Review of "The Space Eagle: Operation Doomsday," by Jack Pearl

Review of

The Space Eagle: Operation Doomsday, by Jack Pearl

Four out of five stars

 This book is one typical of the genre of young adult adventure science fiction written in the sixties. Paul Girard is a dashing young man that is handsome, wealthy and mentally talented. With his sister, he is also owner and manager of a powerful company that possesses many major scientific secrets. One of the secrets is of an extremely powerful ship (codenamed S. W. I. F. T.) capable of navigating within the Earth’s atmosphere and also traveling faster than light.

 When Paul uses S. W. I. F. T. to save the crew of a crippled spaceship, the President of the United States secretly designates Paul the Space Eagle, a one person interplanetary police force. His first mission turns out to be saving the Earth from a nuclear war, where both the Soviet Union and the United States are to be provoked into attacking each other after simultaneously suffering from a nuclear attack by a third party.

 The science used to explain how things are done is very weak, but typical of this type of science fiction. In the spirit of the hero, Paul succeeds against enormous odds in a tense final minute. If you read this book with your mind in the proper context of the literature of the time, this is a decent book. Lacking that, you will no doubt find it somewhat quaint.