Passport to Peril

by Robert B. Parker

Book Overview

An American buys a black-market passport to get into post-war Budapest, only to find himself mistaken for the murdered man the passport belonged to and on the run with the dead man's beautiful... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0843961198
• ISBN13: 9780843961195
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Hard Crime Case
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.9" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

not 'the' parker--but that's ok

the book is a good one for its times. and for those who are upset about it not being the other parker.....it clearly states that on the cover. don't blame the pub. for your mistake.

Pre-Cold War

Long before Smiley and other Cold War characters took the stage, Robert B. Parker wrote a spy story set in Russian-occupied Budapest just after World War II. No, not the Parker who created Spenser, but an adventurous wartime foreign correspondent of the same name. It was published in 1951 and has now been reprinted by Hard Case Crime. It tells the story of John Stodder, a newspaperman whose brother was lost in an air raid over Budapest toward the end of the war, and he wants to find out what happened to him. However, the Russians wouldn't allow him a visa, and he enters the country with a supposedly forged passport of a Swiss watch-and-clock exporter and even purchases the man's seat on the Orient Express when he doesn't show up. From this point, the complications grow and the confusion mounts with competing interests attempting to gain access to information they think the protagonist brought with him from Vienna, the starting point for the trip. Russians, Americans, even defeated Nazis vie in an exciting chase to the end. Written with verve, the book certainly set a standard for those of the genre to follow, and is recommended.

The other Robert B. Parker

For those who see Passport to Peril by Robert B. Parker, the first impression would be it was by the author of the popular Spenser series. Both front and back covers, therefore, make it clear that this is a different author by the same name, a minor pulp fiction writer who came out with just a couple novels in the early 1950s before dying at the relatively early age of 49. Fortunately, the publisher Hard Case Crime specializes in re-releasing these long out-of-print novels, giving Parker a new, if posthumous, audience. The narrator of Passport to Peril is John Stodder who is on his way to post WWII Budapest on the Orient Express. He is traveling on a false passport, intent on sneaking into the city to track down his missing brother. Into his train car bursts Maria Torres, in fear for her life after her boss has been killed. As Stodder quickly realizes, the murdered man has the name on his fake passport, putting him at risk from both the law and the killers. He jumps off the train with Maria, but his effort to avoid capture is only briefly successful; soon, they are the captives of the evil Dr. Schmidt, a former Nazi who is after a list that Maria's boss had and which Stodder hid before his capture. The two are separated, and Stodder soon is able to escape with the assistance of a husband-and-wife team of American Intelligence agents. They are interested in the list, while Stodder is interested in saving Maria and finding out what happened to his brother. Fortunately, their interests coincide, and the three will team up to try and stop Schmidt and his cohorts. Published originally in 1951, Passport to Peril is one of the earliest Cold War thrillers. It is a decent enough book, though the plot can sometimes be a little muddled. Overall, however, Parker's book is a nice lightweight thriller: not necessarily a book worth waiting almost six decades to be reprinted, but at least a pleasant diversion.

Mayhem, intrigue, and coincidences

This month's Hard Case reprint is a 1950s' espionage thriller set in post-war Hungary. The author's name is Robert B. Parker, but not THAT Robert P. Parker. This Parker, as we learn from the book's afterword (penned by the author's daughter), was a wartime correspondent and quite possibly an OSS operative. He lived fast and died relatively young. We therefore see that "Passport to Peril" is somewhat autobiographical in nature. The plot is rather heavily dependent on coincidence. The narrator, John Stodder, is a reporter and World War II veteran trying to smuggle himself behind the Iron Curtain -- not on any official American business, but rather to find out his brother, MIA since the war. That's the back story, anyway. Stodder's ill-gotten passport turns out to belong to a murdered Swiss businessman who had connections to A) Russian authorities, B) conspiring ex-Nazis, and C) Stodder's missing brother. That's a lot of balls in the air for Parker to juggle, and perhaps the three plot threads turn out to be a little too closely connected. Still, the characters we meet are colorful, and Hungary in the 1950s is not a locale on which we've already burned out from too many Ian Fleming novels. The book reads fast and the ending is appropriately bloody for a novel steeped in this much intrigue.