Max Smart and The Ghastly Ghost Affair
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Published
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September 1969
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Author
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Novel Number
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9
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Villain
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Preceded by
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Get Smart Novel #9 (final novel).
Plot
Assigned to trail KAOS's top U.S. assassin to a secret seminar, Max and wife 99 board a train and start searching for the KAOS killer contingent. They are checking out passengers when lunch is announced. One by one all the passenger file into the dining car . . . and disappear! Rather that ignore the "drop-out" situation, Max and 99 report the curious incident to the conductor, who conducts them, at gunpoint, to the engineer - KAOS's fast-acting, antiseptic assassin, Arbuthnot. The train speeds to Arbuthnot's devilish destination - a ghost town with a small but spirited population: one ectoplasmic prospector and his immortal mule. Max manages to win the western wraith to the side of good. But can Max and his supernatural sidekicks stop Arbuthnot? And will Max ever find his Coolidge-head penny phone in time to summon the Chief and Control's counter-attacking counter forces? As usual, Max's blundering booboos and mindless maneuvers menace friend instead of foe!
Which all adds up to a ghastly ghost affair that's really out-of-this-world entertainment.
- from inside the book.
Synopsis
Characters
CONTROL
KAOS
Others
Trivia
- This is the only novel in which Max and 99 are married and the only one to be published during Get Smart 's tenure on CBS. However, it makes no mention of 99's pregnancy, placing the story prior to the start of season five.
Reality Check
- The title mimics the episode titles of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and its spin-off The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. all of which end with the word "affair". Like Get Smart, both series also spawned a series of novels, most of whose titles follow the same format. The series' titles themselves were previously spoofed with the television episodes "The Man from YENTA" and "The Girls from KAOS".