and once again delay intensifies the problem. When eventuallynthe pirates are rooted out, the personal cost is agonizing.nThe novels of Robert Ludlum also address the excision ofnevil, although it is evil less apparent than in Benchley’s work.nThe Ludlum novels turn on the painful, slow exposure ofnconcealed conspiracy. This is a world of contemporarynproblems and the terrible silent running of the machinery ofnthe dark: the coordination of drug routes, the channeling ofnarms to terrorists, the struggles for power within thenintelligence community, the corrosion of racial prejudice innhigh government circles, the evasion of accountability.nLudlum’s characters bring to these matters intelligence andnthe habit of abstract thought. When they experiencenviolence, they are astonished and shockingly vulnerable.nAnd violence comes often, the more horrifying because ofnLudlum’s exact observation of its physical consequences.nUnlike the facile gunmen of motion picture and paperback,nwho kill and are not changed, Ludlum’s people are permanentlynmarred by their confrontation with evil, whether itnappears as direct violence or the equally dark faces ofncorruption and intellectual arrogance. Ludlum has remarkednthat “you write from a point of view of somethingnthat disturbs or outrages you. And that’s what I do. I admit tonbeing outraged—mostly by the abuse of power by fanatics.nThe extremes bother me, right or left. … I disapprove ofnviolence, that’s why I show pain for what it is. When myncharacters get hit, they hurt.”nHis 1973 novel The Matlock Paper involves a universitynprofessor in the gradual exposure of a secret organizationnthat has turned to crime for extraordinary reasons. Thenaction oiThe Chancellor Manuscript (1977) twists amongnnational intelligence agencies during a search for J. EdgarnHoover’s missing personal files, and, in doing so, exposes thenfrightful corruption created by the abuse of power. Corruptionnas a consequence of power also drives The IcarusnAgenda (1988), an examination of illicit armament sales andnMideastern terrorism. From deep concealment, a smallngroup toys with the destiny of bitter Arab states. Thensituation is handled by Ludlum with customary intelligence.nAt the novel’s close, the blunt-spoken President of thenUnited States remarks:nI don’t give a damn how pristine [the primenconspirator’s] motives were; he forgot a lesson ofnhistory that he above all men should havenremembered. Whenever a select group ofnbenevolent elitists consider themselves above thenwill of the people and proceed to manipulate thatnwill in the dark, without accountability, they’ve setnin motion a hell of a dangerous machine. Becausenall it takes is one or two of these superior beingsnwith very different, unpristine ideas to convince thenothers or replace the others, and a republic is downnthe drain.nPreservation of the Republic is a central concern of neariynall recent adventure fiction. Accepting the postulate that thencountry is continuously under attack within and without,nthis genre has reflected nearly every major subject ofnnational concern and national debate. Each Cold War crisis,neach technological advance or threat, from hostage taking tonthe Star Wars initiative, has triggered a fresh burst of novels.nMost of these novels are less rigorously realistic thannLudlum’s work. Most routinely deal in extreme positions.nThey derive considerable emotional effect from the suspicionsnand unrelieved fears of the Cold War years. Nationalnsecurity, they warn, is continually at risk. These fearsnachieve unsettling reality in stories that describe how thenRussians hurry to prepare a nuclear strike when, for variousnglibly explained reasons, the United States is vulnerable. Ornhow the United States and Russia plunge toward a confrontationnthat will inevitably escalate to thermonuclear exchange.nCommon to this novel form is the assumption that thenUnited States and Russia are so evenly matched technologicallynthat a single new development will thrust one side ornthe other to an inferior military posture, as in CraignThomas’s Foxfire (1977). The novel describes how thenUnited States steals a Russian high-tech fighter so advancednthat it is equipped with thought-controlled armament. In thensequel. Foxfire Down (1983), the crippled fighter, groundednin neutral territory, must be salvaged before the Sovietsnarrive. Both novels are dense with details of missionnplanning, aerial combat, and the performance of aircraft andnweapons, either extrapolated or imagined. A reversal of thenidea appears in Dale Brown’s Day of the Cheeta (1989),nwhen Russia steals a high-tech fighter from the UnitednStates. A similar situation occurs in his Flight of the OldnDog (1987), when Russia steals Star Wars technology andnprepares to test it at a remote site. Since preservation of thatntechnology is absolutely vital to national security, the UnitednStates must mount a suicide mission to destroy the site. Thenimmediacy of the action, the continuous flow of apparentninsider information, glosses over the unreal premise and thenimprobable decisions initiating the action.nAs the novels earnestly reiterate,ncontemporary society is unstable andncorrupt. Freedom and democratic processesnhave been compromised away by lawyers,npoliticians, inept national leaders, andnspecial interest groups.nTwo later versions of Cold War fiction have appeared innthe specialized world of original paperback series novels.nThe first variafion features small combat squads fightingnsubversion in contemporary settings; the second revives then1950’s science fiction nightmare of nuclear doom, placingnthe story amid America’s ruins in a post-atomic war world.nJerry Ahern’s The Survivalist series (which began in 1981nand continues to the present) evokes a glum picture ofnviolence, heroism, social and political fragmentation, andndesperate efforts to hold together the final few frail threadsnof civilization. The Guardians, a series by Richard Austin,nalso begins with America wrecked. Through the rubble anhardboiled four-man survival team searches for “The Blueprintnfor Renewal,” a secret plan for reviving the country.nnnAUGUST 1991/17n