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paul_cornelius's review
4.0
Assignment Budapest is an example of why you should read these Sam Durrell novels in chronological order. It picks right up where Stella Marni, the preceding book, left off. The backdrop is the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Stella Marni is now in prison, and Sam Durrell must deal with Hungarian communist agents who have infiltrated into the US on an assassination mission. What makes this a bit more interesting than usual, is that Durrell tracks down Korvuth, the killer, and his associates, but Korvuth escapes and Sam becomes allied with with one of the assassination team members, Ilona. She has turned against the Hungarian regime, and she now, about 40 percent through the book, goes with Durrell into Hungary to rescue a scientist and his family as well as the CIA supervisor, Dickenson MacFee. This is an action novel through and through. Aarons just doesn't let up. The sense of being in post revolutionary Budapest, once again under the Russians' thumb, carries through the latter half. Aarons understands the one great rule of genre fiction: always advance the story; don't linger and sidetrack yourself. That is the reason his works seem to average around 160 to 170 pages. And one final thought emerges as well. It is clear to me that Aarons and Sam Durrell are a Cold War liberals, people in the likeness of Henry "Scoop" Jackson, strong on defense as well as issues pertaining to civil rights and civil liberties, often tinged with a bit of socialism that balanced with advocacy of the US presence internationally, such as in the Vietnam War.
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