The author James Atlee Philips (father of the musician Shawn Philips) wrote thrillers under the pen name Philip Atlee. He’s best remembered for a series of thrillers called the “Contract” novels, featuring freelance assassin Joe Gall. The Green Wound Contract is the first in the series, set in 1963.
At that time in history, James Bond was all the rage. Joe Gall, it seems, must have been one of the American attempts to provide an American equivalent, cross-pollinated with Mike Hammer. It’s not entirely unsuccessful.
A former CIA agent, Joe Gall is called in by the director to do a special contract job. In the southern town of Lafcadio, racial tensions are rising, and the agency suspects an outside hand is manipulating people and politics. Going in undercover, Joe meets the town’s white political boss and his beautiful wife, and ventures into the town’s black section, where anger is simmering – until it all blows up. Further developments will lead to commando action in the Caribbean.
For the 21st Century reader, The Green Wound Contract is a little disorienting. The Black Civil Rights movement is not treated with a lot of respect, and in this story at least part of it is directed by a hostile world power. (Though not a Communist one. Anti-communists are also dismissed, and Castro treated sympathetically).
The writing was quite good, often elegant, with lots of Shakespeare quotations. The story was violent, and there’s some sex, the sex and the violence overlapping at one point. The topic of human trafficking is handled in horrific detail.
The Green Wound Contract is pretty well written, I think, but it hasn’t aged well. It does make an interesting read in light of actual historical events.