Book Review: Chameleon 2: In Garde We Trust by Jerry LaPlante
One of my reading addictions as a teen was trashy series hero paperbacks. The Executioner, the Destroyer, Nick Carter Killmaster…much like the old pulp heroes but grittier and with more sleaze. The more successful series are still published to this day in one form or another, but there were many imitators that have sunk into the memory hole. The Chameleon series is one of them.
Vance Garde is a genius scientist (his primary specialty is engineering physics) who has a prosperous think tank producing inventions and innovations to improve things for humanity. But every so often he encounters injustice, and in his rage works to destroy those evil people who are responsible. In the first book, it had been the death of his half-sister from tainted drugs that caused him to create a new subdivision of his company, VIBES, that produces weapons for his missions of vindication. Ably assisted by his Vice President of Operations Ballou Annis (the first book was heavy on the punny names), he wiped out the entire drug ring.
This volume opens with Vance being chased across a Montana glacier by a grizzly bear while doing metric conversions in his head. Which is a pretty good use of in medias res. We then flashback to him as Ms. Annis (who has a pretty vindictive streak herself) and he are interrupted during a meal by a girl in green robes who hasn’t eaten regularly in a while and is seriously glassy-eyed. She collapses, and when taken to the hospital, swallows cyanide rather than be treated. Her male conterpart is prevented from suicide and goes catatonic.
Vance Garde is already beginning to get angry at the cult that sponsors these green-robed fanatics, The Symbiotic Synagogue, when it becomes personal as Ballou learns her brother Adrian has joined the cult and wants his trust fund released to that organization. The two hatch a plan to rescue Adrian by kidnapping him, but that plan goes seriously awry, leading to the situation at the beginning of the book.
Having survived that, Mr. Garde is ready to come up with a plan to crush the Symbiotic Synagogue, if he can just figure out what they’re really up to.
The Symbiotic Synagogue and its leader Father Sol Luna are obviously based on the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, right down to the cultists being named “Lunies”, but there are also elements of the Hare Krishnas and other cults of the time. Their mind control is more literal than in real life, though more subtle than many uses of that idea, and Vance Garde isn’t thinking clearly for a substantial piece of the story.
That serves to smooth over the fact that Mr. Garde is one of those multi-competent protagonists who is both physically and mentally superior to just about everyone in his vicinity. He’s rather smug about it, too–so it’s amusing when he screws up.
Ballou Aniss is less likable, due to her petty yet over-engineered pranks against those who offend her. Seriously, you do not want to get on this woman’s bad side. She also benefits in-story from not so much being brilliant as her targets being stupid, sometimes repeatedly.
It’s interesting to look at the technology in the story as well. Aside from the mind-control gadget and an interesting method of detecting uranium deposits, we have the hero’s computer. It’s got a very powerful database system, and he has three people dedicated to putting in information about science and industry. So when Vance needs information on a company he’s investigating, that’s something he can find right away. But he’s never bothered with religion, so someone has to go out to the library to look up the cult they’re fighting. It’s also apparently not hooked up to ARPANET.
Also, no cellphones, so our heroes hide miniature CB radios in largish tourist cameras.
As mentioned above, this is a sleazy paperback. Two running gags are that Vance and Ballou never actually get all the way through sex (including a waterbed disaster) and a dog that’s been conditioned to poop whenever it hears a telephone ring. The former is more amusing than the latter.
On the more serious side, there’s chastity belts with some nasty surprises built in, attempted rape, and torture (this last one by Vance, who enjoys amateur dentistry too much for this reader’s comfort.)
The writing is adequate for the kind of book this is, and often rises to the level of amusing; it would be a good disposable read for fans of sleazy Seventies paperback series.
