Singapore -- 1883. Waves of heat... exotic scents and sounds... ships of every knid crowding the harbor... coolies swarming on the quais.... Here the Batavia Queen rode at anchor. In her sweltering holds, a gang of convicts bound for a living death. In her closed cabins, a strange assortment of men and women, adventurers all, handpicked by the closemouthed man called Chris Hanson. It was Hanson who was the Captain of this ship. Hanson who was master of the fate of every soul aboard. Hanson who would guide them to fabulous treasure -- or to final doom!
Michael Angelo Avallone was a prolific American author of mystery and secret agent fiction, and novelizations based on TV and films. He claimed a lifetime output over 1,000 works, including novels, short stories, articles, published under his own name or 17+ pseudonyms. His first novel, The Tall Dolores 1953 introduced Ed Noon PI. After three dozen more, the most recent was 1989. The final volume, "Since Noon Yesterday" is, as of 2005, unpublished. Tie-ins included Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-0, Mannix, Friday the 13th Part III, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and even The Partridge Family. In late 1960s novellas featured U.N.C.L.E.-like INTREX. He is sometimes cited incorrectly as the creator of Man from U.N.C.L.E. (as in the January 1967 issue of The Saint Magazine), or having died March 1. As Troy Conway, Rod Damon: The Coxeman novel series 1967-73, parodied Man from UNCLE. An unusual entry was the novelization of the 1982 TV mini-series, A Woman Called Golda, the life of Golda Meir. Among the many pseudonyms that Michael Avallone used (male and female) were: Mile Avalione, Mike Avalone, Nick Carter, Troy Conway, Priscilla Dalton, Mark Dane, Jeanne-Anne dePre, Dora Highland, Stuart Jason, Steve Michaels, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone, John Patrick, Vance Stanton, Sidney Stuart, Max Walker, and Lee Davis Willoughby. From 1962-5, Avallone edited the Mystery Writers of America newsletter. Personal Life: He married 1949 Lucille Asero (one son; marriage dissolved), 1960 Fran Weinstein (one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_... http://www.thrillingdetective.com/tri...
Michael Avallone was an incredibly prolific writer and I must say that I enjoy his style when it comes to novelizations. This one involves a shipload of scurvy characters hunting for shipwrecked pearls while Krakatoa gets ready to make the biggest explosion ever recorded in human history.