowsky, in Booklist, called the series
“deftly plotted.” Publishers Weekly, in its review of The Davis Cup
Conspiracy, said, “Bickham deftly flips from tennis lore to the spying game
in his customary style, nailing another ace.”
Brad is forty years-old and a knee surgery
past being a competitive tennis player, but in his prime he was one of the best
in the world. He is remembered by fans for losing what would have been his
second Wimbledon Championship to Bjorn Borg, when an easy dropshot caught the
net cord and heartbreakingly fell back into Brad’s court. When he was a regular
on the big-time tennis circuit, the CIA used Brad as a “delivery boy” in places
where tennis players were welcome, but intelligence assets were scarce. In the
first book, Tiebreaker, Brad thinks his spying days are as far gone as are
his playing days until the CIA enlists him to help Danisa Lechova, a
Yugoslavian tennis phenom, defect to the West during the Belgrade International.
When the plan to exfiltrate Danisa from Yugoslavia blows up, the Company backs
away and leaves Danisa in the cold. Brad, against orders, takes matters into
his own hands.
Brad’s disdain for what he thinks are stupid
orders, like leaving Danisa in Belgrade to fend for herself, make him a pariah
within the agency. His access to the international tennis scene and the ability
of Collie Davis, Brad’s CIA contact, to talk him into almost anything keeps the
agency coming back again and again. As for Brad, he is an uneasy participant.
He doesn’t trust Langley, and as an idealist, he is uncomfortable with the
CIA’s often unsavory work around the world, but the same “embarrassingly
old-fashioned” patriotism that pulled Brad into Vietnam in the 1960s motivates
him – often begrudgingly – to help when he can.
The
series straddled the fall of Soviet communism, which forced Bickham to change
the series from its Cold War espionage roots (where the Soviets are behind
everything bad) to the more nebulous threats that arose from a fractured world.
The first three books fit nicely into the Cold War mold: Tiebreaker, as
discussed above, is an East to West defection story; Dropshot is about a
Soviet plot to steal western technology; and Overhead is about a Soviet operation
in a top-secret military lab. The final three novels, lacking the Soviet
presence, are about terrorism (Breakfast at Wimbledon), a Vietnam
massacre (Double Fault), and a military coup in Venezuela (The Davis
Cup Conspiracy).
While
Bickham adjusted the story types after the Soviet Union’s demise, most
everything else about the books remained the same. Brad’s reflective and
likable character, the suspense, the action, and the narrative style. The
tennis stayed, too. The jumble of real-life stars – John McEnroe and Martina
Navratilova, Billie Jean King and Jimmy Connors – mixing with their fictional
counterparts. The laconic and tense descriptions of match play. Brad’s
struggles with the women in his life. The shifting morality of the bosses in
Langley. The viciousness and amorality of the villains.
The
only problem with Bickham’s brilliant Brad Smith series: There should have been
a few more books.
|
a little more about the Brad Smith books… ·
The
six Brad Smith books are: Tiebraker (Tor, 1989) Dropshot (Tor, 1990) Overhead (Tor, 1991) Breakfast at Wimbledon (Tor, 1991) Double Fault (Tor, 1993) The Davis Cup Conspiracy (Forge, 1994) “Professional Tennis, Amateur Spying: Jack M. Bickham’s Brad Smith Thrillers” is an excerpt from Killers, Crooks, & Spies: Jack Bickham’s Fiction (2021). Visit Amazon's page for Killers, Crooks, & Spies: Jack Bickham’s Fiction |
Copyright © 2021 by Ben Boulden / All Rights
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