Showing posts with label Razoni & Jackson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Razoni & Jackson. Show all posts

Monday, July 15, 2019

Razoni & Jackson #5: Lynch Town


Razoni & Jackson #5: Lynch Town, by W.B. Murphy
December, 1974  Pinnacle Books

The final volume of Razoni & Jackson has “the tough black and white duo” spending the entirety of the narrative in Alabama, a comically overdone Alabama filled with racist rednecks who are eager to don their KKK robes at the drop of a hat. And this includes the town Sheriff. Otherwise Lynch Mob was my favorite volume yet in the series, even though our heroes are outside their normal stomping grounds of Manhattan and, as ever, there’s not much in the way of action or sex.

It’s certainly fast-moving, though. Warren Murphy’s skill is in the dialog, and he’s in top form this time, with fiery banter throughout. This is proven posthaste as we meet our heroes after they’ve been on the road together for several hours, Jackson driving and Razoni sleeping. They’re headed to New Orleans for a detective’s convention (the back cover incorrectly states Miami), and their respective women – Jackson’s wife Sara and Razoni’s girlfriend Pat – have flown ahead. Our cheapskate heroes gave the women their plane tickets, then “borrowed” a ’71 Chevy from the precinct for the drive south, even though the car’s not supposed to leave Manhattan.

The narrative picks up as the two decide to finally pull over for some food. The arguing here over Jackson’s driving, and his unwillingness to pull over for food or bathroom breaks, calls to mind the similar bantering of Philip Rock’s Hickey & Boggs, which I still say served as a huge inspiration for this series. Unfortunately Razoni picks little Pinkney, Alabama as the place to find a restaurant. From the get-go they are assailed by redneck yokels in the small town, but things really come to a head when the fat slob owner of a dive refuses Jackson service because Jackson is black.

Word to modern sensitive types – there’s a lot of racist invective throughout Lynch Town, which is humorous given that Murphy clearly wants us to understand the racist locals are the bad guys. But the dreaded n-word is tossed around a lot…and when Murphy does show black characters, even in a sensitive light, he has them shrieking stuff like “Hallelujah!” while having house parties. But clearly this sort of stuff isn’t intended to be taken seriously, and I imagine anyone actually seeking out this book (which is as scarce and overpriced as the others – and I still haven’t gotten the first volume due to that fact) will already know what they’re in for.

Razoni and Jackson don’t know what they’re in for, though; in a wildly over-the-top subplot, young Pinkney resident Flasher Potter is planning to knock over the town bank while wearing a rubber “Negro” mask with a wild afro. We’ve already learned that Flasher occasionally rapes women while in this disguise, secure in the fact that none of the victims will go to the cops due to being ashamed. All this sort of reminded me of the obscure low-budget 1974 crime film The Zebra Killer, aka The Get-Man and a bunch of other titles. It too featured a sadistic redneck villain who disguised himself as black.

One of Flasher’s victims was the wonderfully-named Tulsa Cuff, the pretty-in-a-tarnished-way young waitresses at Buford’s restaurant. And by the way, Buford is Flasher’s father; a recurring joke is that a large portion of Pinkney is made up of the Potter family. This bodes ill for Razoni, given that he smashes two raw eggs in Buford’s face for being a racist prick, then later slams his head into a car. Buford’s brother is the town Sheriff, thus Razoni is hassled good and proper for the remainder of the text.

The action highlight occurs early on. Flasher robs the bank just as Razoni and Jackson are leaving Bufford’s diner; Murphy by the way pulls a few Elmore Leonard-type tricks with time, showing events happening concurently. The bank hit is pretty bloody, Flasher in his mask and “fright wig” showing no mercy to the old bank guard and the president – even though he’s friends with them, given that he works there! He’s chased down the street by cops and carjacks the first vehicle he comes to, which of course happens to be Razoni and Jackson’s Chevy. And Jackson happens to be behind the wheel at the time.

Razoni isn’t worried about Jackson – he’s worried about the car. In fact Jackson is guilt-tripped that he even let the armed punk carjack him! Jackson immediately knows that this is a white man in a rubber mask. He also notices the penny loafers Flasher is wearing; as ever, it’s deductive logic which cracks the cases in this series, not gun-blazing action. And for that matter, both Razoni and Jackson have locked their guns in the trunk of the Chevy and never even get their hands on them in the course of the novel. Flasher’s the only one who does any shooting; after Jackson crashes the car into a lake, the masked punk gets up on the sinking car and takes a few shots at Jackson as he swims away.

From there it’s more of a slow-burn “racist town” caper. Sheriff Potter (Bufford’s brother and Flasher’s uncle) rounds up a young black local with radical politics named George Washington Clinton and pins the bank heist on him. Jackson’s statements that the “black man” who carjacked him was really white of course fall on deaf ears…save for state cop Lt. McCabe, the only local policeman in the novel with any intelligence.

While Jackson meets with the Clinton family to confirm their son’s innocence, Razoni seeks out waitress Tulsa Cuff for more info on the Buffords. He ends up having some off-page lovin’ with her, even checking into a hotel with her, and while there’s zero sleazy detail Tulsa is well-handled and comes to life more than the average men’s adventure babe. There’s also a somewhat-touching backstory about her mother dying, hence her return to Pinkney from “the big city, and how she’s now abused by her alcoholic father. Tulsa also factors into the finale in pure pulp style: tied bare naked to a tree by a bunch the KKK, to be killed for having sex with Razoni!

This is what makes for the climax, but even here Murphy goes for more of a comedic vibe. The Potters whip their KKK brothers into a frenzy and they all don their white robes to go round up Razoni and Jackson. Jackson is still at the house party in the black area of town and the residents successfully fight off the KKK, though the action is bloodless – everyone’s a terrible shot and the KKK runs away. The other faction of KKK fares better, charging in on Razoni and Tulsa in their hotel room and pulling them away, Razoni punching and fighting all the way.

The finale is a retread of #3: One Night Stand, with an enraged Jackson coming to Razoni’s rescue. Leading the group of black locals, they tear into the woods behind the hotel and find Razoni and Tulsa tied to trees, Razoni in the process of being whipped by a cat o’ nine tales. Jackson goes ballistic, throwing KKK scumbags around and bashing them up. The heroic act is of course undercut by Jackson’s shout that only he can whip his partner. Razoni spends the entire action scene out cold.

It makes for a fitting conclusion to the series, even though the series ad at the back of the book promises “And more to come…”; that same hyperbolic line Pinnacle used for all its series advertisements. But Lynch Town was the last volume, ending with our heroes finally headed for New Orleans, bickering away. However Razoni and Jackson returned twelve years later, as supporting characters in the sixth volume of Murphy’s Trace series, Too Old A Cat. I’ll be checking that one out next.

Monday, September 18, 2017

Razoni & Jackson #4: Down And Dirty


Razoni & Jackson #4: Down And Dirty, by W.B. Murphy
May, 1974  Pinnacle Books

The penultimate volume of Razoni & Jackson is another murder mystery more involved with sleuthing and bantering, but this time our temperamental protagonists actually see a bit of action themselves, getting in a very brief firefight before resuming the bantering. But truth be told, Down And Dirty seems a bit winded, the banter at times almost lame – as if desperate – and one gets the impression Warren Murphy was growing weary of the series. Which might be reason enough why the next volume was the last.

The cover art once again faithfully captures all the events that transpire in the text – it opens with a sequence of sadism in which two black men torture and then murder a hapless beat cop, one who works the Little Italy section and has gone out of his way to keep his nose clean from corruption. We get a bit of history on this section of Manhattan, how it was once run by Italians but is slowly being taken over by the blacks – there’s lots of commentary here on how black neighborhoods quickly fall into disrepair, which would no doubt trigger sensitive modern-day readers, yet it should be noted that there is also a defense of these very same people, arguing that these slums are all they have and that in time, no doubt, they’ll clean the place up.

But the Italians run a lucrative gambling business here, one that the blacks are cutting in on, and a gang war appears to be imminent. Murphy in his prescience even has “fake news,” what with the local news constantly talking about the possibility of one, so as to drum up circulation and viewership. The media indeed comes off poorly here; when we meet our heroes, Razoni and Jackson are scoping out a famous local newscaster for reasons that are not explained to them. They discover that the guy is a “closet queen,” with Razoni finding the dude in bed with another man at a big party – this elicits a string of outrageous slurring that would really trigger the sensitive types of today. As usual with Murphy, this also sets off a chain of riffing that continues through the novel, with the newscaster himself frequently appearing on TV and Razoni launching into a new anti-gay tirade.

Our heroes are tasked with finding out who killed the cop in Little Italy and to prevent any potential gang war. Murphy must’ve been feeling a little lazy when he plotted this one out, as it all amounts to Razoni looking up a bigtime crook he knew in childhood, and Jackson looking up a bigtime crook he knew in childhood, and each arguing with the other that their childhood acquaintance isn’t the guilty party. In Razoni’s case, the crook is Ruggerio, a Mafia bigwig who gave Razoni one of his first jobs when Razoni was just a little kid, and who only deals in graft and gambling and the like. In Jackson’s case, it’s Sugar Man Lawson, an obese black guy whom Jackson tutored many, many years ago, and who now has used his intelligence to corner a huge slice of the gambling market for himself.

War has been brewing between Ruggerio and Sugar Man’s gangs in Little Italy; this cop-killing just being the latest incident. Previous to this two of Ruggerio’s runners were gunned down; as the narrative ensues, one of Sugar Man’s employees is killed by a car bomb. Our heroes try to navigate through all this while tracking down the two men who killed the cop. The two killers are quickly – almost casually – revealed to be a loser pair of brothers who served time for breaking and entering and blame Sugar Man for it. Razoni and Jackson, who have asked both Ruggerio and Sugar Man for their help in finding the killers, basically bump into them during a festival in Little Itlay.

Here’s where the only action scene in the novel occurs. The brothers, Willy and Filly Smith(!), run back to their apartment and one of ‘em grabs up a submachine gun, blasting away at their pursuers. Jackson takes out the subgunner, and when the other brother barricades himself in the apartment, Razoni grabs up the dropped submachine gun and opens fire at the door. When they discover the second brother also dead, the two cops quickly deduce that the submachine gun did not kill him – but they hide this fact from their fellow cops for their own reasons. They’ve begun to suspect that someone was just using the two brothers for their own ends.

Murphy had a proficiency for mysteries, so Down And Dirty works very much on a whodunit vibe, one that I won’t ruin. Murphy doesn’t cheat, and the killer – the mastermind behind the entire near-gang war – is a person introduced early in the story, and his outing is believable, if a bit underwhelming – as is the fact that he isn’t himself blasted by Razoni or Jackson. Instead the hero cops make their collar, the villain having exposited on all his kills, and then they go on with their bickering and bantering.

As with The Destroyer, this bickering and bantering is the true star of the series. But Razoni and Jackson’s bantering lacks the fun of Remo and Chiun’s. Theirs mostly revolves around racial differences, or Jackson’s grumblings that Razoni drives too slow, and Razoni’s grumblings that Jackson drives too fast. It just sort of goes on and on and lacks much verve or spark, coming off as listless, which I say again is more an indication that Murphy perhaps was wearing himself thin with the similar material he was writing for Remo and Chiun, and didn’t bring his A game to Razoni & Jackson.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Razoni & Jackson #3: One Night Stand


Razoni & Jackson #3: One Night Stand, by W.B. Murphy
October, 1973  Pinnacle Books

Our favorite feuding detectives return in the third installment of the short-lived Razoni & Jackson series. As expected, the novel is low on action and thrills and more focused on witty banter, running jokes, and actual crime detecting. Author Warren Murphy again proves his mastery of dialog and character, though to be sure those looking for the lurid quotient expected of the men’s adventure genre will be a little let down.

The opening is appropriately sordid, though; an attractive young woman, wearing only a trenchcoat (a la Kiss Me Deadly), flags down a random motorist one night in New York City, pleading with him to give her a lift. A pair of cops, clearly in pursuit of the lady, pull the motorist over, and she tries to hide beneath the seat as she begs the driver not to tell the cops she’s there. But the dude, bowing to authority, does exactly that. The cops – one a lanky, gaunt-faced white guy, the other a muscle-bound black dude – haul the woman out of the car and there, right in the headlights, shoot her in the head.

Perhaps the biggest puzzler of One Night Stand is that these cops do not also shoot the would-be samaritan of a motorist as well. Instead they merely get in their car and drive off, leaving one hell of a witness behind. But, had they killed the guy, Murphy wouldn’t be able to work up the mystery which lies at the core of the novel.  I had a hard time getting over this, but what the hell. The motorist gives his story to the police, and it’s yet another knock against New York’s finest, who have been coming under increasing fire thanks to the liberal scum who have taken over the justice system.

Chief among the scum is Jason McCarter, an inheritor of great wealth who decided one day to become a liberal lawyer, because liberal lawyers get the most “media space.” Championing the rights of “wrongfully accused” criminals and murderers, McCarter has becoming so powerful and famous that he’s headed for bigtime politics. He has an ace in the hole though; a dimwited clerical room detective named John Hardin, McCarter’s nephew, who hooks McCarter up with case files, which McCarter uses in court to exonerate his crooked clients.

When we meet them, Razoni and Jackson are currently trying to bust Hardin – without the knowledge of their boss, Captain Mannion. This is yet another of Murphy’s trademark humorous scenes, which has Razoni and Jackson taking out their respective lady friends (in Razoni’s case it’s his redheaded knockout of a girlfriend, Pat; for Jackson it’s his equally-attractive wife, whose name I’ve forgotten) to a fancy restaurant. What the women don’t know is this is actually a stakeout; the two cops are here to see if Hardin’s going to deliver a certain case file to McCarter. Unbeknownst to Hardin, this particular file was written by Razoni and Jackson themselves; it’s a fake, one designed to bring McCarter’s illegal practice out into the spotlight.

While it goes down smoothly, trouble ensues: a pissed-off Mannion informs our heroes the next morning that none other than Jason McCarter has been appointed by the governor (a notorious cop-hater) to look into police corruption, especially given this recent murder which was apparently perpetrated by two cops. The whole fake case angle might end up blowing up in their faces if McCarter finds out about it. Meanwhile Razoni and Jackson are given their urgent assignment: found out who really killed that young woman, who turns out to be a hooker named Claire Coppolla, and clear up the case before McCarter’s commission gets everyone fired.

As mentioned, Razoni & Jackson is not an action series by any means, even though it was packaged as yet another Pinnacle men’s adventure series. Our titular heroes use their brains more than their brawn – actually, they use their mouths more than anything else, bickering and bantering like an old married couple. This particular volume falls a little flat on the recurring jokery, though, in particular to a running gag about a “black jockey with bruises on his palms” or some such. Not that the racist-tinged barbs (from each direction) bother me, it’s just that they aren’t as funny this time out. But in between the back-and-forth our heroes try to figure out who killed Claire Coppolla and why. 

Their investigation takes them across the dingier areas of New York, from the apartment Claire shared with another young and attractive girl (and also a hooker, though only we readers know that initially) named Renee Charver, to a truckstop diner/cocktail lounge called Delaney’s where Claire supposedly did a lot of secretive business. We also get a view into the long-gone world of rampant smoking, as the plot centers around a cigarette distribution facility in which tax stamps are put on cigarette packages; a sleazebag named Kitsky runs the place and Claire’s brother, an ex-con, works there, and we’re treated to lots of detail on how the machinery operates.

The most enjoyable sequence is also the most lurid; Razoni’s girlfriend Pat is once again used as bait. Having determined that Renee is a hooker and that she ran some sort of two-girl con job with Claire, Razoni and Jackson set Pat up as a hooker and send her to a bar Renee frequents. Let’s just say the two attractive ladies become real friendly real quick, with “AC-DC” Renee inviting Pat back to her place for some all-night lesbian shenanigans! And Pat eagerly accepts!! Murphy doesn’t write the details, but he does have an exhausted Pat calling Razoni the next morning to report, with Razoni increasingly jealous, bitter, and frustrated over what he suspects Pat spent the whole night doing.

It gradually develops that Delaney’s is run by a corrupt group that cons truckers who haul cigarettes; Kitsky, the distribution center owner, has come up with a scheme where these truckers are distracted by hookers (kindly offered by the propietors of Delaney’s), who talk the truckers into letting them ride along to the next city. But when the hooker gets the trucker to pull off the road for some quickie sex, a lanky, gaunt-faced guy named Al and a muscle-bound black guy named Earl storm onto the truck, disguised as cops, and threaten to bust the trucker, as it’s against the law for them to have passengers. Eventually the trucker will cop a “deal” with them, promising to drop off a delivery of illicit cigarette crates on each future trip in exchange for the cops keeping their mouths shut.

Razoni and Jackson don’t figure all of this out until the very end, though they do realize that Claire Coppolla was killed because she’d gotten wind of something she shouldn’t have. They themselves don’t get into danger until the final pages. Planning to bust the extortion racket, Razoni goes undercover as a trucker, his rig loaned to him by the boss of a local truckyard, who turns out to be Captain Mannion’s brother. Jackson is to wait behind and show up when the two fake cops storm the truck to “bust” Razoni. But things go to hell when a drunk Detective Hardin, still pissed over that fake case scenario, shows up when Jackson’s about to leave and hands him a subpoena, demanding that he show up in court asap. Why? Hardin’s been trying to set up Razoni and Jackson as the two cops who killed Claire Coppolla.

Razoni, thinking Jackson’s about to save him, blindly drives into the ambush and is almost beaten to death, his rig crashed by Earl and Al. When Jackson gets away from Hardin, who realizes he’s made a huge blunder, he’s alive with rage, particularly when Razoni’s battered, bloodied, and unconscious body is fished out of the truck wreckage and taken to the hospital. Murphy brilliantly shows the difference between our two heroes; where Razoni is quick to rant and rave but just as quick to forget about it, Jackson is cool and calm…until he gets mad. And when he gets mad, he doesn’t quickly forget about it; when he sees Razoni’s crushed body in the hospital, he’s “boiling over” with rage, to the point where you feel sorry for the bad guys.

The climactic action scene isn’t up to the caliber of The Executioner or anything, but it’s still pretty good. Jackson heads on over to Kitsky’s distribution center, having figured out thanks to his own sideline investigation that Kitsky was actually Renee Charver’s ex-husband and likely the brains behind this extortion scheme. Armed with his .38, Jackson takes on Kitskty and his two thugs, Earl and Al. It isn’t overly violent or spectacular, but this sequence does feature the memorable moment of Jackson strapping Kitsky onto the front of his car and smashing throught he facility’s gate. Surprisingly enough, Kitsky lives through it – and promptly spills the beans to the cops, thus exonerating Razoni and Jackson.

Not to end this review on a sad note, but I recently heard from Warren Murphy’s son, Devin Murphy, the sad news that his father passed away, on September 4th of this year. Here’s a nice writeup about him from the New York Times. I’m sorry to hear Mr. Murphy has passed on, but as was the case with Burt Hirschfeld, Harold Robbins, Don Pendleton, and so many others, he left behind a huge body of work, and will of course live on through it, continuing to provide entertainment to generations of readers to come.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Razoni & Jackson #2: Dead End Street


Razoni & Jackson #2: Dead End Street, by W.B. Murphy
May, 1973  Pinnacle Books

As if he wasn’t busy enough co-writing The Destroyer, in the early ‘70s Warren Murphy also turned out this five-volume series that is now most remembered for providing the inspiration for the Lethal Weapon movies; screenwriter Shane Black even gave Murphy official acknowledgement for this, requesting that Murphy be hired to help write the script for Lethal Weapon 2.

Given this, you’d expect Razoni & Jackson to be an action-comedy like Lethal Weapon. However, the series, if this second volume is any indication, is more of a mystery, with barely any action at all; heroes Ed Razoni and William “Tough” Jackson don’t even fire their guns once in Dead End Street, and the most we get for an action scene is a quick scuffle Razoni has with a pimp.

But from what little I’ve read of Murphy’s work, he doesn’t go much for the action stuff; his skill is more with dialog, and it’s here where you can clearly see the Lethal Weapon similarities – not to mention the fact that white Razoni is a young, loose cannon and black Jackson is an older family man. But even this isn’t exactly the same as Lethal Weapon, as Jackson is clearly stated as being bigger and tougher than Razoni, and you can’t help but picture Jim “Slaughter” Brown the way Murphy describes him.

Our heroes bicker and banter throughout Dead End Street, just like Remo and Chiun bicker and banter, and it’s all just as humorous. Another big difference from the Lethal Weapon films is that these two know no boundaries in their bantering, with race usually playing a big element. In his brief mention of the Razoni & Jackson series in his interview with Justin Marriott in The Paperback Fanatic #15, Murphy stated that if anything he was thinking of Robert Culp and Bill Cosby’s relationship in I Spy, and that’s easy to see when reading the books, though again with a bit more racial baiting (usually on Razoni’s part, making fun of Jackson’s attempts at growing an afro).

The plot of this second volume (the first is too grossly overpriced to track down) has our heroes tasked with finding out who has been murdering hookers in Times Square. The novel opens with the cops discovering the third murdered hooker in just a few months: Patsy Parris, who worked a certain area of “The Street” (as Murphy always refers to it – so I’m guessing it’s either Broadway or 42nd Street?) with all of the other hookers. Patsy’s death is not described, we just know that after working her shift until 4AM she’s offered a ride home by a friendly face, and the next chapter we’re informed the cops have found her corpse.

Razoni and Jackson, who are busy busting a corrupt cop who’s selling drugs, are called in by their gruff superior, Captain Marvin Mannion. Our heroes are the sole members of the Special Squad, meaning they get all the “special” jobs. Razoni wonders why the city cares that a bunch of hookers are getting killed, but Mannion reminds him that they’re good for the city’s economy. Not only do city officials want this killer found, they also want the hooker murders kept out of the press; they’re hoping Razoni and Jackson will be able to use all of the other hookers out there as killer bait.

The three dead hookers did not know one another, and the only thing linking them was that they were each platinum blondes from the south. Murphy keeps the mystery tightly knit, with only three characters introduced as possible suspects, all of them doing business on the Street and thus knowing most of the hookers: gruff Sgt. Rijenski, a beat cop; Tony Milller, owner and proprietor of a porn book shop; and Halligan, the sleazy night manager of a sleazy flophouse the hookers use for their appointments, usually giving Miller something free on the side for his allowing them to use the place.

Our heroes have no idea what to do, so they just sort of wander around the Street. Razoni goes undercover as a sailor, hanging out at the raucous Ship Ahoy Club; cue lots of funny banter about Razoni’s cheap sailor costume. Jackson meanwhile scopes out the place, standing around and waiting for Razoni to uncover something. Instead Razoni gets cozy with Lip Service, a hotstuff black hooker who comes on strong to Razoni, who insists that he never has to pay for it. And he doesn’t, as he’s currently got a thing going on with Pat, a gorgeous redhead who works for the paper as a researcher.

One thing that should be mentioned is that, for a novel about hookers and a serial killer, Dead End Street is not in the least bit sensationalistic, explicit, or even lurid. There isn’t a single sex scene (Razoni scores with both Pat and later on with Lip Service, and in both cases Murphy immediately fades to black), and the opening murder of Patsy Parris occurs “off camera” as well. There is no graphic content in the entire book. About the only thing outrageous about the novel is the salty dialog our heroes trade back and forth, which as mentioned can get pretty colorful at times (so to speak).

There also isn’t much sense of danger. Razoni’s only flashes of danger occur when he runs afoul of Lip Service’s suspicious-minded pimp, but even when the guy comes at him with a switchblade you aren’t concerned for Razoni, as the pimp is obviously out of his depth. Later Razoni also runs afoul of Hap Carburgh, a reporter who blew one of Razoni’s cases a few years before, outing his undercover sting in the papers. Now Hap is in New York trying to blow the lid off of the hooker-killings, which is something the New York officials don’t want to happen. Razoni ends up stealing the reporter’s car and destroying all of his film negatives.

As the novel proceeds it becomes pretty clear who the murderer is, but to Murphy’s credit he only has the heroes discover it due to police work and not flashes of inspiration or whatever. Meanwhile Pat has gotten herself in trouble, having gone undercover as a hooker as killer bait. She ends up encountering the man himself, and instantly becomes his latest source of fixation. The finale, while suspenseful, rings a bit hollow because the killer just sort of twiddles his thumbs after he’s cornered Pat, while Razoni and Jackson drive around Manhattan looking for him. But even here there’s no action, our heroes arriving just in time to slap cuffs on the guy and deliver a joke.

But here’s the thing -- Dead End Street was a lot of fun to read. Just as in the Destroyer books it’s the banter between the two lead characters that provides the most entertainment, and I’m happy I have the next three volumes to read.