The Eyes of The Tiger was published in May 1965 and it introduced a more violent characterization of Nick Carter. More brutal and in a way lead to the birth of the mens adventure to be forth coming with the Executioner Series in 1969. Manning Lee Stokes wrote this title as well as 17 others throughout the series until mid 1970. He in fact carried the series until other prolific writers could be published, like Jon Messman and George Synder. Now back to the story. Nick Carter is given the task of recovering some Nazi loot. This loot is from a Japanese temple that was presented to Adolph Hitler as a token of Axis partnership. As the story goes, the loot lay in a a Swiss bank account protected by a kill on sight order by two hand picked elite SS guards.
Award First Printing Cover Scan.
Five desperate people schemed to steal it:
- Hermann Goering, Reichsmarschall.
- Max Rader, Hitler's personal aide.
- Shikoku Hondo, Colonel of Japanese Intelligence.
- Baroness Elspeth von Stadt, Voluptuous double agent.
- Nick Carter, AXE agent.
Award Books updated this title in 1973 to be written in 1st person. There were lots of errors and it was the only title to be written in third and first person. First person point of view became stand for the series in 1969. There might be a fourth printing with book number A315 out there as I do not have that one. Awards reprinted a lot of titles in 1970 with the same book numbers while reissuing a few new book numbers.
Here are the cover scans from the second (A152F, August 1966) and third (A315X, 1969) printings.
This next cover is from the revised edition in 1973 and the Charter Books printing in January 1981.
Mayflower Books in the UK published five Killmaster title beginning in 1967. Here are the 1970 and 1974 reprint cover scans. The first cover scan is a second 1970 reprint and each has the same book cover.
The first Nick Carter i read, as a teen, was THE EYES OF THE TIGER. Since the covers were tamer than the Carter Brown's, i was allowed to read them at my young impressionable age. I recall the cover, but not many details of the story, except one line that went something like: "He slapped his hand across Wilhelmina's butt." Of course, that wasn't physical abuse, as all Nick Carter readers know that Wilhelmina was the name of Nick's gun. Great fun. Nice blog.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words. Welcome aboard.
ReplyDeleteAward Books updated this title in 1973 to be written in 1st person. There were lots of errors and it was the only title to be written in third and first person.
ReplyDeleteI am intrigued by this comment. I have just read the first edition of Eyes of the Tiger. It is certainly written in the third person perspective. However, I did not identify any significant errors. I also wonder why this novel in particular was chosen to be revised in 1973 (8 years after first publication) to be converted to first person? Do you - or any other readers - have any suggestions / comments? Thanks.
I have no other info as to why this one was updated. Maybe Award was trying something out. If you read the 1973 edition or the Charter Books edition from 1981, you will find the errors.
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