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

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Thunderstrike In Syria (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #125)


Thunderstrike In Syria, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1979  Charter Books

According to his 1981 interview with Will Murray, this was the only volume of Nick Carter: Killmaster Joseph Rosenberger ever wrote, for the following reasons: “the advances are low, because I don’t have the time, and, mainly, because there isn’t a byline.” Despite the latter, Rosenberger’s stamp is all over Thunderstrike In Syria, complete with even a character named “Josef Risenberg.” The novel comes off like the first-person installment of Death Merchant that never was. 

I really mean it; throughout I had a hard time remembering that narrator Nick Carter wasn’t really Richard Camellion. And, other than an early meeting with his AXE boss David Hawk and occasional references to his trademark weapons, our protagonist does come off more like the Death Merchant. There are a lot of opionated asides, random bursts of arcane trivia, and detailings of various weapons and vehicles which seemed to me outside the typical Nick Carter realm. In short, the “Nick Carter” who narrates this book seems more like a roving one-man army than the secret agent of the other books. There’s also a ton of martial arts stuff, very reminiscent of Rosenberger’s earlier Mace series. 

It’s clear though that Rosenberger reigned in his usual impulses and catered to the series style guide. The narrative is a little more tame than the average Death Merchant, with none of Rosenberger’s typical “the goof woke up and found himself in hell” sort of phrases. Also there are no footnotes nor any mentions of the Cosmic Lord of Death. Rather, Rosenberger hits the bases required by all the series ghostwriters, with Nick scoring with two women (I believe the series guideline was three per book, though) and sticking to his trio of weapons: Wilhelmina the Luger, Hugo the stiletto, and Pierre the gas bomb. Rosenberger even referes to the AXE tattoo on Nick’s forearm, something which I believe had been phased out by this time and was really only present in the earliest books. 

But Thunderstrike In Syria can in no way be confused with the novels in the Lyle Kenyon Engel years. It’s not even similar to the Nick Carter installments that came later in the ‘80s, which for the most part went for a Ludlum-esque “realistic” espionage angle. What it is like is…you guessed it, a Death Merchant novel. Ever been reading one of those and thought to yourself, “Man, it would be great if Richard Camellion himself was telling this story?” Then you owe it to yourself to read Thunderstrike In Syria. And heck, here you’ll even find Rosenberger writing a first-person sex scene, and if that doesn’t raise your hackles, nothing will. 

And as mentioned, Rosenberger certainly attempts to cater to the series mandate in this regard, as within the first pages Nick’s telling us about his colleague Leah’s awesome bod: “breasts full and round, that always seemed to be struggling for release.” Often throughout Nick will remind us of the ample charms of various women he encounters, which again is much different than the typically-asexual Richard Camellion. Leah is an Israeli agent and the two are in Jerusalem to probe a suspected SLA front. Nick informs us he’s already been briefed by Hawk: intel has it that the SLA plans to unleash nerve gas in New York and somehow blame it on the Israelis, so that the US will stop sending money to Israel. Boy, Thunderstrike In Syria is certainly from a different era – today supposed elected leaders cry on the House floor when they vote to fund Israel! (But on the other hand, uh, speaking of “struggling for release…”)  

Rosenberger wrote a pro-smoking book in the ‘60s, and he’s still a proud inhaler: when Leah mentions that the Surgeon General has stated that smoking is dangerous to one’s health, Nick responds, “The Surgeon General [is] dangerous to the health of smokers.” Rosenberger brings another Death Merchant gimmick here in that Nick and Leah are dressed up like old people, complete with heavy makeup…and will be in this guise in the coming firefight. Rosenberger did this frequently, I believe, most notably in The Cosmic Reality Kill, which was published this same year. And of course the action scene, as Nick and Leah wipe out the SLA terrorists – their front being a store that sells religious trinkets – is along the lines of anything in Death Merchant, heavy on the firearms and ammunition detail, but the gore is toned down. 

Not so with the ensuing sex scene, as Nick and Leah, out of their old person disguises and back in Nick’s hotel, get cozy in explicit fashion: “I felt her tightening in that lubricious haven to which I constantly strove with all my might.” A sentence like that takes talent – I personally never would’ve thought of pairing the words “lubricious” and “haven.” But that’s it for Leah, as Nick is sent on to Damascus, where he’s to hook up with a double-spy named Miriam. An SLA agent, Miriam approached AXE with info on the plot and claims to be driven more for money than ideology. And speaking of which Thunderstrike From Syria is from an earlier era in another regard: the Muslim terrorists here are presented as mercurial, driven by money, and the thought of them dying for their beliefs in suicide missions is hard for Nick to understand. 

“I couldn’t help but have erotic thoughts about her,” Nick tells us, as sure enough Miriam’s a hotstuff Arabic babe with a killer bod. And she doesn’t stand on ceremony, either, basically insisting that she and Nick do the deed posthaste: “I…push[ed] the lance full-length into her begging orifice.” Humorously though, this sex scene, which occurs shortly after the one with Leah, will prove to be the novel’s last, as if Rosenberger decided to hit his quota early and be done with it. In fact, from here on out Miriam is no longer treated as a sex object, but as a potential traitor; Nick’s uncertain how true her story is, and wonders if she’s leading him into a trap. Miriam has a van with food, two beds, guns, and other gear, and proposes to drive it through the desert to the secret SLA camp, which is running by a mysterious terrorist known as “The Hawk.” Yes, the exact same name as Nick Carter’s boss! No one even mentions this. 

And yep, that’s two beds – Rosenberger’s over and done with the naughty stuff, and Nick doesn’t even much mention Miriam’s looks or body anymore, even when the two have to strip down due to the desert’s heat. As I say, the focus is now on unrelenting action. Sure enough a posse of outlaws hits the van, leading to a cool action scene where Nick grabs various guns from the van’s arsenal and goes out to deal with them one by one. From this point on the novel is essentially a Death Merchant, only in first-person. There’s a ton of gun detail…Nick apparently knows the make of every gun in the world, the type of ammo fired, and etc…up to and including artillery. He’s more commando than secret agent here. 

The Hawk isn’t even an interesting villain; he’s just a basic terrorist type who doesn’t seem to believe his own hype. Nick of course is captured and has an argument with the villain, then Nick’s thrown in the prison camp. Here he meets a few captured Israeli soldiers, among them a guy named Josef Risenberg. What the reader doesn’t know is that this sets the course for the rest of the novel: Nick gets into the confidence of the Israelis, orchestrates their escape…and they all get in an endless battle with the Hawk’s SLA terrorists as they try to make their escape across the desert. I mean folks, that’s the rest of the novel, over half of the book – a seemingly-neverending desert battle sequence. All careful plotting is lost, there’s no attempt to bring the Hawk to life, nor any changing of the locale. 

The action is fast, furious, and exhausting as Nick shoots, kicks, knifes, and blows up various stooges. At one point he and the Israelis commandeer a tank, which brings to mind a sequence in Super Death Merchant. Of course Nick knows how to drive and operate a tank. Later they get into an armored personnel carrier and continue to make their way across the desert, blasting away at their captors. Finally Nick talks the Israelis into launching an assault on the Hawk’s camp, which leads to the novel’s climax. The action here (and throughout) could come from any single installment of Death Merchant


And true to Richard Camellion, this version of Nick Carter could care less if he’s shooting at a man or woman. There’s an off-putting part at the end where a female character begs Nick for mercy, asking for her safety in exchange for info on more SLA plots. Nick tells her no deal – her SLA team’s all dead, so there are no secrets for her to give…and then he guts her with his stiletto! This sort of leaves a bad taste in the reader’s mouth…I mean I get it that the woman’s bad and all, but the hero doesn’t have to be that cold about it. Anyway this was the only Killmaster Rosenberger wrote, and while it wasn’t terrible Thunderstrike In Syria certainly wouldn’t rank high in my list of favorite volumes of the series. It’s mostly interesting for the novelty value, in that it’s a pseudo-Death Merchant in first-person.

Monday, August 23, 2021

Steele #3: Killer Steele


Steele #3: Killer Steele, by J.D. Masters
February, 1990  Charter Books

It’s been so long since I read a volume of Steele I almost forgot about the series. Actually I meant to return to it many years ago but just kept putting it off. I rank this one along with The Guardians: a series I have every volume of, but just can’t bring myself to actually read. Like that post-nuke series, Steele is just too ponderous for me, but it’s more frustrating here because ostensibly this series is just a ripoff of Robocop. Only with interminable “is the hero human?” pondering in place of all the dark humor and gore. 

And as it turns out, Steele has something in common with The Guardians: the author of the final few volumes of Steele was Victor Milan, who also wrote The Guardians. This does not instill me with much enthusiams for the later volumes, folks. At any rate, the first six volumes of Steele were penned by Simon Hawke, at least according to sometimes-reliable Wikipedia. And clearly Killer Steele has the same author as the previous two books, with the same writing style, the same focus on internal probing and character introspection at the expense of action – and the same outline-esque treatment of what action does occur. 

So it’s some time after the previous volume, and Steele’s hanging out in his loft penthouse in New York with his teenaged former prostitute girlfriend Raven. Steele’s plagued by a nightmare in which someone else’s memories seem to be mingling with his own; a mere foretaste of the interminable stuff Hawke will deliver in this regard, as once again his focus is on plumbing the metaphysics of whether an archived database of memories can have a soul and whatnot. To which I can only cry out, “Who cares?!” Steele wakes up to be informed of a double-whammy: One, his teen children Cory and Jason have run away from home in Boston, and Two, a fellow cyborg has run amok in the headquarters Steele operates out of and wiped out several of the scientists who created Steele himself. 

Steele’s choppered to the HQ, which is the former UN Building; here in this future, a “bio-war” has wiped out hummanity, thanks to an experimental virus some Muslim terrorists got their hands on.* Here we get backstory on the world in which Steele occurs, where the virus quickly mutated and spread across the population. Boy, I sure hope no one dared to question the government’s handling of the pandemic in this reality! But then there wasn’t a 99% survival rate for this particular lab-created virus, and thus huge chunks of the population died off. After which the US itself broke apart, with Texas forming its own separate republic. All this is relayed in backstory, and by the way we’ve already gotten egregious backstory on Steele’s origin as well. 

While Hawke isn’t much for action, he does have a lot of post-action gore; Steele’s shown around the building and sees the eviscerated remains of the various scientists from the project, their organs ripped out by the marauding cyborg. But this will become an unintentionally humorous scenario, as multiple times in the narrative Steele will just miss the enemy cyborg and come upon the gory aftermath of his destruction. It happens throughout the novel, Hawke clearly padding until having the single – and final – fight between the two cyborgs at novel’s end. Meanwhile Steele gets more bad news: the new cyborg, codenamed Stalker, is his old cop parter, who apparently was killed in Steele #1, but hell if I can remember it. 

So Hawke has the makings of an interesting thriller here. Steele is faced with two problems, both personal – his son and daughter, just finding out that their dad is alive, have come to New York to find him, and two, Steele’s old buddy has been reborn as a psycho cyborg out for revenge. And Hawke takes this setup and…delivers endless scenes in which Dev Cooper, the new doctor on the Steele team, sits around for hours pondering whether Steele’s database of memories has a soul or not. Folks I kid you not. This series is excruciating in that regard. It’s like I said last time – you look at those covers and they promise greatness. I mean they look like the VHS covers for some ‘80s Italian sci-fi action movies that never existed (ie Hands Of Steel). But when you read the books, that’s not what you get…and, as with the previous books, the cover for Killer Steele is something that only occurs at the very end of the novel…and is over in just a few sentences. 

As for the other plot, as these things happen, Steele’s daughter Cory came looking for Steele in the big city and ended up becoming a hooker. Raven, a former pro herself, handily spells out how such a thing could’ve happened, and her blasé attitude toward it all is pretty funny. When Steele finds his son, Jason, the kid’s beaten to a pulp, courtesy a run-in with his sister’s pimp. There’s extra stuff here with backstory on Steele’s wife; a hotstuff social-climber type, she dumped Steele and told the kids he was dead, but when they found out they left Boston to come look for him. There’s a bit of melodrama, again along the lines of Robocop, where Steele reflects back on his pre-cyborg life and marriage and whatnot. 

Hawke has established a small group of recurring characters, so there’s also Ice, hulking black criminal overlord who helped Steele in the previous volume. To continue with my ‘80s action movie comparisons, Ice is essentially Isaac Hayes in Escape From New York. And also there’s the Borodini mob family in play, and eventually they of course get hold of Steele’s daughter. Meanwhile Stalker continues to run roughshod over sundry victims, mauling and ripping with cybernetic aplomb…and Steele consistently shows up too late to catch him. This is the holding pattern that constitutes the meat of the novel – that and more “is Steele human” bullshit from Dev Cooper. Boooring!!! 

Steele’s poor daughter is passed around; she ends up working for one of the stables owned by the Borodini clan, who of course plan to use her as bait for their long-simmer vengeance on Steele. But then Stalker wipes out a bunch of the clan and takes the girl for himself. This leads to the long-delayed confrontation between the two cyborgs, which is of course the incident depicted on the cover. Which occurs over just a few pages. It follows the same outline-style treatment of action with minimal violence, Hawke even here going for “the humanity” of it all with Steele trying to reason with his dead cop friend. Oh and Stalker fires “plasma” beams, but even that’s not treated cool enough. 

Really Steele is just an exercise in tedium, and it befuddles me that something with such a great setup (and such great covers!) could be so boring. I mean just imagine if they’d hired someone like John Shirley or David Alexander to write this series. By far the best thing about Steele is the Brady Bunch parody graphic at Gellaho

*I imagine featuring villains like that could get you cancelled these days – today’s narrative is “They seem friendly,” even if they’re literally chanting “death to America” right behind you!

Monday, March 8, 2021

Psi-Man #1


Psi-Man #1, by David Peters
October, 1990  Charter-Diamond Books

Back in the very early 1990s I was a teenaged comic book geek – this was in the days where you had to keep such things secret, otherwise you would be ridiculed as a complete freak and girls would laugh at you. I liked the popular stuff, like the ubiquitous Uncanny X-Men and the various Batman titles and etc, but I also collected The Incredible Hulk, mostly due to the writing of Peter David. While my comic-collecting friends were really just into the art, even back then I was more into the writing, and I recall David’s work really appealed to me. 

I had no idea at the time that David was also publishing a “men’s adventure” series under the not-even-trying pseudonym “David Peters;” I probably would’ve been very interested in it, given my love of men’s adventure during my middle school years. (I recall the line of progression was comics to men’s adventure to sci-fi and then back to comics…then, of course, on to sex, drugs, and rock and roll.) Psi-Man, which amounted to four volumes, was another of those last gasps of the men’s adventure genre…not as sleazy or grimy as the the series of the ‘70s, nor as guns-and-commandos oriented as the series of the ‘80s. Still following the series template, though, with a heroic protagonist encountering some new threat each installment…but also catering to the reading tastes of a new era, with a slightly politically correct vibe. While Psi-Man is neutered, at least compared to something like The Sharpshooter, it’s thankfully not on the level of another early ‘90s “new men’s adventure series” (courtesy the same publisher): the abyssmal Tracker

That said, the titular Psi-Man, a dude named Chuck Simon (the name as not-even-trying as David’s pseudonym), goes out of his way not to kill anyone, and also spends the majority of this first novel fending off the advances of two eager young women. So yep, we’re in the early ‘90s, and everything is kinder and gentler than what came before in this genre. There’s also a sci-fi overlay in that the series takes place in the future, ie 2021(!), but quite presiciently as it turns out David doesn’t present a world with space travel or any other “sci-fi” trappings. In fact, the 2021 of Psi-Man is pretty much identical to our current one…people still drive cars, watch TV, and the like. Actually if anything it’s less sci-fi than our real era, in that there’s no internet, or mobile phones, or etc. 

Otherwise the author has hit the nail on the head in quite interesting ways. In David’s 2021, the U.S. government has become an oppressive, menacing presence that’s known for disappearing any dissenting voices (no comment!), and both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have been “suspended” so that free speech and the like no longer exist (definitely no comment on this one – I mean, I don’t wanna get deplatformed!). There’s vague backstory about “Extremists” having caused this situation – and as if that weren’t prescient enough, it turns out that these so-called “Extremists” have been villified for political power-grab purposes, as while there’s a minority of radicals among them, in reality the majority of them are just ordinary people who are concerned about the environment. However the government is so aligned against the movement that Constitutional freedoms have been suspended so as to wipe out this contrived threat…ironically, a threat which has been created for narrative purposes by the government, so as to carry out all of those power grabs (no comment!). 

In addition, there’s a shadowy Federal agency which doesn’t so much protect the populace as it does mercilessly enforce the government’s mandates. This is the Complex, the agents of which are hunting Chuck when we meet him at novel’s beginning. He’s pretty much as depicted on the cover, just an average dude with sandy blond hair, but as it turns out he has telekinetic powers that are off the charts. He’s also got a massive German Shepard that travels with him: Rommel, with whom Chuck enjoys communicating with via ESP. There’s a humorous, snappy rapport between the two that brings to mind that of Remo and Chiun in The Destroyer, with the same setup even occurring here: Chuck, the Remo-esque straight man and Rommel the Chiun-esque smart-ass. 

As it turns out, the Chuck-Rommel rapport is pretty much the only thing that elevates Psi-Man #1. Another thing that separates these latter “men’s adventure” series from their earlier brethren: the first volumes spend much too long on the origin story and the series setup. And that’s pretty much what this first volume is. We open in late 2021 with Chuck hiding out in Kansas with a traveling circus, he and Rommel clearly on the run from someone. Then “they” show up at the fair one night, and Chuck knows he’s finally been tracked down. At this point we flash back to 2020 and begin the long-simmer, somewhat slow-moving narrative which will encompass the majority of the tale. This certainly isn’t an action-packed novel by any means, and for the most part comes off like a standalone thriller instead of the setup for a continnuing men’s adventure series. 

The majority of the tale takes place in Ohio, Chuck living in a small town and serving as the coach at a local high school. He’s around 27 (meaning he’s a Millennial!) and comes off as overly naïve and unaware of the world around him. Hey, he is a Millennial! Seriously though, we’re told at one point that Chuck’s heard that “British Prime Minister McCartney” was once in some band called the Beatles, but Chuck’s never bothered looking into it. Otherwise there’s vague backstory that Chuck’s girlfriend or wife or something left him two years ago; a pretty fellow teacher has made her intentions clear, but Chuck as mentioned keeps fending her off. Supposedly because he thinks his ex will return or something. Really though it’s a slow-moving tale at this point, David delivering something far removed from men’s adventure and more along the lines of Stephen King…only without the supernatural stuff. 

Save, that is, for Chuck’s somewhat-latent mental powers. These are introduced to us casually, with Chuck rarely using them. He’s pretty much an easy-going Quaker who does karate to focus his will. Eventually we’ll learn that both the religion and the martial arts are there so Chuck can make himself “normal” and suppress these mental powers which separate him from others. However as it develops the Complex is already onto him, and shadowy agents appear in town to monitor him secretly. When Chuck finally goes out on a date with the young lady, the novel picks up. He’s managed to run afoul of some local drugdealers, one of whom he found trying to sell junk to one of his students. These guys ambush Chuck during the date – and his house blows up, while Chuck’s outside and his date is inside. 

Here finally the novel seems like it’s going to become a vintage men’s adventure: Chuck’s girlfriend has just been blown up by drug dealers, and now he’s all raring to kill ‘em all. This he does, in one of the novel’s few action scenes – ripping people apart with his mind, hurling them into the burning flames. Only…it turns out Chuck’s girl wasn’t in the house, and after a quick peck on the cheek she gets the hell out of Dodge, terrified of this mental monster she’s been wanting to date. At this point the narrative coalasces into a thread: Quinn, manipulative agent in charge of the Complex, appears and offers to recruit Chuck, to teach him how to hone his TK powers, all in exchange for “serving his country.” 

We jump forward again and it’s still all about the story and character development. Chuck’s living in the Complex HQ and trying but failing to use his TK. Meanwhile he learns that Quinn will likely expect Chuck to serve as a sort of psionic assassin; there’s another, named Beutel, who enjoys his work and who begins to resent Chuck’s presence. Even though the TK isn’t coming for him, Chuck’s display of his powers on the drug dealers was beyond what anyone else has ever done. It just sort of goes on and on, but really picks up when Rommel is re-introduced into the tale. The dog is “subject 666” at the Complex and is so big and mean he’s scared away everyone, particularly Beutel, who as it turns out is terrified of dogs. Quinn, who has set Beutel on Chuck to test him, further introduces Rommel into the mix so as to scare Beutel, given his increasingly-insubordinate attitude. 

Rommel is by far the most memorable character. With an off-colored tuft of hair on his forehead in the shape of a “Z,” he has an instant mental rapport with Chuck. Rommel tries to kill Beutel but Chuck calls him off – again it’s a kinder, gentler sort of men’s adventure, and Chuck’s forever trying to not kill someone – after which Chuck and Rommel escape the Complex. Chuck’s had enough of this shit and refuses to be an assassin. This of course causes a big standoff with Quinn, who sarcastically refers to Chuck as “Psi-Man,” as if he were a superhero in a costume. After this the narrative picks back up where we started, Chuck at the fairground in Kansas around a year later, Quinn’s men closing in on him at last. 

At this point the novel finally picks up. The Complex agents dose some of the lions in the circus act so they go nuts and attack the trainer, and Chuck has to save his friends while, you guessed it, also not hurting the lions. There’s also a nice showdown with Beutel, who ends up losing a hand in the melee but isn’t killed, of course. Dakota, a tightrope babe from the circus who also has a thing for Chuck (not that he reciprocates) almost gets the better of Beutel, too. The novel ends with Chuck and Rommel again on the road, with Dakota in tow. She too is a memorable character, and in fact if David’s style reminds me of anyone it would be Raymond Obstfeld. Snarky dialog with memorable comebacks and one-liners, a spunky female character, and a lack of the hardcore gun-violence one usually demands from this genre. 

I think I’ve only got the last volume of Psi-Man, or maybe I have the third one as well. I can’t remember. I know I don’t have all of them, at least. I found this first one marginally entertaining, and figure I’ll enjoy the other ones more, if anything because they’ll likely spend more time with Chuck and Rommel instead of on setting up the overall storyline, like this one did.

Monday, October 26, 2020

Springblade #6: Battle Zone


Springblade #6: Battle Zone
, by Greg Walker 
December, 1990 Charter Books 

I’m missing a couple installments of Springblade, and it appears there’ve been some changes to the status quo; whereas the previous books featured the three-man team of Bo Thornton, David Lee, and Jason Silver, with gruff old former master sergeant Frank Hartung serving as the organizer, “Springblade” is now comprised of a couple extra members…not to mention a girl(!!). This would be Thornton’s girlfriend, Linda, who previously only appeared in the opening scenes on Thornton’s Oregon ranch; now we’re informed she can shoot, drive, fight, and etc, “just as good” as any of the male members of Springblade! 

Regardless, the series has if nothing else become even more in the vein of the “military fiction” thrillers that were, at this point in time, taking over the shelves of bookstores – shelves which once featured more-escapist men’s adventure fiction. I mean Springblade might as well just have a generic photo cover of some SEAL commando or somesuch; Battle Zone is stuffed to the gills with military acronyms, military strategy, insights into military life, and even military red tape – unlike the men’s adventure of the decades before, this one is on slow-boil for the duration, building up to the “realisitc” rescue of a DEA commando deep in the Burma jungle. Whereas say Phoenix Force would be blasting apart native soldiers by chapter three, the members of Springblade plot and plan for the majority of the novel’s runtime, not even getting onto the field until page 126. And the book’s not even 200 pages long. 

As mentioned there’s a lot of background on the military and Special Forces and whatnot. The book is dedicated to Colonel Nick Rowe, a real-life Green Beret who was a POW in ‘Nam, escaped, and wrote a best-selling book about his experiences. He went on to found a brutal Special Forces training program called SERE, which factors strongly into Battle Zone. Rowe was assassinated by Communists, in the Philipines, shortly before Battle Zone was published, thus his sacrifice is often mentioned. Walker clearly looked up to the man, as one of the “new” Springblade members, presumably introduced in the previous volume, has the same last name: Alan Rowe, “the team’s only Chinese-American.” Curiously none of the characters mention that he has the same last name as the recently-departed colonel. And also Rowe doesn’t do much, but we learn he enjoys painting in his California home, as this is what he’s doing when he gets the call to go along on this latest Springblade mission. Personally I imagined him doing fluffy clouds and trees a la Bob Ross. 

The other new member is Peter Chuikov, a former Spetsnaz commando who is just now getting Federal clearance to become part of Springblade, which we’ll recall is Thornton’s special commando team of active and inactive soldiers who do special jobs for the US government. He also doesn’t make much of an impression on the reader. In fact it’s Linda who takes up the brunt of the “new member” focus; this is the first mission Thornton decides to bring her on, concerned that the guys in the team will be ruffled a bit that a woman’s coming along. But Linda we are assured can hold her own…not that we actually see her do so. Her role will be “computer girl,” and like the female character in MIA Hunter she essentially stays off the field for the duration, running point on info and etc. The most action she sees is when she flies in a chopper with Hartung and watches him blow enemy troops away with a high-caliber machine gun – but shockingly enough, Walker keeps the vast majority of the novel’s climactic action off-page

This is especially shocking given how much padding there is in Battle Zone. Seriously, almost the entire novel is focused on the plight of the DEA agent, Thornton’s past with him, Thornton putting together the team, then finally getting them all over to Burma…where the hellfire full-auto action slaughter is, as mentioned, pretty much kept off-page…relayed via off-hand dialog in the final pages. Really the DEA agent is the star of the show: Mike Bannion, a former Special Forces comrade of Thornton’s who now heads up a SLAM commando team for the DEA which has gone through some hardcore SERE training. (You see what I mean with the acronyms.) The first twenty pages of the book, for some reason entirely presented in ugly italics, concerns his plight in Burma: his chopper crashes and he manages to escape with a bunch of guns and knives, soldiers of the Shan United Army chasing after him. 

Meanwhile Thornton stews on his old buddy’s capture, having learned about it a few days later. He’s chomping at the bit to get the clearance from DC to head into the green hell of Burma and get Bannion out…while also checking out Linda’s nice rack. We’re often reminded how hot Thornton finds his girlfriend, checking her out while she waltzes around half-nude in their place in Oregon (they’re clearly not married yet!). But as ever any hanky-panky is firmly off-page in this series…I mean it’s the early ‘90s now, and all that sleaze is just oh so ‘70s. I mean we wanna read about guns and knives and military acronyms, right?! Well anyway, Thornton eats a bunch of MREs (meals ready to eat) and gabs a lot on the phone with his DC contacts and checks out Linda in her revealing clothes, and meanwhile Bannion survives like a true badass in the jungle, knifing Shan soldiers in the dead of night and doing pretty damn well for himself for a dude’s whose stranded in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the enemy. 

After a meeting with “Reagan’s heir” (aka Bush – whom we’re later told is “a good man”), Thornton’s government handler Billings finally gives Springblade a go. At this point Thornton officially assembles the team. This is like 90 pages into the book, folks. About the only memorable part here, I thought, was how Jason Silver plays T. Rex’s “Bang A Gong” on his “recently-purchased CD player.” (Dude, keep your vinyl!) But boy is it an exercize in patience. Meanwhile Bannion takes up the brunt of the action scenes, becoming more animalistic as he flits across the jungle, slitting Shan throats in the dead of night. Oh, and suffering from bouts of diarrhea, Walker even thoughtfully detailing the act for us. Bannion’s plight is clearly intended as a callback to Colonel Rowe’s real-life tribulation; Bannion even often thinks of Rowe, not to mention that SERE training which prepared him for just the sort of situation he now finds himself in. 

So Thornton and team work with ground forces in Burma to mobilize various military vehicles to venture into the jungle and extract Bannion. And folks get this – the part where Thornton’s scout team actually finds Bannion’s comatose form happens off-page! Instead more focus is placed on his Thunderball-esque extraction, which sees a special flight suit prepared for Bannion; it pulls him aloft on a balloon, which is collected by a Talon plane or somesuch. Actually this part goes on for a bit, relayed from multiple perspectives. And get this, too – Thornton and team’s battle with the converging Shan forces is entirely off-page! Mind-numbingly enough, the chapter ends here, picks up the next day or something in a military hospital, and we learn that Thornton and some others picked up some injuries during the massive battle which ensued. I mean we waited the entire novel for the action to go down, and it all happened off page! 

At least Battle Zone ends on a memorable note, though again we must endure a lot of narrative padding to get there. It seems to me that the gimmick of this series is that Thornton uses the titular weapon each volume – ie, the “Russian ballistic knife” which launches its blade at a push of a button on the hilt. So the main Shan soldier guy, who has his own inordinate share of the narrative, has come to Rangoon to get revenge on Thornton, posing as a bellboy in Thornton’s hotel. It leads to a knife fight, of course, with that Russian springblade again saving Thornton’s ass. 

But while Thornton’s ass might be saved, the novel’s is not – Battle Zone was a little too padded, too listless, and the fact that it kept all the climactic action off-page was unforgiveable. In other words, I’m not sorry that I’m missing a few volumes of the series.

Thursday, January 9, 2020

Springblade #3: Stiletto


Springblade #3: Stiletto, by Greg Walker
April, 1990  Charter Books

The “new breed of commando” series Springblade continues with another installment that comes off a little more like military fiction than men’s adventure pulp. Nothing in Stiletto matches the outrageous elements of the previous volume, and indeed for the most part it’s a long-simmer suspense yarn that saves its fireworks for the final quarter. However when those fireworks occur Greg Walker once again delivers some glorious gore, with noses bitten off, privates ripped asunder, and even anal impalements via pliers – so far as I know the latter being a first for the genre.

There’s no pickup from the previous book, and in fact much is made this time around about how main protagonist Bo Thornton is a “civilian” and no longer a military man. Meanwhile he’s already undertaken two covert military operations in the previous books. But then, Walker seems to have run out of steam, so far as his trio of protagonists goes, with the titular Springblade commando team playing second fiddle to a bunch of one-off Nicaraguan soldiers and terrorists. Bo himself doesn’t even appear until around thirty pages in, with the opening quarter devoted to a character named Angel Barahone, a Nicaraguan native who grew up in the US and currently serves in the Special Forces alongside series regular David Lee – the only member of the Springblade commando group who is still active in the military.

Angel, despite taking part in missions that wipe out the Sandanistan rebels, is actually a Commie at heart, and turns out to be a traitor in uniform; after an opening sequence in which he and David Lee take out some Sandanistas, Angel goes AWOL and delivers himself to the front door of a Sandanistan office in Managua, where he claims to be a believer in the cause. More importantly, he has intel which the Sandanistas can use to crush the Contras and the Americans. Later we’ll learn that Angel was not only trained by Bo Thornton, but is also “like a son” to him, not that Walker does much to exploit this relationship. Indeed, when Bo finds out Angel’s a traitor he has a few moments of disbelief, then basically vows to kill him.

We meet Bo as he’s practicing his knife-fighting technique with Jason Silver, the third member of Springblade, however this will be it for Silver this time around. The two get in a knockdown, dragout mock knife fight along the beach, complete with them rolling around in the sand and stuff – it isn’t the least homoerotic or anything – and after this Bo gets the call about Angel. This is also the only time series regular Calvin Bailey appears, ie the DEA agent who serves as Springblade’s handler. Bailey calls Bo with the bad news and Bo heads for Honduras, where he’s briefed on the situation by local army boss Major Gaston. Even here Walker manages to work in the series fixation on bladed weaponry, with Gaston showing off a butterfly knife he picked up in ‘Nam.

Gaston and Bo figure that the damaging intel Angel’s taken to the Sandanistas must have to do with the recently-built US base in Choluteca, right on the border of Nicaragua. Angel was part of the team that built this base, thus he would know the best means of destroying it. Here Walker injects a bit of commentary on the situation in Central America; Gaston claims that the situation is shit, with the US-backed Contras suddenly showing their sadistic impulses, butchering people right and left, yet the politicians would still rather back them than the Commie Sandanistas. Bo meanwhile is more pissed over the fact that a Green Beret has turned traitor; he’s never heard of such a thing happening before. 

Bo’s plan is to go in with just one other guy to head off the squad Angel will be leading on his attack. He requests David Lee, mainly for the reason that Lee’s familiar with the area and also has stake in the game, given that he served alongside Angel. Armed with a Stoner machine gun, an M-16, various sidearms, knives, and explosives, the two are dropped into Nicaragua and begin the arduous trek through the jungle. I suspect Walker must’ve been familiar with such operations as he brings a lot of authenticity to the narrative, down to Bo and Lee arguing over which of their prepackaged ready-to-eat meals (aka MREs) are the worst. However there’s still been no action for our main characters thus far, unlike last volume where Walker would toss in random but insane action scenes – most notably when Bo and Bailey were attacked by transvestite bikers with intentions of sodomy. (Now that's the story Jussie Smollett should’ve gone with!!)

In a Manning Lee Stokes yarn, our heroes would bump into some native gals who would serve as their guides and soon get all nice and cozy on the jungle floor with them. But we’re in the ‘90s now, and all that pulp stuff is frowned upon; the focus is on “realism,” so there go the sexy jungle babes with their pidgin English and “full breasts.” In fact the only woman in the novel is Bo’s girlfriend, recurring from previous books; they have an off-page sex scene shorty after Bo’s introduction into the text, after which she disappears from the narrative…with Bo often wondering if he’s in love with the girl. Oh wait there’s also a buxom waitress David Lee hits on before the operation in Nicaragua, but we don’t get any more detail on that.

However as mentioned the feeling of realism is strong and Walker does a great job of putting us in that green hell alongside Bo and Lee. There’s some good foreshadowing – not to mention Walker again working in the grander theme of knives in relation to the series concept – when Bo and Lee are surprised by some helicopters which are circling the area, and in their quick escape Bo manages to lose the trusty combat knife he’s carried since Vietnam. He and Lee get in a long discussion about it, Lee concerned that Angel’s men will find the knife and Angel will realize Bo is here, but Bo disbelieving this will happen. However the veteran reader will know that, given the amount of dialog which has been devoted to the topic, this is indeed what will happen. And it is.

But there’s no big “you were like a son to me!” climax here. Bo and Lee set up traps in the jungle and wipe out several of Angel’s Sandanistas before they can reach the American base, and at one point in the melee Lee is shot, his rucksack abosrbing most of the damage, but losing most of his ammo in the process. This leads to an awesome sequence where Bo and Lee split up, the former to head off Angel’s mortar team before they can hit the base, the latter to act as a one-man army and wipe out the rest of Angel’s squad. The stuff with Lee is the best and the highlight of the novel. He proves his badassery in a grand way, using Bo’s Stoner, various weapons, and even his own teeth as he takes on the attacking squad, biting off one guy’s nose in a brutal brawl.

This is just Walker getting warmed up, though. After this insane fight, Lee briefly passes out – only to wake up as he’s getting pissed on. Turns out there was one more Sandanistan in that party. But while the Nicaraguan is busy shaking himself off, Lee grabs hold of the only weapon in his reach: a pair of pliers. First he rips off some of the dude’s dick, then he flips the pliers around and jams the barbed handles up the guy’s ass! For the coup de grace he blows the guy’s brains out with a Magnum. Given this, Bo’s confronation with Angel is spectacularly anticlimactic; they get in a brutal martial arts fight with Angel ultimately getting the upper hand, training a gun on Bo. However the series title Springblade not only refers to the name of Bo’s commando team but also to the Russian-made springblade knife he carries in combat – a knife he hasn’t used yet this volume. Walker of course saves this for this climactic battle.

Walker at times approaches David Alexander levels; there’s a great bit where Bo’s Stoner is referred to as a “death guitar.” And in addition to the copious gore we’ll occasionaly get combat description like, “Lee blew the point man’s shit away.” But it’s in the gory details that Walker really shines, with Lee at one point cutting a guy in half, from crotch to head, with the Stoner. The knife-fighting stuff isn’t as prevalent as last time, though when it happens it too delivers heaping helpings of bloody violence. There’s also a memorable moment where Bo offers Lee some speed, to give them a boost of energy. 

So in the end, Springblade is kind of an anomaly. It veers a bit too close to “realistic” military fiction for me, but when the shit goes down it happens in a gory manner that’s more akin to what we expect from men’s adventure. At any rate I’m missing the next couple volumes, but will return to the series anon.

Monday, March 12, 2018

Springblade #2: Machete


Springblade #2: Machete, by Greg Walker
January, 1990  Charter Books

Jeez, I pretty much plumb forgot Springblade, that 9-volume “Special Forces” series from the early ‘90s that features a protagonist a bit too fond of bladed weaponry. It’s been so long since I read the first volume that I had to go back and re-read my (typically long-winded) review to refresh myself on the gist of the series before reading this one. Not that I needed to, as it turned out; as typical for the genre there’s scant reference to the previous book.

Again, this series shows how the men’s adventure genre slowly metamorphasized into military fiction. The focus is more on how an off-the-books black ops outfit like Springblade would work in the real world, with more of a slow-burn approach than the constant action more typical of the men’s adventure genre. Like the previous volume, Machete hardly has any action at all until the very final pages. But the series lasted for a respectable 9 volumes, so clearly it resonated with many readers.

Author Greg Walker again turns in a novel that revels in the grungy world of an army lifer; hero Bo Thornton and his gang are as crude and rude as can be, “blowing farts,” endearingly referring to one another as “cum bubbles,” and engaging in banter that would melt modern snowflakes. As with the previous volume, there’s some dialog here that wouldn’t be publishable in today’s world, and if all that weren’t enough, there’s a wildly outrageous part where Thornton and his pal, DEA agent Calvin Bailey, are nearly mugged (and raped!) by transvestite gay bikers.

It’s some unspecified time after the previous volume, and when we meet up with Thornton again he’s on his land in Oregon, hacking down the marijuana plants someone’s planted there. After this it’s on to some off-page sex with his girlfriend, Linda, returning from the previous volume. Like with most other entries in the genre at this time, Springblade is not overly concerned with sex – or women in general – and this will be it for any hanky-panky on Thornton’s part. The focus is actually more on the fiery banter these two exchange; Linda is a hardcore liberal, having been raised by left-leaning parents (“God help me if Mom ever finds out you were a Green Beret”), and Thornton often pokes fun at her liberal sentiments.

Thornton is contacted by Bailey again, who brings our hero and his outfit into a mission that is pretty convoluted. But it goes mostly like this: down in the fictional banana republic of La Libertad, despotic ruler Aguillar has sicced his loyal and sadistic henchman Melendez on the freedom-loving revolutionaries. The novel opens as Melendez butchers a bunch of them, though leading revolutionary Ricardo Montalvo is able to escape the massacre along with his family. Montalvo is popular among the people and, if a free election were to be held, he would easily beat Aguillar. Montalvo makes his way to America, into the safety net of the State Dept, but his story of Aguillar’s butchery isn’t fully believed.

Speaking of the State Dept, boy is it taken through the wringer in this book. Walker clearly held some strong opinions about them. Throughout the book the Dept is mocked as being run by a bunch of bumbling fools; in particular there’s Richard Lippman, mockingly referred to by all and sundry as “Dick Lips.” Walker takes a special relish in abusing Lippman; the convoluted setup at one point has Thornton and team staging the “kidnapping” of Montalvo and his family, and Thornton’s boys beat up Lippman a bit too thoroughly. As if that weren’t enough, Walker has to constantly remind us of the agony the man endures.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Bailey, again representing the DEA, hires Thornton and his “Springblade” outfit for the job of feinging Montalvo’s kidnapping (due to a bunch of convoluted reasons) and then protecting him from any forces Aguillar might send up to America to exterminate him. Eventually Thornton will learn there is more to this, much to his chagrin: the DEA, despite Bailey’s own dislike of the idea, also wants Thornton to use Montalvo as bait. Anyway Thornton puts together his team, which is the same as the last time – total cipher Jason Silver, who is referred to as Thornton’s “alter ego,” and mother hen Frank Hartung, Korean War vet who actually sees some action this time. But David Lee is off on official military duty, so Bailey brings in a hired gun replacement named Mike Bannion.

Like last time it’s mostly page-filling until the fireworks finale, but boy do Thornton and Bailey get in a lot of fights throughout, all of them as arbitrary as can be. The action moves to San Francisco, which Walker presents as a liberal hellhole with an almost surreal proportion of crime – the comments on SanFran’s gay community in particular would raise the hackles of the sensitive readers of today. It becomes an intentional recurring joke that each time these two go out for dinner, they encounter some sort of bloodshed, from an arbitrary drive-by machine gunning to those aforementioned tranny bikers. Thornton as ever carries his knife, and Bailey, a sword fanatic (who drops lines from the Koran), has a cane that conceals a long blade.

The part with the gay bikers is the highlight of the book, and a damn mini-masterpiece of sleazy pulp. Led by Turk, with colorfully-named members like Teddy-San (who dresses like a “geisha girl”), Charley O, and Oboe, the bikers plan to rape, kill, and then mug our two heroes, who of course respond to the threat thusly:

“Fuck me to tears,” grunted Bailey. “Look at ‘em, Bo. They’re all queers!” 

“Big, mean queers, too,” whispered Thornton.

Of course, our two battle-hardened heroes make short but grisly work of the gang, slicing and dicing with their bladed weaponry in full graphic splendor:

Ignoring Teddy-San, who was spewing vomit over Oboe’s head, Bailey stepped directly behind the injured man, raising the waki high above his head, then brought the whistling blade down with all the power he could muster. With a sound like a coconut being split by a hammer, the hard cranial bone parted, offering the off-white softness of the brain to his eager cutting edge. Calvin, his muscles swollen with adrenalin, continued the stroke, pulling the blade back toward himself as it roared through the sponge-like mass of brain cells, effortlessly parting the tough cartilege of the neck and throat, and continuing into the dead man’s upper body.

Compared to this graphic insanity, the finale can only pale in comparison. Sure enough, Melendez – who by the way is the wielder of the titular “machete” – sneaks into the US with a group of enforcers, their goal the murder of Montalvo and family. Springblade of course prevents this, in what is unfortunately a rather anticlimactic fight – though Melendez at least buys it in fitting fashion, his heart impaled by Thornton’s springblade. So I guess the series’s titular weapon trumps the volume’s titular weapon. (That sentence made sense in my head, at least.)

But the book for some reason isn’t over yet, so Aguillar sends another dude after Montalvo, and this guy’s like the replacement for Melendez. His name is Azo and it turns out he once received combat training from none other than Bo Thornton. This final battle is a bit more spectacular, taking place in the San Francisco zoo, and features a nice blockbuster movie-esque send-off for one of the villains, as he falls into the zoo’s alligator pit. Meanwhile temporary replacement Mike Bannion has received minor injuries, and it’s doubtful if he will return in a future volume, who knows.

Walker injects a little in-jokery with the tidbit that Jason Silver enjoys reading men’s adventure novels, in particular a series entitled “Night Raider.” We see him finish the latest installment, grumbling to himself how unreal the events depicted in the book are – and then getting into a firefight just as outrageous as those in the series. However Walker drops the ball on this one, or at least didn’t even realize he had a ball in play, as at the end of the book when Thornton tosses the villian into the alligator pit, Walker describes Thornton as “the powerful night stalker.” Seems to me like his intention was actually to write “the powerful night raider,” thus serving up the payoff to the “Night Raider” setup earlier in the book.

Overall Machete is okay, mostly saved by all the insane, arbitrary stuff. One almost wishes that Walker had forgotten about delivering a “realistic” setup of our heroes guarding Montalvo and family, and just turned in more surreal stuff along the lines of the arbitrary fights on the streets of San Francisco. Personally I could’ve read an entire book of Springblade slicing and dicing tranny gay bikers who were trying to mug and bugger them.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Tracker #8: Dynasty Of Evil


Tracker #8: Dynasty Of Evil, by Ron Stillman
October, 1992  Charter-Diamond Books

The worst series in men’s adventure fiction limps to a close in this final volume of Tracker. Once again a big thanks to Martin O’Hearn and S. Michael Wilson, who each posted comments on my review of #7: Shock Treatment, informing us that David H. Jacobs wrote these final two volumes of the series. But whereas Shock Treatment, while padded and ultimately dull, at least had some sort of spark to it, Dynasty Of Evil is a snoozefest of the first order, and almost (almost!!) makes one miss the moronic but action-packed installments of series creator Don Bendell.

Jacobs continues with his retconning of series protagonist Nat Tracker, here referred to as “Uncle Sam’s most unusual sleuth.” As with the previous volume, Jacobs has recreated the character, likely not even having read Bendell’s first six installments. Tracker is now a shady government spook, a freelance agent, and Six Million Dollar Man style he was biomechanically augmented by the government after his horrific Air Force crash. While Jacobs’s version of the character is still smart and tech-savvy, he is not the godlike figure of Bendell’s books, and almost comes off more as a pawn of the government after the high-tech surgery he endured to become the “radar warrior” (per the cover).

Also thanks to Martin and S. Michael for confirming my suspicion that the author of Shock Treatment was also the author of the short-lived Psycho Squad series. Indeed, my suspicion is that Dynasty Of Evil started life as a potential plot for that earlier series. For this time Tracker doesn’t go up against a terrorist plot or anything of the sort; instead he finds himself confronted by voodoo and other strange, bloodthirsty religions in an island republic very much like Haiti. Action is sparse for the most part, but when it happens it’s pretty big if chaotic, with legions of henchmen blasting submachine guns at Tracker and comrades.

Jacobs isn’t kidding about the “sleuth” tag. Tracker is no longer the high-tech lone wolf of previous books; he does the bidding of the US government, which this time has sent him to the fictional island of Tambour in the Caribbean. US notables have been murdered across the US and now here in paradise, usually in “random” shootings or such, but this time a family has been massacred in gory style. When we meet him Tracker is investigating the murder house, working with local police captain Martel, a native who speaks with a French accent and keeps calling him “M. Tracker.”

My friends, this investigation of the murder site goes on for 50 or 60 pages. It is mind-bogglingly tedious as Tracker, hiding his high-tech hardware eyes (which look like Ray-Bans or something), bickers with Martel while roaming about the palatial villa and looking at all the blood and hearing all the details of how this or that person was killed. This incredible deluge of padding is the first indication that Tracker is not headed for the most spectacular of finales. Things slightly pick up when Tracker, using his tracking video components, finds a previously-overlooked piece of evidence: an iron claw.

Tracker is not on the best terms with Martel and his cops, all of whom resent Tracker for his presence here. But Tracker figures there might be a connection between this slaughter and the random deaths back in the US, and he gets more verification when they are attacked, while still investigating the murder house, by a group of armed men with “tiger-striped” painted faces. Jacobs is not the best action writer, with the ensuing melee more chaotic than thrilling, and also he doesn’t dwell much on the violence and gore. It’s more along the lines of “Tracker stitched the man across the chest and he fell into the bushes.”

The guerrilla fighters each wear medallions fashioned after that iron claw Tracker found. Turns out this is a mystical symbol of the “egobo” religion, a sort of pre-voodoo cult that’s like darker than plain ol’ voodoo or somesuch. By this point we’re almost 90 pages into the book and Tracker still hasn’t left the villa in which the murders occurred; when they head out, they’re attacked yet again, leading to another firefight and car chase. Part of the problem with Dynasty Of Evil however is that Tracker disappears for long stretches, so that for the most part these action scenes star Captain Martel and his bungling police force.

This I’ve found is typical of David Jacobs’ work; his protagonists get lost in the swelter of minor, one-off characters, many of whom are introduced in the eleventh hour. As is the case here, where an infamous crime kingpin, thought dead for ten years, turns out to be behind the plot in Tambour and is only introduced like twenty pages from the end. But Tracker really is a shadow warrior this time out, with only a few lines of dialog, more so using his brains and his fancy gear. Once again he is not the superwarrior of Bendell’s books, though he does gun down a few thugs. Indeed Tracker fears for his safety quite often, another big difference from the superhuman character of the first six books.

There’s one single female in the book, a pretty doctor’s assistant, who shows up like on page 110, says a line or two, and promptly disappears. Later it’s discovered she’s left a bomb in Martel’s office, and she’s, uh, working for the bad guys or something. Tracker defuses the bomb and chases after her, but again Jacobs denies us a big climax; the gal is gunned down by the crime kingpin, who himself is summarily blown away by Tracker without any big buildup. But that’s the case throughout; despite the back cover hyperbole, Dynasty Of Evil just drifts along.

The book is so convoluted and padded, friends, that the last several pages are comprised of exposition courtesy Tracker as he explains what all has happened! And if that isn’t enough padding for you, before that we get another several pages of exposition as Martel tells how he thinks the massacre went down and who was behind it – all of it moot, because he turns out to be wrong. I’m talking pages of exposition!

So yeah, David Jacobs is a classic ghostwriter who is prone to padding to meet his word count. I try not to be hard on these guys, I mean they were just doing their job, but sometimes you wish for a bit more spark and pizzaz. For god’s sake, have fun with it! But anyway, the novel ends “months later,” as Tracker sort of blackmails the father of that doctor’s assistant, who himself is a fallen politician, into carrying a bomb into the White House and killing off two powerful senators who have been behind a lot of bloodshed and misery(!?). So in other words, the cover image happens in the book – and it’s caused by Tracker himself!

Jacobs does get some things right…I like how he employs Tracker’s fancy gear, something which always seemed so unbelievable in the Bendell installments. Tracker also gets a few good one-liners. But the book is just so padded and uneventful – there’s even a part where the natives grow restless in true cliched fashion, setting fires and killing the prisoners falsely accused of the villa massacre, and it too happens off-page – that you breathe a sigh of relief when you come to the last page.

Now maybe one of these days I’ll go back and check out the two Bendell volumes I skipped (#5 and 6). But not anytime soon.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Nick Carter: Killmaster #215: The Samurai Kill


Nick Carter: Killmaster #215: The Samurai Kill, by Nick Carter
July, 1986  Charter Books

I bought this installment of Nick Carter: Killmaster fresh off the racks of a Waldenbooks store in the summer of 1986; I was 11 at the time and I was in the grip of Bondmania. I was in the process of reading the Ian Fleming 007 novels and had read all of the then-new “continuation” 007 novels by John Gardner (and I’m unashamed to admit that I actually preferred the Gardner books as a kid!), so I was on the lookout for more spy action. Also, the cover likely drew my interest due to the presence of ninjas.

I’m sure I started The Samurai Kill, but I know I never finished it. I think I put it aside because the opening sequence was too strange for me at the time, and also likely I was overwhelmed by the fact that this was volume 215 of a series; would I be totally out of my depth having missed the preceding 214 volumes?  (Likely one of the reasons Jove Books later decided to make the volume number a lot less prominent on the cover.)  Little did I know at the time how free-flowing this series was, with an army of ghostwriters turning out adventures with hardly any sense of continuity. Also, reading the book now, the weird opening is right up my alley. In short, The Samurai Kill is firmly in the far-out realm of the Killmaster universe, very much along the lines of the later Deep Sea Death, complete with mutant seaweed, underwater cities, and high-tech underwater gear that could come right out of The Aquanauts.

Apparently this one was written by Dennis Lynds, a veteran writer more known by his Michael Collins pseudonym (under which he wrote about detective Dan Fortune). He delivered several Killmaster novels, starting in the ‘70s, and if this one is any indication he would’ve been right at home in the early years of the series, when Lyle Kenyon Engel was producing. Lynds has the same writing style as those early Engel ghostwriters and isn’t afraid to get way out there while still making it all seem realistic (to a point). There’s also a definite sense of fun, which is to say there’s none of that dour, overly “serious” vibe you get from series ghostwriters like Jack Canon (ie Blood Raid). 

One difference between this and the series installments from two decades before is a heavier focus on action, as demanded by ‘80s men’s adventure pulp. In fact The Samurai Kill opens with action, as Carter and his latest bedmate, sexy Australian secret agent Siobhan O’Neill, are attacked while scuba diving near Kwajalein, an atoll deep in the Pacific. Speaking of Siobhan, an interesting note is that she’s never described! This is the first time I can think of where a Killmaster author never once tells us what the main female character looks like – no details on her hair color, eyes, anything. We are of course informed she’s got a great rack, but hell, that’s a given. Anyway the great cover painting by George Gross will have to suffice.

Carter and Siobhan are attacked out of nowhere by a squad of frogmen in black wetsuits, frogmen who aren’t wearing air tanks. A pitched underwater battle ensues; luckily Carter and Siobhan brought along their spearguns. It’s like the finale of Thunderball in miniature and a precursor to the vast amount of underwater action in The Samurai Kill; Carter spends most of the novel in diving gear, swimming around the Pacific, getting in various battles. This isn’t a complaint, as I’ve always been interested in scuba stuff, especially when it’s combined with spy hijinks…likely from watching Thunderball (which is probably another reason I bought this book as a kid, as I’d recently seen that film for the first time and wanted more of the same).

These weird scuba dudes have come from a high-tech submersible that doesn’t look like anything Carter or Siobhan have seen before. It gets even more sci-fi when a gravity field expands from the ship, pulling the attackers back inside, and Carter and Siobhan along with it. They can’t escape and their air tanks are running out. This is a tense scene in which Siobhan saves the day, realizing it’s the metallic tanks that are pulling caught in the gravity field. She and Carter escape and find themselves on a desolate atoll, where they of course have sex all night. Speaking of which, Lynds is more so in the lyrical mode when it comes to the purple prose; Carter and Siobhan screw a whole bunch, but rarely if ever do we get any of the naughty details.

Carter’s here near the Marshall Islands because there have been sightings of underwater flying objects and many locals have gone missing. In addition to the frogmen and their strange craft, Carter next discovers a rampant outbreak of vegetation taking over the coves, mutant seaweed that grows phenomenally fast. Even worse, it’s poisonous, instantly killing anything that touches it. Carter and Siobhan are certain this stuff is connected to the strange frogmen and their underwater craft. Speaking of which, those frogmen are what’s depicted on the cover; turns out they aren’t ninjas, after all. That’s just how their scuba outfits look. In fact there aren’t any ninjas in The Samurai Kill; the 11 year-old me would’ve been bummed!

The seaweed grows more rampant, killing natives and even destroying a nearby Soviet spyship. Carter and Siobhan, who turns out to be like a female version of the Killmaster, venture around the various islands, researching clues, getting in frequent battles with more wetsuited goons, and of course having sex. There’s another long action sequence, this time featuring Carter going up against the mysterious frogmen alone, which takes place on a golf course. This frogmen army turns out to be comprised of both men and women, from various countries, but Japan keeps turning up in the investigation; eventually Carter determines that the mutant seaweed is the product of a chemical research factory outside of Tokyo. 

The focus on action really picks up the middle half, which is otherwise bogged down in too much dialog and redundancy; Carter keeps getting off on one-upping the stolid commander of the US base in Kwajalein, as does Siobhan. But before they leave for Tokyo Carter and Siobhan are again attacked by an assault team of frogmen, which leads to a pitched battle on the army base. Then Carter’s plane explodes on the flight to Tokyo, but he’s able to bail out, just like in the old G.I. Joe cartoon. Siobhan survives too, however we get lots of worry from Carter’s perspective when he thinks the woman he was “just inside of” a few hours before might be dead(!).

Carter and Siobhan’s Tokyo investigation eventually leads them to a research center off the coast where the mutant seaweed was created, but thought to be destroyed. When going to interview the widow of the seaweed’s creator, the two are attacked by samurai. This finally is the introduction of the main villain: Fujiwara, last descendant of the ancient ruling power of feudal Japan, who not only wants to rule the country again but also wants to wipe out humanity and start over again. He plans to infect the world’s oceans with the seaweed, causing the gradual death of everyone on the planet, save for the select group of people who will live…in Fujiawara’s massive underwater colony!

The Samurai Kill gets more and more sci-fi (and again more like Deep Sea Death) as a captured Carter and Siobhan are taken to Fujiawara’s domed city beneath the sea, in which a thousand or so people live. But talk about not reaping the potential. Carter’s in and out of the place within a few pages. Even worse is the lame, last-minute copout of Siobhan going turncoat and deciding to join “the bad guys.” Why? Because she thinks Fujiwara’s all man and stronger than even Carter and she wants to serve beside him. It’s all pretty hard to buy; honestly, Siobhan’s decision to suddenly go evil just comes out of nowhere. At first I thought it was just a ruse on her part, but nope, she stays evil until the bitter end.

The finale continues with the action focus, but rather than taking place in the underwater city (which would’ve been cooler) it instead takes place in a high school(?) on Kwalajein. It’s all like a summer blockbuster as Carter goes in, guns blazing (there’s more of a focus on guns here, too, again befitting it’s mid-‘80s publication), freeing the captured US soldiers and killing legions of wetsuited goons. The climax sees Carter and Fujiwara going at it with samurai swords while Siobhan stands by watching. Speaking of whom, Siobhan survives the book, telling Carter she regrets nothing and will no doubt cop a deal and go free; Hawk later confirms this, saying Siobhan will likely live out her years on a nice pension.

The spy-fy gadgetry of the early years is also here, in particular a pressurized, scuba-ready plastic suit Carter gets from AXE and smuggles into the underwater city beneath his clothes, conveniently enough. Pierre, the gas bomb he straps to his “upper thigh,” is used twice, and also interesting to note is that in this volume Carter loses both Wilhelmina, his Luger, and Hugo, his stiletto. But later on he just breaks out a replacement Wilhelmina, which is pretty funny, I mean the dude must have like a crate of Lugers he calls “Wilhelmina” and stilettos he calls “Hugo,” which doesn’t sound psychotic at all. In addition there’s the vast assortment of sci-fi tech at the disposal of Fujiwara, like those self-contained wetsuits his soldiers wear.

This was definitely one of my favorite volumes yet of the series, but I still wouldn’t rate it as high as The Sea Trap or even Deep Sea Death; there was just a bit too much repetition at times, and also given the expanded word count of these later installments a lot of the book comes off as padding. Also Siobhan’s going over to the dark side was lame and insulting to the reader, particularly given how she was basically in love with Carter throughout the book and even saved his bacon multiple times.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Nick Carter: Killmaster #226: Blood Raid


Nick Carter: Killmaster #226: Blood Raid, by Nick Carter
June, 1987  Charter Books

Sporting an awesome if misleading cover (unfortunately, there is no M-16-toting punk rocker chick in the novel), Blood Raid is indicative of the type of novels the Nick Carter: Killmaster series put out late in its run, with a vibe that strays for realism, a lack of action, and a focus on globe-hopping espionage.

Author Jack Canon, who earlier wrote the much-pulpier installment The Satan Trap, goes for a Fleming or rather Robert Ludlum feel, with cynical, world-weary Nick Carter jumping around the Middle East, Europe, and Africa as he hunts down a secret murder cult called The One Hundred Eyes. The “Killmaster” doesn’t even live up to his name until the final quarter, for the most part using his espionage contacts and his wits instead of his various weapons.

The series is back to third-person narration here, which allows Canon to hopscotch around a group of characters. Blood Raid somewhat reminds me of the work of Dan Schmidt, with its terrorist villains, stoic protagonist, and busy plotting, but Canon’s novel moves more smoothly – though it also has a lot less action, so there’s good and bad. At any rate, the novel plays it straight throughout, which is a shame when you consider that this time Carter goes up against a cult of murderers who operate out of a secret hideout in the caves of Niger.

Carter is already on the mission when the novel opens, and his boss David Hawk doesn’t even appear. Terrorists who are looking to “defect” to the West are turning up dead, murdered cult style, usually strangled, and their bodies mutilated. Researching this, Carter hooks up with gorgeous and famous newsreporter Noreen Parris, who meets Carter in Bahrain with some intel she has come upon. Noreen has been known since the ‘70s as the source for info about the terrorist world, but Carter distrusts her throughout, as he knows the lady will keep info for herself so as to get headlines.

Carter is not the same character as he was in previous novels. In fact he’s almost Ryker-esque in Canon’s hands, brusque, rude, and arrogant – he refers to himself as “a very bad-ass spook” when he meets Noreen. He’s not very human throughout, coming off like a cipher, which is likely yet another attempt at realism on Canon’s part, as I guess this is what a real-life spy would probably be like. Most surprisingly, he’s also not concerned with sex at all, coming on like a prick to Noreen, despite her attractiveness, demanding that she does what he tells her to do, when he tells her to do it.

Noreen has come across the info on The One Hundred Eyes, a previously-unknown mystery sect run by Ali-Din Muhammed, the “Grand Vizier” of the order. They supposedly operate out of the mountain ranges of Niger and their goal is the unification of Africa. It all sounds pretty cool, and definitely inspired by the tales of The Old Man of the Mountain, but unbelievably Canon does little to exploit the plot he himself has come up with; Carter doesn’t even make it to the hidden stronghold until the final few pages of the book, and the rest of the narrative comes off like a bland Cold War spy thriller.

The novel mostly reminds me of Schmidt’s work due to an overlong subplot about a KGB informat named Bal-Sakiet who is looking to defect in Oman; Carter has nothing to do with any of this, and you wonder why so much space is being devoted to it. But it develops that Bal-Sakiet is also on the target list of The One Hundred Eyes. It’s also this guy’s death that lets Carter know the Russians are in on it, or at least are trying to cover their tracks.

Noreen Parris has gotten hold of a ring used by members of the cult; like that shown on the cover, it’s a bloodstone that has embossed stars beneath it. Carter is certain it’s a cipher. All they need is a code book, but by the time Carter gets it, Noreen has already taken off. Carter is waylaid by the Russians, lead by Major General Mock, a KGB agent who has apparently had run-ins with Carter before (in particular there’s a reference to a “Cyclops” caper). Mock offers Carter full KGB support, as Mock also wants The One Hundred Eyes put to a stop, even if the Soviet command isn’t concerned about them.

Carter, with the aid of KGB agents, goes next to Cyprus, where Noreen has fled. Here we have the first hinting of sex in the novel, as the beautiful woman who owns the house Noreen is staying in makes her interest in Carter clear. But “Agent N3” is so focused on the job that he doesn’t care. With the ring and code book united, Carter and Noreen go to Milan, where Carter employs a KGB cipher expert to break the code.

The Robert Ludlum Lite stuff continues, as a drunk British agent who skips in and out of the narrative arrives to tell Carter that he’s being followed by Jacob Barassa, “a huge black man” who is one of the top assassins in the world, and likely a member of The One Hundred Eyes. This sequence plays out during an opera, but once again Carter does not get in a fight and basically just walks around outside of the opera and then comes back and discovers the British agent’s corpse.

Suddenly, with no explanation to the reader why, Carter decides he’s going to put together a Mission: Impossible type of team. Now Mock’s KGB resources are pooled toward finding this group of underworld misfits that Carter for whatever reason needs: Trig Muldane, an SAS commando, Ace Hardy, a radio expert, and Jim Rowland, a sailor. But they’re spread all over the Mediterranean and the coast of North Africa, and Carter really racks up the air miles to find them.

And of course, Carter and Noreen find the time to heat up their relationship. Throughout the novel Canon reminds us that Noreen is hot stuff, usually sitting around nude when Carter comes back to their hotel room. But it takes Carter almost the entire novel to remember that he always screws the main female character in each book. The eventual sex scene is pretty explicit, and further evidence that the later books in the series were a lot more graphic than the earlier ones – but again, the earlier ones appear to be more entertaining. So I guess it's a tradeoff!

The One Hundred Eyes stay in contact via broadcasts to secret radio stations in North Africa, and here finally the novel ramps up the tension, as Carter’s team – after a much too long bit where they break Jim Rowland out of prison – stages an assault on one of these secret radio bases. Here, finally, 170 pages into the book, the “Killmaster” actually kills someone. And it’s all very ‘80s action style, with the commando team blitzing everyone with assault rifles and such.

Also, Carter’s plan is finally explained: Ace Hardy, taking over the appropriated radio base, awaits the next Hundred Eyes transmission, so he can track its source. Then, posing as “businessmen” on Rowland’s yacht, they tool around as part of their cover (okay, this part lost me). Anyway, long story short, the novel finally delivers the stuff we’ve been expecting on page 184 (of a 191 page book!!), as Carter and team stage a raid on the secret cavern headquarters of The One Hundred Eyes in Niger.

Talk about underkill! The action is over before you even realize it, and there’s no depth or elaboration to any of it. Even the send-off for the outed leader of the cult, a man named Hajib Tutambe (aka “Ali Din-Muhammed”), who got his start as Idi Amen’s top sadist, is anticlimatic, with a short gunfight between him and Carter. But for the most part, Carter and Trig Muldane just plant explosives deep in the cave, and then rush out, shooting a few people. The place explodes, and so long One Hundred Eyes!

This is the second of Canon’s Nick Carter novels I’ve read, and I have to say, it’s the second one that’s fallen a little flat. It blows my mind that such a pulpy concept could be played out so tepidly, so “realistically,” and once again I have to wonder what a more gifted pulpist like Manning Lee Stokes could’ve done with it.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Thursday, June 26, 2014

The Satan Trap (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #131)


The Satan Trap, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1979  Charter Books

This installment of the Nick Carter: Killmaster series promises quite a lot – I mean the back cover blurb makes it sound like a bast of pure Satanic sleaze, which is my favorite kind of sleaze. And while The Satan Trap does occasionally veer in this direction, it is for the most part a bland sort of spy caper that goes in too many directions. That being said, in this volume Nick Carter poses as a demon, so at least it has that going for it.

Apparently written by Jack Canon (the same name, with one less "n," that Nelson DeMille would use for his Ryker reprints in the late ‘80s), this volume comes in at a too-long 223 pages of smallish print. Canon went on to write for the series on into its final stages a decade later, so I guess he eventually found his footing. His storytelling skills are pretty good, and he gives narrator Carter a few deadpan, hardboiled lines, but I just felt there was too much going on. If he’d stuck with the plot promised on the back cover, about a Satanist using his loyal women to blackmail political bigwigs, he would’ve had a much stronger (and more fun) novel.

After a disastrous mission in South America in the opening pages, in which Carter has to hide out while his comrades are torn apart, our narrator heads to Switzerland to meet with his boss, Hawk. From here Carter is briefed on the strange activities of the Draco cult, which is based outside of Monaco. A KGB agent was working undercover there before being found out, and now he wants to talk to Carter, whom he’s met with in the past. After a very James Bondish ski chase in the snow-swept forests, Carter learns from the dying agent that Draco is not only blackmailing influential people, but he’s apparently involved in something heavier.

The KGB man was about to bring in someone to help him: an occultist who works as a spy on the side, named Serena. (Definitely a Bewitched tribute, as later Canon even references an “Aunt Clara.”) Serena doesn’t know that her handler’s been made, and Carter doesn’t know what she looks like, but his job is to meet up with her in the predesignated location of London and go with her to Monaco. Here Canon proceeds to further muddy up what could otherwise be a lean, sleazy tale with the introduction of Komand, another dude from Carter’s past, who we learn via backstory once sold Carter out early in the Killmaster’s career.

Komand, who only works for the highest bidder and has no allegiances, is himself trying to get into Draco’s Monaco temple, called Pastoria. He has his own Serena, in an effort to hoodwink Carter, but our narrator quickly deduces this and heads off with the real one, who as expected is very attractive and lithely built. The two have a sparky relationship, constantly trading barbs, and Carter’s frustrated that he’s been hooked up with such an inexperienced agent.

Canon still denies us the sleazy stuff, with Serena instantly heading off for Pastoria – she’s been brought in by Draco to summon a demon or something – while Carter goes to nearby Monaco to get to the bottom of this blackmailing scheme. More characters are doled out. Most importantly there’s Gilda Morrow, a crone who was once a Theda Bara-style actress in the silent age; she is perhaps the most famous member of Draco’s cult, living in decadent splendor in Monaco and hosting various bigwigs who come down to check out the cult. One of her latest acquisitions is yet another actress, this one a young and uber-sexy Brigitte Bardot/Sophia Loren-type named Paulina Mendici.

Carter has further been informed that someone down here is also in intelligence; it’s not long before he learns it’s Paulina, who works for Interpol on the side. He learns this shortly before the expected sex scene; spotting each other in Monaco’s plush casinos, Carter and Paulina trade lascivious looks and flirt until it leads to the series-mandatory outcome. Canon goes more for the purple prose in the ensuing sex scene (the book definitely isn’t as explicit as the previous one I read, Target: Doomsday Island), with lots of talk of “cresting passion” and the like. We do learn though that Paulina has the greatest body Carter has ever seen, so given that the dude’s been with like a few hundred ladies by this point, she must certainly be something.

There’s a cool part where Carter joins a party hosted by Gilda Morrow at her estate, and here we see a bit of the Draco cult in action, though the man himself doesn’t appear. Instead the ceremony is hosted by LaFarge, Draco’s second-hand man, and from what Carter’s intel tells him apparently the one pulling the strings. Carter quickly notices how familiar the man seems – there follows this goofy bit where we learn that not only was LaFarge the guy who played Dracula in one of Gilda’s old films, but he’s also a gunrunner…and he was the leader of the sadistic terrorists in that opening section in South America! Talk about plot contrivances!

Anyway after getting randy from the (nondescribed) cult sex onstage, the audience is welcomed to make use of private rooms. Carter and Paulina head for one, but the Killmaster makes the poor girl moan and fake it in the dark room as he goes off into the tunnels hidden beyond. Here we learn that the rooms are monitored via infrared camera, recorded onto film for later blackmailing purposes. This apparently isn’t enough plot for Canon, though, as Carter also learns that LaFarge is trying to get into some heavy weapons selling, probably to foster a worldwide revolution or some shit.

Serena meanwhile poses as an exorcist for Draco, and Carter manages to score with her as well, Serena throwing herself at Carter during a clandestine meeting in a former brothel outside Nice. It had to be hard to write these books in first-person, because Canon has to let us know that Serena is acting suspicious here, yet due to the demands of the plot Carter comes off like an idiot because he doesn’t notice. Ie, Serena not only insists they have sex, but Carter is “pretty certain” that she keeps checking her watch throughout. And yet when Carter later goes out to his car and discovers it’s wired to blow, Serena is not the first person he suspects! 

Draco doesn’t even appear until the end, despite being the sole villain listed on the back cover. He’s a raving lunatic, expecting Serena to summon a demon (which he names “Nickrobus!”) from the pits of hell, so Draco can challenge it and thus claim dominance over it and hell itself. Carter ends up posing as the demon; using Scooby-Doo trickery and smoke bombs he appears in a mask and costume, taunting Draco. This leads into the finale, in which Carter deduces that the “Untouchable Monks” who patrol Pastoria are really soldiers, and that Komand is trying to take over LaFarge’s gunrunning scheme. Oh, and Komand has someone working for him undercover, but you’ll have long figured out who it is.

The Satan Trap is just underwhelming for the most part, despite the promise of Satanism and sleaze. The Draco cult is woefully unexplored and more focus is placed on the shady world of espionage, with Carter often reflecting back on people he’s worked with and how untrustworthy they are. There is however a nice touch in a minor character, named Andre, who supplies Carter with guns and intel. Andre is able to go into a trance mode and relay information, as if he’s a different person, which makes me wonder if Canon had read Walter Bowart’s recently-published book Operation Mind Control, which was all about how MK-Ultra was used to make real-life spies just like this.

I wasn’t blown away by this particular installment, but I still have a few more volumes of Nick Carter: Killmaster to check out. Hopefully they’ll be more entertaining.