Audiobook – Dark Shadows: Operation Victor
Quentin Collins is in the Clapham Picture House in 1945, catching up on the newsreels of the day, when the air-raid siren goes off. However this is not a German raid, it’s a subterfuge by a mystery lady to clear the cinema and get Quentin alone. Overcome by gas, Quentin passes out as the woman tells him he’s going on a very long journey.
He wakes up in a Lancaster bomber somewhere over the Bavarian Alps with the woman, Corporal Sally Green, a Secret Service Agent who is investigating reports of a secret project called Operation Victor working on the occult and needs Quentin to help with the supernatural side of it. They have to parachute out of the plane and head for Doctor Moloch’s castle where they witness dead soldiers being loaded into a truck. They get to Moloch’s lab and find more soldiers wired up to some kind of experiment but before they can do anything they are discovered by Moloch himself who reveals that Sally is actually...
But that would be telling! This was a really enjoyable story with a lot more action in it than the previous Quentin Collins episodes I have listened to, much more of a radio play than an audiobook reading. It had a real Dick Barton/Boy’s Own adventurous feel to it and was full of exciting twists and turns so that just when you think you’ve worked things out, something happens to make you question everything all over again. The horror content, both psychological and physical was a lot lower this time, although there were still some very graphic scenes, and the story played a lot more on excitement, tension and suspense than shock and gore. Quentin, played by David Selby, and Sally (Fay Masterson) have a really good chemistry and Terry Molloy as Doctor Moloch has the most wonderful sinister edge to his voice. The writing in this episode, by Jonathan Morris, is second to none, keeping the heart-pounding action going while still providing enough detail to really absorb you into the story, and the music and sound FX really played on the tension and suspense.
All in all a top episode that has re-engaged me with Dark Shadows after a bit of a lull.
Image - Big Finish.
Post a Comment