Harry and the Bikini Bandits

by Basil Heatter, Robert McGinnis (Illustrator)

There's a lot to be said for my Uncle Harry. Mostly unprintable. All my life I'd heard about him, and from a distance he was kind of a legend. But the moment I signed on as a one-man crew to his beat-up old bucket, Jezebel, I found my hero was really a pirate. Broads and booze kept him afloat between capers—and so far, his luck was holding . . .

But this new harebrained scheme—to heist the loot from an island gambling casino—was the daffiest—and most dangerous—yet.

And there I was. Right in the middle. Up to my virginal ears in naked nymphs and nitrous oxide—with nothing between me and the future but a leaky getaway and a pot of gold that was fast disappearing behind Harry’s private rainbow.

192 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 1971

About the author

Basil Heatter, the son of radio commentator Gabriel Heatter, was born on Long Island on March 26, 1918. He attended schools in Connecticut, then went abroad when was 16 for a two year travel stint through Europe. Returning to America, he went to work for a New York advertising agency. He enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and during WWII served as a skipper on a P.T. boat in the Southwest Pacific. Besides being a news commentator himself, Heatter wrote twenty novels of intrigue and adventure—beginning with "The Dim View" in 1946, the story of a young PT boat skipper—as well as several non-fiction works revolving around his love of the sea. In fact, he lived for years off Key West on his own self-built sailboat, The Blue Duck. He passed away June 12, 2009, in Miami, Florida

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry and the Bikini Bandits, published in 1971 by Basil Heatter under the Fawcett Gold Medal label, is a fun romp through the Florida Coast and the Bahamas. Perhaps one part Travis McGee cause it involves free spirits on boats, one part Richard Stark’s Parker cause there’s a crime caper involved, one part Holden Caulfield coming of age, and two parts Ken Kesey and his band of day-glo merry pranksters. Clay Bullmore III, scion of a proper midwestern town named Peckinpaugh or some such nonsense is a football hero with a steady girlfriend and the world at his fingertips, but what he’s always wanted (or at least wants now at the grand old age of seventeen) is to sail the seven seas with his crazy uncle. Of course it’s on a deeply neglected ketch (a two-masted, fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat with a mizzenmast stepped forward of the rudder and smaller than the foremast), his uncle’s Bikini-clad hangers-on, a randy monkey, and a heap of trouble. Uncle Harry is the life of the party wherever he goes. He’s a free spirit who knows no boundaries when it comes to women, booze, or money. And, if it’s adventure little Clay wants, he’ll get it if he can get this boat across the ocean without sinking to the bottom first. And then, just when Clay thinks the Bahamas is just another randy frolic in the sun, there’s a matter of a planned heist that, of course, doesn’t follow the plans so well and the aftermath.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I first read back in junior-high that is every bit as fun as I remembered, even if there are no bikini bandits. Ok, maybe one. The form here is "my summer vacation" and it's a coming of age tale as seventeen-year-old Clay hunts down his uncle Harry and sails to the Bahamas with him aboard Harry's worn out old ketch Jezebel. That's the first third of the novel, which is a picaresque. And then, during the middle third, it turns into a heist novel as they plan and successfully rob a casino in Nassau. The final third completes Clay's coming of age in the usual ways: besting his uncle and finally losing his virginity. The end has a sweet twist that I won't spoil. The narration is first-person and the style is a cool mix of genre and literary quality free-indirect prose filtered through Clay's coming-of-age point of view. Good stuff!

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
Good enough for an amusing read… but no more. First few chapters/ third of the book were by far the most amusing. Second half of the book started to drag on.. with less and less shenanigans.

[Captain Dunsel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Captain Dunsel
It's a bit freaky, for me, to realize Clay is 17, and the novel was published in 1971....considering I was 17 in 1971...

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great coming of age story about a kid tracking down his ne'er-do-well uncle who skips from port to port in his battered old sloop, avoiding romantic entanglements and staying one step ahead of the law. Originally from 1971 it has a kind of nostalgia common in books from then and earlier decades, but it doesn't feel dated.

This is the second Gold Medal original I've read (back to back) of Basil Heatter's. I've got one more left, which I'll be reading soon as Heatter is very reminiscent of one of my other favorite GM authors, Charles Williams.