Operator #5 Audiobook #11

A group of bitter men — a secret League of War — was ready to plunge the world into a new, earth-wide conflict. They issued orders, and bloody organized murder was loosed in the heart of Europe! And behind this carnage, a single man was scheming to make himself the Dictator of the World! Never before had a single person conceived such a colossal plan for profiting from the slaughter of humans. He had overcome all obstacles — except one lone avenger, Operator #5, America’s secret service ace. Can Jimmy Christopher, keep the nations of the world from hurling themselves into a war which can bring nothing but universal defeat, misery, and slavery?

Originally written by master pulpsmith Frederick C. Davis, the Operator #5 series was a clear forerunner of the spy and espionage genre, which exploded in the 1960s when President John F. Kennedy happened remark that he enjoyed reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Soon, America was surrounded by spies. Jimmy Christopher was on the job a generation before them all, blazing the espionage trail, and keeping America safe from fascism and other wicked isms.

Frederick C. Davis began pitting James Christopher—otherwise Operator #5 of the United States Intelligence Service—against the Yellow Empire, variously thinly-disguised European dictators, and other torn-from-the-headlines global actors. The more Operator #5 exploits Davis wrote, the wilder and more horrific the threats to national security became: Wicked would-be conquerors, creepy cults, weird weather-controllers and famine-creating menaces to our mid-western breadbasket. Davis’ tales were disciplined, yet apocalyptic—a difficult accomplishment when you are tasked to turn out a 50,000-word novel every 30 days.

The League of War Monsters is read with stirring intensity by Milton Bagby. Originally published in the February, 1935 issue of Operator #5 magazine.