CHRISTOPHER COOL

Christopher Cool is an agent with TEEN.

TEEN is an acronym for the Top-secret Educational Espionage Network, a very hush-hush department of the CIA created because using young people would allow the agents to move into numerous areas without attracting attention. It is run by a hard-nosed, humorless individual known only as "Q" known for wearing navy-flue blazers and a yachting cap (even at his desk) with a glass of milk constantly by his side to help with his ulcer. The offices of TEEN are in Manhattan behind the facade of Luxury Motors, a high-end car dealership. This helps explain why Cool is frequently driving expensive autos including a Jaguar speedster.

Cool is the son of Dr. Jonathan Cook, said to be "America's foremost brain in high-energy physics" and a scientist who disappear two years before the start of the recorded adventures. When young Cool became convinced his father had been kidnapped and was being help behind the Iron Curtain, he applied at 17 to the CIA to become an agent to help track his father down. He never really expected to be accepted but it was worth a try and he was surprised to find that not only were they interested, they had a section for which he could work - TEEN.

A "genius" at languages, Cool could "pass as a native in several different tongues" and this talent was enhanced by an inate ease around strangers and strange surroundings making his trips about the globe easier to pull off. Additionally, after extensive training at the TEEN academy, he also became highly skilled at photography, cryptography, flying, scuba diving, martial arts (karate and aikido) and generally taking care of himself.

As part of his cover, Cool, now 19 years old, is a freshman at Kingston University, an Ivy League school, and an institution obviously with some ties to TEEN because Cool is able to disappear for some time whenever he is needed and no one at the school says a word. His codename in TEEN, Kingston-One, points to his affiliation.

Also attending Kingston and known as Kingston-Two, is Cool's best friend, Geronimo Johnson, a full-blood Mescalero Apache and an agent who, while not at skilled at languages as Cool, has all the same training and skills and also has the talents of tracking and stalking that he learned as a boy on the reservation. In today's world of PC, some of the things Cool and Johnson say to each other might get an eyebrow or two raised but there is genuine friendship between them and Johnson can give as good as he gets. At one point when asked if he were an American, Johnson quipped, "original settler". Johnson uses the nickname of choonday for Cool and since Apache is one of Cool's languages and he is not upset by it, it likely is endearing.

Yet another member of the TEEN troupe that regularly shows up is Spice Carter, a gorgeous and highly resourceful (and fearless) female operative Cool and Johnson meet on their first recorded adventure. While she is not part of the team of Cook-Johnson, she often is sent into the same area for a different though connected reason and helps out.

Finally, no good spy organizaiton is complete without an equally nasty evil organization to challenge it and TEEN has it in TOAD. Now, I cannot find where TOAD has any meaning other than, well, toad, but while they may be lacking in acronym-meaning, they make up for it with a particularly unpleasant brand in the shape of a toad which they smack onto a victim and poison in it kills the unfortunate in an unappealing manner. That's interesting but ... TOAD?

I do not remember reading these books as a kid although it was the right time-frame for me to have done so. The cover of the first book looks quite familiar and the title of the second also rings a bell but after reading both of them before adding them to the compendium, my memory has no stirrings so I guess not. Shame, though, because as a kid I would have devoured them. I mean, what is not to love? He is smart and athletic and handsome and goes all of the world and fights really bad guys and meets really cute girls and has a best buddy by his side and did I mention the girls?

He also has some really nifty gadgets, the kind that even the movie Bond would have envied. A wristwatch ala Dick Tracy that he can call people on, send and receive coded signals on, and can even tell time! Since it is the mid-to-late 60s and the love generation had not reached into juvenile adventures and this was a clean-cut all-American lad we are talking about, he is almost always in a sports jacket and a tie. The tie, though, is a good thing because it is made of special material that acts as a makeshift gas mask.

Some of his whizzbang arsenal might be a tad over the top, of course. Thrown off the Eiffel Tower, Cool would have surely died if not for the jet packs in his titanium-soled shoes. Seems like that would be really heavy footwear to have on when running after bad guys for or away for your life. Ah! Why nitpick?

Jack Lancer, the author, was a pen-name used for this series by Jim Lawrence, an accomplished author who has done, well, just about everything including writing the long-running James Bond comic strip for the newspaper industry and therefore created more Bond adventures than anyone else. The man knows spy adventuring and since he also did a fair number of juvenile-oriented writing, the Cool books were obviously a natural.

As a man slowly coming out of his second childhood (really slowly), I enjoyed reading the first three books. When time and finances allow, I might go after the other three.