The Star Ruby Contract

Joe Gall Mystery #6

by Philip Atlee

In Washington they call him THE NULLIFER. The reason behind the label goes like this ,,, If you influence a man to tell you something important, that is intelligence; if you steal the same material when he is out of the room, that's espionage. But if, when matters get to irritating for diplomatic channels, you pay a man to obliterate situations..or people.. you have a takeout, an expert or planned violence, a nullifier. It is a suitably vague and bureaucratic word, nicely calculated to insulate policy makers themselves from Joe Gall -- the devil of their own creation... And now, we have Gall's 6th Contract, this one in Burma --and hairy enough for him to call in firepower from the entire Gurkha regiment ...

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 1967

About the author

Pseudonym of James Atlee Phillips

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Atlee's first book was an expose about local country club members. An avid flyer, he was a member of the Flying Tigers before WWII. He joined the Marines after Pearl Harbor. He ran Amphibian Airways in Burma, probably for the CIA, and it is from this experience that his first Joe Gall book, Pagoda, came.

Reviews

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sixties spy novel. Free agent Joe Gall goes to Burma, hires an escort, has lots of sex and curry, gets captured, gets a finger cut off, blows shit up, plays poker for his life against a drunken monk, is captured by a tribe of headhunters, plays one dictator off against another, and comes out in mostly one piece by the end. Beyond that I'm not sure what it was about. Told with lots of hardboiled laconic delivery. I liked it for a what it was. I'll read some more by this author.