Book Review: Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead

Ever since I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time in the spring of 1981, I have been a huge fan of George Lucas’s Indiana Jones, the fedora-wearing, whip-wielding, fast-quipping globe-trotting archaeologist-spy-soldier of fortune who risks life and limb going after “rare antiquities” imbued with supernatural powers.

Like many Raiders fans of my generation – I was in my teens when that first George Lucas-Steven Spielberg collaboration was released – I loved that film and its two sequels partly because of the non-stop action set pieces, partly because John Williams had composed a kick-butt score, partly because they mixed elements of the old Saturday matinee serials and the James Bond flicks, but mostly because Harrison Ford was so likeable playing the Man in the Hat.

Now, even though I own all four feature films and the three Adventures of Young Indiana Jones box sets, I only own a few of the novels and novelty books which fill in some of the gaps in Indy’s long career of chasing after ancient artifacts while facing such opponents as rival archaeologist Rene Belloq, Nazi agent Toht, Thuggee leader Mola Ram and Soviet operative Irina Spalko.

One of these novels is Steve Perry’s Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead, which has Indy and his British archaeologist/secret agent partner George “Mac” MacHale (who was introduced in 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) chasing after a black pearl nicknamed the Heart of Darkness in the tropical jungles of Haiti while evading competing German and Japanese teams which also seek the mysterious pearl.

Now, if you have a story set in Haiti with the title Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead, you can probably figure out that Indy’s worst foes won’t be the Nazis or the Japanese – though they are pretty worrisome as the story goes on – but rather a Haitian bokor, a houngan priest who is extremely long-lived and can control a veritable army of zombies.

As in the films, Indy is accompanied by an attractive woman; in this story it’s a lovely Haitian woman named Marie. She, too, has a bit of the sorceress in her soul, being a distant relative of the power-hungry Boukman, and part of the story delves into the mystical struggle between the two characters.

On the trail of Indy’s party are the rival Axis teams led by German SS Colonel Gruber and his Japanese counterpart Captain Yamada. Supposedly allies against America at this time in history, both men are sworn to get the Heart of Darkness for their own regimes, wartime alliances be damned.

But before they can beat Indy to the mysterious black pearl – the “McGuffin” of the story – Gruber and Yamada’s teams must first survive the terrain, the tropic heat and – most important – the dark powers wielded by the powerful Boukman……

My Take: I have long been a fan of author Steve Perry; he is best known for having written 1996’s bestselling novel Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for Lucasfilm’s huge multi-media project of the same name, and has, with Michael Reaves, co-written several Star Wars novels, including the Medstar duology and 2007’a Death Star.

Clearly, Perry has a certain fondness for Indiana Jones (both the hero and the franchise); he tries to capture the essence of the fast-quipping central character and making a few offhand references to the events of the first three movies and at the same time “foreshadowing” Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in a brief but telling comment about Indy’s “lost love” Marion.

Perry also seems to have done his homework regarding Haiti and its culture, particularly zombie lore, even though I am sure he took lots of artistic license with his setting to make the story an Indiana Jones adventure.

Though the novel sometimes does get bogged down when Perry shifts the narrative from one group of characters to the others – everyone gets more or less equal billing in Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead – it is an enjoyable if not spectacularly thrilling adventure tale.

The one weak point the story has – in my view, anyway – is that there are way too many characters and their viewpoints and not enough action, or at least not enough action to bring to mind Harrison Ford doing his own stunts or the mental echoes of John Williams’ “Raiders’ March.”

However, Perry is a good storyteller and very good at writing crisp and easy-flowing prose, and his style – which can often be wryly humorous or even sentimentally touching – fits the Indiana Jones mythos suitably enough.

© 2012 Alex Diaz-Granados.  All Rights Reserved