Showing posts with label Capers and Heists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capers and Heists. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Mission: Impossible #4: Code Name: Little Ivan


Mission: Impossible #4: Code Name: Little Ivan, by John Tiger
No month stated, 1969  Popular Library

After a one-year gap the Mission: Impossible series returned with this fourth (and final) volume. Walter Wager also returned as “John Tiger;” he’d written the first volume back in 1967. That one tied in with the show’s first season; Code Name: Little Ivan ties in with the fourth season. Series regulars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were gone, meaning that their characters Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter do not appear in this book; instead, we have magician/actor Paris (as protrayed by none other than Leonard Nimoy in Seasons 4 and 5), and a female character named Annabelle Drue, a “sloe-eyed” beauty who previously worked as a model before becoming an IMF agent “three years ago.” This character is unique to Code Name: Little Ivan, and likely was a creation of the editors at Popular Library. 

For, page 12 and the back cover copy of Code Name: Little Ivan reveal that Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter did appear in Wager’s original text: Paris is mistakenly referred to as “Rollin” on page 12, and the back cover lists Cinnamon as one of the characters in the book. So it seems clear that these two characters were originally in the book, but had to be replaced when the actors left the show. And only the names were changed, as Paris acts in the same capacity as Rollin Hand – a noted actor who seems mostly into the whole IMF thing for the drama – and Annabelle Drue is described in the same terms Wager used for Cinnamon Carter in the first novel: a “leggy blonde,” etc. I’d imagine some editor at the imprint had to go through the text and change all mentions of “Rollin Hand” to “Paris” and “Cinnamon Carter” to “Annabelle Drue;” other than the aforementioned two misses, the editor did a good job. 

Wager again proves himself the best writer on this short-lived series, and not just because he’s clearly the only writer who actually bothered to watch the show. Once again his novel feels very much like an episode of the series, perhaps one with an expanded budget. While the previous two novels just seemed like generic ‘60s spy action, Code Name: Little Ivan is clearly intended to be a genuine Mission: Impossible story, following the template of every show: IMF “chief” Jim Phelps (described by Wager as an athletic “blond” man…who packs a .357 Magnum beneath his “expensively-tailored” sport coat!) is briefed via self-destructing tape and then goes about pondering the assignment and then putting together a team for the job. Here we get the tidbit that the Impossible Mission Force is comprised of “volunteer civilian daredevils.” 

One additional thing Wager injects into his version of Mission: Impossible is a sense of humor. I wasn’t too fond of this – the show itself is usually pretty cold and aloof – but fortunately it wasn’t too egregious. We aren’t talking pratfalls or anything, but we have a lot of goofy bantering between idiotic East German officials, with a bungling assistant who is the source of his superior’s wrath…and also a lot of the payoffs on the caper are done comedically, which doesn’t gibe with the series vibe at all. This even extends to the typically-cold IMF agents, particularly Paris, who often chortles to himself about “going too far” in his portrayal of an overly-patriotic Red Army officer. There’s also a little more “friendly banter” among the IMF agents than typically seen in the show; Paris, for example, is a bit egotistical, and Phelps convinces him to take the job by appealing to his egotism. 

Now that I think of it, Code Name: Little Ivan doesn’t veer too far from the constraints of the show; given some of the relatively implausible sci-fi scenarios seen on Mission: Impossible, I think the plot of this one could have fit right in. Basically, the IMF team must get into East Germany and steal a protoype Russian tank that’s made of a new alloy. As it turns out, though, there aren’t any big fireworks or really any action whatsoever; late in the novel there is a staged assault on a German military base, but in true Mission: Impossible style it’s all a fakeout, nothing more than Barney Collier hoodwinking the moronic soldiers with a sound effects tape. 

Wager has the mandatory opening down pat: Phelps shows up at a carnival in his unstated home city and proves his marksmanship skills to win a stuffed animal. After exchanging some code words with the proprietor, Phelps gets on a roller coaster – one that stops at the top so he, alone on the ride, can hear the secret tape that’s embedded in the stuffed animal. A secret tape which of course self-destructs after playing. From there to the also-mandatory bit of Phelps in his swank pad going over his IMF dossier to put together his team; here we learn that “Paris” was injured in a recent assignment and has not been stated as fit for duty by the medics, but Phelps figures Paris will take the job when he hears how impossible it is. 

And it truly is one for the “master thieves” of the IMF: they must steal an entire tank and sneak it out of East Germany. So they go about this in the usual caper way: Phelps and Barney pose as salesmen for “Lovely Lips,” a lipstick manufacturer(!), Annabelle is their hotstuff French model, and Paris poses as a KGB agent, with typically-sidelined muscleman Willy Armitage acting as his chaffeur. Willy’s presence was apparently challenging even for the screenwriters – how do you integrate a strongman into every single caper? – but Wager has it that he and Paris often work together as a pair, even though they are so physically mismatched. Of course, this likely made more sense with the original Rollin Hand/Martin Landau of Wager’s original text, rather than the tall and lanky Paris/Leonard Nimoy. 

Despite a brief 128 pages, there’s still a fair amount of padding in Code Name: Little Ivan, mostly due to the scenes featuring one-off East German characters. Also, the caper itself doesn’t unfold with as much tension as on the show. Wager does try to instill a little suspense in some spots, but it comes off as at odds with the show itself, where the capers most always went off without a hitch – even when they seemed to be going wrong, it would turn out to be yet another bit of “5D chess” by mastermind Phelps. Here we have sort of “tense” bits where the machine they plan to use to hide the tank starts leaking water from beneath the big “Lovely Lips” truck and Annabelle must distract the East German guard with some small talk; stuff like that. 

But otherwise there’s no action per se, unlike the previous two novels in the series with their car chases and shootouts. The caper goes down on more of a comedic nature, with Paris – wearing one of the show’s famous “rubber masks” – posing as a Ukranian tank expert and steering it for the awaiting IMF team. Spoiler alert, but just to note it for posterity: the way the IMF team hoodwink the Commies is they have a water-filled rubber replica of the tank, which they leave on the road while Paris drives the real tank into the awaiting Lovely Lips truck. Even here the tone is one of comedy, with an idiotic East German officer insisting one of his men to get on the “tank” the next day, only for the nonplussed soldier to claim the tank is sinking beneath his weight – because it’s a rubber replica filled with water. 

Wager does sort of replicate the moment where the villains realize they’ve been swindled – always one of the highlights of the show – but here, again, it’s mostly comedic, other than an off-page bit where two of the Commies shoot each other due to some IMF hijinkery. But that’s it; the two separate teams drive over the border to West Germany and that’s all she wrote for Code Name: Little Ivan, as well as the Mission: Impossible tie-in series itself. All told this was an okay series, with the caveat that the second and third volumes seemed to be novelizations of an entirely different show.

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Men’s Adventure Quarterly #6


Men's Adventure Quarterly #6, edited by Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham, and Paul Bishop
October, 2022  Subtropic Productions

Every issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly has been great, but this sixth volume was really up my alley. It’s devoted to heist yarns, and some years ago I personally was on a hunt for men’s magazine heist stories. In fact, a few of the stories I hunted for but never acquired are actually collected here. So once again Bob Deis, Bill Cunningham, and guest editor Paul Bishop have done everyone a great service by bringing these long-lost tales back into print. 

Even better, many of the stories here are from the ‘70s, which to me was the decade that crime fiction was at its best. This also means that the stories here are slightly more risque than the men’s adventure stories of the decades before. It also means the stories are a little shorter; even the “Book Bonuses” collected here are shorter than those from the ‘50s and early to mid ‘60s. All told though, the editors have done a swell job of putting together a great “snatch” (lame pun alert) of men’s mag heist stories. In fact it would be an even sweller idea if they did another heist theme in a future MAQ

A cool thing about the heist stories in the men’s adventure magazines is that they usually lack the fat of a longer novel in the genre. While you still get the planning of the heist and the carrying out of it, the timeline is much accelerated. Also, there’s more than likely going to be a full-breasted babe in various stages of undress (perhaps even more than one such babe) at some point in the story. The protagonists, while criminals, are generally the same square-jawed “Yanks” (as they were always referred to in the original mags) that would feature in the WWII stories the men’s mags were more known for. That said, many of the protagonists are vets; there seems to have been a requirement from the editorial department that the heroes be combat veterans. 

As usual we get nice intros from each editor, with overviews of favorite heist movies and novels. There’s a lot of Bill Cunningham’s usual great art direction here, with movie posters and stills augmenting the text. There’s also a great beefcake section on Angie Dickinson. Completely random TMI moment: I recall seeing a glimpe of Ms. Dickinson in the 1980 movie Dressed To Kill, shortly after it came out and was on HBO or something – my parents had one of those boxes on the TV set that would get HBO or “The Superstation” (aka TBS). I was only six or seven at the time, but man, what I saw was Ms. Dickinson in the shower – I don’t even think she was nude – and we’ll just say I was, uh, moved by the sight. To this day I’ve still never seen Dressed To Kill, but I’ll always remember it for that. 

Well anyway, on with the show. Things start off swimmingly with “The Flying Bank Looters,” by Tom Christopher and from the October 1967 Man’s World. In one of his typically informative intros, Bob Deis notes that “Tom Christopher” was really author Thomas Chastain…and it occurred to me I’ve never read one of the guy’s novels before. Oh and one thing I had to laugh about – the slugline on the splashpage (with art by my favorite of them all, Earl Norem) says that the story features a “whirlpool of greed and laughter” (emphasis mine)! I’m assuming that’s supposed to be “slaughter,” and I’m curious if that’s how it appears in the original Man’s World printing. 

Chastain’s story is a fast-moving piece of crime fiction that dwells a little more on the setup than the other stories collected here. It concerns a dude named Frank Cage, hiding down in Colombia as a ranch hand after some criminal business in the States. He concocts a scheme to heist the “Jetbanco” venture, which is a sort of flying bank for the remote ranches in the area. Cage’s American girlfriend, with her “thrusting breasts,” also shows up for some men’s mag-patented off-page lovin’. All told a fun story that sets the tone for the rest of the magazine, complete with the mandatory “complications ensue” finale. 

Next up is a novella that’s more in-line with the typical men’s mag story in that it’s a long one that takes place during World War II: “G.I. Stick-Up Mob That Heisted $33 Million In Nazi Gold,” by Eugene Joseph and from the November 1967 Male. This is the longest story here, and somewhat reminded me of Mario Puzo’s men’s mag story that became a novel, Six Graves To Munich, in that the framing story takes place after the war, with a long flashback to the war itself. It’s not revenge that centers the tale here, but hero Steve Brock’s quest to collect the titular Nazi gold he hid near the Elbe in January of 1945. 

This one really does read like the typical men’s mag war yarn, with Brock leading his tank squadron against the Germans in various pitched battles. The author works in the mandatory full-breasted babe, in this case a hotstuff “fraulein” who engages Brock in a “brutal bout of love” right on some rubble! I mean the poor girl’s back must’ve hurt like hell! This girl is the one who informs Brock of a stash of gold the Nazis have plundered, and Brock talks his men into routing the Germans and stealing it – even though they’ll have to go up against the Russians, too. 

The “1946” story finds Brock with yet another hotstuff German babe, this one a nurse, as he tries to figure out who among his men is trying to kill him. It’s more on the suspense angle here, but the revelation of who was the double-crosser wasn’t as shocking as the author likely intended. A curious note about this tale is that the yank hero marries the native gal at the end of the story; as I noted ten years ago in my review of Women With Guns, in the majority of the men’s mag stories the yank heroes would bang foreign gals with aplomb, but would generally go back home and marry an American girl in the end. 

“Stop California’s Iron Shark Heist Commandos” is pretty much everything I was looking for in this volume of Men’s Adventure Quarterly. It’s by yet another famous author in disguise: Martin Cruz Smith, credited as Tom Irish in the December 1967 issue of For Men Only. Oh, and that’s another note – all the stories collected in this issue are from the “Diamond Line” of men’s adventure magazines, meaning that the quality of the writing is always good. Cruz Smith proves that here, in a fast-moving tale in which a group of heisters take on a floating casino in Baja. 

Smith also works in a bit of a cold war angle in that the hero of the tale is an undercover agent who infiltrates a specially-selected gang of heisters. After some training they carry out the heist, outfitted in scuba suits and hoisting Stoner subguns. There’s a bit more action in this one but truth be told, I found the writing to be harried, as if Smith had to jettison chunks of plot due to limitations on the word count. The finale is especially rushed, with various reveals and turnarounds happening so quickly that they don’t really resonate. 

Don Honig, one of the few men’s adventure magazine authors still with us today, shows up in another MAQ with “Band Of Misfits,” from the January 1970 Action For Men. I really appreciated Bob’s intro for this, as in it Don Honig himself shares the background on the story, which he came up with while on vacation. This yarn is a bit more smallscale than the previous ones, seeing a somewhat smalltime heister planning to hit a casino in Mexico. But then he runs into a hotstuff blonde divorcee with “huge, soft breasts,” and just as our hero predicts the female presence only serves to “louse up” the heist. Then he runs into a fellow ex-con, which louses things up even more. Overall an enterntaining, fast-moving piece. 

Next up is a story I reviewed here back in 2015, and thanks to Bob for mentioning my review in his intro: “The Great Sierra Mob Heist,” by C.K. Winston and from the December 1971 Male. Now, do not go back and read my review, unless that is you’ve already read the story and know everything that happens in it. Back when I wrote that review, I had no idea that one day Bob Deis and cohorts would be bringing these men’s adventure stories back into print. But I read the story again in this issue of MAQ, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It was my favorite story in the issue, in fact. I also appreciated Bob’s intro, with more background from Don Honig on who exactly C.K. Winston was. 

One thing I noticed in my second reading of “The Great Sierra Mob Heist” was the increased focus on sleaze; “hero” Asherman gets it on with both the nubile babes who are involved in the heist, and author Winston heightens the sleazy vibe of the remote gambling resort with a part where a couple have sex in a sauna – an act of cheap showiness that prudish Asherman doesn’t think much of. There are also minor sleazy details like Asherman putting his hand down the “hot pants” of one of his conquests, and the girl “widen[s] her stance to accommodate him.”  There’s also more violence, like the opening bit of Asherman brutally and gorily killing off an ex-con who recognizes him; an interesting parallel to an event in Honig’s “Band Of Misfits.”  

“The G.I. Wild Bunch” is by prolific men’s mag author Grant Freeling and from the March 1975 Male. This one detours from the heist vibe of the other stories in that it’s more about a guy trying to clear his name. There’s a “Yankee Gang” hitting places in early ‘70s West Germany, and it appears to be a group of American G.I.s behind it. Our hero, Landers, is a ‘Nam vet with a shady past who is set up by the heist mob, falling for a “fraulein” honey trap who steals his ID. This bit contains the phenomenal line: “[Landers] realized, to his astonishment, that the large, round, but thrustingly firm breasts beneath her dress were not supported by a bra. The unseen nipples hardened instantly…” Of course the lovin’ happens off-page, but still, great line. Otherwise this one’s like The Fugitive, with Landers evading the military police while tracking down the heisters who framed him. 

More G.I.s-turned-heisters hijinks ensue with “G.I. ‘Hayseeds’ Who Pulled A $2 Million Gold Heist,” by Frank Porter as told to Michael Cullen and from the July 1975 Male. This one rides on the rednecksploitation vibe of the mid-‘70s, with a “hayseed” narrator telling us all the misadventures he and his two buddies endured while trying to hijack some counterfeit coins up in Canada. An interesting note about this one is that it’s the only story here without a female presence. Instead, things play out more on a dark comedy nature with the narrator telling us how one thing after another goes wrong in the heist, as it turns out the coins belonged to the Mafia. The “G.I.” nature isn’t much played up in the actual story, and is just more indication that these men’s mags tried to cater to a readership likely made up of ex-G.I.s. 

The final yarn is even more oddball in its riding of current trends: “Arizona’s Incredible ‘Kung Fu’ Vengeance Heisters,” by Grant Freeling and from the November 1973 Male. This is another longish yarn, and also the second story in this MAQ by Freeling, who has always been one of my favorite men’s mag authors. Here Freeling combines three setups: a heist, revenge, and kung-fu. He also gets the sleaze in, with the story opening with hero Hal Brice checking out a “voluptuous” blonde. Of course, within a few paragraphs he’ll be in bed with her, this being a men’s mag story. 

In his intro Bob Deis notes how Bruce Lee’s image was ripped off for the story’s splashpage, but I couldn’t help but notice the similarity of the hero’s name, as well: I mean, Hal Brice. He too is a former G.I., and in quickly rendered backstory we learn how his father was rendered destitute by an evil land baron. This guy had teenaged Brice beaten up, after which our hero went to ‘Nam – where he, of course, learned kung-fu – and now Brice has returned to the States to get a little revenge. The voluptuous blonde is part of his vengeance scheme, being as she is the secretary (and of course mistress) of the evil baron. 

This is the rare men’s mag story that also makes reference to the more liberal times; one of Brice’s associates is a former ‘Nam pilot who now does marijuana runs across the border, but has had to stop due to the recent crackdown. This is relayed bluntly, with no condemnation or anything. Now that I think of it, how I wish there was a men’s mag story about dope-running pilots. Hell, maybe there is – Bob Deis would know. Anyway, the kung-fu stuff only factors in the frequent action scenes, with Brice insisting “no guns” and using only hands and feet during the heist of the baron’s coffers. But like so many other stories here, the tale ends with a surprise betrayal or two. Overall, this was a great way to round out the issue. 

It came out a few months ago, but Men’s Adventure Quarterly is still available at Amazon, and would make for perfect escapist summer reading. These stories can be brain-rotting, though. This is also TMI, but one day I was at work, and I’d just been reading this issue of MAQ in the morning, and this lovely young coworker happened to walk by my desk, with a tight top showing off her ample charms (which us male coworkers aren’t supposed to notice, of course, I mean the toxic masculinity of it all). No lie, friends, but the phrase “jutting breasts” popped unbidden into my head. Unfortunately, she did not saunter over to my desk to offer her services in whatever heist I might be cooking up. 

Thursday, March 30, 2023

The Ms. Squad #2: On The Brink


The Ms. Squad #2: On The Brink, by Mercedes Endfield
September, 1975  Bantam Books

We have here the second (and final!) installment of The Ms. Squad, one of the more curious representations of the “men’s adventure” genre you’ll ever encounter. This is because it is in fact a caper with a light comedy tone and features a trio of women who are determined to do everything better than men – especially heisting places. But as it turns out, the best thing about On The Brink is the cover art; it isn’t credited, but it looks so similar to the work of EC Comics alum Jack Davis that I’ll go ahead and assume it’s by him. The same artist did the cover for the first volume of the series, Lucky Pierre (which I don’t have). 

Also the background of the book is more interesting than the actual plot; it’s copyright “Ruth Harris Books, Inc,” which appears to have been an outfit similar to Lyle Kenyon Engel’s “Book Creations Inc.” Only much less successful; I can hardly find anything credited to “Ruth Harris Books.” On The Brink is itself credited to Bela Von Block in the Catalog Of Copyright Entries. Block was a prolific writer of the era, writing under a host of pseudonyms, though this is the first book of his I’ve reveiewed here. He had most success writing as “Johnathan Black” in the ‘70s and ‘80s, turning out big, Harold Robbins-style blockbusters like The World Rapers and The Carnage Merchants. Around a decade ago a reader from Manhattan sent me a few packages of books, with a handful by Black, enthusing over their sordid plots (not to mention the strange frequency in which the word “smega” appeared in them), but folks I still haven’t read those books, and I feel bad about that. But damn, they’re long; The Carnage Merchants for example is over 900 pages! 

Well anyway, if Bela Von Block did indeed write On The Brink, one can only hope his “Jonathan Black” material was better – that is, if Block was really Black. That too seems to be a mystery, but I was fairly confident of this at one point. These days I’m not confident about anything. Wait, I’m confident that most of you won’t dig this book. Because I’m sad to report it isn’t very good. And despite being under 160 pages it moves really slowly. This is because Block doesn’t seem to know how to write a fast-moving book. So much of On the Brink is given over to telling rather than showing…with the double kick to the crotch that we’re often told about stuff we already saw happen! Indeed, the second half of the book concerns a new character trying to figure out what happened in the first half of the book…events which we readers were privy to from the start. 

That said, On The Brink is a fun ‘70s time capsule, which I always enjoy; that new character I just mentioned is a famous black private eye named John Shift; Block doesn’t go all the way with the goofy in-jokery and tell us there’s also a famous song about him. Otherwise he’s clearly based on John Shaft, even down to his hatred of the mob. But there’s also an interesting modern vibe to the novel. For we learn that the three members of Ms. Squad have banded together over feminist ideals, in particular the lack of pay equality. The leader of the team, Jackie Cristal (who barely factors in this installment), in particular rails against pay inequality; she’s the Vice President of a cosmetics company, their chief chemist who designs new perfumes and other inventions, but she doesn’t get paid very well. 

Apparently Lucky Pierre detailed the formation of the Ms. Squad. There’s also Deanna Royce, a black soul singer who too is sick of being treated second-hand just because she’s a woman in a man’s industry. Finally there’s Pammy Porter, whose name cracked me up because I work with someone named Tammy Porter; Pammy’s a blonde-haired gold medal gymnast who rails against the fact that she doesn’t get half the lucrative sponsorships the male Olympic athletes do. Apparently in the first Ms. Squad installment these three met at a women’s lib conference or somesuch and, the way these things go, decided to band together to heist places(!?). That first volume detailed their heisting of a luxury hotel; in other words, a retread of The Anderson Tapes

But there are two quirks with the Ms. Squad. For one, they hit places after they’ve already been hit; in Lucky Pierre, they apparently robbed that hotel shortly after it had already been robbed. And in On The Brink, they decide to heist the Brinks vault on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the famous Brinks robbery. The other weird quirk is that the Ms. Squad does these heists to prove that women can do the job better than the original male robbers did…but folks, this entire setup is ruined because the three Ms. Squad girls disguise themselves as men on the heists! WTF! So who exactly are they proving these feminist victories to?? 

Anyway as mentioned, the series is basically a comedy. The Ms. Squad has sworn that no one will be killed on their heists; Jackie, the chemist, comes up with all the harmless weapons, like “Perma-zonk,” which is hidden in an “atomizer” in their purses and can knock someone out for hours with just one spray. She also creates various explosives and fake skin that they can wear on their hands that will disguise their fingerprints. Pammy brings the muscle to the team, using her athletic ability to hop around and fight as necessary – but the action scenes, as shown below, are minimal at best. As for Deena…well, she brings her experience as a black woman to the table: she’s familiar with the crime world and how criminals think because she’s black. I’m not making that up, either. 

Deena does all the heavy lifting in this one; the dialog indicates that Pammy might have featured the most in Lucky Pierre. But then again, it appears that the two books follow identical setups; the Ms. Squad carries out a heist, then some private eye gets on the case and tries to prove these three harmless women were really the heisters. In Lucky Pierre it was a handsome Irish P.I. who got on the case and ultimately banged Pammy. In On The Brink it’s handsome black P.I. John Shift who gets on the case and ultimately bangs Deena. But folks even the banging’s off-page. There is absolutely zero in the way of sleaze or filth in On The Brink, I’m sorry to report…which again makes me wonder if this really was by Bela Von Block, given that his “Jonathan Black” books are fairly risque. 

But then, maybe this “G rating” was the request of Bantam Books, or even the mysterious “Ruth Harris Books, Inc.” I just find it curious, because you have here a series about three hotstuff swinging babes in the ‘70s who like to heist places, so you’d figure it would be at least a little explicit in the sexual tomfoolery. But it isn’t! It’s curiously deflated, as if Block doesn’t know how to write the book. This again makes me suspect he was writing to spec, as Bela Von Block also wrote some “nonfiction” sex books as “W.D. Sprague,” so you’d figure the guy would have no problem sleazing things up. Damn you, Ruth Harris! 

Another strange thing is the novel is so awkwardly constructed. So it starts post-heist, with the Ms. Squad having hit a “black restaurant” in Boston which is on the sight that the Brinks vault was back in the ‘50s. Again, their schtick is they hit places a second time, thus they wanted to heist the exact location that the Brinks armory once was, even if it’s now a place called “Chick ‘n’ Treat.” Yes, a big black-owned chicken diner. But the girls discover that they’ve heisted a lot more than the two hundred thousand haul they expected to get; the place was filled with money bags, and after all night counting they discover it’s just shy of two million dollars. 

But all this is told in summary, to the point that I assumed we were being recapped on what happened in the first volume. Not so. The majority of the novel is told in this summary fashion. Then we flash back like a year or something to the aftermath of the previous book, and learn how the girls came up with this “Brinks anniversary” heist. It’s all heavy on the plotting and planning, with little in the way of action. Jackie is the only one we get to see in her normal life as VP at the cosmetics firm; Deena and Pammy only factor into the heist planning scenes. The team comes up with an idea to hit the Brinks place, flying to Boston and scoping it out – and finding a chicken diner there. So Deena goes undercover as a waittress to scope the place out, and Pammy comes up with an idea to steal a Brinks truck, just like the original Brinks crooks did 25 years before. 

Of course, we already know from page one that they are successful in the heist, so there’s zero tension here. As I say, Bela Von Bock has a rather interesting approach to how he writes what’s supposed to be a suspenseful novel. At page 70 we catch up with the opening, and now it’s all about John Shift being hired by the heisted chicken diner owner – whose diner was really a front for a numbers racket – and putting together the pieces of how the heist went down. That’s right folks, the entire first 70 pages are the setup of the heist, and the remainder of the novel is devoted to a secondary character figuring out how the heist was planned and carried out! To say On The Brink is a study in repetition would be, uh, redundant. 

The goofy ‘70s touches are okay, like a black crook who retains a seven-foot henchman basketball player named Abdullah Eleven, clearly a spoof on Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who uses his basketball to torture Deena – slamming her in the stomach with the ball. Shift shows up with his .357 Magnum to save the day, not that anyone is killed. Block also tries to develop suspense with Shift suspecting Deena of the heist while also developing feelings for her, and Deena trying to hold him off with lies while developing feelings for him, etc. Shift also factors into the climactic action scene, which also features Pammy, apropos of nothing, showing off sudden obscure kung-fu skills: 


The girls kill no one, though we’re told the cops kill a bunch of the bad guys off-page. That’s another thing. For a trio of heisters, the Ms. Squad is saved twice by the police in the final pages, first in New York and then in Boston. Just super lame all around. Block apparently planned a third volume, as On The Brink ends with the hint that the Ms. Squad, having pulled off the biggest heist on American soil, will now try to do the same thing in a foreign country, namely Brazil. But readers of the day clearly disliked The Ms. Squad as much as I did, thus this second volume turned out to be the final volume. No tears were shed, I’m sure.

Monday, September 5, 2022

The Illusionist #2: All Of Our Aircraft Are Missing!


The Illusionist #2: All Of Our Aircraft Are Missing!, by John P. Radford
No month stated, 1974  Canyon Books

It’s been seven years since I read the first volume of The Illusionist, and it’s taken me this long to recover from it. As we’ll recall, The Illusionist pretends to be a light-hearted caper series, but in reality it’s nothing but gutbucket sleaze. The sleaze isn’t even the problem; it’s that the sex is thoroughly unpleasant, with author John P. Radford clearly trying to gross out his readers. 

I still don’t know if Radford was a real person or some ghostwriter using a house name. The novel is copyright Canyon Books. The writer certainly appears to be the guy who wrote the first book, and also I have to wonder if he was involved with the Space Race. Series hero Joe Maguire worked on the Apollo Program as an engineer, and Radford peppers the novel with a lot of aeronautical engineering details. What I mean to say is, he seems to know a lot about the subject, and also the setup for the series is that Maguire is out for blood ever since “The Great White Father” (ie Nixon) dropped NASA’s budget, leaving guys like Joe (as Radford refers to him in the narrative) unemployed. This is such an unusual setup that I wonder if Radford himself experienced Joe Maguire’s backstory. 

Radford also gives this installment an aeronautical setup. Joe, in France after making “heavy bread” in the first book’s caper, becomes interested in the nascent Concorde program, and soon devises a way to con his way into more money. The previous book had a setup where Joe and his two henchmen pretended to kidnap some kid, or some such shit, even though the kid was never in danger. So is the case here, with Joe coming up with the idea to make it seem like a bunch of Concorde jets have been hijacked – though it will just be trickery. 

This then is what makes Joe “The Illusionist.” In perhaps the only interesting part of the novel, we learn that Joe was a teen in the Depression and listened to a lot of radio shows and read a lot of pulp. He sees himself as the modern incarnation of his favorite character, The Shadow. He doesn’t go for a disguise or even use any weapons; instead, Joe concocts schemes and then acts as a guy who is merely carrying out a job for a mysterious mastermind. His two helpers, Bob Sidak and George Ross, are unaware that Joe is really the plotter of the cons they work on; Joe just calls them up and says he has a new gig he’s working on for a mysterious employer, and once again Bob and George help out. 

All this though is just window dressing. All Of Our Aircraft Are Missing, like its predecessor, is devoted to the sleaze. Endless pages of hardcore tomfoolery, and let’s not forget Joe is in his mid-40s and looks like Woody Allen. But he’s got a big dick, folks! We can’t forget that. But yes, he’s an ex-NASA engineer who looks like Sol Rosenberg or whatever and he picks up chicks left and right. He spends most of the novel banging June, an American girl here in Paris for stewardess school – specifically, a Concorde stew. June is also casually banging Pierre, an engineer on the Concorde program, and Radford uses the opportunity to saddle the book with lots and lots of exposition about aeronautical engineering. 

Exposition is in fact the name of the game here, and I swear I’ve never read a book where even the sex-dialog is exposition. I mean check it out: 


So it seems clear that John P. Radford is not taking any of this seriously (note the alliterative phrases), and in fact the sex scenes achieve this same vibe throughout the novel. Now last time Radford also tried – and succeeded – in grossing us out. I re-read my review of The Most Happy Con Man and regretted it, because I’d managed to forget the puke-inducing bit where Joe graphically screwed his “dirty whore” girlfriend…literally dirty, and literally a whore, and who never cleaned up after her johns. We don’t quite get to that disgusting level here, but the sex scenes are still so thoroughly unpleasant as to be nauseating. And Radford does try to make us sick – like when Joe finally gives it to June the one way he hasn’t yet (think “backdoor shenanigans”), and she, uh, lets one rip, and Joe “delights” in the “warm anal air.” 

Yeah, and there’s other stuff too, like when Joe visits yet another dirty whore, this one French, and Joe is so digusted with her poor hygiene and her copious body hair that he serves her up “the crowning insult to a French whore” and, uh, “He shit[s] in her bidet.” There’s also a random two-page anatomical lesson on female private parts, and speaking of bidets, there’s another grossout bit where June sits on a bidet after yet another boff with Joe, and Joe looks in the bidet and sees the spewage that has spilled out of her…well anyway, enough of that. 

Oh what the hell; here’s the random two-page anatomical lesson: 



Other than that, the book lacks thrills or excitement. We get lots of page-filling dialog in between the page-filling sex; later in the book it turns into a travelogue across France, with yet more screwing as Joe and June still avidly go at it while seeing the sights. What’s funny is that the novel practically reeks of a condescending attitude; nothing is good enough for Joe Maguire, and one can’t help but see it as a reflection of the author’s personality. And also it’s clear again that the author hates his readers, hates anyone who would even want to read sleaze like this, so he goes all-out to ridicule them by serving up the most unpleasant filth his perverted mind can conceive. 

As for the con, it takes forever to get underay, same as the previous book. And it’s lame; Joe and his two comrades manage to fool various airlines and airports into believing some Concordes have disappeared, but it’s all some trickery via radar. By novel’s end Joe’s once again into some “heavy bread,” and also June and Pierre get married – which is real weird because June spends almost the entire novel screwing Joe. But whatever, who cares. 

The craziest thing is that there were two more volumes of The Illusionist. I’ve only got the third one – the fourth one appears to be impossible to find – and I’m in absolutely no hurry to read it. It’s gonna take me another seven years to get over this one.

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Valley Of The Assassins


Valley Of The Assassins, by Ian MacAlister
January, 1976  Fawcett Gold Medal

Prolific author Marvin Albert published a few adventure novels as “Ian MacAlister” in the ‘70s, Fawcett clearly trying to capitalize on the success of Alistair MacLean’s books. Some of the “MacAlister” books were WWII thrillers, and others, like this one, had contemporary ‘70s settings. But if the others are as good as Valley Of The Assassins is, they’re all worth seeking out. 

The only material I’ve read from Albert is his work on Soldato, so what I know about him is his recurring theme of a protagonist being hunted by killers in a desolate terrain. That occurs here as well; Albert is a gifted adventure writer, capably bringing to life desolate, far-flung corners of the world and having his characters endure Hemingway-esque struggles while also fending off human enemies. With this novel Albert adds other elements to the mix: a sort of proto-Indiana Jones vibe with ancient maps written in secret code, an almost supernatural menace, and even a heist vibe to boot, with the main protagonist carefully putting together a team to carry out what is essentially an elaborate tomb raid. It’s an entertaining novel for sure, but be aware this is another of those deceptively-slim ‘70s paperbacks; it only runs to 190 pages, but it has some very small, dense print. 

It’s not a slow-moving novel, though; while we don’t get to the expected “hunted in a desolate setting” motif until late in the novel, Albert keeps the narrative moving with occasional action setpieces, lots of mystery and suspense, and very strong characterization. Not to mention a very strong grasp of setting: Valley Of The Assassins takes place in Iraq, Iran, Oman, and the desert, and in each locale there is the feeling that Albert has been there, even if he hadn’t really been; what I mean to say is that he confidently and succinctly captures the vibe of these areas with the air of an expert. He also capably brings to life his protagonist, Eric Larson, an American “adventurer” (per the back cover) who has lived in the Middle East for the past several years; Larson came here as an oil driller, “fell in love” with a cabin boat, decided to buy it at great expense, and now lives here still, doing odd jobs for foreign businessmen visiting the area. 

We meet Larson while he’s en route to one such job, venturing along the Persian Gulf for Iraq. He comes across three “corpses” along a reef; one of them, a frail little hunchbacked man, turns out to still be alive. Larson brings him aboard and, per the weak man’s whispered request, takes him to Iran. The novel takes place in pre-revolution Iran, of course, and indeed Larson never once is concerned about terrorism or the expected modern troubles during his voyages around Arabia. His main troubles are how the Iraqi authorities suspect him of occasionally providing assistance to Kurdish rebels, something we gradually learn Larson has indeed done in the past. 

Two weeks later he’s bumming around in Basra, Iraq, trying to avoid the suspicision of his “friend,” a power-hungry Iraqi cop named Hammad who likes to have the occasional secret drink with Larson – but who wouldn’t be bothered at all if he were to have to torture, beat, or arrest his friend if it turned out Larson was involved in anything illegal. Larson has bigger concerns, though; he returns to his cabin boat one night to find a strange young Arabic man waiting in the boat for him. The man draws a strange symbol on the deck and tries to kill Larson with a poisoned dagger. Larson blows the guy’s head off; Hammad comes in to collect the corpse, and everyone is baffled by the strange symbol tattooed on the would-be assassin’s chest. There are a lot of ideograms throughout the book, by the way, including even hieroglyphics. The assassin appears to have come for a piece of paper (with more ideographs) that the old hunchback secretly stashed on the boat without Larson’s awareness. Larson takes the map to a scholar acquaintance, one who has spent decades studying Arabic history. 

Albert skillfully weaves a mystery element into the narrative as it becomes clear the paper is a map. But everything about it is a puzzle, with the deciphered symbols coming out as odd lines of poetry which seem to be vague directions. Eventually Larson will learn this all has to do with the infamous Hassan I Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, a despotic ruler from centuries ago who retained a legion of fiercely loyal Assassins. The Old Man also factored into Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus!, which too was published around this time, so there must’ve been some book or documentary or something that was getting writers interested in him in the mid-‘70s. Larson suspects the Assassins still exist, even though official records state they were disbanded back in the medieval era – he gets confirmation of this when he draws the symbol that was tattooed on the would-be assassin, and his friend tells him it is the mark of the Assassin order. 

Larson gets further confirmation when another old acquaintance suddenly shows up – Darra, a “dark, hard-eyed young woman” that Larson had a fling with a few years before. She’s a Kurdish rebel, and while helping them against their Iraqi oppressors Larson and Darra fell in love…which didn’t go over well with her husband, thus Larson left. But she reveals that her husband’s since been killed in a Soviet airstrike. Now Darra is here with another young Kurd, Jamil, and they’ve also come for the map. Turns out they are aligned with the old man Larson saved at the beginning of the book: his name is Kasra Tofiq, and he’s an Iran-based scholar of Kurdish extraction who is the world’s leading expert on Hassan I Sabbah. After meeting the man again, Larson gets the full details: Tofiq had read that the Assassins had a great treasure which was hidden in Sabbah’s coffin after their fortress fell. They carried it around Arabia to stash it somewhere, but the location was lost. Tofiq thinks he’s found the location, but in pure Indiana Jones style it’s not so simple: the seeker must decipher several clues and jump through innumerable hoops to find the treasure’s location. Worse yet, Tofiq is certain the treasure is somewhere in the Rub-al-Khali, a massive desert so infamous that even veteran sand-dwellers go out of their way to avoid it. 

This takes us into the heist angle of the novel, as Larson begins putting together his team of specialists. However unlike a proper heist, these specialities aren’t fully exploited in the narrative. Like one guy, another acquaintance of Larson’s, named Church, who lives in Oman as a geologist and thus has free reign from the authoritative government to travel around. Larson hires him on with a promise of a nice cut in return for using Church’s free pass – Larson and the others will need to go through Oman for the desert – but after this is accomplished Church becomes inconsequential to the plot. More important are the other characters who come along: Darra, Jamil, and finally Hammad, who forces himself into the venture after having spied on Larson. Finally there’s Ivo Slasko, a Czech gunrunner who too has nothing of consequence to add to the plot and might as well be wearing a red shirt. 

Albert delivers yet another taut sequence where Larson ventures alone to desolate Alamut, impregnable desert fortress of Hassan I Sabbah. This is very much in the Indiana Jones mode as Larson must find the ancient garden and sit in the darkened, empty fortress throughout the night, waiting to see how the moon illuminates the map – only then will the first steps in the journey to the treasure be revealed. This sort of thing repeats throughout the novel, with the journeyer coming to the next stop only to have to wait for the next “signal” on how to proceed. Larson by the way has gotten so involved because, if the treasure is as great as expected, he wants fifty percent of it – and knows no one can prevent him, as he keeps Tofiq’s map and further burns it after getting the next signals here at Alamut. Thus Larson is the only person in the entire world who knows how to find the ancient Assassin treasure. 

Now there’s mystery, and tension, and mounting thrills with strong characterization, but I can hear you asking – where’s the sleaze? Sadly my friends there’s none. We know for sure that Larson and Darra are soon back together, but the most we get is a “morning after” moment in Darra’s small apartment in Iran, with Larson musing that she is “the epitome of a soft and supple harem delight.” Even the violence isn’t much dwelt upon; later in the book there are a few pitched firefights, but as with the Soldato books it’s more in the PG realm of “get shot and fall down”-type violence, with none of the exploding heads or fountaining cererbrospinal gore that bloodthirsty action readers typically demand. But friends it’s my pleasure to inform you that the lack of this exploitative stuff doesn’t matter! Valley Of The Assassins is a damn great novel even without it. 

We know action is forthcoming, as Larson is sure to get arms for the trip into the hellscape desert. Everyone carries an M16 and Browning high-power automatic, and they also bring along two Enfield rifles for long-range sniping. As they enter the desert in a truck and a Land Rover, Church learns via his friends in the Oman army that the Berber “desert raiders” have been especially violent lately. They almost come off like proto-Sand People in the novel, with the constant threat that they might latch onto Larson’s party in the desolate desert and set in upon them. But while cool, I felt the Berbers sort of distracted from the more narratively-important threat: the Assassins. And indeed the two menaces are easily confused, both being comprised of robe-wearing desert dwellers with little in the way of human compassion. 

Albert really brings the desert to life, and this material is straight-up adventure fiction, with lots of flora and fauna detail. But as mentioned the book is longer than you expect, and a lot of this serves to make it read a little slowly at times. Then again, Albert’s prose is so sinewy and accomplished that you don’t mind the slackened pace. There is as mentioned the growing threat of the Berbers, and this really comes to a boil in a gripping sequence that has several of them tailing Larson’s group. The Berbers are on camels, but when Larson’s Land Rover keeps breaking down on mountain-sized dunes the tables are turned. This leads to a gripping sequence where Larson and comrades mount an ambush on the Berbers, cutting them down on full auto. This leads to more of Albert’s patented “man being stalked” material, with Larson desperate to find the last four Berbers, but while super cool it turns out to be a precursor of the novel’s climax, which features the same situation of Larson being stalked. 

There’s another layer to the story in that Larson is certain there’s a “leak” in Tofiq’s organization; this became evident when the Assassin showed up on Larson’s boat in Iraq to kill him. The “mystery” of the leak is pretty easily solved, but regardless Larson doesn’t get certainty of it till near the novel’s end, when a trio of Assassins show up and start stalking his party through the desert. There’s no titular “valley” of Assassins here; rather, the treasure turns out to be in a twisted cavern system that sprouts over a volcanic crater. Albert again skillfully delivers the desperate situation as Larson and the few remaining members of his party navigate the rocky, dangerous terrain, all while the Assassins stalk them. The biggest reveal is when the treasure is discovered, lying for centuries on a pile of volcanic ash by the crater – the excellent cover illustration turns out to be a spoiler of what Larson actually finds in Hassan I Sabbah’s coffin. 

The finale is what Albert does best: two men tracking our hero through rough desert terrain in a taut sequence that will leave even the most veteran action reader exhausted. It’s the exact opposite of the typical gun-blazing action finale, with Larson desperately maintaining silence as he crawls in and out of canyons, moving inch by inch as he scans the horizon for a betraying cloud of dust – which would give away the location of his enemies. Oh and meanwhile he’s been shot in the leg so has to pull himself around, and Darra has a severe concussion. This part was especially synchronistic as I happened to accidentally bang my own head on the wall that very day (I forgot to duck when going into the downstairs closet, like a pure fool). Darra’s out of it for the finale, save for one very memorable appearance; I forgot to mention, but she too is a wonderfully-realized character, a kickass desert warrior babe who fights harder than most men Larson knows. 

At 190 dense pages, Valley Of The Assassins actually has a pretty curt ending; Larson manages to get out of the desert with the “treasure,” but what happens after this is unstated. Does he go back to Kofiq? Do he and Darra use the treasure money to start a new life in America, with Darra becoming a media presence to talk about the Iraqi subjugation of the Kurdish people? This is something Larson suggests they do, but whether they actually do or not is up to the reader to determine. Regardless, Valley Of The Assassins is as mentioned a great novel, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I’ll be looking for more of the “Ian MacAlister” books in the future.

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Loaded (aka Smokescreen)


Loaded, by Robert Sabbag
No month stated, 2002  Little, Brown and Company

In 1976 Robert Sabbag published Snowblind, an account of a coke smuggler which was greeted with much critical acclaim; Rolling Stone excerpted it extensively, and no less than Hunter Thompson showered it with praise. Sabbag didn’t focus on “drug books” for a while after that; I think I read an interview with him where he stated he didn’t want to to only be known for drug-related nonfiction, so focused on other material. But in 2002 he returned to the field with Loaded (retitled Smokescreen for its trade paperback reprint), which concerns the much more interesting (to me, at least) subject of ‘70s marijuana smuggling. 

In the afterword to Loaded, Sabbag states that he almost wrote this book back in the ‘70s, and that it would’ve been an of-the-moment documentation of the era. It’s kind of unfortunate he didn’t. I’ve searched, and it doesn’t seem like there were many books published on dope smuggling in the ‘70s; you’d figure Rolling Stone would’ve done a story on it, maybe with Thompson himself or some other roving reporter tagging along with some dope smugglers on their DC-3 as they winged their way across the border from Mexico with a huge stash of Colombian Gold. I’ve searched my Rolling Stone: Cover To Cover CD-ROM and have been unable to find any such story…the closest thing would be the occasional “dope pages” updates from Charles Perry which ran in the early to mid ‘70s, but the majority of those were just news bulletins on happenings in the world of dopesmoking. 

My assumption is the smugglers were so under the radar they didn’t even want any publicity in Rolling Stone. It seems that the only place you can find stories about them from the era itself would be in the fiction of the day, a la Night Crossing and The Mexican Connection. (And let’s not forget a modern attempt at this subgenre, High Fliers.) Well anyway, all of which is to say that Sabbag could’ve dominated the field if he’d done this book back then, because as it is, it doesn’t seem like Loaded reached anywhere near the success (critical or commercial) that Snowblind did, implying that readers in the ‘70s were much more interested in drug-related nonfiction. There’s hardly much about this book online, either; part of it could be confusion over its retitling, which also implies it didn’t do as well as expected, thus a new title was devised for the paperback edition, to increase awareness or somesuch. 

Given that Loaded was written decades after the events described, there is an air of detachment to the narrative, which unfortunately robs it of impact. Also there is an air of a time lost. But on the other hand, at least this method allows the tale to fully be told, given that our protagonist escapes custody until the early ‘90s. Allen Long is that protagonist, a man who starts out in 1971 as a struggling documentary director, but who by the end of the ‘70s has become a kingpin of the drug trade. In a way he represents the era itself, starting off as your typical young hippie who is into the whole peace and love movement, but ending the decade as a guy who does deals with former CIA agents who carry along grenade launchers in case their coke deals go bad. 

Greil Marcus also gave Snowblind a laudatory review in Rolling Stone, in particular marvelling over the hardboiled style Sabbag employed in it. Sabbag doesn’t seem to go as much for the same vibe here, instead giving the narrative more of a snarky, or at least somewhat humorous tone. I guess the difference is that Zachary Swann, “hero” of the earlier book, was a coke dealer, employing all the heavy vibes of that trade, whereas Long is at times more in the Cheech & Chong spectrum of things. This is just the difference between the two drugs, personified; Long, like so many others who became smugglers (as Sabbag informs us), only got into the business because he enjoyed smoking dope, not because he wanted to get rich. Indeed, the wealth was basically a bonus. But whereas the world of cocaine dealing is a dangerous one, wraught with murder and burns and blackmail (as documented in the awesome period study Cocaine), the marijuana trade – at least in the ‘70s – was one of a closeknit group of peace-lovers who just wanted to get stoned on good grass. 

The novel opens with a taut, gripping sequence; it’s Fall of 1976 and Long’s just arrived in Colombia on his DC-3, along with pilot Frank Hatfield and Long’s partner Will McBride. Long, against Hatfield’s suggestions, has loaded the plane with marijuana despite the rough conditions; Hatfield is adamant the plane won’t make it. As usual it makes sense to listen to the pilot, as the plane does indeed crash – a grueling sequence that goes on for several pages. There’s about as much “flying material” in Loaded as in Maryjane Tonight At Angels Twelve (another of those dope smuggler novels published in the actual era), and I guess other readers would enjoy it more than I did. But this opening sequence definitely gets your interest. 

But Sabbag leaves us here with the protagonist’s fate in question and then cuts back to 1971, so we can see the rocky path which led Allen Long to this predicament. In ’71 he’s a young wanna-be documentary director, looking to ride on the success of the countercultural milieu with a documentary about smuggling – showing it actually happen, the people behind it, etc. Long has a private investor and has what he thinks is a great subject: El Coyote, a notorious big time smuggler who is given to boastful stories of his smuggling escapades and whatnot. Long puts together a crew and goes with Coyote down to Mexico to film the deal…only for Coyote to be informed by his usual contacts that it’s not the right season for marijuana, that it will be another couple months until product is available. Everyone’s stunned that El Coyote entirely forgot about this, and the big man heads back to New York in shame, never to be heard from again. 

Long stays in Mexico and meets up with various fringe-world drug characters. Sabbag throughout captures the shaggy freak vibe of the era, often documenting the fashions and hairstyles of the various characters. Long quickly bumps into another smuggler, Lee Carlyle, and figures this guy can be the new protagonist of his doc, particularly given Carlyle’s grandiose flourishes, like when he shows his last penny and proclaims he’s going to turn it into a million dollars. Which he does, in one of the more entertaining stories in the book, even if it happens mostly off-page; Carlyle goes through the novel means of smuggling marijuana via Greyhound Bus, and when Long meets up with him later in the US, Carlyle’s a wealthy man with a fancy sportscar, an actress girlfriend, and etc. Then his latest smuggling caper falls apart and Carlyle’s penniless again, and Long is once again back where he started so far as his documentary goes. 

When his independent backer says he’s finished, Long decides to become a smuggler himself, so as to raise the necessary $100k to finish the documentary. Curiously, his original plan will soon be forgotten as Long enters the big leagues of marijuana smuggling and just starts living the life. This takes us into the meat of the tale, with his meeting of McBride and Hatfield, as well as other associates in the drug biz. Some of these characters are more interesting than our protagonists, like JD Reed, a “practicing noble savage and sagebrush philosopher,” who starts each day with a full joint soaked in hash oil. A musclebound giant whose father is a contract killer for the mob, Reed is given to philosophical meanderings as he goes about his smuggling ventures, and he has a sort of “made for a movie” partnership with a science professor named Abe. The material with these two in their Cesna, plotting new smuggling ventures over fatt joints, is entertaining enough for a novel itself. But these are supporting characters, and not seen enough. 

The only time we get this sort of madcap fun from Long and crew is on their first big venture; they fly down to Colombia to handle a shipment to make up for one that was lost, courtesy a bust. On the several-hour flight back up into the US, they inhale copious amounts of marijuana and coke, drinking beer on the side. In various states of inebriation Long takes control of the plane, gliding along without a care in the world. It’s a surreal sequence, very entertaining, particularly the “pullover” that happens in mid-air when a pair of US fighter jets accost them – the pilots having to slow way down to keep abreast with the DC-3. Turns out Long and crew are over US military airspace. They respond with meek shrugs when the fighter pilots call for them over the radio – Long and crew pretending that their radio is broken. “Just some more drug smugglers,” they hear one of the pilots say over the radio. “None of our busines.” And the fighter jets just leave! 

But otherwise Loaded is comprised of straight-eyed recountings of Long’s various smuggling ventures, with little of this zaniness. More of the novel has to do with the machismo of the Colombians, who particularly value masculinity when it is combined with recklessness. This is most displayed when Long bluffs his way out of a bad situation by telling his Colombian partners that he wants them to give him a shipment of marijuana on credit, so he can sell it to pay them back for both it and the shipment he lost. When the Colombians ask how he will carry off such a plan, Long grabs his crotch and announces, “I have only my airplane and my balls.” This delights the Colombians so much they shoot off their guns in the air. But it really is a man’s world in Loaded, the only females a series of romances Long has along the way, from the daughter of a prominent Colombian smuggler to a swingin’ American chick whose pubic hair is trimmed into the shape of a heart – I really wanted to know more about her in particular, but the sleaze quotient is nil, more’s the pity. Again, the book is the product of the ‘00s, not the ‘70s. 

When we pick back up on the opening 1976 sequence, we find that Long has crashed into the sea, though everyone has survived. They are saved by the “deus ex machina” appearance of Tony, a Miami-based drug dealer who arrives on the scene on his boat. He’s not only familiar with Long, he’s more than happy to help him save his shipment. This new partnership leads into the latter half of the book, with coke making a bigger presence on the scene – Long smuggles some of it, but just can’t get into it, finding something evil about the drug. He’s very much a marijuana guy, and finds himself more and more out of touch with the times as coke becomes the drug of the late ‘70s, with all the violence and high-stakes dealing. Around 1978 Long gets a publicity job for Nemperor Records, but quits and gets back into dealing. The book ends rather anticlimactically with Long’s plan for one last big job – one that goes south, losing him 3.5 million dollars. 

At this point Tony, who has had CIA training, has moved on to greener pastures, leaving another CIA trainee, Jimmy, to handle his coke business. Jimmy comes off like the prototype of all the coke dealers you’d see on Miami Vice, down to convincing his partners to do jobs by holding guns to their heads. With Tony’s dealing in guns and grenades on the side, Long has had enough and says goodbye to the business. A brief epilogue gives us a rundown of the fates of the various characters, the majority of whom were eventually caught and did time. Long managed to evade capture the longest, not arrested until 1991. But given that so much time had passed since his smuggling, there was no interest in throwing the book at him, thus he only did 30 months in prison, the last several months in minimum security. 

Sabbag does carry the story along with panache and a definite skill, but at the same time something seems to be missing from Loaded. Maybe it’s because the reality of dope smuggling in the ‘70s wasn’t as fantastical as you would imagine…a lot of it comes off as boring, just a lot of planning and flying back and forth from South America. I get the impression that Snowblind will have all the elements I found lacking in Loaded, so I’m sure I’ll give it a read someday.

Monday, December 14, 2020

Mission: Impossible #3: Code Name: Rapier


Mission: Impossible #3: Code Name: Rapier, by Max Walker
No month stated, 1968  Popular Library

No idea who served as “Max Walker” for this penultimate volume of the Mission: Impossible series; it might’ve been the same author as the previous volume, I’m not sure. Michael Avallone is usually pegged, but supposedly he himself said he didn’t write it, and besides the flat prose style is nothing like Avallone’s. Whoever it was, he (or she!) clearly had no understanding of the actual TV series; Code Name: Rapier is just a generic pulp-spy novel, with absolutely nothing unique about the Impossible Mission Force. Indeed the team is usually one step behind “The Other Side” throughout the book, leading to a climax in which team leader Jim Phelps breaks his cover to ask someone for help – and the only time something like that ever would’ve happened in the show, it too would’ve been revealed as just another facet of Phelp’s master strategy. 

All of which is to say, the show presented an IMF team that was almost godlike, in that every little detail of every mission was carefully plotted and executed. And just as they were masterful strategists, they were also ciphers in the personality department. Not true in either case, here, with the team fumbling through the assignment and also joking around with each other throughout. Again, the author had likely never seen the show, same as with the previous volume – there’s also a bit more action here than in the series, but nothing too outrageous. Actually the “climax” features the IMF taking on a gang of imposters…fighting and capturing them all in the span of a single paragraph. The most interesting action scene isn’t even explained; some guy waits with a submachine gun in Phelps’s apartment, but is taken out by some unknown person courtesy some poison gas. Otherwise the book is very rushed, and more narrative focus is placed on the one-off character the IMF team is tasked with protecting. 

Dr. Roberto Blackthorn is this character, a scientist who has invented a miniature computer which makes possible a host of things that would give America the edge in the Cold War. But word is “The Other Side” (aka “Them”) will try to kidnap Blackthorn…there might even be a third party behind a possible abduction attempt. Phelps is briefed on all this in a novel way: ripping apart a stuffed doll in a factory to find the customary briefing tape. After this it’s back to his New York loft where he looks at the IMF dossiers and picks the usual group: actor Rolin Hand, muscleman Willy Armitage, electronics whiz Barney Collier, and blonde sexpot Cinnamon Carter, who is again described in such a way that the reader in no way envisions Barbara Bain. This “putting together the team” is the last part of the novel that even seems like Mission: Impossible; from here on out it’s just a generic spy yarn, where the carefully-chosen IMF members could’ve been replaced by any other agent and not a difference would be made. 

As mentioned Blackthorn really gets the most narrative time. Rather than the frosty “scientist type” of cliché, he’s a brash, brazen young man given to chewing on unlit “stogies” and hitting on any woman who catches his eye. He’s also got a soft spot for mod discotheques (and really who doesn’t??), as he visits two of them in the course of the short novel. We first meet him in one, checking out the mini-skirted go-go dancers who hip-shake away to the “hard rock” group on the stage. He’s a loudmouthed jerk, and Walker does a poor job of conveying how such a guy would even have the time or wherewithal to come up with a slew of electronic inventions. Blackthorn takes up a lot of the narrative, too, giving the impression that Walker was more comfortable writing about this character he created than the IMF protagonists. 

Otherwise the feel of the show is completely absent. There’s a part that would be more at home in The Man From UNCLE where some mysterious assassin breaks into Phelps’s apartment, gets a submachine gun out of a briefcase, and waits patiently for Phelps to arrive so he can blow him apart. But instead the would-be assassin is killed by poison gas, which emits from a piece of paper his prey slips under the door. It’s cool and all, but doesn’t seem like something from Mission: Impossible. More importantly, it turns out later that it wasn’t even Phelps who killed the assassin, as when Phelps does return to his room he deduces that someone has broken into it and tries to figure out what they did. Eventually he finds a nasty anti-personnel mine has been hidden beneath his mattress. Here we learn that Phelps is a veteran of the Korean War; I’m assuming this is another invention of Walker’s, as Phelps and the others were such ciphers in the show they didn’t even have much in the way of background stories. 

Blackthorn has been invited to a science conference in St. Michel, an isle in the Caribbean. Phelps and team are to secretly guard against any potential abduction attempts. Phelps will pose as a lawyer for a patent company, Cinnamon as his secretary, Barney as an employee in Blackthorn’s hotel, and Willy and Rolin as “loud American tourists.” That’s it, folks. That’s the extent of Phelps’s strategy. Even more shockingly, absolutely nothing is done with the setup. Whereas in the show Phelps and team would roll out with a minutely-plotted plan in which every step – and potential misstep – was planned for, here it’s clearly just the author following an outline with no real understanding of the why of it all. As it is, the Phelps and team of this novel could be replaced by any other generic spy heroes. 

And as with the previous book Cinnamon is presented as the honey trap, a gorgeous blonde dish who could ensnare any man. As she does with Blackthorn, at one point going with him to yet another mod discotheque – probably the highlight of the novel, with yet another hard rock band playing in a club filled with psychedelic lights. But this part is goofy; there are big screens in the club, playing clips from old monster movies, one of them King Kong. And Cinnamon, dazed by the flashing lights, seems to hallucinate Kong reaching out from the screen and grabbing her – and apparently this is exactly what happens. A bizarre plot development that is never explained. Long story short, the IMF team is being picked off one by one, but this is a pretty “G” rated novel and none of them are killed. It’s just curious that this scenario is never explained, as the last we see of Cinnamon she’s doing a tribute to Fay Wray, being lifted up into the air by King Kong.  

Barney’s also abducted, and soon thereafter so are Rollin and Willy. Phelps eventually gets on the ball and realizes a pseudo-IMF team is afoot, made up of lookalikes. Curiously nothing is made of any of this. There’s even a pseudo-Phelps which the real Phelps takes on – after, that is, completely dropping his cover and telling Blackthorn he’s an agent here to protect him. Phelps soon locates his abducted comrades, leading to a painfully anticlimactic fistfight between the fake IMF and the real IMF. It’s over and done in a paragraph – one part that makes me suspect Avallone might’ve been behind this after all is a lame paranthetical aside that Rollin and Barney have a tough time with their opponents, because “in real life the good guys don’t always win.” Of course no insult meant to Avallone, but I could see him writing something like that. 

Even more painfully, the finale is given over to exposition in which the plot is explained to us. We also have the IMF team celebrating that Blackthorn gets away safely. The whole thing lacks the feel of the real show, and while the previous volume at least had some action, this one doesn’t even have that. Fortunately Walter Wager (aka “John Tiger”) returns for the next (and final) volume; he’s clearly the only writer to serve on this series who had actually watched the show.

Monday, March 30, 2020

Bad Guy


Bad Guy, by Nicholas Brady
No month stated, 1977  Belmont-Tower

“Nicholas Brady” was a Belmont Tower/Leisure Books house name used by a variety of contract writers; Len Levinson served as “Brady” for Inside Job. Bad Guy isn’t by Len, though, and although the identity of the author has never been officially confirmed I’m fairly certain it was George Harmon Smith. Thanks to the trailblazing research of Lynn Munroe we know that Harmon Smith was a contract writer often used by BT/Leisure editor Peter McCurtin, and the narrative style of Bad Guy is identical to those installments of Marksman and Sharpshooter (ie This Animal Must DieSavage Slaughter) that Lynn has designated as being by George Harmon Smith: literary but very overwritten.

To wit, Bad Guy opens with some weatherbeaten redneck deputy in Georgia, maintaining law and order at a stock car race, and as with those other Smith books it just goes and on and with the pointless detailing of every single thing the hayseed does. I mean the writing’s good and all, it’s just flabby, and the author clearly doesn’t know when some judicious editing is necessary. That being said, this opening does feature the oddball moment of the deputy shoving some guy’s face into a pile of shit; this sort of random nastiness is another George Harmon Smith hallmark, as evidenced by his other books, and I’m even more certain he might’ve been the mystery author who wrote Bronson: Blind Rage – which by the way is still one of my very favorite novels I’ve ever reviewed on here.

As Zwolf so succinctly put it, Bad Guy is a “Grade-B sleazy crime novel,” clearly catering to the spate of Southern action films going on at the time; you could easily see Burt Reynolds (or Joe Don Baker if you don’t have the budget) as protagonist Jake Colby, shit-kicking stock car racer and former Syndicate stringer. Actually he has a much darker side than any Reynolds character; the BT house ads claim Jake Colby is “in the tradition of Gator McCloskey [sp],” ie the “hillbilly hoodlum” Reynolds portrayed in White Lightning (1973) and Gator (1976). But he’s a stone-cold killer with a sadistic streak. Harmon Smith (I’m just going to proceed with the theory that the novel truly is by him) implies that Colby’s casual mercilessness is due to his wife and toddler son being killed in a car bomb six years before, a car bomb that was meant for Colby. But damn, that’s not nearly enough to explain away some of the sadistic stuff he does in this novel.

To tell the truth, the hicksploitation stuff really isn’t much exploited nor integral to the plot. There are no “Southern” quirks to Colby and he comes off no different than any other Belmont Tower anti-hero. The action mostly occurs in Georgia, the Bayou, and Vegas, but other than a couple Creole characters there’s no real attempt at making this a Dixie-fried actioner. The opening sequence is the closest approximation to this, with an overly-detailed stock race in Georgia serving as our introduction to Colby. This will be the only stock car race in the book, but it displays the same style Harmon Smith brings to the rest of the novel: inordinate scene-setting and word-painting, but with very good characterization and dialog. Seriously, the guy was like the John Gardner of BT/Leisure (I mean the John Gardner of Michelsons Ghosts, not the British John Gardner who took over the James Bond books in the ‘80s).

Before we get into the meat of the review, I’d like to clarify that I really did enjoy Bad Guy. It’s certainly more entertaining and better written than the majority of the blockbuster crime novels of the ‘70s, or at least ones that were published in hardcover and received industry reviews. I mean it’s a lot more enjoyable than The Devalino CaperThe Anderson Tapes, or Golden Gate Caper. The main characters are three-dimensional and there are memorable oddball touches to most of the minor characters that you remember long after you’ve finished the book. It’s just that the damn overwriting sinks it; the Gardner comparison again comes to mind. Anyone who has read (or tried to read) Nickel Mountain or The Sunlight Dialogs will know what I’m talking about; just an insurmountable barrage of needless topical description. Each and every chapter begins with elaborate scene-setting, and every menial gesture or action of the characters is stated; Colby smokes about a bujillion cigarettes in the novel, and we’re told every single time he tosses aside a butt and lights a fresh one. This makes the book seem like a slog at times, because it gears up to be so great, then stalls with unecessary bouts of page-filling. 

Anyway when we meet Jake Colby he’s a stock car racer in the south, a mostly-broken guy who is ready to blow into violent action at any moment. He’s approached by two hoods, Scalise and Blaustein, who claim to be representatives for Peaches Angella, Colby’s old boss in the Syndicate. Gradually we’ll learn that part of Peaches’s portfolio was heroin, which Colby ran for him. Then some interloper named Gazzara came onto the scene and started taking over Peaches’s territory, killing off his various underbosses. This is how Colby’s wife and son were killed, blown up in a car bomb meant to take out Colby. But that was six years ago, and Colby’s out of the life, and Peaches is calling in old favors and wants Colby to come out of retirement for one last job.

Before that we get a taste of our hero’s sadism; he meets Scalise and Blaustein at a bar, and after the two thugs leave, Colby is hassled by a couple corncobs who give him a hard time for drinking soda instead of beer. Rather than walk away, Colby wades into the three of them, beats them to burger, then lines them up and drives over them. All because they said a few curt words to him. It’s insane, and again all very similar to Bronson: Blind Rage in its tone of ruthless brutality. So too is the relationship Colby eventually forms with a young Creole girl, their dialog very reminiscent of the dialog Bronson has with the young Latina girl in Blnd Rage. And finally, the word “focussed” appears here, same as in Blind Rage, so my proposition is that the same author wrote Bad Guy, and that author was George Harmon Smith. Or it was Aaron Fletcher, who also served as “Nicholas Brady,” but I’m going with Smith because the book is too similar to those Marksman and Sharpshooter installments Lynn Munroe identified as being by him.

But after this random bit of sadism Colby’s legacy of brutality sort of simmers for the rest of the novel, as he’s more busy putting together the getaway portion of Peaches’s job. Peaches you see wants to hit Gazzara where it hurts, robbing the vault in his Vegas casino and making off with as much of the two million therein as possible. Colby will be in charge of getting the heisters to freedom, and to that end he has basically a blank check to have a hopped-up car put together for him. Colby also suggests the use of “chunkers,” ie the bottom feeders of the underworld – people so poor they actually jump in front of cars, acting as decoys. As with most heist novels the plotting and planning of the actual heist takes the brunt of the narrative, with the heist itself occuring over a few frantic pages toward the very end of the novel.

What makes Bad Guy so interesting is the otherwise-arbitrary situations and characters Harmon Smith introduces into the text. For example, shortly after meeting with Peaches, Colby’s relaxing in his hotel room when there’s a knock at his door. It’s a gorgeous, well-built brunette named Ginger who has been sent over by Peaches to keep Colby company. But what would be a throw-away hardcore scene in a lesser novel is here built into a fuller relationship, with Ginger not a hooker but a housewife whose husband is in the hospital with some disease and she’s desperate for money, so she took the job. And Colby’s gruff with her, not wanting any sex tonight – there’s already been some off-page hanky-panky earlier, with Colby doing, and them dumping, some never-named woman he’s been living with the past couple months. But Ginger in her innocence brings Colby out of his shell, with the author successfully doling out three-dimensional characterization for both of them. In particular for Colby, as we see he suffers recurring nightmares of the day his wife and son were killed.

And then…Colby leaves the hotel next morning and Ginger’s never mentioned again. (And also the sex between them is off-page, for anyone out there taking notes – all the sex is off-page in this one, curiously.) There are all these random bits of characterization throughout the novel which are given so much initial focus and then unceremoniously dropped. The stuff with the clunkers is another case in point. Colby heads into Harlem to hire a renowned clunker, a smashed-up black guy who lives in a tenement building and is so poor that his kids rent out their rooms to local hookers. This guy brings in two more clunkers, both of them just as memorable: one of them, also black, speaks in overly-formal terms, and the other, a Hispanic guy, is so brain-addled from his clunking that he’s become a mindless robot for the woman who controls him. There’s more of that random sadism as the poor guy eagerly bashes his own head into a hotel room wall at the woman’s order. All these characters and more – even the inside man on the heist who has “the unmistakable drawl of the homosexual” – are built up at the expense of dense paragraphs, and then dropped from the narrative with little fanfare.

My favorite of all these arbitrary characters and situations is the bitter old Mafia consigliere Colby visits a little past the halfway mark of the book. Confined to home care with a “crazy woman” serving as his nurse, the old man is filled with hate, particularly toward Colby – as it turns out that Colby’s dead wife was the consigliere’s daughter. The old man blames Colby for the loss of his daughter and grandson, but Colby, undeterred, bullies the old man into getting some info. Through various plot developments, Colby has learned that there might be more to this heist than Peaches has let on, and the old consigliere would be able to find out with his connections in the Syndicate. Harmon Smith’s tongue is firmly in cheek as the consigliere gets increasingly irrational and furious with Colby, culiminating in the unforgettable line: “Go die, so crazy woman can pour my shit and piss on your grave.”

Colby heads into the Bayou for the getaway car, hiring a poor Creole auto repairman to build a custom vehicle. But the man’s niece turns out to be more important to the narrative: Camille, a hot-tempered Creole girl in her twenties who speaks poor English and who has waist-length black hair. With her fiery temper mixed with her innocent nature, she is as mentioned very similar to the girl in Bronson: Blind Rage. As is the budding relationship between her and Colby, which is almost G-rated given the tone of the rest of the novel. The old auto mechanic is glad to get rid of the quarrelsome girl, but Colby finds himself falling for her – again, unexpected character depth and character building. That being said, man there’s a lot of padding with Colby and Camille. Even late in the game, right before the heist we’ve been waiting a couple hundred pages for, there’s an interminable sequence of them going camping in the Bayou. But it’s true love, Camille even giving Colby her virginity – as we learn after the off-page sex scene.

Colby’s trick car is cool but doesn’t get exploited enough. Per his specific demands, it’s a junked-up old Chevy that has the guts of a Jaguar, and we get a lot of gearhead dialog about the various modifications to the engine and whatnot. Cooler yet are the touches the mechanic adds from his days of doing up cars for moonshiners, like a bucket filled with nail-balls that can be dropped into the path of pursuing vehicles. Colby also goes to various lengths to plot out the getaway, including getting a machine gun and stashing out a boat and a second getaway car in a place Peaches doesn’t know about. For as the back cover has so brazenly spoiled for us, Colby’s planning his own cross, having learned that the entire thing is a setup courtesy Peaches.

The heist goes down in just a few tense pages, but here Harmon Smith is lean and mean with the prose. And humorously whereas before we were informed almost relentlessly of pedantic actions and gestures, here bigger revelations are spun out with nonchalance – like the fact that Camille is a stone-cold killer. Colby’s brought her into the heist due to her ability to scale and climb obstacles, a needed skill in the heist of Gazzara’s vault. But once her part’s done Camille’s brought out a revolver and is blowing away cops and guards with ease. In fact she kills several police officers in the final pages, toting the M-16 Colby has acquired. Colby, his heist double-cross carried out with finesse, heads up the getaway, and this too is a fun, tense scene, complete with those nail-balls in use. But Harmon Smith seems to forget about the Chevy’s changeable paint job that he so heavily built up in the narrative; another of the old man’s tricks, a plastic sheen will fly off the car when the speed gets up to fifty m.p.h, with a different-color paint job beneath.

It appears that Bad Guy is relatively scarce and overpriced, but I’ll try to refrain from total spoilers. I will say the novel heads for the exact conclusion the reader expects; there’s already been skillful foreshadowing throughout, like Colby’s admission that he’s afraid to die. But once the heist is done, Harmon Smith decides he wants to do more of a Bonnie and Clyde thing. Even though he and Camille have the chance to get away scot-free, with all the money, Colby can’t let Peaches go unpunished; of course, he’s learned that Peaches was responsible for the death of Colby’s wife and son. So Colby and Camille stash the cash and slip into Peaches’s fortified mansion for a little revenge. This is another tense scene, which might play out a little too quickly, but then when you’re dispensing bloody payback with a .357 Magnum, like Colby is, there really isn’t much opportunity to draw out the kill.

But as ever Harmon Smith is unpredictable, with Colby’s vengeance sated but having a surprise conclusion, and the climax itself involves a tense standoff between Camille and the cops. In other words we’re headed for that mandatory downer ‘70s ending, but then it was only expected given that our “heroes” just wasted several cops in the heist and chase. Harmon Smith instead focuses again on Camille’s childlike love for Colby, even while bullets are flying around them. It’s an effective, memorable finale, and again reminiscent of Bronson: Blind Rage; indeed, Bad Guy features the exact sort of ending Blind Rage seemed to be headed for, but of course didn’t, because it was the start of a series and all.

Overall though I really enjoyed Bad Guy. It’s certainly too long, with way too much flab that could’ve been cut, but at its core it’s a mean, tense ‘70s crime thriller that should’ve received more attention. And the author, whether it was George Harmon Smith or not, is definitely skilled, giving us a lot more character depth and random plot quirkiness than might be expected from a Belmont Tower publication about a “hillbilly hoodlum.”