Review: The Girl in the Telltale Bikini

The Girl in the Telltale Bikini by Patrick Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the sixth book (out of ten) in the Operation Hang Ten series about surfer/secret agent Bill Cartwright. He's kind of a mash-up of James Bond and Travis McGee. Drives a Woody, lives in a trailer by the beach, surfs, chases women. His cover is that he's a private investigator, but he's a secret agent. Plenty of action: fights, gun battles, car chases, sex. But what makes this series unique is the surfing scenes, and in this book we get a surfing duel with the surfboards as weapons. I first read this whole series back in junior high and this was one of my favorites because of the clever plot driver of someone impersonating Cartwright. Plenty more in this one though as you have missing women (auctioned to arabs for harems) and a sunken spy ship (creates great new waves for surfing ) and a weird cult (trafficking the women and the spy documents) and the Cartwright double is in the middle of it all. The real Bill unravels the mystery and kills all the baddies, but the one thing never explained was why they chose to impersonate him (not that it matters!)