Any fans of the Mr. Moto books here?

Cafe Society
1

I just finished today THE LAST OF MR. MOTO (1957, also known as STOPOVER TOKYO), and I thought it was one of the better spy novels I`ve seen in a good long lifetime of reading. John P. Marquand was after all a Pulitzer Price winning novelist and he did a great job here.

What impressed me most was how he showed the exhausting effect on spies of having to constantly play a role no matter what their real feelings were, how they judged every single word and facial expression they made, how they had to obssessively study and analyze everything everyone else said to them. It was nerve wracking just reading about it.

I have three of the six Moto books around here somewhere, but I skimmed through them as a 14 year old and didn`t appreciate them then. (No cars exploding, no laser death traps, no naked babes.) Has anyone read them all? Was this the best in the series or are they all pretty good? And are the Peter Lorre movies at all like the books? Please enlighten me.

2

Not the books, but I loved the movies with Peter Lorre.

3

Wow! I remember the old Peter Lorre “Mr. Moto” movies-ye gods, these things were made in the 1930’s! Talk about racial stereotypes…Mr. Moto was bucktoothed, nearsighted, and had a most charming accent when he attempted to pronounce the letter “l”!
Where do you find these bboks?

4

Actually, that was just Peter Lorre with a pair of glasses and his hair slicked down, so I hope you`re not saying Hungarians have buckteeth and a stereotyped accent.

5

I’m a huge fan of old mysteries, but I tried a Mr. Moto novel and was so bored that I never got more than a chapter or two into it. Very odd for me to do that.