THE HELLBOMB FLIGHT (Pinnacle, 1975) is a typical mad scientist plot. Dr. Orlando Fitzmueller, banished from NASA and the rest of the scientific community for his, shall we say, extreme viewpoints about achieving peace on Earth, establishes a secret base beneath the Utah mountains. From there, he plans to hijack a Soviet weapons satellite and blackmail the major powers into giving up all their atomic weapons, or else he'll unleash some powerful bad fury upon the world. With the aid of a handful of scientists and a Mafia hitman named Marshall Davis, Dr. Fitzmueller is ready to achieve his dream, and if a few folks have to die to get there, so be it.
Fitzmueller has a daughter, of course, yet the Penetrator amazingly doesn't romance her, nor does she play a major role. I like THE HELLBOMB FLIGHT as much as I do the other Penetrator novels, though its reticence to fully embrace its espionage plot is a drag. Other Penetrator novels have involved megalomaniacs and slightly futuristic technology, but the main plot point of the rampaging satellite is wrapped up in a couple of pages. Fitzmueller, who is nicely portrayed as a benevolent man with good intentions, despite his mad means of making them real, is apparently captured off-page even.
I know the cover (not one of the series' best) says Nevada, but I'm pretty sure the book takes place mostly in Utah. A nice touch is wrapping up a side plot introduced in TOKYO PURPLE, an action-packed chapter with nothing to do with the Fitzmueller storyline.
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