Showing posts with label Lancer Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lancer Books. Show all posts

Monday, June 13, 2022

The Troubleshooter #2: The Black Hearts Murder


The Troubleshooter #2: The Black Hearts Murder, by Ellery Queen
No month stated, 1970  Lancer Books

An early attempt at packaging a mystery series like men’s adventure, The Troubleshooter only ran for 3 volumes and each volume was written by a different writer, though the series was credited to Ellery Queen. This second one was by Richard Deming, a veteran crime writer; searching the blog it looks like so far I’ve only reviewed some of his short stories in various ‘60s crime digests and also his Good Guys Wear Black novelization. Deming’s The Black Hearts Murder is pretty much the same as the other material of his I’ve read: a workmanlike mystery with not much pizzaz to it. If it is indicative of the other two volumes of Troubleshooter (the first by Gil Brewer and the third by Edward D. Hoch), then there’s no mystery why the series didn’t last. 

But then “mystery” pretty much sums up the vibe of the novel. The Troubleshooter is similar to later paperback mystery series like Hardy and Renegade Roe in how it is misleadingly packaged like gun-toting men’s adventure. In point of fact, titular Troubleshooter Mike McCall doesn’t even carry a gun! It’s interesting though that Lancer Books was already jumping on the men’s adventure series bandwagon; in that regard, The Troubleshooter must be one of the earliest instances of a publisher trying to follow the success of The Executioner…which only around 1970 was beginning to pick up steam. (Per Don Pendleton in his interview in A Study of Action-Adventure Fiction, it took a handful of years for The Executioner to become a successful series.) In fact, The Troubleshooter has all the hallmarks of a venture by book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel…and indeed the series setup is so similar to later Engel venture Chopper Cop that I wonder if Engel was inspired by this series. For, just like Terry Bunker in Chopper Cop, Mike McCall is a lone gun who reports directly to the Governor…but whereas Bunker’s boss is clearly identified as the Governor of California, McCall’s boss is the Governor of some never-identified state…which clearly seems to be California. 

Another similarity to an Engel venture is the slugline that The Troubleshooter focuses on “top-of-the-news” subjects; very similar to Engel’s concurrent Now Books For Today’s Readers pseudo-series of unrelated standalone novels. The hot topic covered in The Black Hearts Murder is, as the title and cover should inform you, the civil rights movement. Mike McCall, whose official title is The Assistant To The Governor For Special Affairs, is sent by Governor Holland to a city called Babury in this never-named state, where racial tensions are high. The novel is an interesting relic from an earlier era; McCall and Governor Holland are the even-headed rationalists who embrace progressivism so far as black people should have the same rights as white people. But also it is interesting that in this novel both sides of the debate are given equal weight, complete with the concern that the whites might riot – in other words, the racists are given equal voice on the public platform. It is indicative of the sea change of the past few decades that such a thing would be inconceivable today – and these are real racists, mind you, not because they merely disagree with the party line but because they are wholly against blacks having equal rights. Today of course the “racist” accusation is tossed around so much that it has lost all meaning, but The Black Hearts Murder is from an era when some white people really did march against civil rights and whatnot…don’t think you’ll find too many of those whites today, despite the media/government’s obsession with “white supremacy.” 

Deming doesn’t get too preachy; McCall’s position as mentioned is more rational than impassioned. His is the voice of reason as he confronts the various racists in Banbury…and “voice” is pretty much all Mike McCall uses in the book. That and his rugged good looks. For the most interesting thing about The Black Hearts Murder is that, even if it’s progressive in the race-relations arena, it is so backwards in the gender-relations department that Richard Deming would automatically be cancelled in today’s woke era. That is, if he could even get published. (Tocsin Press would take him!) McCall, who has an athletic build and rugged good looks, indulges so frequently in what is today called “the male gaze” that it’s actually humorous – twice in the book he so stares at good-looking young women that the women become uncomfortable. 

But only a little uncomfortable, that is, because both women end up throwing themselves at McCall. The novel is almost an exercise in wish-fulfillment, as literally every single person in Banbury has heard of “the famous Mike McCall,” and his name opens doors for him everywhere. And the women are all aware of McCall’s notoriety as a lady-killer…and are plumb eager to add themselves to his list. The first is an auburn-tressed beauty who works as a secretary, and Deming has no issues with filling in incidental background detail about McCall; it would be interesting to see how this jibes with the other two authors who worked on the series. Anyway, Deming’s McCall has a thing for auburn hair, even though “his mother did not have auburn hair.” This was one of the more peculiar Freudian slips I’ve ever encountered in a book…like what the hell does McCall’s mother have to do with his longtime attraction to auburn-haired women? 

McCall’s second conquest is a blonde-haired mega-babe who happens to be a cop. When McCall oggles her it’s another unintentionally humorous bit, as he flat-out tells her she’s too hot to be a cop. And of course, later in the novel when the lady’s cop-skills might prove necessary, she instead turns to McCall for help…later admitting that she’s “mostly just a secretary” at the precinct. McCall’s rugged virility appears to be a big gimmick with the series, and I assume is just as focused on in the volumes by Brewer and Hoch. Also he manages to score with both women, with the novel ending on the certainty that he’s about to score with a third – and these are literally the only three single women in the entire novel, so McCall gets them all. But it must be noted that Deming is very much a “fade to black” author. In each case the chapter ends pre-boink, usually with the sentence, “McCall spent the night there.” And then next chapter will open the next morning and McCall’s saying goodbye to the babe to head off onto the next lead in the case. 

Unfortunately The Black Hearts Murder is a dud when it comes to the suspense angle as well. McCall basically just drives around Banbury and engages various characters in conversation. The setup is that Harlan James, the leader of a militant black movement called The Black Hearts, has been indicted by a racist district attorney, but James didn’t show up for his court date. James’s disappearance and the complicity, or lack thereof, of his fellow Black Hearts takes up the first half of the novel, and it’s a slow-grind of boredom. But then suddenly on page 94 something happens – another of Banbury’s racist political figures, who intends to launch a national movement, is assassinated during a rally…by a black man dressed all in black and wearing a domino mask. This is the part where Beth, the hotstuff lady cop, just goes into panic mode and McCall is the only one who gives the assassin chase. 

I mentioned that McCall doesn’t carry a gun. About the only thing he has weapon-wise is his training in judo, which he uses sporadically in the text. He isn’t the most capable of heroes, though, as the novel contains two separate scenes in which McCall is captured, put in a car, and driven off to his death. This is what I mean about Deming’s workmanlike plotting; the author himself seems to be bored with it all. The first “being driven off to his death” scene is the highlight of the novel, as the black man in the domino mask captures McCall and drives him out to a desolate part of the countryside. Here the man holds a pistol on McCall and has him lug a tire chain down to a river, so as to drown him. But McCall manages to escape, leading to a tense chase – pretty much the only tense moment in the entirety of The Black Hearts Murder

Otherwise the novel is just a lot of talking and time-killing, as we’re told incidental details like McCall going back to his hotel room and eating and brushing his teeth. I mean it’s all just so mundane. And it’s also funny that, despite civil rights being the subject of the novel, there are hardly any black characters in it. During the course of his investigation McCall meets a few of the Black Hearts, including Harlan James’s wife, but the black characters are mostly on the periphery, with more time spent on the various Banbury government officials who are aligned against the Black Hearts. There’s also a lot of stuff about a local radio station that plays messages Harlan James has left for them. The most puzzling thing is why Mike McCall’s character even exists; he demonstrates nothing special about himself in this particular installment, and his even-headed manner could have been supplied by any number of the governor’s functionaries. 

This lack of anything special extends to The Troubleshooter itself, so if The Black Hearts Murder reflects the vibe of the other two installments, it’s not suprising that the series never caught on. It seems as if Lancer wanted to jump on the action-series bandwagon but at the same time didn’t want to fully commit to it. And on that note, it also seems that Lancer concurrently published The Troubleshooter through its Magnum Books imprint, only minus the volume numbers on the covers, which would indicate they weren’t exactly sure what sort of series they wanted The Troubleshooter to be.

Monday, November 1, 2021

President’s Agent (Bart Gould #1)


President’s Agent, by Joseph Hilton
No month stated, 1963  Lancer Books

Look everyone, yet another ‘60s spy series that tried to tap into the success of James Bond! But judging from the publication date, Bart Gould was one of the first on the bandwagon, coming out a year earlier than even the long-running Nick Carter: Killmaster. A big thanks to the Spy Guys And Gals site, which clears up the mystery of authorship on Bart Gould; this first volume was written by (and credited to) an author named Joseph Hilton, but the remaining seven volumes were written by a variety of authors and credited to the house name “Joseph Milton.”* 

This initial volume was written by Joseph Hilton, then, and it looks like he returned for one more installment: Baron Sinister, which was the fifth volume of the series and published in 1965. His writing is fast-moving and economical and brings to mind the work of J.E. MacDonnell in the similar ‘60s spy series Mark Hood. And, like Mark Hood, this series starts off on relatively realistic ground before getting into more fantastical realms (juding from the back cover synopses of later volumes, Bart Gould doesn’t seem to get as fantastical as Mark Hood, though). Hilton does a fine job of introducing us to the titular character and bringing to life the settings and the characters, and also doles out more action than I expected in the final quarter, including gunplay. Unlike Mark Hood and other swinging ‘60s spies (ie Jonas Wilde), Bart Gould doesn’t just rely on his martial arts skills and is fine with blowing off the faces of his enemies. 

An also unlike those other characters, Gould is not a secret agent when we meet him. Rather, he’s an international playboy type, one with a varied background (race car driving, some military service, big game hunting, etc). Hilton doesn’t dwell on Gould’s backstory, which is one of the things I dig about vintage pulp; he just leaves it that Gould’s been around the world – even getting a Medal of Honor at one point – and now at 36 he’s bored with it all. He grew up in wealth and now lives in a luxurious pad near Washington, DC; when we meet him one of his servants is giving him a rubdown after a quick boxing match. That night Gould gets a call from a former Senator named Titus Banning, an older man who now works in an unstated capacity for “the new President.” Banning has some business he wants to discuss with Gould. 

The never-named “new President” is clearly John F. Kennedy, and likely President’s Agent was written in 1962: he’s nine years older than Bart Gould, and also was sort of a mentor to Gould when they both were kids in Cape Cod. The President even makes an appearance in the text, but he’s not described and is presented more as dashing figure from myth, someone everyone looks up to regardless of partisan politics. He personally has tasked Titus Banning with summoning Gould and offering him this particular job: to go down to San Barrios, a fictional Caribbean country, and look into a plot that might entail sending a bunch of uniformed troops across the border into the US as a veritable invading army. 

Gould’s offered the assignment not only because he knows the President – and also because the President is aware of Gould’s military record and all-around adventuring skills – but also because he owns land in San Barrios. As mentioned Gould comes from wealth, and has inherited land down there, so it makes for perfect cover for him to abruptly visit the country. So then, Bart Gould in President’s Agent isn’t your typical secret agent; he has no training, and has literally been sent on the job by the President himself, mostly due to their past friendship. Also it’s interesting to note that Gould is a lot more hot-tempered than your average ‘60s spy protagonist, with none of the calm, cool, professionalism of someone like James Bond. 

Hilton brings to life the tropical paradise that is San Barrios, with Gould going about the capitol city and trying to find out what happened to the Foreign Service ambassador here – whom we already know has been killed, thanks to a suspenseful opening which features a memorable villain (an oversized muscular dwarf who serves as henchman for the novel’s main villain). Action is not really frequent, but at least it’s not a slow-moving dirge like another ‘60s spy paperback set in Latin America: The Survivor. Gould isn’t even that focused on the local beauties, though he “promises himself” he’ll find the time for some of them as he flies into San Barrios. As it turns out, Bart Gould won’t get lucky until novel’s end. 

Hilton seems to be taking us into that direction early on; Gould on the street is approached by a sexy young lady (whose name turns out to be Paquita), but she’s just a cover for some guy who tries to shove a knife in Gould’s back. Our hero defends himself, gets the knife, but both the attacker and Paquita take off. This leads into more of the vibe of a private eye yarn, as Gould hooks up with a local contact and goes on the hunt for Paquita, to find out who hired her. Eventually Hilton works in a plot featuring a local commie rabble-rouser, and Paquita’s boyfriend is involved with this guy’s group. All this turns out to be a red herring, as Gould ultimately learns that the threat comes from a German named Norden who owns the land near Gould’s own, and indeed is looking to take over Gould’s land. (How very German!) 

An interesting thing about President’s Agent is that, while there isn’t much in the way of action, it still moves along very quickly, and holds the reader’s interest. The action really doesn’t come along until Gould is captured by Norden and breaks free, escaping across the camp of Norden’s soldiers. It’s a thrilling sequence, but I did feel that Hilton didn’t suitably exploit some of his characters. For example the muscular dwarf, with the deformed face; he’s much built up, but Gould dispenses of him rather perfunctorily. And in fact Gould’s first kill isn’t until page 119. However, this escape sequence features more action than many other ‘60s spy novels, with Gould blasting away with a .45 and other appropriated weapons. He also manages to shoot a helicopter out of the sky at novel’s end – one that happens to be carrying the traitorous wife of an American dignitary, indicating that Bart Gould doesn’t let things like gender get in the way of completing an assignment. 

And speaking of which, Gould finally finds the time for one of those native beauties once the job’s been completed, the act occuring well off-page given the publication date…and for that matter, Hilton doesn’t much exploit his female characters. He does set up another volume, with Titus Banning informing Gould of a potential assignment in Austria – that is, after the President and Gould have gotten to play a little tennis. I liked this “personal agent” setup for the series and will be curious to see if it continues into the next volumes, whether they stick with the “new President” angle or change it given Kennedy’s assassination. 

*Lancer Books attempted to clear up the confusion, though; I have the third printing of President’s Agent, dated 1967, and the cover credits the book to “Joseph Milton,” not Joseph Hilton. The ’67 reprint date is interesting, given that the last volume of the series, The Death Makers, was published in 1966. Maybe Lancer was trying to drum up enthusiasm for the series to see if more volumes were warranted? Here’s the cover of my reprint edition:

Monday, May 24, 2021

Infinity Five


Infinity Five, edited by Robert Hoskins
No month stated, 1973  Lancer Books

This was the fifth and final Infinity collection Robert Hoskins edited; I don’t have the others, but it’s my understanding they all were along the same lines: forays into the “new wave” science fiction that was en vogue at the time. In other words, no space opera or pulp or anything, but lots of drugs and sex and four-letter words, the stories generally taking place in some perverted future (which is now the past in most cases). It doesn’t look like these five volumes have much clout in the sci-fi world – I mean you don’t see them namedropped like Ellison’s Dangerous Visions books – but my copy was so inexpensive I figured I had nothing to lose. 

Overall the stories are fairly weak; it seems that the various authors were so excited about the prospect of having curse words and “dirty stuff” in a sci-fi story that they forgot about little things like plot and character. Also too many of the stories veer into satire, trading on spoofy extrapolations of the era – in other words, futures with mass psychedelics, wanton free sex, new permissiveness, and other trends of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s. Also a lot of the writers don’t even bother with plots, going for stream-of-conscious exercises in the manner of William Burroughs. I mean I’m all for the “future ‘60s” or “future ‘70s” setups, but I’d like a little plot and story to go along with them, and for the most part the stories collected here fail to deliver. On the other hand, all of them are original to this book, so if they weren’t reprinted elsewhere this might be the only place to find some of them. 

“The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame” is by Robert Silverberg and starts off the collection. This one seems more of a writing exercise than a full-on story, yet regardless I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It alterntes between the viewpoint of an unnamed sci-fi fan in his 30s and excerpts from the various sci-fi stories and novels he’s read over his life, which range from psychedelic to space opera to pulp. Honestly I think this one would’ve worked better if it was a full-on novel, with more space to flesh out the narrator and maybe see how the story-snippets intertwine with his life story. At any rate he’s a lifelong sci-fi fan, with whole collections of magazines and novels; interestingly, all the novels and authors he refers to, at least the sci-fi ones, are fictional. The “A” story has it that the narrator worries over how he could still be a sci-fi fan at such an “old” age, and also how it gives him comfort in that he’s afraid of the future and looks to sci-fi for a “road-map” of how the future will pan out. The dude could’ve saved himself a lot of trouble and just bought a copy of Orwell’s 1984

Silverberg’s writing is good, especially in the excerpts from the fictional stories; he has a firm command of the various styles, and again some of them would’ve been fun to see fleshed out more, like the psychedelic take on two characters sharing a “thought-transference helmet.” But in this short story format the effect is sort of squandered, as the excerpts seem wily-nily and don’t have any bearing on the narrator’s plot, which gradually concerns his veering into science fiction realms during his waking moments, as if he were losing his mind. We also get a few LSD shoutouts, per the era. But I have to say, for a sci-fi geek the guy gets laid a lot; the story opens with the memorable moment of him picking up and screwing some blonde the night of the moon landing (complete with her “frenzied” climaxing as Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon), and later we learn he’s having an affair with his friend’s wife. Otherwise though, I found this story thought-provoking, and wish there had been more of it. For as it turned out, this was my favorite story in the collection. 

“In Between Then And Now” by Arthur Bryon Cover is a short narrated by an alien in a never-ending war against another alien, which is female. This one is very much in the “art for art’s sake” department and came off as unreadable for me, for the most part. 

“Kelly, Frederic Michael: 1928 – 1987” by William F. Nolan continues the trend of stream-of-conscious gibberish. This one’s another short of featuring random events from some guy’s life, but as with Silverberg’s story it’s just wily-nily with nothing to hold it together. Only it’s much worse, here. At this point I was getting annoyed with the book. However, we have yet another scene where a narrator gets lucky while watching the moon landing on TV! (Or, “She twisted under me, doing a thing with her pelvis, and I came.”) The plot per se has to do with the narrator going into space in 1987 at age 59 to help with “a new system,” but the entire “story” turns out to be “thought transcripts” picked up by aliens who have captured him. Or some such shit. 

“Nostaliga Tripping” by Alan Brennert is more of the same, but slightly more focused. This one’s another short of some guy experiencing various past timelines, and as with Silverberg and Nolan’s stories it randomly jumps from era to era with no thread. It’s short, at least; late in the game we learn something happened in 2003 and either the world came to an end or some other event occurred. The most notable thing about this one is the past timelines are incorrect, and keep changing, like for example the Rolling Stones releasing albums in 1949. 

“She/Her” by Robert Thurston is yet another short narrated by an alien, a la Cover’s story. This one has a little more semblance of plot, but still is more opaque than one would like, as Thurston really tries to capture the viewpoint of an alien being. Basically the narrator now thinks of himself as a “he,” even though the aliens don’t have gender – it’s all due to “corruption” by the humans, who insist on thinking of the narrator being as “him” and another of the alien beings as “her.” Same as with the Cover story, this one has feelings developing between the two alien beings, with “she” wanting to travel off with the humans and “he” being against it. This story too left me dissatisfied, but I did appreciate Thurston’s attempts at capturing a truly alien viewpoint. 

“Trashing” is by Barry Malzberg, who around this time was penning the Lone Wolf series. This one’s as psychedelic as that Mystery novel I reviewed years ago, and so similar at points that I wondered if Malzberg was the “Matthew Paris” who wrote it. This short is also in first-person, as are the majority of the tales in Infinity Five, and concerns a professional assassin who works for “The Committee.” He’s after a “madman” politician who (apparently) has an army of killers he lets loose on the populace wherever he appears, or something. The LSD fumes were particularly thick with this one. 

“Hello, Walls and Fences” by Russell Bates really tried my patience. Another vague “weird future” story where a narrator, who is like a builder or engineer or something, is offered a job by a rich guy but is so offended by the job that he storms out of the office…dithers around at home with his girlfriend…then months later changes his mind about the job, only to be told it’s no longer available! We’re never even told what the job is nor what so offended him about it! 

“Free At Last” is by prolific Ron Goulart and reminded me why I have never been able to get into his work – for, like his other novels at the time, it is a satirical look at the near future, with overblown ‘70s concepts and whatnot. Told mostly via dialog, this one features a guy in a “Wide Open Marriage” in 1992; his sexy wife enjoys wearing “neotex skirts” and is apparently having multiple affairs, her lovers ranging from a cyborg to a warlock(!). Meanwhile the guy, Stu, is having an affair of his own; the belabored setup has it that his aunt is old and sick, but in reality she’s dead, and Stu is sleeping with her “nurse” while the corpse rests in cold storage nearby. Overall this one was another dud, an unfunny comedy, mostly comrpised of made-up “futurespeak” words. 

“Changing of the Gods” by ubiquitous sci-fi editor Terry Carr continues the “wacky future ‘70s” trend, only to more extreme and perverted lengths. This one’s about Sam Luckman, an agent at an advertising firm (just like Darrin in Bewitched!) whose latest job is to come up with the concept of “unselling children” for an order of religious “Pragmatists.” We learn Sam went to college in the ‘70s and is now 38, so once again we have another “future” that is long in our own past, but anyway the setup is that various religions collapsed in the ‘80s and new ones, like the Pragmatists (as well as monks who are “psychologically addicted to LSD”), have sprung up. 

Meanwhile the population is way overblown (Sam has to stand in a long line with other executives just to use one of the urinals), and so is crime – we learn that if Sam were to use the regular employee bathroom, he’d encounter the danger of “tough homosexual rapists” lurking about. But Sam has problems at home – an ultra-horny “youth-injected” wife who enjoys hitting on preteen boys…and might be in the midst of an affair with her own 13 year-old son! Carr pushes all the sleaze buttons in this one, with Sam catching his wife and son in the actual act (complete with the unforgettable phrase “his long pink incestuous dork”), after which Sam goes off the deep end in the ensuing commercials he devises for the Pragmatists, which make children look like everything from violent street punks to baby vampires. This one’s wild and wacky to be sure, but at the same time comes off as so satirical that the center just doesn’t hold. 

“Interpose” is by George Zebrowski and seems to be a take on Jesus and time travel, but at this point I just wanted the book to end so I skipped it. 

“Grayword” is by Dean Koontz and is clearly the centerpiece of the book, running to around 90 pages. This full-blown novella seems to have come out of the Lyke Kenyon Engel fiction factory, and is so close to the Richard Blade setup that you wonder why Koontz never became one of Engel’s stable. After all, around this time Koontz published Writing Popular Fiction. This is the sole story in the entire collection that follows a standard plot, and also whittles way down on the sex and kink factors. And the only drugs here are ones that have been devised for research purposes. While I appreciated having an actual plot and characterization, I have to say that ultimately “Grayworld” was as frustrating a read as the others, mostly because it just kept repeating itself. 

The opening is memorable, at least: a well-muscled naked dude wakes up in a sort of laboratory, one filled with strange computers and the like. Much like a reverse Richard Blade, with Blade waking up in the teleportation chamber instead of a new world in Dimension X. The guy has amnesia, and has no idea how or why he came here; he finds a skeleton in another chamber, and what appears to be cryogenic chambers – also with a skeleton in one. Eventually he pieces it together that his name must be “Joel,” given the name above the chamber he woke in, but before he can figure anything else out a “faceless man” with syringe-like needles on his palm comes out of nowhere and slaps at him, and Joel goes into darkness. 

From here “Grayworld” picks up its maddeningly repetitive plot; Joel continues to wake up in a sequence of realities, all of them always featuring the same three people: himself, a hotbod brunette usually named Allison, and an older guy usually named Henry Galling. In some “realities” Allison is Joel’s wife, in others she’s a nurse (with a different name) who claims Joel has tried to rape her. In some realities Galling is Allison’s uncle, and in others he’s running a research project into a new drug. It goes on and on, Joel passing out – or being knocked out by the ever-present faceless man – and coming to in some new reality or other, not knowing which is real…but certain that the initial one, of him waking up in the chamber, was the “real” one. 

Koontz drops some eerie foreshadowing in the opening sequences; in particular mentions of dust on everything and everyone, even how “dust lay between the full cones of [Allison’s] breasts.” (For some reason I suddenly want ice cream!) The reader can ascertain that we are in some dystopic future; nothing seems to exist except for the countryside mansion in which all this occurs. It’s also very heavy on the mindbender vibe, with Joel – in multiple realities – discovering that the scene outside the window is just a hologram; one can even reach out and touch the moon! But this forward momentum is lost as Joel is incessantly thrust into one new reality after another; in some he’ll have Allison on his side, ready to escape, then the faceless man will come around again and in the next “reality” Allison will be someone else…or even one of the people behind the mind games. 

So let me jump to the reveal here, SPOILER warning. “Grayworld” has the biggest copout ending ever. Joel has had one “flash” that something big happened at some point, something he glimpsed out the window, but he’s unable to remember it. And finally, after 80 or so pages of endless mysteries, he remembers everything immediately. So basically there was like an “eco disaster” which destroyed hummanity, and all this is occurring a thousand years later. Joel is the last human on the planet, part of a group of astronauts who were supposed to leave Earth but who never got off the ground due to various computer snafus or something. So Joel has created androids from “vats” (it sounds like an incredibly easy process, too), and over the years he fell in love with one of them (aka Allison). But he was so haunted by this “miscegenation” that he gave himself amnesia so that he’d forget everything and have the androids put him through various trials…so that he would be able to gravitate to Allison free of any guilt, unaware that she’s an android and all. 

I mean honestly I think I speak for everyone when I say, what the holy hell??? And Koontz isn’t done yet; in the very last pages he doles out this eleventh hour plot about these evil creatures that have been trying to break in for hundreds of years or something, and Joel marshalled the androids to stop them before, but now he’s still getting over the amnesia so they have to remind him, and etc…and here the story ends, with Joel about to lead his android pals in attack. Just the most mind-boggling finale ever, but humorous in how Koontz flat-out kills off all the suspense and psycho-sexual mystery he spent the majority of the novella building up. 

“Isaac Under Pressure” is by Scott Edelstein and seems to have been about genies in bottles or something – it’s another short one – but I was so turned off by “Grayworld” that I skipped it. 

And that’s all she wrote for Infinity Five. This one sounded a lot more promising than it turned out to be, so there’s no mystery at all why this series is relatively unknown.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Soldato #4: Murder Mission!


Soldato #4: Murder Mission!, by Al Conroy
No month stated, 1973  Lancer Books

Gil Brewer turns in his second and final installment of Soldato, once again proving that, despite his talent as an author of hardboiled mystery yarns, he really couldn’t cut it as a men’s adventure writer. I can only assume he didn’t understand the genre – not that the genre is very complex or anything – and that he did his best to wing it over the course of 190-some pages. I mean folks the “climax” of this one features Johnny “Soldato” Morini hiding a room…for like 15 pages. 

Actually Morini is a former soldato, aka Mafia soldier, and Brewer again does a swell job of reminding us of his past and how he’s still hooked on the girl he was married to back in the earliest volumes. Brewer does at least invest the series with a lot more emotional weight than the genre average, but really is that what any of us are here for? Morini in Brewer’s hands is too pensive, too given to self-doubt and uncertainty; he’s comparable to Len Levinson’s interpretation of Johnny Rock in the first two Sharpshooter novels he wrote, The Worst Way To Die and Night Of The Assassins. Then editor Peter McCurtin gave Len the advice that his version of Rock wouldn’t last, that Rock must be more driven, more prone to violent action – that he must “kill with cold hate,” a phrase that spurred Len into turning in one of the better installments of the series, Headcrusher.

I guess there was no editor on Soldato to give Brewer any such advice. Thus we must endure Morini’s frequent anxieties, and while we’re often told of his burning hatred for the Mafia, very rarely does he do anything about it. In fact he goes out of his way not to kill at times. More unintentionally humorous though is his supposed helper slash “best friend,” Riley, the lawyer who set Morini up in his current capacity of one-man army for a cancer-ridden old Mafia don who wants to wipe out his former brothers. Riley does absolutely nothing to help Johnny (as Brewer refers to his protagonist, so I’ll start doing the same) for the majority of the tale, and most of the time tells Johnny not to call him! There’s a ridiculous amount of antagonism between the two, particularly in how Riley expects Johnny to do everything on his own and acts like it’s a huge pain in the ass to even answer his occasional phone calls.

There’s no pickup from Brewer’s previous volume, and when we meet Johnny he’s in New Orleans, already having established himself as “Bacchi” for local Don Marno. The gist of the series is that Johnny goes undercover in various Mafia families, busting them up from within; his operating parameters seem to be “kill everyone,” as Riley and his Justice Department cronies aren’t really looking for arrest warrants or anything. Johnny’s got a lot of problems this time, and one of them’s that the real Bacchi, a Chicago soldato, is in prison; Johnny’s pretending to be the guy, the story going that he busted out of prison and is now looking for a job with Don Marno. Of course, before novel’s end the real Bacchi’s Don will come down to New Orleans to hook up with Don Marno, adding a bunch more tension to the tale.

And as if that weren’t enough, the photo taken of Johnny in the previous volume has been destroyed, but L.A.-based Don Sesto got a drawing made of it, a drawing by a professional artist, and he’s flying around the country to show the various families this drawing. I mean he can’t mail it or anything. I mean the dude’s literally walking around with a single drawing, the thing covered in protective glass and everything, and showing it to other Dons across the country. The whole subplot is so ludicrous you have no choice but to just go along with it. Johnny manages to fix this guy, though, in one of the novel’s more tense scenes: Don Sesto just happens to fly into New Orleans after midnight, and Johnny chases him along a deserted highway before crashing him into a lake and getting in a brutal life or death struggle with him. A curious capoff here is that, when Riley belatedly arrives on the scene, he insists on taking the drawing instead of destroying it, like Johnny wants to. Given Riley’s general half-assery throughout, I almost wondered if Brewer was developing a subplot that Riley would eventually sell Johnny out, hence his keeping this drawing that could cost Johnny his life.

We get a quick reminder that this isn’t your typical men’s adventure series; the opening sequence introduces us to Don Marno and his orbit of followers, including his heroin-addicted brother Milo. There’s also a six year-old kid the Don treats as his own; the boy’s mom is Helena, Marno’s disowned daughter. There’s a subplot about Marno having killed Helena’s husband because he wasn’t worthy, and also Helena is hooked on heroin and etc. To Brewer’s credit, none of this goes where you’d expect: while Helena is introduced in a scene where she screams at her dad to be able to see her son again, she wants to be accepted back into the family and still has Mafia in her blood. Also, despite being the prettiest woman Johnny’s ever seen, our hero doesn’t get lucky – Johnny’s really a sad case when compared to his men’s adventure brethren, friends – other than a quick kiss. Indeed, Helena will go further than any other character to do away with Johnny…not that he does anything to get her out of his own way, even once he’s figured out what a threat she poses to him.

But this opening bit with Don Marno lets us know what we’re in for: a lot of talking, a lot of scheming and plotting. Don Marno is up against two rival local Dons: “Fats” Faturo and Logari. As with previous volumes, Johnny will try to engineer a war between the families…at least, that’s how it starts out. Instead the onus of the plot becomes more about Johnny trying to protect his identity, with more time placed on his fretting – and eating in restaurants and diners – than on action. The back cover even promises that in this one Riley will be taken captive, which hints at some action or at least tension; instead, the subplot’s over and done with in about twenty or so pages. A couple of Fats’s men get the jump on Riley, Johnny as “Bacchi” hears about it, and that night – after a big meal – Johnny puts on black clothes and springs Riley from the warehouse where they’re holding him. Riley doesn’t even thank him!

Speaking of meals, the novel is very much of a different era. Johnny’s constantly smoking or pouring himself a drink; before any action he’ll hit a very heavy meal, like a couple steaks and etc – plus “five different vitamins.” In fact Johnny seems to drink quite a bit in the course of Murder Mission, to the point that I wondered if it wasn’t some in-jokery courtesy Brewer…that it was more of an indication of how much Brewer himself was drinking as he ground out the manuscript. It’s clear though that he struggles with the basic tenents of this genre; the action scenes, for example, are almost dashed off, with more focus on the talking, the scheming, and the introspection. And Johnny is much too consumed with guilt for a men’s adventure hero; we’re even informed he sometimes sees the faces of the men he’s killed in his sleep – even the men he killed in self-defense. 

For that matter, Brewer fails to grasp basic action-telling principles. I mean no one could ever confuse Johnny Morini with Mack Bolan. For one, Johnny’s only ever armed with a Colt Cobra .38. Not that there’s a problem with this, I mean .38 revolvers were pretty much the standard firearm for ‘70s crime fiction. But the problem is the way it all goes down. For example, there’s a part where Johnny abducts Helena and ties her up in an abandoned building, to be collected by Riley (who of course bitches that Johnny has troubled him with this task). But Helena manages to get herself loose, call Milo (Marno’s junkie brother), and has him come over with some soldiers. So Johnny’s standing there in the room, sees three guys walking down a hallway toward him…and he runs away! This leads to a tense chase, at least, but still – dude, you’ve got a gun, and they’re all just walking toward you, conveniently bunched together. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but our hero instead desperately rushes for the window.

Even worse is the supposed finale. As “Bacchi” Johnny manages to talk Marno into hosting the rival two Dons – as well as the real Bacchi’s Don, from Chicago – on his yacht. Johnny gets some explosives from Riley (cue more bitching – seriously) and secretly sets them up…then for some belabored reason, he boards the yacht and must be present until right before the explosives go off, I guess to ensure everything works or something. But since he’ll quickly be outed as an imposter when the Chicago Don sees him, Johnny pretends to be sick and sequesters himself in a stateroom. This goes on for pages and pages. The ship moves further into the ocean, heading for the Gulf of Mexico, and hours later Johnny’s finally confronted by drunk goombahs who demand to see “Bacchi.” He manages to jump off the yacht as they start shooting at him; at least Riley proves his worth here in the finale, arriving on the scene in a helicopter to pick him up just before the ship blows.

I brought up The Executioner and again, as I mentioned in my review of the previous volume, I finally got confirmation that Gil Brewer was the mysterious author who was hired by Pinnacle to write the followup to Sicilian Slaughter (which was by William Crawford). I’ve read before that Don Pendleton often mocked an unpublished Executioner manuscript, one that had been sent in by some contract writer, and I’ve often wondered if it was Brewer’s manuscript Pendleton was mocking. While the writing itself is fine – the introspective stuff does add depth to the storyline, even though it’s unnecessary depth – the basic stuff you want from this genre is lacking. I mean imagine Mack Bolan hiding in the stateroom of a yacht for twenty-some pages in the climax of a Don Pendleton novel.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Time Rogue


Time Rogue, by Leo P. Kelley
No month stated, 1970  Lancer Books

Leo P. Kelley will always rank highly with me, if for no other reason than his novel Mythmaster, which I still think of often – pretty much the epitome of psychedelic pulp sci-fi. I was hoping for the same with this earlier novel, and while the psychedelic touch is there Kelley goes for more of a dramatic tale. In many ways Time Rogue is a prefigure of The Terminator, with heroes in the “present” (ie a 1980s very much like the late 1960s) finding out they unintentionally create a “cyborgian” future two hundred years in the future. Actually it’s more akin to Terminator 3 in that a female cyborg is sent back in time to stop them.

Indeed, it’s the “cyborgian society of Century Twenty-Two,” which Kelley introduces us to in a fast-moving first chapter which left me confused as hell. But that’s how sci-fi pulp rolls, friends; there’s no need for fancy-pants world building. Only gradually does one grasp that “Max Marie,” the hermaphrodite cyborg thing which initially is presented as your typical villainous robot run amok, is actually on the side of good…or at least what he/she believes is good in this skewed future. Max Marie has just driven insane one of the few mostly-human individuals left on this future earth, a guy named Caleb who is a professor of “temporal history.” As we watch in puzzlement Max Marie pulls out the essence of Caleb’s crazed mind, splits it into seven sections, sends these sections back to “Century Twenty,” and allows the “husk” of Caleb’s now-mindless body to die.

We will learn that Caleb has partnered with these cyborgs to prevent his future from occurring; it’s your typical nightmarish future of ‘60s sci-fi, a la The Mind Brothers, in which humans have become so roboticized and cybernetic that they’re no longer really human. Kelley is presicent in this, given how our own nightmarish present is quickly headed into a sort of post-human future, with gender now deemed “fluid” and the ACLU tweeting stuff like, “Men who get pregnant are still men.” Given this, it probably is only a matter of time before “humans” become biomechanical hermaphroditic creatures that have lost all touch with what they once were, and thus some people will no doubt yearn for the days of the past, as is the setup here.

Kelley doesn’t spend much time in this future world, other than a handful of cutaways to it, where we see the cyborg administrators of justice torturing Max Marie for info and then trying to figure out where in the past he’s sent Caleb’s splintered mind. We readers know it’s to the twentieth century, and while Kelley doesn’t pinpoint the date it seems to be 1983 or so, given the time stated since World War II. The novel plays out over the span of just a few days, and the main character for the majority of the narrative is Ruth Epstein, constantly referred to as “old and gray” in the opening chapters and on the back cover copy. Today she wouldn’t be considered old at all, given that she’s only somewhere in her sixties. Forty years before, in 1943, she was prisoner in a concentration camp, along with her younger sister; both were in their twenties at the time, and Ruth is still haunted by what happened there. 

There’s some unexpected character depth for a pulp sci-fi thriller, but then the same could be said of Mythmaster. What happened to Ruth’s sister in the camp is kept a mystery, but it’s something that has plagued Ruth throughout her life, something she’s blamed herself for to such an extent that she’s become a veritable old maid, living alone near her research facility in New Jersey. And her research is, you guessed it, centered around “uniting man and machine.” We meet her as she’s just successfully hooked a lab mouse into a computer. Of course the mouse dies but it’s a huge success. Thus in her own way Ruth will make possible the cyborgian world of the future, and must, per the hyperbolic back cover copy, die. Caleb enters Ruth’s mind in a memorable moment, quickly taking control and prompting her to follow strange requests – like driving to New York and attending a chess match.

This introduces the second of the seven characters who will mind-meld with Caleb: a twelve year-old chess prodigy named Barry Lamont who lives in a plush apartment with his wealthy parents. Barry proves to be a memorable character, somewhat wise beyond his years yet still retaining a childlike innocence about this possession of his mind by a man who hasn’t even been born yet – he just accepts this strange new reality for what it is. Unfortunately Barry is gradually minimized due to the other five characters who come into the fold. He makes a memorable first impression, taken over by Caleb on his way to a chess match, which he still manages to win. Then he meets Ruth, who has of course come to New York for him, Caleb pushing them to find one another so he can recreate himself here in this century. They also already know each other’s names, even though they’ve never met.

The next person is Sa-Hid, a Malcolm X type we meet as he’s giving a black power rant in Harlem (“Black is where it’s at!”). He of course brushes off Ruth and Barry when they approach him, but he too is unable to fight against Caleb’s mind control. Soon the three of them are heading back to Ruth’s home in New Jersey, Barry having gotten gruding permission from his parents, the story being that Ruth is a psychologist looking to study child prodigies. Sa-Hid contantly butts heads with them, which leads to Ruth nicely calling out Sa-Hid’s own racism and how he is “a mathematician of race,” only capable of seeing the world in black and white. A nice bit of shaming that would probably be deemed unacceptable in our victim culture society of today.

The fourth person is a flower child in a psychedelic print dress (one of the few topical touches that allow us to know the era) named Joan. There’s some off-page sex here as a penniless Joan offers her body to a taxi driver so he can give her a lift to New Jersey…plus an additional ten bucks! She has been compelled to Ruth’s clinic, and like the others she has her own sad background. I should mention that long stretches of Time Rogue aren’t even remotely sci-fi, particularly the parts with Ruth, Kelley more determined to examine the backstories of his various characters. This pays off, as he gradually builds a family dynamic, similar to what he did in the final half of Mythmaster.

And really, this is more of a character-driven piece than an action spectacular; the focus is more on this group of random people inexplicably thrust together by future events and how they work with one another, while temporarily being assailed by mental urgings from the disembodied Caleb. Action is promised though when we cut back to Century Twenty-Two and see the cyborg authorities of that era put together a Tracker who specializes in “detecting genetic continuities.” It is designed to track backwards in time through the various genetic streams to find the seven humans Caleb and Max Marie must’ve singled out as perpetrators of this future world. The Tracker is named Leda, and Kelley doesn’t do much to describe her, other than she is pretty.

The fifth person is Kirby, who shows up at Ruth’s house one day and promptly tries to rape Joan, whom he claims to love even though he’s never met her. Once this awkward bit is overlooked, Kirby turns out to be a swell guy. Seriously though at this point the brevity of Kelley’s paperback begins to rob his too-many characters of much depth. Kirby we learn is unhappily married and in his Caleb-possesion has learned that he and Joan are soul mates, destined to be married. But not much is made of this and the storyline comes off as hard to buy. Even worse treated is the sixth member of the group, a handsome gigolo type named Skeeter who lives in a cabin in the woods. He’s more of a cipher than anything else.

Kelley does a weird thing here; Leda, presented as the Tracker, gradually emerges to be a savior instead of a killer – unlike a Terminator, she’s not here to kill anyone, but indeed to prevent their deaths. It’s Caleb who plans to kill the seven, thus hopefully preventing his nightmare future. Leda explains this to Ruth when she appears to her one night; Leda’s capabilities are maddeningly vague, with her just appearing and disappearing with not much explanation. But Leda has gone back into the various timelines for each of the six – even she doesn’t yet know who the mysterious seventh person is – and has learned Ruth’s secret from the concentration camp. Leda explains what Caleb’s intent is and somehow instructs Ruth herself how to travel in time.

The seventh dude turns out to be a Mafia boss, and he’s so inconsequential to the plot as to be a waste of time; Kelley has it that this dude’s above-board business dealings, stuff he does to keep the prying eyes of the government from his mob activities, end up funding the cyborg research that will create the world of the twenty-second century. The other six are sent like automatons to a church, where the mobster’s daughter is getting married. Here the climax, such as it is, plays out. Rather than an action spectacular, Caleb is wrenched away in a mental fight with Leda, and ultimately the others realize that Ruth is gone – and, following Joan’s hunch, they deduce that she no longer even exists “in this timeline!”

Spoilers here, so skip the paragraph if you don’t want to know. Kelley unexpectedly delivers a toucing finale. We finally learn what happened at the concentration camp in 1943, the day that’s haunted Ruth. Her 1983 mind has traveled back in time to take control of herself in 1943, once again in the camp. The camp commander makes a daily game of choosing victims for the gas chamber, and each day Ruth has found a way to protect her kid sister. But on this particular day she has failed. We already knew this from the start of the book, but here in the finale we find out what happened afterwards: the commander, having chosen Ruth’s sister for the chamber today, asks Ruth if she would be willing to take her place. In the previous timeline Ruth said no, hating herself for her cowardice for the rest of her life. This time, of course, she boldly says “yes,” much to the commander’s surprise. So off she marches to the gas chamber, already forgetting Caleb and the others, as she has changed the future – perhaps the only book in history which features an uplifting finale involving a gas chamber!

While it doesn’t have the psychedelic vibe of Mythmaster, Time Rogue definitely scores in the character department. Kelley makes you care just enough about his characters that you want to see how they work their way out of this strange situation. The cyborg future is effectively portrayed, but still some of it could’ve been better fleshed out, like Leda’s character. Overall though I’d recommend Time Rogue for anyone looking for a quick pulp sci-fi read, one with an unexpected emotional depth.

Monday, October 21, 2019

Soldato #3: Strangle Hold!


Soldato #3: Strangle Hold!, by Al Conroy
No month stated, 1973  Lancer Books

Gil Brewer takes over the Soldato series with this volume; he’ll remain for the next one. It’s clear he read the previous two installments, courtesy Marvin Albert, as Brewer often refers back to the events of the first and second volumes. I was curious to see how Brewer would handle men’s adventure, and for the most part he turns in the same sort of book he was known for: a hardboiled yarn heavy on suspense and tension, with little in the way of the action or thrills you’d get in, say, the average installment of The Executioner

Speaking of which, Brewer wrote a never-published volume of The Executioner in the ‘70s, and it was always my suspicion that he was going to be Pinnacle’s next “Jim Peterson,” following on from William Crawford’s Sicilian Slaughter (aka the infamous sixteenth installment of the series which creator Don Pendleton never even read). The other year I had my suspicion confirmed when I discovered that Brewer’s unpublished manuscript was indeed titled Firebase Seattle, a title Pendleton himself eventually used, given that Pinnacle had already come up with a cover for it (as Pendleton relates in A Study Of Action-Adventure Fiction). However Brewer’s yarn would’ve been the true sequel to Sicilian Slaughter that we never got, and I’d love to read it…but it costs a whopping $200 for a jpeg copy of the 240-page manuscript which currently resides in the Gil Brewer collection at the American Heritage Center.

Judging from Strangle Hold, though, those two hundred bucks might be better spent elsewhere; while Brewer’s writing is fine, delivering much more character depth for titlular Soldato Johnny Morini than previous series author Albert ever did, the story ultimately fizzles out into too much stalling and repetition, and Brewer constantly fails to exploit his own material. The book is also much too long, coming in at 222 pages of small-ish print – however Brewer is too much the pulp veteran to turn in a slow-moving tale. Even though not much happens, it always seems that something is about to.

But the first half is really nice because as mentioned Brewer gives Johnny a lot of depth. We meet him as he’s still holed up in Los Angeles, drinking more than he should, and still thinking about his ex-wife, last seen in the first volume. Johnny even goes to the trouble of visiting her, only to be told by her mother that she’s not home; a cool scene here as the phone rings, Johnny’s ex mother-in-law answers it, and it turns out to be for Johnny. Brewer captures the general paranoid vibe of the ‘70s here, with Johnny constantly being monitored by Riley, his ex-Fed handler; Riley later even informs Johnny that his ex was upstairs all along, and her mom was lying to Johnny.

This thread is dropped, though…and folks believe it or not there’s zero female companionship for Johnny in the entire novel. In fact Brewer doesn’t even deliver any exploitation of the novel’s sole babe; from Play It Hard I assumed we’d at least get a bit of that, but Brewer’s very conservative here with the sex and the violence. For the most part Strangle Hold is just a Mafia novel, with Johnny going deep undercover as an L.A. bigwig, sent down to Tampa to oversee the activities of the Florida mob. 

Riley doesn’t appear much, this time. He summons Johnny to a dingy hotel in New Jersey, turns him over to another handler, and heads out. Johnny’s assignment is to fly back to L.A., take out a guy named Frank Lott, and head down to Tampa to bust up Don Remo Paragluci, who seems to be putting together a combine with two other Florida dons. Lott is a member of the Syndicate Committee or somesuch, basically the corporate wing of the Mafia which ensures all the various “franchise” families stay in order. Then Johnny’s new handler is blown away – the novel opens with Paragluci knowing that the Feds are onto him, and sending someone off to kill Riley – and Johnny runs from the cops, who think he’s the one who pulled the trigger.

Once Johnny’s captured the real Lott, interrogated him, and left him tied up for Riley to collect, our hero flies down to Tampa…and here the novel loses its frenetic pace. As “Frank” Johnny bulldozes his way through Don Paragluci’s domain; Johnny’s idea is that it’s “expected” he’ll be a hardass, given that he’s from the Committee, so he pushes boundaries at every opportunity, constantly testing the old don’s temper. He also runs afoul of little Nevito, Paragluci’s creepy younger son; Paragluci’s older son has recently been blown away during an attempted hit on soldatos from a rival Tampa don. 

This guy’s widow provides the babe quotient for Strangle Hold; she’s a hotstuff beauty named Lucia who likes to go around in her bikini. Even though her husband’s been dead just a few days, she’s throwing looks at “Frank Lott.” But Brewer ignores this element and goes for a heavy suspense vibe; Don Paragluci, who is prone to sitting around in his office and staring at a print of a Picasso painting he much admires, is planning to get together with two other dons and start up a combine, whether the Committee approves or not. There’s a ton of talking and scenes of fat old Italian guys going over plans for the takeover and whatnot.

Despite the threat of a war with another family hanging over the proceedings, nothing much really happens. Johnny gets reproachful looks from Nevito and continues to bully old Don Paragluci. Then things get weird. Nevito gets jealous when Lucia decides to go to dinner with “Frank,” and Nevito rapes and kills the poor girl off page…this like a day after she’s buried her husband. And what does Johnny do when he finds out? Tells Don Paragluci, who basically shrugs it off as yet another indication of his young son’s growing insanity. I mean there’s no part where Johnny takes up his .38 revolver (which he’s somehow able to screw a silencer onto) and vows revenge, mostly because he’s too concerned about blowing his cover. One hopes Mack Bolan wasn’t similarly emasculated in Brewer’s unpublished Executioner.

But it gets more weird…almost a dark comedy in that Nevito keeps trying to screw over Johnny, suspecting somehow that this Frank Lott is an imposter. Yet in every case someone else saves Johnny’s skin, all of them turning in Nevito’s duplicitous actions to either the don or to Johnny himself, so as to stay in good with the Committee. And it’s very messy, too; Brewer introduces one soldato, mentions that he’s a serial killer, and intimates that he and Johnny might be matching up soon…then the serial killer soldato goes to “Frank” to tell him that Nevito’s up to no good! After which the character is brushed back under the narratorial carpet.

Only in the final pages is there any tension. This comes through two acts: first Nevito snaps a photo of “Frank” and sends it to LA to ensure this is really the right guy. Secondly Johnny decides to heist the real Picasso Don Paragluci loves so much(!?). Conveniently, it happens to be at a nearby Tampa museum. This happens after Nevito has failed to steal the painting, desperate to impress his dad, and is nearly caught in the bargain. Another incident the don decides to forget. So Johnny goes off on his own and steals the painting in a tense but protracted and arbitrary sequence, particularly given that it happens toward the very end of the novel.

The absolute worst part is that Johnny is a bystander in the climax. Riley’s shown up and attempts to stop the mail and prevent Nevito’s package of photos from getting through, but fails, and now the clock is ticking. Johnny quickly sets up the various dons so that they converge on a restaurant, then works Don Paragluci up into a lather and sends him and his boys off to wipe them out. Johnny gets in a car chase, trying to prevent a group of thugs from getting to the restaurant before the don – lamely enough, they just got a phone call from L.A. telling them “Frank Lott” is an imposter.

But all the various villains gun each other down while Johnny watches from afar. Even little prick Nevito, who we’ve waited for Johnny to blow away the entire novel, is rendered his comeuppance by a squad of cops who show up on the scene, having been summoned by Riley. After this Johnny hops in a car with Riley and heads home, bitter about the life he leads…perhaps not nearly as bitter as the reader for having endured such a subpar but initially-promising book.

Don’t get me wrong, Brewer’s writing is fine, save for a strange fascination with the recurring phrase “beneath the wheel” every time a character gets in a car to drive (ie “Johnny got beneath the wheel”). This phrase was a new one to me; I mean I can see “behind the wheel” as making sense, but “beneath” makes it sound like all the characters are midgets. Anyway, here’s hoping Brewer’s next one is better.

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Cocaine


Cocaine, by Marc Olden
July, 1975  Signet Books

This is basically the primer for Marc Olden’s Narc series, sort of the “nonfiction” version of it. I put that in quotes because for the most part Cocaine reads like fiction…many, many stories of drug dealers and the narcs who pursue them, with even the oddball “fact” coming off like fiction (like “the famous rock group” that was busted for coke possession and wrote a number one song about it, even sending the narc who busted them a thank-you note).

Like Narc, Cocaine started life at Lancer Books before moving over to Signet; this edition is “revised and updated” from the Lancer edition, which was published in 1973. But of course Narc was published under the pseudonym “Robert Hawkes” (even though each book was copyright Olden), so Signet lost a good co-sell opportunity. At least Olden’s Black Samurai series, also from Signet, gets a shout-out, though Narc would’ve made a lot more sense.

In fact, Olden’s main informant throughout Cocaine is “Jerry,” identified as an undercover narcotics agent for the DEA. Man how I wish Olden had gone all the way with it and named him “Jon,” ie Jon Bolt of fictional drugs enforcement agency D-3 in Narc. But I’m betting Jerry served as inspiration for Bolt; Olden thanks several people at the end of the book for their help in the research, with “Jerry” one of them, so I’m assuming he was a real person and that he factored into the creation of Jon Bolt.

Otherwise the contents of this book are identical to those in Narc, even with the same sort of arbitrary subplot-hopping. I’ve complained in more than a few Narc reviews how the narrative will abruptly jump into the almost stream-of-conscious thoughts of such and such a character. Well, that happens for the entirety of Cocaine. It’s basically one short-short story after another. And also Olden’s repetition is firmly in place – he’ll tell you the same thing at least three times.

But that’s cool, because this is one of the most “1970s” books I’ve ever read. I mean it could almost come with a pair of platform shoes. It’s all about hip black and Cuban coke dealers in all the fly fashions of the day, sticking it to the Man. And that’s another difference from earlier drug books, like Smokestack El Ropo’s Bedside Reader. Whereas that one was more of a countercultural book, looking at the pleasures of marijuana and hash, Cocaine is more about the crime and the violence. There’s very little here that would tell you why people were going so crazy over coke, nor much about the effects they feel when under the influence. And for that matter it’s not even so much about the dangers of coke, other than a few mentions of ODs and such. It’s really more about the crime-ridden underworld that has sprung up around the cocaine industry.

Olden does tell us a little about the drug users in the opening chapters – basically all the hip people of the day, from artists to rock musicians to swingers. Pretty much everyone, when it gets right down to it. But the high rollers are the biggest users, because coke isn’t cheap; Olden tell us that it’s $25 to $75 per spoon, and that’s for heavily cut coke. More pure samples are not only pricier but harder to find.

One thing I can say I learned from this book is how cocaine is harvested and manufactured. Previously it was kind of a mystery to me. Basically it’s taken from South America and enters the US via New York or Miami, cut up and processed in various mills. The Mafia doesn’t have much control of it given the South American source, thus has focused its interests on oldschool crime like gambling and hookers. But really Cocaine offers a look at the environment which would create the crack epidemic of the ‘80s; increasingly violent black gangs and Cuban gangs vying for dominance of the coke industry. Olden says there’s no question the Cubans are more violent, and I wonder if this book factored into Oliver Stone’s script for Scarface.

The book follows the same format for each chapter. Olden will introduce some aspect of the coke industry, ie Dealing or Ripoffs or whatever, then will illustrate each aspect with pseudo-fictional short stories. I was most interested in the section on the mills, which are generally in bad areas of town and overseen by women, who monitor a small group of people cutting up the coke, all of them in masks. The ripoffs material was also interesting, and very heavy in that ‘70s crime vibe – “ripoffs” being the term for coke dealers ripping each other off. And as previously mentioned the Cubans are much more vicious in their ripoffs, or when they track down a ripoff artist; blacks are more content to frame the ripoff artist so that he’s arrested.

Things occasionally get sleazy, like a random chapter on pimps, hookers, and coke (and Olden’s description of the outrageous pimp wardrobes just has more of that super ‘70s vibe). There’s the occasional tale of a drug dealer’s superhuman sexual powers, thanks to all the pure-grade coke he’s snorting. Here we learn of the mysterious “Tortilla” practiced by Cuban dealers behind closed doors; a “lesbian orgy” in which women are piled atop one another, occasionally the wives of the dealers even taking part. There’s also “My Hero,” as Jerry refers to him, a Cuban dealer with such machismo that even a mousy and prudish DEA typist gets turned on as she’s transcribing one of his tapped dirty phone conversations.

There’s also a lot on mules, who bring drugs into the country via various novel means, and informants, generally dealers who’ve been caught and decide to work for the Man for a lesser sentence. Olden published a novel titled The Informant in 1978, also a Signet paperback original (and incredibly overpriced, but luckily now available as an eBook), so I’d wager this section factored greatly into that later novel. It already reads like a thriller here, with Olden stressing how dangerous the life of an informant is; once outed by their drug world comrades they are shown no mercy.

There isn’t as much about the narcs themselves; the DEA was fairly new when the book was written, or so Olden informs us, and we even learn that the drug cops had just started carrying weapons. But obviously the men’s adventure vibe of Narc isn’t present here, these stories being true (or at least presented as true) and thus more realistic in the brief snatches of violent action; there is though a nicely-done shootout late in the book which unfortunately sees a young DEA agent killed in action. Otherwise the lot of the narcs is presented as a thankless one; they aren’t out to bust hippies or the occasional drug user, just the big fish, and to do so they have to sit around for long stretches of time before putting their lives on the line. There are also some interesting stories about undercover jobs. 

Overall I enjoyed Cocaine more than I thought I would. It definitely has that ‘70s crime vibe I’ve always enjoyed, and the pseudo-fictional approach makes it a lot more entertaining than a typical study on cocaine would’ve been. It’s even the same length as one of Olden’s Narc or Black Samurai novels, coming in at 172 fast-moving pages of fairly small print.

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

A Piece Of Something Big


A Piece Of Something Big, by Harry Reed
No month stated, 1972  Lancer Books

I was very happy to discover this obscure Lancer paperback original. It’s one of the better crime novels I’ve read – a lean, well-written pulp yarn about a guy with a “Karate Iron Hand” who becomes the victim of a syndicate triple cross. It’s a super cool story and certainly would’ve made for a good movie, but unfortunately the cover blurb is a lie – no movie was ever released.

I’d love to know the story behind A Piece Of Something Big, and not just what happened to the promised film version. Harry Reed is a gifted writer, doling out the assured, economical prose of a veteran pulp author…which makes it quite strange that there’s only one other novel published under his name: The Gringo Killer, from 1971, a Western also published as a Lancer paperback original.

Even more curious: A Piece Of Something Big is copyright Josephine Reed, which would imply that “Harry Reed” is the pseudonym of a female author. If this is true, then Josephine Reed is in the Leigh Brackett mold, one of the very few female authors who can write like a man – in other words, capable of very masculine fiction. However I think there’s more to it than that; The Gringo Killer is actually copyright Harry Reed, which would imply he was a real person and not a pseudonym. So what I think we have here is similar to the situation with Killinger, a novel that was published after the author’s death. This would explain why A Piece Of Something Big, published a year after The Gringo Killer, is copyright Josephine Reed and not Harry Reed. It would also explain why there are no other Harry Reed novels.

Anyway I go into all this because I really, really enjoyed this novel. At 156 pages of smallish print it moves at a snappy clip and captures the exact vibe I love in my ‘70s pulp crime. It’s got smart-guy dialog, colorful characters, fairly exploitative sex scenes, and even a couple nicely-done action sequences. Hell, there’s even a “hippie lawyer” in it. It sort of falls apart in the last quarter, which I’ll get to anon, but even that wasn’t enough to dim my enjoyment of the book. It’s certainly the sort of thing that should be reprinted by Hard Case Crime or some other retro publisher of today, though they might be a little skittish about the occasional usage of the word “Negro.” However the black characters in the book come off very well.

The vibe is very much of a Fawcett Gold Medal hardboiled novel, only moved into the early ‘70s and featuring a hardbitten con with superhuman karate skills as the protagonist. Also, it’s written in a much preferable (to me at least) third person narrative, unlike most of those vintage Gold Medals which were in first person. And as mentioned the sex is more explicit (though nothing too outrageous), with frequent exploitation of the female characters’ ample charms. These are all of course good things.

Our hero is Kurt Kruger and he’s a short, thin guy with receding blond hair; just overall an unremarkable looking guy with a forgettable face. However his right hand is not forgettable: there’s a hard “lump” of calcified bone over his knuckles, courtesy that “Iron Hand.” This was considered a big thing with oldschool martial artists, and I wonder if Reed was inspired by Don Buck, a martial artist of the day who had a similar deformed hand due to his brutal karate training regimen. And Kruger’s hand really is deformed; even if he could hold a gun he wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger.

Kruger’s backstory gradually unfolds in the narrative, but basically he’s somewhere in his thirties and served in the navy, where he took up boxing. Once stationed in Japan he moved into karate and studied with the top instructor of the land, which is how he got that iron hand, and also how he ran afoul Yobiyashi, considered the most dangerous man alive. This backstory seems as if it’s going to be more important than it turns out to be, but basically Kruger was “running around” with Yobiyashi’s sister and they got in a car wreck. The girl died, and now Yobiyashi has sworn to kill Kruger in revenge, not just for his sister’s death but because she died in “disgrace” by dating a white man.

From there Kruger’s had various issues with the law and employment, so that when we meet him he’s in a jail in a podunk desert town in Arizona, arrested for a heist gone wrong. The opening of the novel is already memorable enough: a “drunk Indian” puking, much to the dismay of his cellmates. Kruger’s sprung by some strangers who show up in a limo. Leading them is a “prosperous hippie” type with long beard and highfalutin mod clothing. This is Sylvester Doblin, the aforementioned “hippie lawyer.” He and some thugs drive Kruger to San Francisco, where a mysterious individual wants to offer Kruger a job.

Their destination is a “fortress mansion” where Kruger’s put up in an opulent room that’s basically a gilded cage. But they at least send him a woman – a built blonde hooker named Zelda, who engages Kruger in some off-page lovin’ that’s apparently so incredible they fall in love! Reed does a very good job bringing Zelda to life; the mysterious guy who owns this mansion retains a group of women who are used exclusively for the services of his guests and the thugs on his payroll, and Zelda is very matter-of-fact about the setup. She ends up getting raped by these thugs more than once in the course of the novel, but each time treats it as “just another john.” Yet the developing bond between her and Kruger comes off as genuine and believable.

This is because Reed has a definite gift for characterization and humorous dialog. Kruger has a very quick wit, and this pairs well with Zelda’s plucky attitude. Meanwhile Kruger meets the man who summoned him here: BJ Baldoni, an infamous syndicate man. Baldoni relates that his daughter Lucia is going around with a black boxer (not the phrase Baldoni uses – and there’s a lot of N-word stuff here that would also make a modern publisher skittish) and Baldoni wants Kruger to beat the shit out of the guy…to the extent that he’ll avert his eyes when he bumps into white people on the street (again, not the exact phrase Baldoni uses – it’s much more over the top).

The novel’s a bit modern in Kruger’s attitude on this: “I’m twenty kinds of bastard but race is not one of my hangups.” At any rate he agrees to the job when he’s informed the boxer, Brad Killens, is just a plain asshole, let alone any racial stuff – he’s got a wife he beats on, kids he neglects, and his boxing triumps are courtesy smaller individuals he taunts and then creams in the ring. Kruger’s job is to knock Killens down to size, in front of Lucia, and first Baldoni has Kruger show off his skills against one of Baldoni’s thugs, a hulking goon named Tiny.

Sadly this will prove to be one of Kruger’s few action scenes in the novel – and he doesn’t even use the Iron Hand, much to Baldoni’s (and the reader’s) dismay. He does though stomp Tiny in the balls so savagely that the bastard ends up losing one of them – and this merciless act is payoff for Tiny insisting, earlier that morning, to have sex with Zelda after Kruger was done with her. This though being the first of many such “who cares?” moments for Zelda, who takes Tiny to bed moments after leaving Kruger’s. This is the only time I’ve ever encountered such a scene in a novel – usually the hero fights for his woman – but as I say it comes off well, probably because it’s so unexpected.

Killens is in San Diego and here most of the novel plays out, but Reed doesn’t much bring the locale to life. But again, you don’t look to pulp crime novels for travelogue material, so that’s okay. Kruger’s put up in a plush apartment with Sylvester, the hippie lawyer, and made to pose as a famous painter who likes to surf. Reed doesn’t do much to exploit either of these angles, though Kruger meets Lucia Baldoni while “painting” on the roof of the apartment building (while Lucia is sunbathing in the nude). The goal is for Lucia to spot Kruger and fall for him…she goes for fighting men, which is why she apparently likes Killens so much, and Baldoni wants Kruger to challenge Killens over the girl and beat him to pulp. This could be “a piece of something big” for Kruger, Baldoni promises – he’ll get those charges from the heist in Arizona dropped, and he’ll fund a new karate school for Kruger.

Lucia is a beautiful and built brunette, and Reed, as with Zelda, exploits her ample charms – more indication to me that this novel was the product of a fevered male imagination. Baldoni’s such a thoughtful boss that he even presents Kruger, through Sylvester, with the “gift” of a key – which opens an apartment across town, an apartment in which Zelda is staying, put there expressly for Kruger’s use. But Baldoni also sends periodic tests Kruger’s way, like a deranged speedfreak hippie who tries to carjack Kruger’s Jaguar XKE. This time we get to see the Iron Hand in action.

Reed does a great job of capturing that swinging early ‘70s vibe I love so much. Kruger and Lucia go to a posh party where you can buy “marijuana joints” upstairs – Kruger’s not into it – and there’s also an orgy room in back, and Lucia teases Kruger about taking her back there. But Kruger’s an “old-fashioned motel man,” and when he takes down three more would-be attackers on the way outside to the Jaguar, Lucia becomes incredibly turned on by the violence: “Take me like the bitch whore I am! Quick! Put it in me before I die!” You’ve gotta wonder if this particular dialog would’ve made it into the promised film version…

The confrontation between Kruger and Killens in a restaurant is very well done, mostly because here again we get to see Kruger’s karate moves in action. But when he reads in the late edition of that day’s newspaper that Killens is dead, murdered in a fight, Kruger knows he’s been framed. He beat the boxer badly, but he didn’t kill him. This takes us into the second half of the novel, with Kruger on the run, unsure who to trust. Here Zelda’s character is further expanded, and her love for Kruger is constantly put to the test – there is a wonderfully-executed sequence where she’s taken advantage of by various Baldoni thugs, who insist she get on a plane back to San Francisco and forget about Kruger…but each time Zelda gets to the airport she just turns around and goes back to look for her man.

Reed also expands the story with the introduction of a black police lieutenant in San Diego who is old friends with Kruger from the navy; this character, Nat, has his own subplot in which he tries to help clear Kruger from the frame, and also helps out Zelda. This relationship is also well developed and comes off as genuine. Nat factors into the finale and how it plays out, and only here do I get into any criticisms, because sadly, things sort of fall apart in the final quarter of A Piece Of Something Big

I’ll refrain from complete spoilers. Basically we want to see Kruger get some revenge, but Reed keeps denying him it: first Kruger goes after one bastard who framed him, only to find the guy already dead, his head caved in, clearly from an Iron Hand blow. It’s yet another attempt at framing Kruger for murder. Then a few thugs get the drop on Kruger and he’s taken back to Baldoni’s fortress in San Francisco…and sits around in that same locked room. For weeks! And the simple vengeance plot is gussied up with various turnarounds and reveals, with Baldoni trying to further frame Kruger, making him look like one of the men who planned the entire Killens kill.

While Kruger is robbed of a good finale, Zelda fares much better. She’s taken off by two more goons, and when it’s clear they plan to drive her into the desert and kill her, she takes them out in one of the more memorable sendoffs I’ve ever encountered – she goes down on the driver while riding the thug in the passenger seat, then manages to crash the car as it’s on a curvy mountain road. She’s rescued and put in the hospital, but she’s gone into psychosis from the multiple rapes and beatings. Nat and his wife help bring her back to sanity, and the very end of the book features Zelda dishing out bloody payback with a submachine gun.

But Kruger…man, he gets a bum deal in the final pages. He still doesn’t get to dispense any Iron Hand vengeance! Instead Baldoni reveals that Yobiyashi, the Japanese killer who has vowed to murder Kruger, is the one who really took out Killens and the others, all so Baldoni could pay Yobiyashi back by delivering Kruger on a silver platter. So the two karate warriors begin to circle one another, prepared for the battle…and the helluva it is, Kruger’s no match for the guy. I thought for sure that we’d have this crazy, brutal fight, with Kruger pulling from inner resources, able somehow to defeat Yobiyashi, but it’s more like he’s plain outclassed…and the worst part is, Kruger is saved by another character. This to me is one of the biggest sins the action writer can commit: the hero having to be rescued by another character in the climax.

But don’t let this little detail dissuade you from seeking out A Piece Of Something Big. Before I got to those final pages I was prepared to declare this novel one of the best I’ve ever reviewed on the blog; I was really taken away by it, couldn’t believe how great it was. I can’t let my dissatisfaction with the last bit color my total enjoyment of what came before it.

In fact I started to wonder if Harry Reed died before he could finish the manuscript, and either his first draft got published or some editor (or Josephine Reed, hence the copyright?) attempted to finish what Reed had started. Not that the characters seem suddenly different in the last quarter, or that the dialog falls flat; it’s just that the novel seems building up and up, and then suddenly deflates. But then, this wouldn’t be the first pulp novel I’ve read that suffers from this syndrome, so likely it’s just pointless theorizing on my part.

Anyway, long story short, I totally recommend A Piece Of Something Big, with only slight reservations. It’s a damn shame there were no more Harry Reed crime novels. If anyone knows anything else about the guy, I’d love to hear it.