Showing posts with label Popular Library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Popular Library. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

The Last Ranger #9: The Damned Disciples


The Last Ranger #9: The Damned Disciples, by Craig Sargent
October, 1988  Popular Library

Here’s a funny little “Glorious Trash behind the scenes” story: the reason it’s taken me so long to get back to The Last Ranger was that I couldn’t remember where I put my copy of this ninth volume! I have so many books in so many boxes that I put together a spreadsheet years ago to keep track of where everything is; geeky but necessary when you have thousands of books. I try to keep all volumes of a series together in the same box, but due to the nature of collecting that sometimes doesn’t happen – as apparently was the case with The Last Ranger. The only problem was, I failed to note which box The Damned Disciples was in, so for the past few years I’ve been sporadically searching for it. 

Anyway, that’s the slightly-interesting backstory. More importantly, this is the next-to-last volume of The Last Ranger, and one suspects Jan “Craig Sargent” Stacy knew it was, as the first page notes that the tenth volume, to be titled Is This The End?, is forthcoming. While it doesn’t state it will be the last volume, the title certainly indicates it will be. Also I’m happy to report that Stacy shows a renewed interest in the series this time, after the dud of the previous volume, perhaps because he did know the series was wrapping up. The Damned Disciples opens shortly after the previous volume, with Martin Stone still suffering from the bad leg wound he received “two weeks ago,” in the course of that book’s events, and trying to make his way back to his nuclear bunker in the Colorado mountains. 

As mentioned in my review of the first volume, when I read the first few volumes of The Last Ranger as a kid in the ‘80s, it was the scenes that took place here in this bunker that most resonated with me – something about the safe, high-tech paradise hidden in a post-nuke wasteland. But reading the series again, I see that Stacy doesn’t even spend much time in the place; even this time, after enduring the usual aggressive climate and mutated wildlife expected of the series, when Stone finally does make it to his hideaway safehouse, he only stays there for a few pages. Strange, especially given that it’s got all the comforts of home, and then some; you’d think the guy might at least take a few weeks off and enjoy a beer or two. The hidden subtext is that Stone is freaked by the “ghosts” who inhabit the place, ie his mother and father. Speaking of which, Stone still doesn’t seem to harbor much regret that it was he who caused his mother’s death in the first place – his bullish insistence to leave the bunker in the first volume causing his mother to be raped and killed and his sister to be abducted. 

It's due to Stone’s sister, the perennially-abducted April, that Stone leaves the bunker this time – in a bizarre subplot never broached again in the narrative, Stone receives a fax that “we” have your sister. But a fax machine is just one of the countless amenities here in this high-tech safehaven; Stone even has access to robotic gloves which he uses to operate on himself, while watching it all on a handy TV screen! To make it even crazier, Stone’s learned how to do the operation thanks to that data-dump his father left for him in the computer banks; a sort of self-contained internet that serves up info at the punch of a button. Stone’s wound has become infected, so he has to operate on himself with these “experimental” robotic hands that were designed for handling radioactive material or somesuch; tongue firmly in cheek, Stacy informs us that “it was a simple matter” for Stone’s father to get himself a pair of these robotic hands for his high-tech nuclear bunker. 

As if that weren’t enough, after fixing his own leg Stone then builds himself a new motorcycle, using yet more equipment he has stashed around the place, plus parts from different bikes and vehicles. Stacy doesn’t give a good idea of what the resulting motorcycle looks like, but we’re to understand it’s a Frankenstein sort of contraption that looks bizarre – but is even faster and more powerful than Stone’s previous bike, which was destroyed in the previous volume. Oh and I forgot – Stacy further explains it away with the offhand comment that Stone was the “top mechanic” at a bodyshop when he was younger, thus he’s capable of building a bike on his own. But with this one he also straps a .50-caliber gun to the handlebars, and stashes other weapons about the thing; we do indeed get to see these weapons put to use in the course of the novel, which I’m sure would have pleased Anton Chekhov if he’d ever read this novel. 

We know from the first pages that a blonde-haired young woman has been adbucted by a group calling themselves The Disciples of the Perfect Aura; only later will we realize that this is April Stone, and the Disciples have brainwashed her into their cult, which operates around the La Junta area of what was once California. In another of those synchronicities that would have Jung scratching his goattee, we learn that the leader of this cult, Guru Yasgur, idolized none other than Charles Manson as a child – I chuckled over this, given how I’ve been on such a Manson Family kick of late. Shockingly though, Jan Stacy will ultimately do very little with the Manson setup, with Guru Yasgur barely appearing in the novel. 

Instead, the brunt of The Damned Disciples is focused on the degradation of Martin Stone. For some inexplicable reason it’s as if Jan Stacy just wants to take his anger out on his protagonist, thus much of the book is focused on the breaking and brainwashing of Stone. After coming across some cripples who have been branded “Rejects” by the cult – helping them to regain some of their dignity and teaching them to defend themselves – Stone heads into La Junta…and is promptly captured. The city is comprised of smiling, overly-happy cultists and the black-robed rulers who report directly to Guru Yasgur and The Transformer, the sadist who is behind the brainwashing and torture – and who turns out to be the true villain of the piece, at least insofar as the amount of narrative Stacy devotes to him. 

Hell, even April is lost in the shuffle; the entire reason behind Stone’s presence here, April only appears for a few pages…but then, that’s typical of the series, too. It’s not like she’s ever been a major character. One wonders why Stone even cares anymore. But the poor guy sure does go through hell for her; the Transformer vows to break Stone, and the reader must infer that it was the Transformer who sent the fax in the first place, given an errant comment later on that Stone is strong and that is why the cult wanted him. But man, once again The Last Ranger descends into splatter fiction territory – like when Stone, who struggles against the drugs used to brainwash him, is given a “Death Lover,” which is literally a female corpse in a casket, and Stone is thrown in the casket with it, complete with gross-out details of worms coming out of the corpse-bride’s mouth to “kiss” Stone, and he’s locked in there all night to, uh, consecrate this ghoulish marriage. 

It's all pretty extreme, only made more so with the knowledge that Jan Stacy himself would soon die of AIDS – which as ever gives the ghoulish splatter elements of The Last Ranger an extra edge. But man, with dialog like “You must learn to dance with the monkey of death, with the gorilla of termination,” you just know that the guy isn’t taking it too seriously. Plus Stone has some funny smart-ass comments throughout; like when he gets out of the coffin with “the Death Lover” the morning after, his first line is, “I sure hope she don’t have nothing.” Regardless, he’s still brainwashed, thanks to “the Golden Elixir,” a sweet-tasting concoction made up of heroin, cocaine, LSD, and etc – and, further rendering the entire setup of the novel moot, the brainwashed Stone is tasked with stirring the “hot dry vat” in which the Golden Elixir is made! I mean, was this why the Transformer (or whoever?) sent the fax to the bunker? Because they needed a new guy to stir the vat and it just had to be Martin Stone? It’s just very clear that Stacy is winging his way through the narrative. 

Stacy does at least retain his focus on who Stone is, and what makes him special – namely, that he is a “bringer of death,” as his American Indian friends once proclaimed him. His strength is such that even a mind-blasting daily drug regimen can’t keep down his willpower. That said, the cult-killing retribution isn’t as satisfying as one might expect, with some of the villains disposed of almost perfunctorily. What’s more important is the surprise return appearance at novel’s end of a series villain previously thought dead – SPOILER ALERT: none other than “the Dwarf,” the deformed (plus armless and legless) villain last seen in the third volume, when Stone threw him out of a window. (We learn here that the Dwarf landed in a pool – and he tells Stone that he should have looked out the window to see where the Dwarf landed!) 

Hey and guess what? April is abducted yet again, a recurring joke in The Last Ranger if ever there was one, and by the end of The Damned Disciples Stone and his ever-faithful pitbull Excaliber are off in pursuit. And speaking of which, Stacy’s still capable of doling out scenes with unexpected emotional depth, like when Excaliber himself is dosed with the drugs and set off against Stone…but refuses to attack his beloved master. 

In one of those reading flukes, it turns out that I’m at the same point in both The Last Ranger and it’s sort-of sister series Doomsday Warrior (which Jan Stacy co-wrote the first four volumes of): I’m now at the final volume of each series. So what I think I’ll do is read them both soon, just to gauge how these two authors handled their respective series finales. Like they said in those ’80s NBC promos: “Be there!”

Monday, August 28, 2023

DJ


DJ, by Alan Jefferys and Bill Owen
No month stated, 1971  Popular Library

I discovered this obscure paperback, first published as a hardcover by Ashley Books in 1971, many years ago – and it seemed to be all I was seeking in trash fiction. A contemporary novel about high-libido radio DJs at the height of the rock era! Hell, even the first-page preview provided a glimpse of one of the DJs dropping acid before a little hippie-chick lovin’. 

But then I actually started to read the book (which is an unwieldy 447 pages)…and discovered that it wasn’t anything like what I was expecting. For one, the majority of the tale takes place in the pre-rock era, like the very early 1960s. Even worse, despite being titled DJ, the novel isn’t even really about the DJs! It’s more focused on the business end of running a radio station in New York City, with the jocks reduced to side characters and hardly any narrative at all spent on their on-air activities. Indeed, the main protagonist isn’t even a jock, but the director of the station, a savvy business-minded dude named Basil Kelcke. 

As it turns out, the novel is more focused on the business aspect of things. It’s also a clumsily-written novel. We’re introduced to the state of things in the mid ‘60s as Kelcke learns that his hit DJ, Daddy-O, wants to retire…because Daddy-O is sick of the drug-centric, moral-lacking rock music that is becoming popular and feels that he is contributing to the overall decline of society. He just wants to move back out to the sticks and raise his child in nature and whatnot. And mind you friends, this is like 1965! Well anyway, apropos of nothing Kelcke flashes back to how he hired Daddy-O in the first place…and this flashback turns out to be the exact same plot that started off the book: how Kelcke manages to replace a famous radio personality and not lose out on market share. 

So we flash back to the sticks and it’s now 1960…I mean the hopes of this being a no-holds-barred novel about FM rock radio jocks at the height of the progressive freeform era are just repeatedly dashed. Kelcke is known for fixing up failing radio stations and we see him accomplish this on a regional station…then he takes a job with WMBE in New York, and here he goes about hiring the guy who will eventually end up quitting, aka the aforementioned Daddy-O. But it’s all so focused on the business end of things – it’s about competition with the other stations, pleasing the numbers guys back at the office, shit like that. Absolutely none of DJ actually features a, you know, DJ doing a show on the air. 

There’s a humorous attempt at sleazing things up, per the style of the times, and sometimes it’s so egregious it made me laugh out loud. Like one part where a famous DJ goes home, blasts a classical LP on his turntable, jerks off, and…dies. Then we have a bit where cipher-like protagonist Kelcke is being cuckholded by some delivery guy…there follows super-explicit parts where this guy gives the goods to Kelcke’s wife, Millie, and, when the hotstuff gal who lives next door discovers them in the act, she gets in on it, too! But this subplot is dropped as soon as it’s introduced, having no ramifications on the narrative. 

That’s another thing. DJ is credited to two authors, and I don’t think they compared notes very often. In fact, there’s actually a titular “DJ,” and he doesn’t appear until halfway through the book. My assumption is one author wrote the first half of the book, which focuses on Basil Kelcke, and the other author wrote the other half of the book, which focuses on DJ, aka Daryl Jackson, Kelcke’s latest jock personality who replaces Daddy-O and becomes the hit WMBE DJ through the 1960s. Stuff that comes up in the first half of the book doesn’t pan out in the second half, and in fact Kelcke, ostensibly the protagonist of the first half, is hardly even a supporting character in the second half. 

But then there’s a lot of dropped stuff even in the first half; for example, Kelcke gets a lovely female assistant named Jeannie, one who is a radio superfan. One thing to remember, though, is that this is the early ‘60s, and thus her penchant for radio history is rooted in the old stuff, ie the Lux Radio Theater and stuff like that. Well anyway, she’s pretty and available but Kelcke is a strictly “I’m married” type (of course the ironing is thick given how his wife’s into a three-way affair), so there’s no hanky panky. But there are parts with her trying to find a guy, going out on dates, and none of it ever really goes anywhere. Indeed, she abruptly leaves the narrative with little fanfare and is never heard from again. 

There’s hardly any feel for the era, either. One of the things that pops up in the first half is the nascent rock movement, which Daddy-O isn’t fond of, but man there’s hardly anything topical about it…it’s just yet another “business thing” Kelcke must concern himself with. The book is so incredibly bland and unfocused, and misses out on so much potential. Even when things progress into the mid-‘60s later on, we hardly get any of the “sixties stuff” one would expect – the editors at Popular Library clearly knew what their readers would want, spotlighting a part where DJ (the guy) does LSD, but man this happens toward the very end of the novel…and almost seems to come out of a bad Afterschool Special from the ‘70s. 

I mean really…the tone of this novel is so unintentionally hilarious. According to DJ, if you take a job at a big-city radio station, you’re bound to be corrupted by the forces of evil, committing adultery, getting hooked on heroin, knocking up jailbait…hell, even robbing liquor stores. But you don’t have to worry about actually peforming on the air, because that’s the one damn thing these two authors don’t show us about the job. 

Oh, and DJ is so pathetic that the novel basically rips itself off; Daddy-O is really a back-to-the-country guy who just wants to fish with his kid and live in the woods and stuff, and doesn’t cotton to all that big-city shit. And the titular “DJ,” aka Daryl Jackson…is the same! Folks, more of that unintnentional hilarity ensues when Kelcke, who has discovered DJ in some regional station, brings him to New York and lets him familiarize himself with the city. I kid you not, folks, but DJ actually vomits in fear after a day out, being hit on by hookers and whatnot. It’s just so stupid and lame and pathetic. And DJ too has a button-downed wife back home, one who worries over him, etc, etc…just a retread of the material with Daddy-O. 

Since the novel occurs in a cultural vacuum there’s no insight into the rock happenings of the time, nor is there – believe it or not – anything about progressive freeform FM radio and how it cornered the rock market. But eventually DJ is swooned by a British band called The Glad Stones that takes him over to London and sets him off on an LSD trip…these guys are total ciphers, though, and the authors do nothing to bring them to life. 

Jefferys and Owen do have a gift for dark comedy, though; there’s a part where DJ is finally pushed into wanton behavior by his friend/enemy Rex, a guy who harbors a grudge because DJ beat him out of the WMBE gig; DJ ends up screwing a pretty young female fan…who turns out to be only fifteen. And he gets her pregnant! The authors bring a nightmarish vibe to it all, as DJ is called into the WMBE offices and questioned about his seduction of the innocent, and they almost casually mention he also got the girl pregnant. Later she shows up, after having gotten an abortion (paid for by WMBE!), and throws herself at him – and DJ literally runs away from her! 

But from here it gets even more darkly comic, with DJ spiralling into heroin addiction; again, hardly anything is made of his actual friggin’ radio job. I mean even the Glad Stones stuff doesn’t pan out; Kelcke sends DJ over to London as a big PR venture for WMBE, for DJ to become friends with the band and then officially welcome them for the station when they come to the US for their tour…but even all this is just sort of brushed under the narratorial carpet. Honestly, so much of DJ is told in summary that I had a hard time connecting with any of it. 

And that’s a helluva thing, because a novel about a rock radio station is a novel I want to read. Unfortunately, DJ is not that novel. It hardly has anything to do with rock or radio, despite being set in that world. Kelcke, Daddy-O, even DJ…all of them don’t even like rock music, and it’s really just treated as another trend WMBE needs to exploit to stay ahead of the competition. 

At least the finale packs an unexpected punch – though again it’s so over the top as to be hilarious. We flash forward to 1971, with DJ now destitute after saying “fuck” on air (courtesy that heroin addiction), and he needs some cash, and there’s a liquor store nearby that he decides to rob…a crazy, out-of-nowhere finale that’s rendered even more crazy with Basil Kelcke suddenly turned into a heartless prick on the final page. As mentioned Kelcke is barely a presence in the second half of the novel, which makes me suspect that Jeffery wrote one half and Owen wrote the other. But I don’t know, and to tell the truth I don’t really care – I’d say DJ is justifiably forgotten.

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.

Monday, August 29, 2022

Cage #4: The Silver Puma


Cage #4: The Silver Puma, by Alan Riefe
No month stated, 1975  Popular Library

I was under the impression I had the third volume of Cage, but I’ve belatedly discovered I don’t; this is why it’s been five years since I reviewed the series. I kept thinking I’d come across the third volume in one of my book boxes, but I’ve finally concluded that I never even had it. Well anyway, we’ll just pass over that one and continue with the series with this fourth volume. There isn’t much continuity in Cage, anyway. 

The main thing to note about The Silver Puma is that with this volume Alan Riefe has recast Cage into essentially a light comedy, with only occasional violence. Whereas the first volume had a pulpy concept, this one’s just goofy, and also has no bearing on the series setup. Namely, that Huntington “Hunt” Cage, a New York-based private eye, secretly has a twin brother (Hadley Cage) who sometimes steps in for Hunt on the job. The Silver Puma doesn’t even use the P.I. setup and instead has Hunt hired to pose as the president of a fictional South American country, only to learn he’s walked into a convoluted conspiracy. 

But really this has nothing to do with private investigation; Hunt is hired for reasons that escape him, and his being a P.I. is only seen as a bonus, because it means he can think quickly and make decisions or some other crap. What seems most obvious is that Riefe has grown bored with the series concept, or maybe didn’t know what to write for this fourth volume, and thus came up with a sub-Adventurers setup that features a helluva lot of South American travelogue and a storyline that would be more at home in Mission: Impossible, complete with Hunt Cage disguised as old President Rocafuerte, the benevolent dictator of San Felipe…better known to his people as “The Silver Puma.” 

Riefe is really up to some page-filling trickery because the first few chapters just feature Hunt walking around New York and mulling over the case that’s been offered him, because he suspects something’s up with it. But basically De Ruiz, a “theatrical” and “phoney” official from the San Felipe consulate in New York, calls Hunt in and tells him the secret info that the Silver Puma has just died, here in Manhattan; the Puma was here for special throat treatment or something. The convoluted job would have Cage posing as Rocafuerte, with a bandage over his throat to disguise the fact that he cannot speak Spanish, and going down to San Felipe for a few months until a new leader can be chosen. 

In other words Cage’s job is to fool the locals, but it’s all so ridiculous. Like for example, how in the world was Huntington Cage, a private eye who grew up in Canada, even chosen for this job? It’s explained away that he vaguely resembles Rocafuerte, but this comes off like total bullshit. It’s pretty clear that Riefe had plumb run out of ideas for the series and has shoehorned this caper into the storyline. But we do get a lot of Hunt walking around Manhattan and trying to decide if he should take the case. There’s even a part where he gets his hair cut; at this point the “action” is as prevalent in Cage as in the contemporary P.I. series Hardy

We still get that pulpy concept that the Cage brothers can contact each other on a secret radio watch; we get more detail on it this time, including that the idea for the switch concept was…Hadley’s. This part of the setup has always puzzled me, as Hadley Cage is a New Jersey-based artist, one who hangs out with rich clientele…yet he’s also Hunt’s gun supplier and eagerly takes part in Hunt’s assignments. We also get the bizarre note that Lee has been accused by Hunt of “enjoying” killing, given how easily he does it. Hadley also takes part in most of the action in The Silver Puma, but the action is rendered in outline-esque blandness: 


And really the action comes off like something Riefe has included due to publisher mandate, as “light comedy” aptly describes The Silver Puma. It’s almost Three Stooges-esque at times…for example, Hunt takes the job and at much page-expense gets the Silver Puma’s coffin flown via Pan Am to San Felipe, and then he travels down there, disguised as Rocafuerte…only to discover, of course, that the whole thing was a scheme and he’s going to be used as a patsy to take a bullet for the Silver Puma. Meanwhile Hadley Cage, unbeknownst to Hunt, has also come down to San Felipe…and Hadley manages to get his hands on the real Rocafuerte, who is of course alive and part of the conspiracy Hunt’s been caught in. 

It gets even goofier when Hadley swaps the real Rocafuerte for Hunt, who we’ll remember is disguised as Rocafuerte…and then later on Hadley himself is captured, but everyone thinks he’s Hunt. I mean it’s just plain stupid, like a lame comedy of errors, and it just keeps going and going. To make it worse there’s zero in the way of sex, and the violence is minimal. Like when Hadley is captured, instead of a big action scene where he breaks out, he’s put on a kangaroo trial…one that goes on for an incredible twenty pages of exposition and dialog. The lameness of it all compounded by the fact that the prosecutors think Hadley is Hunt! 

There are times when you read a book and you know without question that the author is desperately trying to meet his word count, and The Silver Puma is one of those times. There isn’t even an action finale, where the Cage brothers mete out bloody revenge to the San Felipe scum who set them up. They basically just high-tail it out of there when they can and get back to New York, so Riefe can end the book on a dumb joke. 

But then, “dumb” also apty describes The Silver Puma. I’m not crying over that third volume that I thought I had. In fact it’s a shock Cage went on for two more volumes. Now those two I’m sure I have, so I guess I’ll get around to them someday.

Monday, May 2, 2022

Harry O (Harry O #1)


Harry O, by Lee Hays
No month stated, 1975  Popular Library

A well-regarded private eye TV series I’ve never seen, Harry O ran for two seasons and starred David Janssen as a former cop turned P.I. in San Diego. I was born the year season 1 came out, so obviously didn’t watch it at the time. And I don’t believe it was ever syndicated, given it only lasted two seasons. In fact I think I only discovered the show a few years ago when I was looking up any and all crime-based TV shows of the ‘70s. Well anyway, even though Harry O didn’t last very long, it still managed to get a pair of TV tie-ins, both written by Lee Hays, and this being the first of the two. Curiously the “#1” only appears on the cover and nowhere else in the book, but Hays did publish a second novel the following year. 

This is an original story, so far as I can determine, and I can only assume it captures the vibe of the TV series (which I’m sure is on DVD, and maybe I’ll actually watch it someday). Hays follows what I’ve learned to be the setup of the show: Harry Orwell, who narrates the novel for us, is a grizzled ex-cop with a bad back, given that he was shot there by a perp some years ago (which led to his retirement). Now he lives off his pension in San Diego, occasionally doing private eye work while not fiddling with his boat, The Answer. He isn’t Joe Mannix by any means; Harry is not at all an action-prone private dick, and usually keeps his gun rolled up in a towel in his house. He won’t use it in the entirety of the novel. In fact, Harry won’t do much of anything in the entirety of the novel. He does manage to score, though, so at least there’s that. 

Speaking of which, it’s interesting that Harry O was published by Popular Library, who seemed to corner the market on private eye series paperbacks in the ‘70s – they published Cage, Hardy, Renegade Roe, etc. Maybe an editor there just had a serious jones for this genre. But at least this one wasn’t misleadingly packaged like an action series, as those others were. Which is a good thing, because it’s mostly action-free. Harry O follows the template of practically every private eye story I’ve ever read: cynical P.I. is hired by a sexy broad who seems to have ulterior motives and soon finds himself in over his head, embroiled in a convoluted plot. So in other words there’s nothing new here, and if the TV series was the same then all the critical accolades are confusing to me. Harry even has the mandatory fractious relationship with the cops, in particular a former captain who has a grudge against him. He also has the mandatory friend on the force: Manny Quinlan, a character who seems to have also been on the show. 

Hays takes adavantage of the San Diego setting with frequent trips to Baja and Tijuana. In fact, there’s a lot of scene-setting in Harry O, to the point that it’s a bit egregious. I’d also say it’s there so as to pad the pages, as Hays doesn’t give himself much plot to work from. We meet Harry as he’s working on his boat; he never sails it in the course of the novel, so maybe that’s another schtick from the show. And in true “burned-out private eye” fashion, Harry ignores the constantly-ringing phone over in his house, just wanting to work on the boat despite needing a job. The caller ends up coming to him, and true to the template it’s a hotstuff babe. While the novel isn’t explicit in the least, there’s still a lot of that casual ‘70s “male gaze” as it’s now referred to – Harry seriously checks this chick out, practically oggling her as she walks by him – breasts, butt, face, etc. And she of course just makes a flippant remark about it, which adds to the charm. 

Harry makes her some coffee; he’ll make a lot of coffee in the novel. If Harry isn’t making coffee he’s checking the coffee to see if it’s still warm enough to drink; if not, Harry will heat it up. This is pretty much the majority of what our narrator does in the course of Harry O. Anyway, the pretty young lady is named Mary Alice Kimberly, and she was sent to Harry by Harry’s cop friend Manny. Her story is that her husband, who wants a divorce she won’t give him, has taken advantage of some land she gave him in Baja, and Mary Alice thinks her husband plans something shady there – to the extent that he’ll kill her to protect his investment. Harry doesn’t really believe her story and she takes off. 

This is of course where the plot thickens. Mary Alice calls Harry that night and begs him to come over to the office of another private eye, this one a sleazebag who specializes in dirty divorces. Well he’s dead, courtesy a bullet, and of course Mary Alice says she found him that way; she says her husband probably killed him. But now she herself is on the run from the cops, so Harry will spend the rest of the novel hiding her from his former friends on the force while trying to clear her name. So far as Mary Alice is concerned, her husband Arthur is involved in some shady business, so Harry heads down to Baja to check it out – oh, and another recurring bit is that Harry’s car is always in the shop. But he doesn’t like to drive, anyway. I mean there’s a part later in the book where Mary Alice is driving him back and forth to Mexico, and she asks Harry if he’d mind driving for a while, and Harry initially demurs! I mean some kick-ass hero! 

The novel comes to life with the appearance of Sydney Jerome; with his “neat mod suit” and “girlish figure” he’s clearly intended to be gay, not that Hays actually states it. He’s the larger-than-life shadowy figure expected in the private eye template, employing his own henchmen and talking “like a character out of Dickens.” He offers Harry a drink (Harry drinks liquour, at least) and tells him he too is involved with the deal, and is also looking for both Arthur and Mary Alice Kimberly. The plot further thickens when Harry’s again woken up in the middle of the night by a woman, but this time it’s Billy, the former stripclub dancer who was married to the murdered sleazebag private eye. This part seems to go nowhere – lots of dialog about the couple that doesn’t matter to the plot but fills the pages – until it leads to unexpected developments. 

As Harry O moves into its second half, things become a bit more tense; Harry himself is now trying to clear his name of murder. And also he manages to hook up with Mary Alice, who per the template throws herself at him. However Hays keeps this entirely off page. But at least Harry’s boat factors into it, as this is where Mary Alice has been hiding. But when Arthur Kimberly himself finally shows up, he warns Harry not to trust his estranged wife and tells Harry that Mary Alice is a “nympho.” Regardless Harry spends a lot of time with her, shuttling back and forth to Mexico. Our narrator literally just sits around while Mary Alice does the heavy lifting of moving the plot; it now develops that Arthur and Sydney were involved in a heroin smuggling scheme, and Mary Alice intends to foil Sydney by dealing him sugar down in Mexico. And through it all Harry just sits there while she does all the plotting and planning. 

Even the finale is underwhelming. Again true to the private eye template, the “climax” is mostly comrpised of expository dialog while various characters explain what exactly has been going on. There’s no real action; at one point Harry actually goes to get his gun, but finds that the towel he rolls it up in is now empty. Harry finally figures out how he’s been swindled, but even here his approach to it is rather humdrum. Hell, if I’m not mistaken he even makes more coffee in the climax, or maybe checks the temperature of already-made coffee. But there isn’t a big finale; instead, the villain just waits calmly while the cops head for Harry’s house. And we leave our narrator where we found him, working on his boat. 

The back cover of Harry O features several blurbs from various publications praising the show. Curiously, half of them (plus the blurb on the front cover) are all based out of Chicago, so Harry O must’ve been pretty popular there, even if it was set in San Diego. Some of the blurbs even go so far as to say Harry O is the best private eye show in history. I don’t know, though. At least judging from this paperback tie-in…well, I’d rather watch Mannix.

Monday, August 9, 2021

The Last Ranger #8: The Cutthroat Cannibals


The Last Ranger #8: The Cutthroat Cannibals, by Craig Sargent
July, 1988  Popular Library

At this point Jan Stacy’s clearly bored with The Last Ranger; the previous volume was a tepid bore and this one I thought was even worse. For some reason Stacy here decides to give us what is for the most part a post-nuke Jack London type of story, only one with the usual absurdist Stacy touches. And not only that but he also cripples hero Mark Stone for the entire tale, having him hobble around with a broken leg. Plus Stone’s lost all his weapons and the Harley Electraglide he’s been riding since the beginning. 

Stacy also co-wrote the earliest volumes of Doomsday Warrior, and everyone knows the template of those books: each will open with Ted Rockson and team heading out into the post-nuke US and encountering all manner of wild flora and fauna. But whereas those sequences are usually over and done with pretty quick in Doomsday Warrior, Cutthroat Cannibals is like that for almost the entire novel. And that’s another thing: the title. If you read the back cover, you expect a splatterpunk yarn; it mentions “The Hunger,” a possibly inhuman group that feasts on human flesh. In reality, this group, which is made up of a mere two individuals, doesn’t appear until the very final pages of the novel. Instead, Cutthroat Cannibals features Stone being assailed by the weather, rugged terrain, treacherous rivers, superstitious Indians, and even a cult-like group of rabid dogs. 

Well anyway, for once we have an installment that doesn’t open immediately after the previous volume. Rather, Stone’s just driving around on his Harley, his pit bull Excaliber as ever with him, when he’s suddenly caught in an avalanche. (“Jesus, mother of God,” he thinks to himself, not realizing this is “biologically and theologically impossible.”) This goes on and on, and sadly is just an indication of the similar material that will occur throughout the book. Ultimately Stone’s caught in a river and swept away – and friends this isn’t the only river he’ll be swept up in during the course of the novel – and along the way not only loses his bike but all his weapons and even suffers a nasty compound fracture on his femur. Now we have more survivalist stuff as he tries to hobble around and survive even more chaotic weather. And meanwhile Stacy keeps up the goofy “banter” between Stone and Excaliber. 

Stone’s bashed into unconsciousness at one point and wakes to find some Indians looking at him. They seem to proliferate here in this post-nuke US, which now that I think of it might be commentary from Stacy that the original inhabitants of America are taking the place over again. And per genre madate they’re the Road Warrior type, a motley crew of bizarre fashions. Oh and they live in houses made of tires. But Stacy’s really focused on dogs this time, so these hardy Indian braves are unsettled around Excaliber, and can’t believe the dog actually listens to Stone. Well anyway they worship a dog whose statue looks nuch like Excaliber, but they end up keeping our hero captive anyway and wondering if they should kill him. 

This too goes on for a long time. Also the shaman shows up, and he’s a former doctor who escaped the world and returned to his Indian roots; it’s intimated that these Indians are so cut off from society that they aren’t even aware a nuclear war has occurred. He tries to fix up Stone’s leg, but it needs to be rebroken first, so he kicks it and then lets it set. Then he makes a crutch for Stone; our hero continues to hobble through the rest of the novel. Honestly I’m not sure what Stacy was going for here, giving us such a defenseless hero for the entirety of the book: Stone’s lost all of his guns, his bike, and can’t even walk around. Humorously he thinks he can make another bike with “spare parts” at the bunker…if only he can get back there! 

Stacy retreads the usual tropes here, with Stone having to prove himself in man-to-man combat with the top brave, yet afterward he’s still doomed to death. But the brave becomes his friend and the two escape. Here we get, unbelievably, even more post-nuke weather insanity, with the two encountering more waterfalls and rushing rivers and etc. Then it gets real goofy when a sort of cult-like army of dogs, two hundred strong, starts chasing them; the brave says these are “demon dogs” and it’s implied they’ve become almost supernatural as they’re able to outwit and outfox the two humans. But even here Stacy proves that The Last Ranger is really just a goofy series at heart, when the demon dogs and Excaliber start “singing” to each other that night:


In the battle – and by the way, the dogs are led by three mutts Stone considers the canine equivalents of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco – Stone is again swept up by a waterfall and thrown around like a ragdoll, to come to in a new predicament. Here, on page 137, he awakens to find himself being watched by a pair of obese albinos…albino cannibals, that is, who have named themselves Top and Bottom. These are the “Hunger” promised on the back cover. Things get real ghoulish here, very splatterpunk, with the cannibals having a sort of mental hold on “Cro-Magnons” who act as their slaves. It’s a charnel house setup, with human skin used as drapes for the village and other horrific displays of past victims dangling everywhere. 

Stone’s thrown in a cage with…you guessed it, a smokin’ hot blonde babe, because he hasn’t gotten laid yet this volume. Even though the girl’s brother and father are also strung up and all of ‘em are waiting for their turn to be eaten – and plus she’s a virgin – the girl insists that Stone take her right then and there, so that at least she’ll have known a man before the cannibals eat her! Or as she succinctly says, “Please, do it, get it in!” The sequence which follows isn’t as hardcore crazy as previous ones, but we do get the added bonus that the girl falls in love with Stone (of course she does), and Stone feels the same – but by novel’s end he’s already preparing to ditch her and her folks so he can get back to the bunker and fix up his bike. 

Norm Eastman’s typically-great cover depicts Stone blasting away with a .50 caliber machine gun. This does actually happen, at the very end of the novel. The girl and her family turn out to have a jeep armed with this gun, and Top and Bottom have just lazily left it sitting there. After a gutchurning bit where the girl’s brother is eaten alive on the dinner table, Stone’s able to escape and commandeers the jeep, getting some bloody .50 caliber payback. And here the novel ends, Stone and the girl and her dad hopping on the jeep to “head north,” but as mentioned Stone’s planning to say goodbye soon so he and Excaliber can go and get their supplies…and, of course, continue the search for his ever-missing sister. 

Two more volumes were to follow, but we’ve had two duds in a row now. We’ll see if Stacy is able to get the series back in shape before the big apocalyptic finale.

Monday, July 26, 2021

The Emerald Chicks Caper (Renegade Roe #2)


The Emerald Chicks Caper, by L.V. Roper
January, 1976  Popular Library

The second and final volume of Renegade Roe gives a good indication why this series didn’t last: Renegade Roe is a dick. In fact I’d rank him as the most annoying protagonist in any of the series I’ve reviewed here. He’s an obnoxious twit, and once again I wonder if L.V. Roper even realized it, or if the whole thing was just an intentional joke. 

At the very least, Jerry “Renegade” Roe comes off slightly better than he did in the first volume. Sure, he still talks a big game but does little in the way of action to back it up, but at least this time he actually knocks a guy out. And sure, he himself is again knocked out a couple times and constantly has to be saved by his partner, Stuart Worth, same as last time. But at least he doesn’t do stuff like “spy” on people with binoculars while standing in plain sight of his prey or talk out loud to himself while “hiding” in a closet. On the other hand, he’s become even more juvenile than he was in the previous volume, pulling off stuff that could get a guy jailed in our #metoo era, up to and including feeling up the firm’s hapless secretary…and then accusing her of wearing a padded bra! 

Roe does seem to get laid a bit more this time, though as ever Roper leaves everything off page. The novel opens with Roe’s perennially-aggrieved partner, Stuart Worth, showing up at the office one morning to find Roe sacked out in their room with a nude blonde at his side…the very same runaway socialite Roe and Worth had been hired to track down. We’re to understand that this girl, as well as the others who fall in his sway in the novel, are drawn to Roe due to his “exotic” cast: he’s tall, reddish skin, wears flamboyant “Indian” fashions like moccasins and a headband, and of course is a loudmouthed brute. 

This is displayed posthaste, when Roe, mere hours after sleeping with the blonde, sets his sights on yet another attractive female client: Helen Bingham, who slinks into the office and asks to hire Worth and Roe to find out what happened to the gold egg and emerald chicks her husband found in Venezuela. Roe makes his interest known immediately, in his usual fashion – ie making all kinds of inappropriate comments – and the idea one gets is that sophisticate Helen merely decides to entertain him so as to file off “an exotic” from her bucket list. As for her case, it’s involved: her husband, a loser who married Helen for her money, desperately struck out to find money for himself, given that Helen had lost interest in him, but was too lazy to file for divorce. Thus Mr. Bingham found out about the legendary golden egg and emerald chicks of Venezuela, and somehow managed to get them, and mailed them to Helen here in New Orleans. But the shipment is missing. Oh, and he’s dead now, not that Helen seems to give a rat’s ass. 

This caper takes Roe into the upper crust of New Orleans, but Roper doesn’t do much to bring any of it to life. Nor does he do much to heat up any of the erotic stuff; Roe just makes his inappropriate comments – the one thing Roper does excel at – and when Helen gives in to his “charms” it’s an immediate fade to black. Even the exploitative content isn’t up to stuff; when Roe visits Helen late one night to ask some questions on the case, she answers the door in a robe made of “transluscent material” (so, uh…plastic??), and Roe can’t stop staring at her boobs: “That’s a lovely bra you’re not wearing.” But Roper doesn’t even do much to bring those heaving, upthrusting, ample charms to life, other than to tell us how Roe keeps gawking at them. The entire novel is just so listless. 

And given that the case has Roe hanging out with uppercrust of society types, there’s little opportunity for much action, so what Roper does is have endless scenes where Roe shows up at Worth’s house and starts hassling Roe’s wife. Just ridiculous stuff, like being there every time Worth comes home from the office – even at one point rushing over to Mrs. Worth when Stuart comes in and panting, as if Worth just caught them in the act. Just stupid juvenile stuff. What makes it worse is that Roper wastes not only our time but his own by even writing all this shit. It just goes on and on, Roe showing up at the Worth home and bugging them…honestly it’s almost like if Billy from Predator had starred in What About Bob? 

Action does finally show up when some Venezuelan thugs accost Roe; he beats up one of them but is of course caught, and Worth has to save him. This is a repeat of the previous volume and will happen again before novel’s end. This motif is one of the things that makes me wonder if Roper had his tongue in cheek the entire time he wrote, because American Indian “Renegade” Roe is presented as the studly hero of the series…yet he’s always getting captured and it’s up to the white guy to save him. Maybe the whole series is a subtle play on the whole cowboy and his sidekick Indian schtick, who knows. 

Not that Roe’s upset by his near death; soon enough he’s back to harrassing Frances in the office, even unizipping her dress when she’s unawares and grabbing her bra strap. Shortly thereafter Frances herself is abducted; Roe finally makes some headaway in the “action hero” department when he tracks her down and sneaks in to free her, but wouldn’t you guess it he’s knocked out and captured again. And who arrives in the nick of time to save his ass but Worth? Roe’s shot in the shoulder here, and there follows and interminable bit where he’s in the hospital, then storms his way out of the place because he’s figured the villains are going to escape via plane. Roe gets in his Mustang and races onto the tarmac to stop it. 

And mercifully here The Emerald Chicks Caper comes to a close, as does Renegade Roe itself. Whereas The Red Horse Caper had a “future books in the series” page with a slew of projected titles, The Emerald Chicks Caper doesn’t, which leads me to believe that by the time of publication Popular Library had decided the series was finished. I guess maybe they’d also had enough of Renegade Roe’s shit.  Great uncredited covers, though; I wonder if they were done by Hector Garrido of The Baroness and The Destroyer.

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Reunion For Death (Hardy #5)


Reunion For Death, by Martin Meyers
No month stated, 1976  Popular Library

The Hardy series draws to a close with a fifth installment that sees Martin Meyers apparently trying very hard to live up to the “sensuous sleuth” tagline the publisher labellled the series with. While Patrick Hardy has gotten lucky frequently in past volumes, this one sees him scoring right and left, even engaging in a two-way with a pair of hippie girls (“fears of V.D.” be damned!). This is all the more impressive given that Hardy’s 40 pounds overweight this volume and struggling to get back in shape. One wonders why he’d even bother. 

There’s no real pickup from the previous volume, though Hardy does occasionally reflect on previous jobs, particularly with the Duchess in Spy And Die; but even here the focus is on the “sensuous” aspect of the job, as the Duchess told Hardy she was the best lover she’d ever had – even better than a KGB agent trained for such stuff. However Meyers has cagily foreshadowed the events of this one; in the previous volume, Hardy got a mailing from his college alumni association, and this volume’s plot concerns a murder mystery involving Hardy’s college pals of twenty years ago. I only recall this about the alumni letter in the previous book because Meyers reminds us of it. For this is a series where pedantic, trivial little details are of key importance, because not much else really happens (other than the frequent sexual interludes, that is); as ever, “action” is mostly comprised of Hardy “flipping through the TV Guide” to see which movie he can watch while he prepares his latest meal. 

Meyers gets the sex out of the way quick, with Hardy entertaining his casual girflriend Ruby, a stripper whose been around since the first volume. Ruby mentions Hardy’s gained some weight and then jumps in bed with him for some off-page fun, after which she disappears from the novel, heading out of town for an engagement. She implores Hardy to visit his doctor, yet another recurring character; Dr. Merle Foster, who puts up with Hardy’s frequent come-ons, given that she’s a hotstuff babe and all. She sets Hardy up with some “pills” to help with his blood pressure and also gives him the card of a fat-loss place called “Fat Limited.” All this is pretty similar to the setup of the previous volume, which also had Hardy going to a fitness facility. 

This means that a lot of Reunion For Death is made up of Hardy’s diet, how hungry he is, how he forces himself to eat less, etc. At least this livens up the “what’s on TV” material. Otherwise as mentioned, Hardy gets laid a helluva lot for a fat guy: Ruby, the two hippie chicks, and a couple other babes all in the course of a 160-page novel. But still we must endure lots of stuff about his worries over his weight and how he restrains from eating high-caloric meals and snacks. The biggest impact on Hardy so far as the extra weight goes is the pills Dr. Merle gives him for his pressure, which cause all sorts of side effects, in particular taking away the feeling of “completeness” in climax. So as I say, Meyers has now figured out how to incorporate the “sensuous” aspect into everything in the narrative. 

After getting all the diet stuff set up, Meyers moves into this volume’s case; Hardy receives a call from old college buddy named Lassiter, who says he’s been looking for another college friend of theirs, Ben Alsop. Lassiter’s in California and Alsop’s in New York, thus Lassiter asks Hardy to look him up. A curious thing about Reunion For Death is that there’s no feeling that any of these people were ever friends. I know it’s been over 20 years since they’ve seen each other, but still…if my friends from college 20+ years ago called me, I’d at least talk about old times or whatever. But Lassiter and the other college friends who pop up in the novel are along the lines of any other one-off characters in the series; there’s no conveyed sense that they were friends at one time. 

This is sort of explained in a brief recap; Hardy was morbidly obese in college, thus was mainly friends with spindly geek Ben Alsop, given that the two were outcasts in school. It was through Alsop that Hardy met the other guys: Lassiter, Ricci, and Leon, all of whom were popular jocks. So then Hardy was never “buddies” with any of them except for Alsop, and Alsop’s the one he spends the entire novel looking for. But regardless, there isn’t much in the way of background setup here, nothing other than a vaguely “subtle” mention that a girl went missing one year in college…a mystery Hardy forgot about years ago because he “wasn’t interested in such things at the time.” But this minor mention is all that’s made of the mysterious incident of twenty years before, thus the big revelations at novel’s end come off as very lame. 

Even more lame is when Hardy can’t get through to Ben on the number listed in the phone book; he talks to some other spaced-out guy and tries to convey a message. So later Hardy’s out walking his dog Holmes and notices a hotstuff black lady approaching his apartment. This will be Melanie, whom Hardy lusts after the entire novel. She has a letter for Hardy from Ben, but “the postman or someone got it wet.” So Hardy will have to piece together the letter upon which various words have been conveniently erased. It’s all ridiculous, but meanwhile he’s busy checking out Melanie and wondering if he should get a shot at her, even though she is, by her own admission, “Ben’s girl.” 

Not that this prevents Hardy from his nookie; he goes to the sleazepit apartment under Ben’s name, to find it’s a hippie crash pad. The hippie girl there, as mentioned above, offers herself to Hardy moments after they meet. Here we get an indication that the sex material in Reunion For Death will be a little more explicit than previously in the series. But also as mentioned Hardy doesn’t feel “right” when he reaches the big moment, thus he rushes back to Dr. Merle, who tells him it’s all a side effect of the drugs, and his body will adjust. So Hardy skips the next day’s dose and heads back to the hippie crash bad, to engage the hippie girl in another tussle…and then immediately thereafter, the other hippie girl who happens to be there! Everything working properly now, Hardy happily heads home and continues fantasizing about Melanie. 

Meyers actually restrains himself on this one; with it being a “will they or won’t they” thing that keeps up between Melanie and Hardy throughout the book. He also injects a bit more action into the novel; while the otherwise nice cover is as misleading as all the previous ones were (Hardy doesn’t own a gun, let alone use one), Hardy does get shot at a few times, and also gets to use his military-programmed “reflexes” to take on a few armed opponents. That being said, there is as ever a humorous lack of tension in the plot. Like for example, when Melanie and Hardy go to Ben’s other apartment, Melanie reveals that the place has clearly been searched by someone. She says this mere moments after the two have entered the apartment. For all they know, the interlopers could still be in there. But what does Hardy do? He tells Melanie to take a look around and flops on the couch to do some crossword puzzles! 

The other two college “pals” come out of the woodwork, both of them looking for a package that was supposedly at Ben’s apartment: Ricci, who is now an interior decorator and seems to be gay whereas he was a lady killer back in college, and Leon, who doesn’t contribute much to the plot other than taking a few shots at Hardy. Eventually a heroin-smuggling scheme is worked in; Ben Alsop is found dead in Mexico, courtesy a few shots to the back of the head, and a Mexican cop (working with recurring series character Detective Gerald Friday) believes Alsop was smuggling drugs over the border. Hardy doesn’t even bat an eye that his old college pal is dead – instead he wonders how long he should allow Melanie to mourn before he tries to get in her pants! 

Surprisingly though we never do get to see it happen, even though Melanie starts making longing looks at Hardy. Instead Hardy gets lucky courtesy some floozie he hooks up with thanks to old pal Lassiter, now in town and suddenly giving off menacing vibes. Hardy gets in a few fistfights here and there, as ever his reflexes kicking into gear when threatened; Hardy will pulverize his opponent, then go and vomit in terror (to quote Homer Simpson). The finale sees that damn crossword puzzle coming into play, the one Hardy picked up at Ben’s apartment; Ben left a clue in it, and after much pondering Hardy figures out how to solve it – and also finds the package everyone’s been looking for, which you guessed it, contains photos of that fatal night two decades ago where the poor girl went missing. Blackmail Ben was using on his three “pals.” 

Meyers ends the novel – and series – on a sex joke. Melanie, feeling all better now, lets it be clear that she wants some good lovin’ with Hardy posthaste…then the phone rings and it’s Ruby, who has just arrived back in town and is on her way over: “I’m so horny for you I’m shaking.” The book ends with Hardy in a serious predicament, with one randy girl in hand and another randy girl on her way over. This was as good a way as any to end Hardy, which unfortunately didn’t pan out like I hoped it would. I recall when I discovered this series years ago…it sounded like everything I could want, a sleazy ‘70s private eye yarn with a military-programmed hero. But man, Martin Meyers instead went for a ridiculously leisurely approach, with more focus on what Hardy ate or watched on TV. So to tell the truth I’m not too bummed that there were no more volumes.

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, August 10, 2020

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas


Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
No date stated (1980?), Popular Library

I first read Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas in the summer of 1997, after discovering this now-scarce Popular Library edition on a Half Price Books “clearance spinner rack” for a whopping twenty-five cents. This is one of those books that’s stuck with me over the years, and given my recurring interest in early issues of Rolling Stone Magazine I thought I should finally read it again. I enjoyed it nearly as much this time, with the caveat that it’s a much different experience reading Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas when you’re 45 years old – it seemed darkly hilarious when I was 23, but this time I saw the gaping problems with Thompson’s entire theme. If indeed there is a theme; I should give him the benefit of the doubt.

But the subtitle “A Savage Journey To The Heart Of The American Dream” seems to be on the level, the book apparently intended as Thompson’s indictment of the screwed-up American mentality of the post-Altamont Nixon era. Which is all well and good, but the only problem is, if you’re going to criticize something, it’s probably best not to do it via a pair of drug-blitzed psychopaths who have no grasp on reality. It’s especially a problem when every single character they meet is normal. I can’t stress this enough – the people who encounter our loony protagonists are all presented as level-headed, even the cops in the second half of the book. They’re not bigots, or racists, or whatever, they’re just normal people who happen to be in Las Vegas and who are bullied, hassled, or harrassed by our two main characters. This renders the entire stated theme moot. But again, perhaps this was Thompson’s intention. He was a “doctor of journalism,” after all.

This though has nothing to do with the entertainment value of the book, which is through the roof – the only other novel that’s ever made me laugh so much is James Robert Baker’s Boy Wonder. And there’s a sort of similarity between the two; both books feature psychotic, delusional protagonists, copious amounts of drugs, and a willingness to take things past the limit. Both novels even sort of lag a bit in the second half, before ramping back up on the insanity. I guess the main difference is that Boy Wonder doesn’t make any pretensions toward being “nonfiction,” and also it actually has female characters in it; Fear And Loathing keeps the focus pretty much squarely on the two psychopathic “heroes,” Raoul Duke and his lawyer, Dr. Gonzo.

The book was originally serialized in two installments of Rolling Stone, under the by-line “Raoul Duke.” This is the character who narrates the story, and of course it’s clearly Thompson himself; to make sure we get the in-joke, “Duke” occasionally refers to Thompson in a negative way. Thompson’s friend, lawyer Oscar Acosta, was transformed into a 300-pound Samoan named Dr. Gonzo (though usually just referred to as “my attorney”). Thompson capably brings this creature to life; whenever Dr. Gonzo leaves the text, which is more often than I remembered, things sort of lag. Duke himself is crazy, but Thompson’s set the bar too high with Gonzo; he walks a fine line throughout the text, with Duke playing the straight man to Dr. Gonzo, but it often rings hollow because we’re also to understand that Duke himself is a nutcase.

I think the first half of the book is the strongest; it features the memorable opening sequence of Duke and Gonzo riding into Vegas on “the Great Red Shark,” a huge Chevy convertible (another parallel -- Boy Wonder’s psycho protagonist also being named “Shark”) and Duke hallucinating that bats are following them. Here we get our first indication of the massive amount of drugs they’ve stashed in the Shark, not to mention already ingested; they’re so wasted they even freak out a hippie hitchhiker they briefly pick up. Through the course of the novel our heroes take acid (a rarity in ’71, we’re told), coke, speed, ether, amyl nitrate, marijuana, mescaline, adrenaline, various pills, and even the occasional beer or mixed drink. But what I always appreciate it, given all this, they still engage in talk about other drugs they’d like to take, usually leading into darkly humorous conversations about the highs that would ensue.

Duke’s come to Vegas to cover the Mint 400, a dirt bike and dune buggy race out in the desert. This entire element is incidental to the plot of the novel, and only leads to more surreal humor; when Duke tries to cover the start of the event, the dust raised up by the vehicles is so intense he can’t even see anything. So it’s back to the hotel for more drugs and insanity; here we have one of the more memorable sequences, with an LSD-soaring Gonzo naked in the tub, armed with a knife, demanding that Duke play “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane (he wants a “rising sound”) and then to throw the tape player into the tub when it reaches the climax. While the tape player’s still plugged in. Befitting something originally published in Rolling Stone, there are occasional references to the music of the day, in particular the sort-of-forgotten dope anthem “One Toke Over The Line,” by folk duo Brewer and Shipley (I also really like their earlier track “Witchi-Tai-To”).

But the thing is, neither Duke nor Gonzo are actually a part of the Woodstock nation. They’re a generation apart from the hippies, and Duke’s fondness for guns definitely puts him at odds with the whole peace and love situation. Also there are recurring swipes at John Lennon throughout the book, which I found humorous; Lennon tried to snipe back at Thompson in some material that wasn’t published until after Lennon’s death, referring to Thompson’s career as “Fear and Loathing For A Living.” Regardless, the book serves as a study of the death of the hippie dream – Manson is mentioned repeatedly, as is Altamont – and some of the best moments are the quiet ones, where Duke will reflect on San Francisco in the ‘60s, and how the dream died.

The second half of the book concerns Duke suddenly being requested to attend the narc convention in Las Vegas, an assignment for Rolling Stone. To be sure, it’s a bit too much after the increasing craziness of the first half, and the narrative stalls a bit; this material, with cops attending lectures on the dangers or drugs, doesn’t have the surreal edge of the Mint 400. And as mentioned, the cops – what very few of them we actually get to meet in the narrative – are for the most part presented as level-headed. Meanwhile Duke and Gonzo razz them relentlessly, including an arbitrary but fun bit about Satanic cults operating in California, chopping the heads off their victims in broad daylight. Otherwise the whole narcotics convention isn’t as exploited as much as it could’ve been.

More time is spent on Duke and Gonzo carousing around Vegas and getting in trouble; there’s a laugh out loud part, one of many, where they bully their way into a song and dance show at one of the casinos and immediately lose their cool. The narrative gets a bit jumbled here as suddenly Duke is looking for “the American Dream,” which entails driving way outside of Vegas and getting into a long conversation with a waitress and a cook – relayed in a chapter that’s all dialog, and featuring the goofy payoff that the waitress and cook immediately think of a notorious local drug-using spot when Duke and Gonzo start asking where the American Dream is. Even though that’s not what the place was ever called…and also even though it turns out the place burned down.

I’ve skipped my usual belabored rundown because Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas isn’t a forgotten book by any means, but I guess its popularity waxes and wanes. I don’t believe Thompson ever wrote anything else like it; from here he moved on to covering Nixon for Rolling Stone, and the narratives weren’t nearly as over the top or deranged. In fact I recall reading somewhere that Thompson felt he himself “got in the way” of his own, self-made legend, that it “would’ve been better” if he’d died after Fear And Loathing was published. Of course he ended up ultimately taking his own life; at the time I recall reading some wild speculation on some site that Thompson had gotten too deep into an investigation about abducted children and how they were forced to do unspeakable things, and ended up killing himself – I recall the date of his suicide was on the same day someone was giving testimony about such things somewhere. But this is just a hazy memory from 15 years ago, so I’m sure I have a lot of my info wrong.

Originally published in issues 95 and 96 of Rolling Stone in November, 1971, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is here reprinted in full, with the original Ralph Steadman illustrations edited a bit to fit in the confines of a mass market paperback. The original Rolling Stone issues are grossly overpriced on the collectors market (as this Popular Library edition now is as well), but I have the Rolling Stone: Cover To Cover CD-ROM, which features every issue of the magazine. I’ve checked out issues 95 and 96, and boy is this novel crammed in there; we’re talking like four columns of dense print per page. It probably gave some readers permanent eye damage.

Curiously there’s no date on this edition of the book. But judging from the cover and interior – Thompson’s early ‘80s collection The Great Shark Hunt is namedropped on the cover, and an ad in the back has an expiration date of February, 1981 – it seems to have come out in 1980. An earlier Popular Library edition had a tan cover, and I think at the same time Warner Books released an edition that looked idetntical, save for a slightly different cover treatment. But all these mass market paperback editions are way overpriced now – I saw someone listing this particular edition for a couple hundred bucks on eBay!? – so there are much less expensive reprints to seek out.