Get Smart Series - William Johnston

William Johnston was born in Lincoln, Illinois, in 1924. He joined the Navy in 1942 and served in the Pacific. He worked as a disc jockey, advertising executive, magazine editor, and PR man before his writing career took off in 1960 with The Marriage Cage, a comic mystery that earned him a Best First Novel Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America. He followed that book with a slew of pulp titles for Monarch Books, ranging from light comedy (The Power of Positive Loving) to medical romance (the Doctor Starr trilogy) to soft-core erotica (Save Her for Loving, Teen Age Tramp, Girls on the Wing).

The Get Smart Series is based on the hilarious Maxwell Smart, a bumbling secret agent working for CONTROL

1. Get Smart (1965)
Max trails a robot called Fred and must keep him from falling into the hands
of the evil FLAG organization.

2. Sorry, Chief! (1966)
Max must stop the nasty Dr. X from marketing his invisibility serum to the boys at Kaos.

3. Get Smart Once Again! (1966)
86 & a cryptographer by the name of Peaches Twelvetrees attempt to break Kaos’ doomsday plan. Their only problem is that they’re being stalked by a rubber faced Kaos agent known as I.M. Noman.

4. Max Smart and the Perilous Pellets (1966)
Control has to plant pellets in
Kaos installations before Kaos’ pellet-planter plants all of Kaos’ pellets in Control’s installations. The question is: can that sentence be read aloud without a stutter?

5. Missed It By That Much! (1967)
The stench of Brassica-Oleracia-212º is wiping out villages everywhere and Max & 99 must put a stop to it before KAOS magician Whitestone puts a stop to them.

6. And Loving It! (1967)
Control & KAOS team up in this book to fight hypnotist Guru Optimo. They can all be glad it wasn’t the Maharishi
-or for that matter, Larry Storch and the rest of the Scared Cows.

7. Max Smart- The Spy Who Went Out to the Cold (1968)
Max & 99 must take absent minded professor Wormser Von Boom to the north pole to protect him from Kaos. As usual, their plans turn to chaos and the group spends more
time losing the professor than protecting him. I’ve found this book to be the best thus far.

8. Max Smart Loses Control (1968)
This time with the help of Hymie the robot, 86 & 99 must save the world’s swiftest computer from KAOS creeps Ways and Means.

9.Max Smart and the Ghastly Ghost Affair (1969)
Max & 99 are assigned to trail the germ-fearing Kaos assassin Arbuthnot to an assassin seminar in the middle of a ghost town. What they find is the ghost of a crusty old prospector and his mule. For the sake of trivia, Max claims in this book that he has two very blue eyes while the cover features a Max with two very brown eyes.