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The Man from U.N.C.L.E. #3

The man from U.N.C.L.E. No 3: the Copenhagen affair

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The photos had already cost one life...

...and as the men from U.N.C.L.E. saw them projected on a screen in Alexander Waverly's office, they realized they were seeing a new weapon which could mean the deaths of billions more. For those secret photos showed an awesome new THRUSH weapon in action - huge, silent aircraft so incredibly swift and maneuverable that no nation's defense system could intercept them!

Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

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About the author

John Oram

15 books2 followers
Working name of Welsh writer John Oram Thomas (1906-1992) for his two Ties in the Man from U.N.C.L.E. Television sequence The Copenhagen Affair (1965) and The Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair (1966), the latter – unusually – being set in Wales.

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5 stars
13 (8%)
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36 (22%)
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87 (54%)
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20 (12%)
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
Profile Image for Alaina.
7,261 reviews204 followers
November 11, 2020
I'm honestly not even sure why I bothered with book 3 when I didn't like the previous two. I will just blame a challenge for this entire thing. It's also weird on how I loved the movie, 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E' but despise the books. Maybe it's because they are so hard to find and then once I do get my hands on the book - I just get disappointed by everything.

The Copenhagen Affair took me a while to get in to. Luckily for me, it is a pretty short book so once things got somewhat entertaining/interesting - the book was basically over by then. Besides that, each book has it's fair share of action.. but then nothing really ever happens after that. Sure we get a villain and such but they lack evilness for me. Maybe it's just my dark soul but I expect more when it comes to villain's nowadays.

In the end, I really want Illya and Napoleon working together more. It's not fun when they are separated for most of the book because they are a great duo. Ugh, maybe I'll try the next book - who knows though..
Profile Image for Philip.
1,741 reviews108 followers
September 14, 2024
These things were published roughly quarterly, and along with the even worse monthly Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, I just ate them up as a twelve-year-old. I would say they haven't aged well, but the fact is they really stunk to begin with. Still, they're kind of fun to reread occasionally, and this one got off to a better-than-usual start with it's Danish setting. Oram obviously read a brochure or two about Denmark before writing this - probably more research than went into most of the books or even the show itself - but that good start goes downhill quickly as this sinks into the typical pattern of multiple escapes and captures, and outrageous (and outrageously thin) plot - THRUSH has developed a flying saucer!

There's never a point in seriously critiquing these books, but I found the bad guy here particularly disappointing. He's initially described as "the blackest-hearted devil that ever disgraced the mother that bore him," and not only a bad man but a madman. But then throughout the rest of the story he turns out to be quite a pleasant gentleman. Later on during the big attack, everyone is told that "whatever happens, Garbridge mustn't get away;" and so of course he does, to which Illya blandly responds, "ah well, you can't win 'em all." So is he a real threat or not? In the end, he escapes (again) in the saucer itself - which then just kind of blows up, because...I guess it hadn't been perfected yet? No body, no follow-up - so is Garbridge actually dead, or does he go on to become a recurring villian a la Blofeld? The answer according to Google is nope, he really just blows himself up and disappears from U.N.C.L.E. history entirely. So there's nothing left for the story to do for the last four pages except for Napoleon and Illya to have a Danish Christmas dinner with the two hot female agents, and then dance the final paragraphs away to Moon River. I literally turned the page expecting a final...anything, but again - nope, that was it, book was over. Surprisingly lame ending to what had already become a very lame story, which ultimately cost the book that final star.

BTW, I'm always surprised in these things to see how everyone is still carrying Lugers and most of the bad guys are ex-Nazis, but then I remind myself that they were written only 20 years after World War II - not that much greater a gap than the one between 9/11 and today .

And a final note on author John Oram. According to Goodreads, he has only written this, Man from U.N.C.L.E. #22, and something called Reluctant Redfellows: The Rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United, (which I think may be a mistake because it was published in 2014, and Oram apparently died in 1996). #22 is one of the final books and goes for $30+ on Amazon, so looks like I won't be adding that one to my collection. But it's also odd, because Goodreads and Amazon both claim it was published in 1966, while #14 through at least #19 (last one I own) were all published in 1968...something's wrong somewhere.
Profile Image for Benjamin Thomas.
1,998 reviews369 followers
July 22, 2018
For the third novel in the series, the publishers turned to John Oram (John Oram Thomas), a staff writer for the Empire News before turning to writing novels. The plot revolves around a new THRUSH threat in the form of a flying-saucer-type weapon system being built in Denmark. Solo and Kuryakin are sent to stop whatever progress has been made but when they finally arrive on scene (after a couple of action scenes where Solo must force his way past some THRUSH thugs), they discover the weapon is complete and ready to run its first dastardly mission.

My research into this author revealed little other than he supposedly based this book on his wartime experiences fighting for the Danish resistance. He would go on to write the 22nd novel in the series, The Stone-cold Dead in the Market Affair. However, I could find no other novels by him, or any other pen names he might have used.

This is a quick read, with a straight-forward plot that seems a lot like one of the season one television shows. Solo still gets most of the protagonist role but I did notice Kuryakin seems to be a bit more of a ladies man than we see in the TV show. Perhaps, like the first two books in the series, this was written based on the show’s concept and before the show’s first scripts were produced or maybe just before the show started to jell into its norm. David McCallum, the actor who played Kuryakin, is on record as saying he purposely did not play the role as a ladies man, believing the character would be too focused on the missions to get side-tracked by that.
Profile Image for Mike (the Paladin).
3,148 reviews2,136 followers
August 19, 2010
I was in the 1960s a huge Man From U.N.C.L.E. fan. Fan club member... any product that was an U.N.C.L.E. tie in. I even had the Aurora scale models of Napoleon and Illya... Yes fan is short for fanatic.

I bought all the Man From U.N.C.L.E. tie in novels...and even the weaker ones stayed with me for years. I lost them with a lot of other books I stored with my parents while I was in the army and the cardboard box was stored in an "outbuilding". That hurt.

Some of the U.N.C.L.E. novels were very good, some were weaker. This one is still one of the slightly weaker novels, but it is overall slightly better. The book is better written than the first two novels in the series, but the characters still aren't really Napoleon and Illya as they fight resurgent Nazis.
Profile Image for Simon Mcleish.
Author 2 books140 followers
May 21, 2012
A less than wonderful entry in the Man From Uncle series. If John Oram had used an atlas, The Copenhagen Affair would have benefited: Jutland is not a "small island", and Copenhagen is on Sjælland, not Jutland (the latter is not explicitly stated, but implied). His knowledge of Danish culture also seems rather shallow, as to him it seems to consist in large part of an obsession with smoked eel sandwiches.
Profile Image for A.L..
Author 7 books6 followers
June 28, 2016
A surprisingly good one for its genre. John Oram goes for Raymond Chandleresque and doesn't quite nail it but does pretty well. I wish he hadn't tried to write a Danish-Irishman with a kiss of the Blarney stone. But he wrote a strong female agent who was rarely objectified and his Solo and Kuryakin were pretty much spot on. I can't speak for his picture of Denmark and the Danish. I suspect they might actually be as well done as his Irishman, but it was pleasant and cosy for an outsider.
Profile Image for Sandy.
571 reviews115 followers
June 21, 2024
Reports of flying saucers over the area of Jutland in Denmark bring Napoleon and Illya to the area to investigate. As it turns out, Thrush is up to its old tricks again, this time using an abandoned, underground Nazi factory to build these new flying devices that can not only fly horizontally, but straight up and down...and, even worse, the evil organization is loading these new experimental craft with atomic bombs, to boot! At just 144 pages, this is one of the slimmest of the U.N.C.L.E. novels by a good 15 pages, but still manages to cram some tough action and scenic color into its taut story line. Highlights of this outing include Solo's being captured in Copenhagen by a passel of Thrushies and no fewer than three back-to-back-to-back finales. In the first, Solo and Kuryakin, along with three of their Danish allies, attack the underground factory from above and below; in the second, our heroes must infiltrate a maternity ward being used by Thrush to rescue one of their captured female agents, Karen; and in the last, Solo and Illya attempt to apprehend the story's main villain, Major Garbridge, racing across the wintry Jutland landscape to do so. This outing has been given some remarkable color and realistic backdrop by Oram, who obviously knew the country well or else did a prodigious amount of research before writing his book. Thus, the references to all those actual streets in Copenhagen (Vimmelskatet, Nygade, Ostergade, and on and on), the Queens cigarettes, the Politiken newspaper, the Tuborg beer, the smorrebrod sandwiches, the Cherry Heering liqueur, the Obel cigars and so much more, to the point of becoming almost a travelogue of sorts. Garbridge, an Irishman who moved to Denmark before WW2 and became a Nazi collaborator, makes for an interesting villain, and his minions make for a motley bunch; especially colorful is Sister Ingrid, a sadistic old matron in that maternity hospital who loves torturing victims in her basement chamber. Our U.N.C.L.E. agents are also given a likeable trio of allies in this outing, including Jens Johannes O'Flaherty, whose life Solo had once saved, as well as the former Danish Resistance fighters Knud Sorensen and the Viking-like Viggo Jacobsen. Oram also provides us, for the first time, with a fascinating look at the organizational setup of Thrush itself. So yes, the book is fast moving, fascinating and often grim, not to mention very well written, and its depiction of Copenhagen during the Christmas season is well drawn. But problems do unfortunately crop up. For one thing, Alexander Waverly is described as being in his early 50s in this book, whereas Leo G. Carroll was in his early to mid-70s when the program ran on NBC...and looked it. Once again, the word "satrap" is used instead of "satrapy." Perhaps most surprising, especially for an author who seems so well versed with the country of Denmark, is the fact that Jutland is referred to repeatedly as being an island, when it is of course a European peninsula! It is unfortunate, too, that the character of Mike Stanning, an American engineer who becomes involved with a doomed female U.N.C.L.E. agent, Norah Bland, in the early chapters of the book, disappears after page 32. He seemed like a pretty tough and smooth operator himself who might have made for another good ally. Oh, well. In all, though, a very respectable entry in this series.

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ....
Profile Image for Tim Deforest.
755 reviews1 follower
December 5, 2024
A fun but flawed entry in the series.

For unknown reasons, THRUSH has set up a secret factory somewhere to build flying saucers. Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin are tasked with finding and destroying the factory. The trail takes them to Denmark, where they team up with former members of the Danish Resistance and a female UNCLE agent. Eventually, the trail leads to an underground factory orginally built by the Nazis to make V-2 rockets. There's a raid on this factory, a race to rescue a captured agent from a THRUSH base disguised as a maternity hospital, and a manhunt for the local THRUSH leader.

A lot of the book is indeed fun. I love the idea of former Resistance fighters casually jumping into a dangerous situation with a "We've done this stuff before--we got this" attitude. There's a great character among the villains-- a cute, petite female THRUSH agent who turns out to be an insanely sadistic torture expert. The action scenes are done well, though I felt the raid on the flying saucer factory could have been longer and tenser than it was.

The flaws don't ruin the book, but are noticable. The story begins when an American businessman in Denmark is recruited by an UNCLE agent to take information back to UNCLE HQ in New York. The guy, unexpectely thrust into a dangerous situation, handles himself well. He's a good character and I expected him to play a part in the rest of the story, but he just vanishes after delivering the information.

Also, the motivation for THRUSH building a flying saucer is never explained. There's a number of possibilities--sow international confusion or fake an alien invasion, for instance. But we never find out and this is a little dissatisfying.
Profile Image for Alton Motobu.
725 reviews3 followers
January 1, 2021
Seems like an episode from the MAN FROM UNCLE television series - short on character development but fast-paced, non-stop action with no plot twists or complications. Napoleon and Illya track a madman from the evil THRUSH organization bent on world destruction via a flying saucer aircraft hidden in an underground ex-Nazi factory in Denmark. They destroy the factory and kill the bad guys, although the body of the man flying the saucer is not found after it explodes over the ocean.
Takes place in December with several references to Christmas so this qualifies as a Christmas mystery.
Profile Image for Katherine.
308 reviews8 followers
May 30, 2021
Entertaining enough if very simple. The women agents (plural!) were not written as designer objects or décor which is refreshing. One of the women gets captured and needs rescuing but seeing as how Kuryakin spent about half the last book "in distress" himself I don't object too strongly. I swear those two couldn't get through an episode without blowing their cover and getting tied up.
Not a book to seek out but perfectly adequate to kill time.
The word for the day is Carlsberg!
362 reviews
February 15, 2025
Solo and Kuryakin find themselves in Denmark trying to stop an evil THRUSH plot to create flying saucer types of weapons. It has a more serious tone than the series and lacks a lot of the show's banter between the two agents. The book could have been a tad longer. The issue gets resolved before it becomes much of an issue.
Profile Image for Rebecca.
265 reviews5 followers
July 5, 2018
I know I shouldn't expect much, but use of the word "negress", the female agent being a damsel in distress, and the amount of time Illya and Napoleon spent apart in the story did not endear me.
Profile Image for Kent Archie.
610 reviews6 followers
March 16, 2022
Not my favorite. Some good detective work. The ending seemed a little incomplete
32 reviews
May 31, 2023
Enjoyable and entertaining. Based on the old television show, which I have heard about but never seen.
Profile Image for Kris.
52 reviews1 follower
October 6, 2024
2.5 stars at best, despite some snappy dialogue and my knowing many of the (overused) Danish references.
Profile Image for Macjest.
1,321 reviews10 followers
October 7, 2021
Another great Man from U.N.C.L.E. Novel. This one is set in Copenhagen at Christmas through the New Year and the author imbued the story with plenty of detail to make you feel like you are there. Not as many gadgets as in the TV show, and the violence is only alluded to. A lot of tie in to WWII in that areas where THRUSH has taken over were formerly used by the Nazis.
Profile Image for Little Timmy.
7,334 reviews58 followers
April 29, 2015
Excellent book adaptation of the TV series. Great spy adventure book. This is how the CIA and FBI should operate. Recommended
2,902 reviews7 followers
Read
November 16, 2016
read during school year 1965-66, possibly spring 1966
Profile Image for Bob Frantz.
Author 24 books14 followers
September 25, 2015
fun, fast simple read. not a great spy novel but fun non the less
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews

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