The Red Berets

The Red Berets, by Tom Biracree

February, 1983  Pinnacle Books

Well folks, like a suicidal Looney Tunes cartoon character, now I’ve seen everything. For we have here with The Red Berets the world’s first – and hopefully only – attempt at a non-violent men’s adventure series. No sex, either! It’s of course not very shocking that there wasn’t a followup volume, though one was clearly intended; once upon a time (ie ten years ago, when I purchased this book), Amazon even listed a second volume of the series, though no copies were ever listed for sale. I cannot recall the title, and the book is no longer listed on Amazon, but it was there at one time, I tell you! Which I imagine means it was on Pinnacle’s publication schedule, which Amazon somehow picked up. 

Now, having read this “first volume,” which The Red Berets was clearly intended to be, I am in no way, shape, or form surprised that the series itself never came to pass. For one, it’s a bloated 342 pages! Granted, it’s got some big print, but still. That’s way too long for a men’s adventure novel. And also, it’s tepid, features a protagonist who comes off like a wuss, and did I mention there’s no violence? Or sex? You don’t need a DOGE task force to figure out why The Red Berets was expendable. 

Speaking of intrusive political tangents, The Red Berets is also notable because it has a left-wing vibe. This is likely the only ‘80s men’s adventure novel that bashes Reagan, and repeatedly at that. We’re given frequent sermons on how “the new administration” focuses on overseas shenanigans and whatnot, leaving inner cities to fend for themselves, and one can almost feel the author gnashing his teeth in hot-blooded Democrat rage. Sure, Butler was also left-wing, but at least Len Levinson was sure to include some good ol’ sex and violence in his books…not so Tom Biracree, who by the way still appears to be publishing today. 

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh on The Red Berets. Truth be told, it has a respectable setup: a ‘Nam vet becomes an unwitting hero of the people when he puts together the titular force of young men and women, which patrols the subways of New York for purse-snatchers and rapists and murderers, and along the way they run afoul not only of a crime kingpin but also the mayor and the transit authorities. 

We get an indication that The Red Berets won’t be your average Pinnacle offering when the novel opens in Vietnam in 1972, with a young Green Beret battlefield medic named Jim Knight deciding that he’s had enough of the killing and the atrocity and that he’s quitting the warfare game, court-martial or not, and he’s going to devote himself to saving lives. From there we flash-forward ten years and Jim is now in New York, where he runs a clinic on the Lower East Side – right in the hellzone that was Alphabet City (though I don’t believe Biracree actually uses that name for the neighborhood). 

It’s a strange setup for a would-be men’s adventure series for sure. Jim Knight, former ass-kicking vet turned bleeding-heart doctor in the inner city. The veteran genre reader will of course understand that such setups are usually just window dressing, and despite all the tree-hugging such a character will eventually start kicking ass. But crazily, such a thing doesn’t really happen in The Red Berets. Indeed, Jim constantly nags at his young wards, the titular Red Berets, insisting that they not engage in any kind of fighting. There’s also an unintentionally hilarious part where he tells them their “weapon” is a whistle – to call for help! 

It takes a while to get there, though. The first quarter of The Red Berets is devoted to establishing Jim’s life in early ‘80s New York; we get another indication that this dude isn’t your traditional men’s adventure protagonist when we learn that he has a crush on Dr. Sara Cummings, a pretty young lady who works in Jim’s clinic, a lady who happens to be married. It’s hard to imagine John Eagle having a crush on someone, but again, this isn’t your average men’s typical yarn. 

As mentioned we also get periodic sermons on how crime-ridden New York has gotten, which for some unspecified reason is the fault of President Reagan, and Jim stews at how dangerous the streets have become. Biracree often cuts to the perspectives of other characters, and through these sequences we learn there is a new gang that terrorizes the subway in particular; young kids who have cut their faces as a sign of their membership in the gang, calling themselves the Savage Skulls. 

Jim’s purpose in life begins when an old woman he knows is murdered by a Savage Skull in a subway mugging gone wrong; with the assistance of his friends, Jim begins riding the subway each night, to see if he can find the punks who killed her. Not to dish out any payback, but so as to get their descriptions and report them to the police! But through this Jim Knight ultimately begins a movement to make the subways – and New York itself – safe again. 

His two main accomplices are Renaldo, a mountain of muscle who happens to be a professional heavyweight boxer, and Baseline, a young black basketball player who drives a taxi and likes to rap his dialog. Yes, it’s the early ‘80s, folks, with the occasional mention of Ghetto Blasters to boot. Other characters will come into the fray – like a young black girl who is also a basketball player, and an old man who once as a Vaudeville comedian – but Renaldo and Baseline are Jim’s standbys. 

What starts as a simple act of vigilance – riding the subway and watching out for gang-bangers – turns into a movement that sweeps the city. When Jim and his colleagues stop a few muggings, already going beyond Jim’s “no engagement” policy, a female reporter comes along and turns Jim into a hero via a series of newspaper articles. This not only gets people interested in joining Jim, but it also pisses off the mayor and the transit cops, as it makes them look bad – ordinary citizens must defend themselves because the authorities are incapable. 

This is where “the Red Berets” are born; when Renaldo’s elderly trainer is nearly killed by thugs (you can just picture him as Burgess Meredith in the movie that plays in your mind), Jim and the team decide to adopt the old man’s trademark red beret as the “uniform” of their movement. And, let’s not forget, a friggin’ whistle will be their weapon. The action scenes follow more of a smallscale, non-lethal template, with mostly fistfights or people running from each other. What I mean to say is, there’s no gun-blazing action in The Red Berets. It’s all very anemic and G-rated, as if Tom Biracree got on the “kinder, gentler” vibe of the ‘90s a decade early. 

There’s no sex, either. Jim manages to hook up with both the married lady – who leaves her husband before offering herself to Jim – as well as the reporter. All the sex is off page, and folks even here Jim Knight comes off like a wuss. There’s a part where Sara asks Jim to spend the night and he balks at the idea, saying they should wait! But then, Jim is indecisive and weak throughout the novel; he even breaks the cardinal hero rule and tries to quit multiple times in the narrative, only to be pulled back into it by other characters. 

We soon learn of Anthony Brown, a local crime kingpin who is involved with the Savage Skulls and who also sets his sights on Jim and the Red Berets. But for the most part the team handles those who prey on innocents in the subway, like a memorable scene where they stop a rape in progress. And as mentioned they also become heroes to the citizens of New York, showing that if you stand together you can fight back against crime – quite an evolution for the men’s adventure genre, coming out of the lone wolf ‘70s. 

Teams were the thing in ‘80s men’s adventure, and in that one regard The Red Berets has something in common with its brethren in the genre. Otherwise, it’s no mystery why this “series” only amounted to one volume, and why the second volume was not published. Personally when I read a men’s adventure novel, I don’t want something less violent, less graphic. I want gore-soaked insanity with tons of lurid stuff. But as I’ve said many times before, that’s just me.

Seven Against Greece (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #25)

Seven Against Greece, by Nick Carter

No month stated, 1967  Award Books

(Edition shown here circa 1974)

Nicholas Browne wrote four volumes of Nick Carter: Killmaster, and Seven Against Greece was his third one. It’s mainly interesting in how standard it is. This is basically a no-frills Killmaster yarn, Browne hitting just the exact bases that are expected of a series ghostwriter and not offering much in the way of innovation. I only hold him to a higher standard given that he featured an ancient Viking warrior in the last volume he wrote for the series. 

But there’s nothing crazy or outrageous aboutSeven Against Greece, other than my suspicion that the title was originally “Seven Against Thebes.” I say this because the published title has nothing to do with the story – if there are indeed “Seven against Greece” in the course of the book, I couldn’t name them – but Nick Carter makes frequent visits to a bar in Athens called Seven Against Thebes, a notorious hangout for a group of native terrorists. Well, who knows. 

Regardless of the title, Browne does indeed keep the action centered in Greece for the entirety of the novel’s 158 pages – 158 pages of incredibly small print, to the extent that I figure Seven Against Greece would at least be 250 pages if the print was a little bigger. Maybe longer. And the helluva it is, a lot of the narrative is listless, and given over to padding, so the book seems even longer. 

According to Will Murray’s incredible Killmaster research in The Armchair Detective V15 #4 (1982), Nicholas Browne was a merchant seaman who turned in a few Killmaster installments in the mid-late 1960s and then “sailed for parts unknown,” essentially disappearing from the face of the Earth. Maybe he sailed into the Bermuda Triangle. 

Murray appropriately makes it all sound eerie, but it’s only now occurred to me that the whole thing might have been a tall tale Murray was fed by series editor Lyle Kenyon Engel. Maybe there was no “Nicholas Browne.” Maybe these books were really written by Engel – who, per Murray’s article, claimed to have done extensive rewriting to “Browne’s” manuscripts. Looking at my 2015 review of The Bright Blue Death, the last of Browne’s four Killmaster novels but the first one of his I read, I see that commenter “halojones-fan” was a decade ahead of me, with his comment: “Was Nicholas Browne an actual person, or just a pseudonym for the Engels?” Good question, halojones-fan! 

At any rate, going into the book with an awareness of who Browne supposedly was, there is quite a bit of realistic detail on ports and sailing; Nick Carter hitches a few rides and there’s a lot of word painting about grungy seaside ports and whatnot, conveying a “been there, done that” verisimilitude to the narrative. So who knows, maybe there really was a Nicholas Browne who was a merchant seaman who wrote a handful of Nick Carter: Killmaster novels while sailing the seas, before vanishing. If Robert Stack was still alive, I’d beg him to do a segment on Unsolved Mysteries. While he was at it, maybe he could’ve also clreared up the mystery on who another series ghostwriter, “William Rohde,” really was. 

Another note is that Nick’s undercover pose this time is as an “able-bodied seaman,” so maybe there really was something to Nicholas Browne being a real person. But then, Nick has two guises in this one: he also pretends to be an archeologist, and even receives AXE training in the field. This dual-cover setup is not well executed in the narrative, and really just added more bloat to an already-bloated story. Nick has the archeologist guise because AXE suspects an Athens traveling agency of hooking visiting Americans up with young natives, in the hopes that marriage will ensue, and the natives will go to America with their new spouse. There seems to be something nefarious in the works, and an agent working this case is murdered at the beginning of the novel – now it’s Nick’s turn to figure out what is happening. 

Parts of Seven Against Greece are similar to the popular fiction of the era, with Nick hobknobbing with jet-setting elite in exotic locales. There’s also Princess Electra, “the most beautiful woman in the world,” with her “luxurious figure,” a former model who plays the field and sets her sights on “archeologist” Nick. Browne is not one of the more explicit writers in the field, but we do get copious mentions of the gal’s breasts. For the most part, though, Browne goes for more of a pseudo-literary style for the naughty stuff; for example, when Nick and Electra have their inevitable fun, Browne leaves it as, “[Nick] felt as if he had crashed through a boundary of the universe.” Well, sure. Okay. 

Then again, Nick’s already had his off-page way with another European beauty: Xenia, a portside whore in Athens, with her “perfect and vital young body.” She will turn out to be the main female character in the novel; Browne goes against the series mandate and “only” has Nick conquering two women in the novel, instead of the customary three. But even with Xenia our author keeps all the juicy details off page; what’s worse, Xenia starts to fall in love with Nick, even trying to get him to stay with her. 

Browne does have a gift for scene-setting. The port-side material in particular is vivid with description, and when it comes to the maritime stuff you can tell that this is an author who knows of what he writes. But still, it’s rather slow-going. Nick gets in a few fistfights here and there, but he stymies himself due to “keeping cover.” Meaning, when some hoods jump him outside of Xenia’s apartment, Nick can’t become full-on Killmaster and waste the guys, as he’s supposed to be a merchant seaman. 

There’s also a lot of suspense material. Browne has a lot of characters in the works, and there are frequent cutovers to their perspectives to fill up the runtime. I found a bit of prescience in the Obama Bin Laden-esque Gorgas, elderly leader of a Greek terrorist army. It’s his men Nick tangles with outside of Xenia’s apartment, and eventually Nick will learn that Gorgas and Princes Electra are in cahoots, working with an Onassis pastiche and a Chinese spymaster. Still, unless my math fails me, that’s only four against Greece. 

This early in the series, we are still apparently under the pretensions that Nick Carter is old enough to have fought in World War II, as established in the first volume. But even by 1967 it’s getting hard to buy. For example, Nick hooks up with an old Greek colleague he fought with during the war, a hardy old warrior who seems to have walked out of Homer, but the dude is old, and he and Nick keep talking about “the old days” and whatnot. But Nick is still young enough that he picks up young chicks like Xenia and has gobsmacking international jet-set beauties like Electra chomping at the bit to bed him. So it almost gives the impression that Nick Carter is a Highlander or something, an ageless immortal. It was a wise decision to gradually drop the whole “WWII vet” setup. 

We do still have the unintentionally goofy stuff from early volumes, though, like an axe tattoo on Nick’s arm…which designates him as a high-ranking agent of the top-secret outfit AXE, of course. I mean there’s nothing like just advertising who you are when you’re going undercover. One wonders why they even bother with giving Nick cover guises. 

When Nick does cut loose, though, Browne doesn’t disappoint. There’s a brutal fight with a couple thugs in his hotel room, which leads to some dark humor where Nick stashes their corpses in a closet…and then goes out for lunch. Browne also caters to the theme of Nick being captured and tortured; late in the tale he is tied, naked, to a pole in a grotto, one that fills with the tide, and all these fish and crabs and whatnot start nibbling on him. Things take a turn into horror when a giant octopus comes in and wraps itself around Nick, biting his chest – the finale here is particularly grisly, with Nick recalling how an old seaman once told him of being in a similar situation, and the way out was to bite the octopus in the brain. 

There’s also another good sequence where Nick and his old comrade are cornered like rats in some underground tunnels, and a guy with a flamethrower comes after them. But the finale is a bit too much like a mystery, along the lines of Browne’s previous The Chinese Paymaster, with Nick uncovering who exactly is behind the plot. Browne does have a good way of incorporating Nick’s trademark weapons, though; little gas-bomb Pierre is used twice in the novel, once when Nick throws it into the open bed of a truckful of soldiers, and in another crazy part where he uses it while he’s tied up in a plane that’s in mid-air(!). 

Overall though, the biggest takeaway from Seven Against Greece is the mystery of who Nicholas Browne was, what happened to him, and why he didn’t write any more Killmaster novels, as he did write some good ones, like Operation Starvation.

Black Samurai #6: The Warlock (Second Review)

Black Samurai #6: The Warlock, by Marc Olden

January, 1975  Signet Books

It’s hard to believe, but it’s going on 15 years since I reviewed this sixth installment of Black Samurai. This was the first volume of the series I read, and at the time I was unaware that it had been the source material for the film adaptation. I loved the book when I read it back in 2010, and reading it again now in 2025, I loved it again. 

For one, I’m a bit more familiar with the work of Marc Olden at this point, so I see how his style is so evident in The Warlock. Stuff that I might not have noticed in my first reading of his work, all those years ago. But it’s all here – the large cast of characters, the frequent cutting between perspectives, the occasional lapse into stream-of-consciousness as we dip into the thoughts of various characters. 

Yes, it’s all here, but this time Olden reins it in, to the point that very little of The Warlock comes off as padded. And it’s pretty impressive because Olden clearly indicates he has not become bored with the series; six volumes in, and he turns in the most entertaining installment yet, filled to the brim with crazy characters and situations. It’s almost like he took a brief survey of the mid-‘70s men’s adventure field, saw how lurid everything had become, and decided to turn the dial of his own series to 10. (Or 11, for you Spinal Tap fans.) 

But man, Marc Olden really threw in the kitchen sink with this one, and not to sound redundant, but it’s impressive. I mean it opens with Robert “Black Samurai” Sand being attacked by a pair of transvestite dwarves, for pete’s sake, with the dwarves wielding razor blades and slicing them at Sand. Not long after that our hero is attacked by “Lion Men,” brawny black dudes in leopard costumes, like they came out of a ‘30s Tarzan movie. (Tarzan And His Mate of course being the best of the lot – complete even with full female nudity in an underwater swimming scene…pretty impressive for a movie from 1934!) 

Again it surprises me that Al Adamson chose this volume to adapt for his movie version of Black Samurai. Reading the book again, after having finally seen the movie a few years ago (as mentioned in my review from back then, I was waiting forever for the uncut version to come out), I see how much content Adamson changed, likely for budgetary reasons…yet, at the same time, he added a bunch of stupid shit that wasn’t in the book that certainly increased his budget. Like a sportscar for Sand. Not to mention a friggin’ jetpack a la Thunderball. And even a moronic fight with a vulture. 

No, none of that stuff is in The Warlock. In fact, Adamson could’ve done a straight adaptation of the source material and he could’ve done it with the limited budget he was working with. He also toned down on the lurid element Olden brought his tale. Janicot, the titular “Warlock,” is a total freak in the novel, filming black magic snuff films for his jet-setting followers and making scads of money off the proceeds; as I mentioned in my review of the movie, the Janicot of the film comes off more like a poor man’s Uncle Arthur from Bewitched. 

Femme fatale Synne also suffers greatly in the movie. I’d forgotten how much Olden puts into her character in the novel: here she is a force of unbridled sex, a hotstuff black babe with silver hair and lipstick. In fact I wish she was in the novel more than she is. She’s Janicot’s second in command, and Olden has it that she’s so blown away by Robert Sand that she jeopardizes her standing with Janicot. That said, nothing much comes of this, and Sand bluntly turns down Synne’s offer for sex – indeed, Sand goes without for this particular volume. 

But as usual I’m getting ahead of myself. Looking at my surprisingly-short original review of The Warlock, I see that I failed to note what the plot was about. Well, in this one Sand is tasked by his boss, former president William Baron Clarke, to take down Janicot, an Aleister Crowley type who runs a satanic cult. Janicot specializes in getting politicians in compromising positions in his sexual rituals, which are filmed for blackmail purposes, and an old colleague of Clarke’s has gotten in too deep. 

We meet Sand as he’s already in France, researching. As with most Black Samurai novels – and, come to think of it, a lot of Olden’s Narc books as well – the action takes place in Paris. I’m not sure if Olden lived there or was just fascinated with the place, but he constantly has stuff taking place in Paris. And that’s where Sand is as The Warlock opens, walking into an ambush courtesy a pair of leather-clad transvestite dwarves. 

Olden really brings home how sadistic these little bastards are; they are the bodyguards of Janicot, we’ll later learn – cross-dressing psyco dwarves who carry razor blades. The opening of the book features a great bit where Sand kicks one of the little bastards. Olden wisely keeps the dwarves a minor presence (lame pun alert); I don’t believe he even names any of them. Nor does he name any of the “Lion Men” who also serve Janicot – burly black men in leopard costumes who battle Sand in the opening sequence, but who then essentially disappear from the narrative. 

This is because Olden, as usual, has a ton of other characters he focuses on. As ever this means Robert Sand himself is lost in the shuffle, but the villains this time are so colorful the reader doesn’t much mind. I mean, there’s Bone, who serves as Janicot’s henchman, a gay albino sadist. There’s Rheinhart, a friggin’ werewolf, who was raised (as a cub?) by Janicot and is the most fierce fighter in the Warlock’s employ – and also we’re told of the creature’s various attacks on women, Olden building on the overall lurid tone of the narrative. 

There’s also Chavez, returning from the fourth volume; in belabored backstory that doesn’t make much sense, Chavez has hired Janicot to capture and kill the Black Samurai. We briefly met Chavez at the end of The Deadly Pearl, where he swore revenge for his brother’s death; the dude certainly has a roundabout way of getting revenge, as he’s hired Janicot to track down Robert Sand, capture him, drug him, and kill him on-camera in a black magic ritual or something…which is the sort of thing Janicot does. 

Reading the book again, I was impressed once more with how lurid Marc Olden got, particularly with Janicot…I’d forgotten the hinted-at backstory that Janicot was a Nazi in the war, one who renamed himself and gradually drew an international following as a mystic guru. Olden delivers a few jet-setter party sequences Janicot throws in Paris that could come out of a contemporary trash paperback. There are also a few scenes where Janicot kills off people who have run afoul of him or his cult, and Olden really brings to life the plight of the unfortunates; some of the material here could come out of the sweats of the era, focused on torture and suffering. 

What’s interesting is that Olden has enough for a novel with this setup, but he also throws in Toki, Sand’s Japanese beloved, not seen since (I think?) the first volume. Janicot has also been hired to blackmail a Vietnamese politician who has campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, and this dude just happens to be married to Toki. Janicot is supposed to get the guy and film him in some depraved satanic orgy to use as leverage on him. And meanwhile, Janicot has learned that this guy’s wife is also the love of the Black Samurai’s life (how Janicot’s learned this is left vague), so the Warlock figures he can get double bang for his buck – kidnap Toki and use her as Black Samurai bait. 

And yet even this isn’t enough for Olden; Sand is already on the trail of Janicot at novel’s start, unaware of the Warlock’s plans for Toki. This is because Janicot has pulled the same blackmailing trick on a French politician the Baron is friends with, and so the Baron has asked Sand to go over to Paris and get the goods on the Warlock. So in other words “it’s personal this time” for this particular installment; there’s no big global threat the Black Samurai is looking to stop. 

Curious, then, that director Al Adamson gussied up the plot with so much fluff. For those who have seen the film but never read the book: Sand doesn’t drive a sportscar. He does not, at any point, put on a rocket pack straight out of Thunderball. He doesn’t fight a vulture(!). And he doesn’t wear a tracksuit at any point of the novel. Indeed, watching the movie again after re-reading The Warlock, it blew my mind that Adamson was too foolish to just do a straight adaptation, as the ensuing film would have been more senastionalistic…and likely cheaper, too. 

One thing the movie did get right with its “fluff” is more in the way of sex and nudity. There’s little of either in the novel. Robert Sand does not have sex in this one, though the, uh, carrot is dangled – courtesy Synne, certainly the most interesting female character yet in the Black Samurai series, if not the entire men’s adventure genre. She’s a black beauty who serves as Janicot’s vassal (or something), a former hooker from the American South who was discovered by Janicot and turned into essentially the embodiment of sex; the Warlock uses her to screw VIPs, and though there is not a single sex scene in the novel, we’re informed that Synne can keep a man happy. Oh, and she has long, straight hair that’s been dyed silver, and also she wears silver lipstick and silver nail polish. This is something Al Adamson also chose to ignore in his film adaptation…but then, actress Marilyn Joi doesn’t look much like how Synne is described, anyway. 

Even Robert Sand is taken back by her staggering and exotic beauty; we are told that his stern, “samurai!” façade is tested by Synne. But it’s all simmer and no boil. Synne catches sight of Sand, and – in the frequent cutovers to Synne’s perspective that occur through the novel – we learn she’s developed a thing for the Black Samurai. He’s a real man, she can tell, and not like the sadistic brutes she has to screw to keep Janicot happy. Men like Chavez…who, by the way, engages Synne twice in the novel, off-page, as does another guy Janicot is keeping happy, a stuffy British doctor. 

As I mentioned in my original review, the Sand-Synne stuff is ultimately anticlimactic. They have a “meet cute” early in the book, when Sand, dressed like a movie cowboy with a Lone Ranger mask, crashes a Paris party of Janicot’s. He runs into the silver-haired Synne, and there’s a clear mutual attraction. But when they have their actual face-to-face, later in the novel, not much comes of it. Synne offers herself to Sand, but as usual he’s all business – plus at this point he’s learned that Toki is in danger – and Sand turns Synne down. Something that makes the silver-lipped beauty freak out in rage, as no one spurns her. But man, that’s it – there’s never another meeting between the two. 

Olden does deliver on the action front, though. And not since that first volume has Sand been so put to the test; he must rely on his samurai resolve quite often in the narrative, being outnumbered and outgunned at frequent points. There’s a fight with the werewolf late in the tale that’s pretty cool – again, shocking that Al Adamson, who made schlocky, low-budget horror movies, didn’t include the werewolf in his film adaptation – and, though brief, the fight is brutal, with the additional element that Sand is injured at the time, with a broken wrist. 

There isn’t a big fight with Chavez; indeed, Olden follows his usual template in that the novel is so busy that he must hurriedly bring everything to a close in the final pages. Chavez is for the most part a secondary character; in his frequent cutovers we see him mulling over how whacko Janicot is (which of course makes the reader wonder why Chavez hired Janicot in the first place), and also chomping at the bit for “the black man to die.” 

The action takes place for the most part in Paris, including an extended action sequence where Sand tries to kill Janicot at a small airport – leading to a tense capoff where Sand commandeers the plane on the tarmac. This leads to a strange bit where the Baron, all the way back in Texas, somehow knows that it wasn’t really Janicot at the airport, and it was all a fake-out to get Sand. Another strange miss is all the stuff with Toki; this is another bit Al Adamson made more of a deal of. But in the novel itself, Sand and Toki don’t even really have a moment together; Sand saves her, but she’s out cold at the time. 

Since I’m on a spoiler kick, skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens. But the resolution with Synne is also lame. She’s killed off-page…by Chavez! Olden delivers one of his customary rushed finales with Janicot’s people all holed up in a remote house once the action has moved Stateside, and Sand leads a team of the Baron’s men into the compound to kill everyone. When Sand storms into the house, he catches Chavez as Chavez is coming out of a room. Sand kills him without much fuss – there’s no big dramatic payoff – and then Sand discovers Synne’s corpse in the bedroom. Material from her perspective has already hinted that Chavez is rough and sadistic in the sack, so this turns out to have been foreshadowing on Olden’s part; Chavez apparently killed Synne during some rough sex. Still, it’s a bit of a letdown. I wanted more from this unusual character. 

As mentioned in my original review, Janicot is still around at novel’s end; there’s a horror-esque finale where his ghostly voice calls to Sand in the dark of the night, and we’re to understand the Black Samurai is properly bugged out. But I do not believe Janicot returns; the series only lasted for two more volumes, and looking at the back covers I see no mention of the Warlock’s return. But then, villains not getting their comeuppance was a staple in Olden’s Narc series. 

Overall though, I enjoyed The Warlock just as much on this second reading, and I was very impressed with the level of insanity Marc Olden injected into it – comparatively speaking, it’s a lot crazier than the previous five volumes of Black Samurai, and displays a more pulpy side of Olden than those familiar with his work might expect.

The Terminator #2: Silicon Valley Slaughter

The Terminator #2: Silicon Valley Slaughter, by John Quinn

July, 1983  Pinnacle Books

The second volume of The Terminator is similar to the first: a somewhat slow-moving piece that is more focused on building tension and suspense than it is to catering to Pinnacle’s almost desperate declaration that they (still) are “the number one action-adventure publisher.” 

Dennis Rodriguez is again outed as the writer on the copyright page, which makes one wonder why the “John Quinn” by-line was even necessary. It’s not like Pinnacle’s contemporary Justin Perry series, where author Hal Bennett likely used a pseudonym (and didn’t put his name on the copyright page) so no one would think he was batshit crazy. As with the first book, Rodriguez turns in a book that’s very sedate and methodical in its delivery, at times more approaching the vibe of a hardboiled yarn than an action caper. 

What I find most interesting about Silicon Valley Slaughter is that series protagonist Rod Gavin – who by the way is never reffered to as a “Terminator” in the entire book – is revealed here to basically be a drunk. This was already hinted at in the previous book, where Gavin “fortified” himself with a bottle of booze while lurking in the trunk of a car, feeling “good” and “loose” when he finally came out for the big finale. 

Well, Rodriguez takes that and runs with it in this second volume. Gavin drinks his way through a lot of bottles in the course of the book, even recreating the previous volume’s bit by asking some goons to buy him a bottle of liquor so he can go to sleep and they won’t have to worry about him! I mean if this guy doesn’t have a problem, I don’t know what a problem would even be. 

Rodriguez also follows the template of the previous book in that the majority of the tale is at a slow boil, cutting across a swathe of characters, until reaching a harried finale. A curious thing about Silicon Valley Slaughter is that Gavin has no personal impetus in the plot; he isn’t out for revenge, and indeed only gets into the fray so as to help his friend Duffy (returning from the previous volume). Otherwise Gavin has no personal stake in the proceedings; ostensibly his goal is to rescue Duffy’s hotstuff, 20-something niece, but Gavin’s never even met her. 

The Terminator series is somewhat similar to the earlier Dakota in how Rod Gavin has a supporting group of characters, who appear in each volume. Actually, his “girlfriend” Kendall does not appear in Silicon Valley Slaughter, but she’s mentioned a lot. But there’s also Duffy, a Justice Dept. colleague of Gavin’s, and Dorn, a car mechanic who fixes up a beaten ’74 Trans Am for Gavin…even putting the very “1980s action” augmentation of an Uzi hidden inside of a center console. One can almost see Steven J. Cannell at his typewriter. 

As mentioned, Rodriguez likes to jump around a large group of characters. So for Sicilian Valley Slaughter we have material with Duffy (who is knocked into a coma after his intro, where he will remain for the duration of the novel), material with Duffy’s niece, Susan, and then stuff with both a high-level Japanese gangster as well as the American-born Japanese thug who works for him, with other characters besides. There is a lot of cutting between perspectives – and Rodriguez is good because he gives us white space or a chapter break to warn us of the perspective hopping – which ultimately means that Gavin comes off like a guest star in his own book. 

The plot concerns Duffy’s niece Susan being abducted, and the editors at Pinnacle do a great job of hyping the lurid aspects of this on the back cover, claiming that she’s about to be sent off into sexual servitude. However, author Dennis Rodriguez has much less lurid intentions. While it is mentioned, in passing, that the ultimate plan is to send her off into some sex slavery thing in Japan, for the most part Susan’s been kidnapped because she is working on some top-secret encryption device for an electronics firm in Silicon Valley. 

The novel is quite prescient in its talk of encryption and data, yet at the same time it’s not really the subject I want to read about in a men’s adventure novel. That said, Gavin himself is blithely unaware of all this mumbo-jumbo and tells people gladly that it’s outside of his realm. Regardless, he acts as a private investigator for the most part, trying to find young Susan as a way to pay back his injured friend, Duffy. 

Action is sporadic, and again has the vibe of a Gold Eagle novel from decades before; it’s mostly Gavin punching people. At one point an old Agency colleague gets him a P-38 pistol, a la the gun Gavin wields in the cover portrait on each volume – and also, the copyright page further states that the cover art is courtesy Bruce Minney. But honestly Gavin doesn’t use the gun much, and he’s more prone to hit the bottle than he is to shoot someone. 

Gavin does find the opportunity to get laid, though. While searching Susan’s place he discovers an attractive young woman hididng, fully clothed, in Susan’s shower. This turns out to be Hillary, a friend of Susan’s – a pretty one, naturally, with “full, upswept breasts.” Hillary has no idea who Gavin is – he uses a fake name throughout, claiming he’s a reporter – and later on there’s this unintentionally hilarious part where an injured Gavin needs to hide…and he goes to Hillary’s place and insists that she let him in, then tells her to go take a bath while he prepares dinner! I’ve seen a couple episodes of Dateline with this setup. 

But instead of telling Gavin to go away, Hillary opens the door and invites him in – this total stranger who is bleeding from an injury, who she met just a few days before, when he was snooping through her missing friend’s house. She even goes off to take a bath! Gavin makes a meal and the two eat and then they go to bed, but as with the previous book Rodriguez does not go into detail; indeed, the sex scenes seem to be incorporated merely so as to meet a publisher requirement. 

It’s the drinking, though, that makes me question how serious Dennis Rodriguez was about this whole affair. There’s actually a part where Gavin thinks to himself, “You can’t be on duty twenty-four hours a day,” and proceeds to get drunk. By himself. Then Dorn drives to California with the rebuilt Trans Am and Gavin gets drunk with him, too. Then there’s the part I already mentioned, where Gavin is caught by these yakuza thugs and he tells them to buy him a bottle so he can get drunk and won’t be “much trouble” for them! And it isn’t even some clever ploy, like Gavin throwing the booze on them and then flinging a match on them (which would totally combust in an action novel, there’s no reason to question “the science”). No – Gavin really does just drink until he goes to sleep! 

Another interesting thing is that Gavin keeps screwing up, thinking to himself that “the old Gavin would never have been caught” and that “the new Gavin [is] an amateur at this.” He’s an assassin – well, a Terminator, technically – and he’s been programmed to kill for the government. But acting on his own in a lone wolf capacity is outside of his experience, and he keeps messing things up and getting caught – even knocked out at one point, by nothing more than a bartender! 

As with the previous installment there’s a lot of cutting across the group of people, from the yakuza thugs to the treacherous employees of Susan’s company. And speaking of which, Rodriguez fills up so many pages with his scene cutting that Susan’s surprising fate is almost anticlimactically rendered, and the reader thinks he’s missed something. The worse thing is that Gavin is reduced to a supporting status, and we waste our time reading about one-off characters. 

But again it all is quickly wrapped up with an action scene that spans a few pages. And yes, Gavin does manage to get his Uzi out of his hidden Trans Am console, though the setup for this to happen is incredibly belabored and hard to buy. Rodriguez is again shy with the juicy details, though we do get occasional lines like, “One burst [from the Uzi] ruptured their chests, blowing pink meat against the walls.” 

Otherwise it’s a quick wrap-up after this, with Gavin dispatching practically all of his foes in a page or two. There’s not much in the way of a setup for the next volume – in fact, Gavin is essentially listless and without any plans for the future at all – but I did get a chuckle out of how the back cover proclaims that The Terminator series is “taking America by storm!” If that’s not hyperbolic copy, I don’t know what is.

Random Record Review: Bloodsong - “Season Of The Dead”

 

Two years ago I posted a review of “Initium Meets Earth AD” by Bloodsong, an album that so perfectly replicated The Misfits and Samhain that I could only hope that one day I, Misanthrope – the sole force behind Bloodsong – would do an entire album of original material. 

Well, fiends, that day has come – and ironically enough it’s around the same time of year as when I discovered Initium Meets Earth AD. Namely, right around my son’s birthday. Just as I recall going back home after an exhausting day of hosting my kid’s sixth birthday party and relaxing to the soothing strains of Bloodsong’s awesome Initium-styled rendition of Earth AD’s “Death Comes Ripping,” so too did I find himself mentally humming along to Bloodsong’s “Life Is Fucking Cold” this year while hanging out with my kid at the Crayola playground on his eigth birthday. 

Once again Bloodsong captures the mood, style, and vibe of mid-‘80s Glenn Danzig, to the point where this stuff would’ve blown my mind if it had come out on cassette tape circa 1989. And speaking of which, what this – and all of Bloodsong’s material – needs is a cassette release! In one of those “you’d never in a million years believe this would happen” scenarios, cassette tapes are back in these days, especially with younger people. As a coworker of mine quipped, “Have these people ever heard a cassette?” 

Also in true Danzig fashion, the album is short! Season Of The Dead is essentially an EP, comprised of eight tracks, each of which are just a little over three minutes long. And tracks 5-8 are remixes of tracks 1-4! 

“Cold World” starts the proceedings, with its memorable chorus of “It’s a cold fucking world.” This one sounds so much like Initium that you could swear it’s an outtake. Opening with heavy chords and those “Taco Bell commercial” synth-gongs, this track is crazy in how it so perfectly captures the Samhain sound. This is the one I was humming to myself while my kid created his own crayon at the Crayola factory – nothing like bopping your head to “It’s a cold fucking world” while kids are happily running around a crayon playground. Of course I was wearing earphones at the time. 

Title track “Season Of The Dead” follows; it starts off with more of a dirgey nature, before going into a metallic onslaught. Complete with those Taco Bell gongs, which I love to death, as well as unearthly growls buried in the mix. Lyrically this track is very in-line with mid-’80s Danzig, concerning witches and “malicious spirits.” I especially appreciate the multi-tracked “Yeahs” that puncuate the end of the track; very goth-punk.  This one received its own single release this past October, albeit in slightly different form (as noted below). 

“Psychofuck” is the mosh track; faster than the previous two songs and all scraped metal chords and pounding tribal drums. Ironically it’s this track where I feel I, Misanthrope most replicates the sound of Danzig’s voice, muted and buried in the mix during the verse but belting out wails in the chorus. There’s a cool part midway through where the track comes to a stop…and then starts back up again. I could really see the 15 year-old me banging my head to this one in 1989. 

Last is the mega-awesome “I Want Your Blood (2025),” another piledriver of heavy, punk-metal guitar riffing, with speed metal drums straight off of Earth AD (but better produced, as befitting Samhain!). A minute in we get into a cool bit of Danzig-esque experimentalism, with the tribal drums panning back and forth across the stereo spectrum and a chorus of I, Misanthropes intoning “I just want…your blood.” Super cool and so perfectly done. This section comes back at the end of the song, where it’s more prolonged and even cooler; I also love how the track ends, with a lone guitar offset by more of those unearthly growls.  This version is an update of the first-ever Bloodsong release, the I Want Your Blood single from 2018.

“Side 2” commences with a “Dark Cloud Mix” of “Cold World,” which runs a few seconds longer than the original mix. It’s a more experimental take than the original, opening with FX’d growls, and more focus on those awesome Taco Bell synth-gongs than the guitars. I, Misanthrope’s voice is more buried in the dense mix, again giving it the sound of a cassette. This mix would probably have given my kid nightmares if I’d been playing this on speakers instead of headphones; the focus is more on hellish din, with the growls often overtaking the music entirely. Yet at the same time it really sounds like something Danzig might’ve put on Unholy Passion. 

The Dark Clouds Mix of “Season Of The Dead” follows the same path – the howls and growls are panned up and the music is murky and buried beneath them. There’s also a headfucky chorus with a demonic voice whispering overtop I, Misanthrope’s voice. In some ways this one’s almost a dub mix; about the most we hear from the instruments is the kick drum and scraped guitar strings, with the focus on demonic sound effects. 

Seventh track “Psychofuck” also becomes a demonic nightmare in its Dark Clouds Mix; I, Misanthrope’s voice is amped up but at the same time sounds far away, like he’s up on stage at an outdoor festival in hell and we’re all the way back in the cheap seats, getting poked by demons with pitchforks. Once again the instruments are all meshed together into a blurry sonic wail, with screams and wails taking precedence over the music. The “mosh” nature of the original is somewhat lost, yet at the same time the track is so crazy sounding that you can’t help but laugh like a madman. This is truly music to lose your mind to. In a good way, of course! 

Final track “I Want Your Blood (2025)” follows the same path as its three predecessors in its Dark Clouds Mix, though this time the guitar is brought up a little. Otherwise the main add to this mix is a lot of murk and demonic growling, but really it doesn’t sound drastically different from the original mix. There’s just more hellish FX added to it, so like the previous Dark Clouds mixes it’s basically a more experimental, more “evil” take on the original mix. 

That’s it for the Season Of The Dead album, but over the past few months Bloodsong has put out a few other digital releases; I’ve just been too lazy to write about them until now! 

On Halloween of this past year, Bloodsong released the single Season Of The Dead, topically titled “Halloween ’24 Mix.” Per the notes, this is a demo mix of the eventual EP mix, but is not lacking any of its power. If anything this early version just sounds a little more barebones, almost like a live run-through of the track (impressive, given that Bloodsong’s a one-man band!). 

In September of 2024, Bloodsong’s first release of original music came out – titled Glub, it was comprised of two versions of the title track. First was the “Mannyfield Version,” dedicated to Manny Martinez, the recently-passed first drummer for the Misfits, followed by the Original Version of the song. 

“Glub” is inspired by the very first Misfits releases, “Cough/Cool” and “She,” particularly the former track. “Cough/Cool” was a smoky, jazzy number that had nothing much in common with later Misfits material, and Bloodsong stays very true to that vibe here. Like its inspiration source, “Glub” is a piano-driven lounge sort of tune; the Mannyfied Version lives up to its namesake with a lot of snare fills throughout the tune. 

The “Original Version” is quite similar. The snare fills are brought down a little, with the kickdrum getting more focus. Otherwise there isn’t much difference between the two versions that I could detect. Of the two, though, I’d say this one sounds the most like a lost number from the original Misfits sessions. Kudos to Bloodsong for trying to replicate the sound of this early, mostly-forgotten incarnation of the Misfits, though. 

In closing, Season Of The Dead comes off as highly recommended for anyone out there who likes the Misfits and/or Samhain (I only ever knew one guy who liked Samhain better than the Misfits, by the way – a guy I knew in college back in the ‘90s who not-so-coincidentally was also a total nutcase). Bloodsong hits the ball out of the park in his recreation of mid-‘80s Glenn Danzig music, and I had a blast listening to these songs. 

But what we really need is a physical release, like ideally on a neon orange cassette tape, similar to how Danzig’s own Black Laden Crown was recently released!

Search (Search #1)

 
Search, by Robert Weverka

January, 1973  Bantam Books

I first became aware of the 1972-1973 TV series Search some years ago; it was a little before my time and did not last long enough to reach syndication, so I was unfamiliar with it. But the concept of the show sounded cool: a team of “Probes” who had a continnuous audio-visual connection with a control team back at headquarters. 

In early 2014 the complete series was released on DVD, and I spent an exorbitant amount of money on it; at the time, it was one of those “manufactured on demand” releases, so there was no cheaper price option. However the first true episode, a TV movie titled Probe, was not included in the set, so I had to purchase that separately…and it was another exorbitantly-priced manufactured on demand disc that I had to shell out for. 

Well, I should have saved my money, as Search was for the most part a stage-bound, slow-moving show, and it was a chore to get through what few episodes there were. Only toward the end of the run, when a new producer tried to up the action quotient, did things really pick up, but even then it was too little, too late. In fact, I don’t even think I watched the entire series all the way through – and I know I fell asleep while watching the tv-movie Probe, which this tie-in paperback is a novelization of. 

The show itself was to be titled “Probe,” but due to another program with that title it was changed to Search. This paperback tie-in reflects that title change, but the TV movie itself was titled Probe. Tie-in novelist Richard Weverka also penned another Search novelization, but I don’t have that one; I came across this one in 2013 in a used bookstore in New Orleans, and only now have gotten around to reading it. 

Despite being only 152 pages, Search is a slow read, sort of like the TV movie itself. Interestingly there is nothing in the way of background setup, same as in the movie version. We are introduced to our protagonist, Hugh Lockwood (as played by Hugh O’Brian in the series), who is already a Probe agent, working for World Securities Corporation. As a Probe agent, Lockwood’s job is “the search and recovery of things that are missing.” 

But what sets Lockwood (and other Probe agents) apart from your standard private eye is that he is electronically hooked up with a control room that monitors everything Lockwood hears (courtesy an impant behind his ear), sees everything he sees (courtesy a video scanner on a ring he wears), and also is able to monitor his health (ie his heart rate, brain functions, etc). And also the control room – mainly through the guise of head honcho V.C.R. Cameron (Burgess Meredith, of all people) – can talk directly to Lockwood, no matter where in the world he happens to be. 

The setup seems to clearly be inspired by the contemporary Space Race, with the Probe agents a globe-trotting variation on the Apollo astronauts, their bodies monitored constantly by Mission Control. But a sort of “James Bond for the space age” setup is ruined with the later revelation – almost casually dispensed by Weverka – that Probe agents are “forbidden” to carry weapons!! And reading this made me recall why Search the show was such a bummer. The Probe agents were reduced to automatons, literal “probes” who essentially did the bidding of Cameron and the other techs back in mission control. Not being “allowed” to carry a gun (even to defend themselves!) was like the ultimate slap to the face…and something, I seem to recall, that the second producer on the show realized was a huge mistake, as only in the very final episodes of Search did you see one of the Probe agents even carrying a gun. 

Weverka tries to cater to the setup of the show while not having Lockwood appear to be an automaton. Unfortunately he only suceeds in making Lockwood seem passive-aggressive. Cameron will give an order, and Lockwood will grumble under his breath, or pretend not to hear the order. But then, Lockwood is nagged at through the entire book (and series). One of the techs is an attractive young lady who has an interest in Lockwood – as most women do, we’re informed – and there’s a lot of stuff where she’ll mutter angrily when some girl’s “heart rate picks up” when Lockwood talks to her. 

So essentially, Search is almost like a play from Ancient Greece, with Cameron and the other techs like the chorus who push Lockwood through the narrative, making all his decisions, etc. But we’re told that Lockwood was “the last Probe agent” to have the ear implant put in, etc – and, by the way, there’s no mention of the other two agents who featured in the series, so the book is like the show in that it never occurred to anyone to maybe have all the Probe guys meet up for an adventure or something. 

Despite being a guy who is constantly obeying the voices in his head, Lockwood we’re to understand is still a firebrand, a rule-breaker who picks up the chicks with aplomb. We meet him in this capacity, hooked up with some babe on “his first vacation in months,” but in a foreshadowing of the nagging and hectoring Lockwood will endure throughout the novel, Cameron starts talking to Lockwood through his ear implant right before Lockwood’s about to do the deed with the babe, and our poor hero has to send the girl off so he can scramble for New York, to be briefed on an emergency case. 

The case is also an indication that this is a TV show with a TV show rating: Lockwood is to find some diamonds that were stolen by the Nazis in the war. His company has been hired by a South African diamond firm that has bought the rights to the diamonds, they just need to find the damn things, and so they’ve hired World Securities. As a Probe agent, Lockwood is the one who gets to head over to Austria and talk to the old lady who was last known to have these diamonds…which were given to her by none other than Herman Goering! 

Along for the ride is Harold Streeter, the dapper employee of the South African company that hired World Securities (John Gielgud in the movie). His is the “comedic relief” role, serving up the jokes while Lockwood is the traditionally stoic protagonist. And throughout we have Cameron and team yammering in Lockwood’s ear. Weverka does a good job of conveying the setup; he refrains from annoyingly referring to Cameron’s voice as appearing in Lockwood’s ear, and just leaves it as “Cameron said” or “Cameron asked,” etc. But of course in the show, whenever Cameron would talk to Lockwood, we would see Burgess Meredith in a lab coat back in Mission Control. 

The story is very uninvolving, and reading the book it reminded me of why I fell asleep while watching the tv movie. I mean this was probably 2014, and I still remember falling asleep. Lockwood and Streeter find the old lady, Frau Ullman, who got the diamonds from Goering, but Lockwood of course is more interested in her hotstuff blonde daughter, Ullie (Elke Sommer). So we get the bantering stuff with the lady back in control getting her panties in a bunch because Ullie’s heartbeat increases when Lockwood talks to her, etc. 

Action is sporadic; like here at the Ullman estate Lockwood and Streeter are shot at from afar. Here is where we also get more reminder that Lockwood is not a self-sufficient troubleshooter as is typical of the genre. He relies on Cameron and team to give him intel on the situation, intel on his enemies, and also ideas on how to escape or fight back. It’s cool for Lockwood and all, but at the same time it robs him of his heroic qualities. 

Note though that Lockwood doesn’t kill anyone, not in the entirety of the book (or the entire series itself, so far as I can recall). He mostly gets in fistfights, reminding us again that this is the novelization of an early ‘70s TV show. That said, Lockwood does (eventually) get laid, courtesy Ullie, who tags along with Lockwood when her mother goes missing. I half expected Cameron and crew to give Lockwood step-by-step instructions while he was having sex, but our hero “goes offline” and handles the job himself. But novelist Weverka goes offline as well; “[Ullie] was voracious in her appetite for repeated fulfillment” is the extent of it. 

There is an attempt at globetrotting, denoting your typical Budget Bond; from Austria Lockwood follows leads that take him to…Florida! Eventually he finds himself mixed up with a bunch of old Nazis, many of whom are also looking for those lost diamonds. But still there isn’t much in the way of action, just Lockwood knocking people out or getting knocked out himself. And so far as the latter goes, once again Cameron and crew come to the rescue, coaxing Lockwood back to consciousness and giving him tips on how to escape his captors. 

It’s a strange and unwieldy setup, and granted it actually worked better on film, where quick cutting to Cameron and the others would add more drive to the action scenes. But on paper, where it all has to be explained in words, it only serves to make Lockwood seem incompetent, and constantly needing the support of control. Again this takes me back to the Space Race connotations, as the astronauts themselves often complained that Mission Control treated them like automatons, there to push buttons. 

Also in the tradition of a TV show, it all comes to a head with exposition. Lockwood keeps getting ambushed, wherever he goes, and neither he nor Cameron are capable of figuring out who the (clearly obvious) traitor is. So for a climax we have the traitor outed, via dialog, while Lockwood just stands there. And even here in the finale he doesn’t shoot anyone or even hold a gun. 

Reading this Search novelization makes it all the more clear why the show was not successful. It’s too talky, too slow-moving, and the protagonist is stymied by the technology. Compare to the later – and much more successful – Six Million Dollar Man, which did a far better job of incorporating “gee whiz” technology and a competent, self-sufficient protagonist.

The Butcher #14: African Contract

The Butcher #14: African Contract, by Stuart Jason

April, 1975  Pinnacle Books

Well, first the good news: James “Stuart Jason” Dockery for once writes an installment of The Butcher that isn’t a retread of every other volume he wrote, meaning that we don’t have the recurring template that I’ve nauseatingly complained about for the past several reviews of this series. But that brings us to the bad news: African Contract isn’t very good. It isn’t very good at all. 

This is a shame, because once again James Dockery proves himself a pretty good writer. But man, his plotting is so bizarre that even Russell Smith would get frustrated by one of Dockery’s books. Because once again Dockery takes a novel about a former mobster turned government assassin – Bucher the Butcher, of course – and, instead of the inner-city action piece one might expect from that setup, he turns in a tale where Bucher goes on a safari in Africa…oh, and apparently gets married! 

The reader knows he (and I’m sticking with the old-fashioned “he” instead of “they,” ‘cause we all know there’s no woman anywhere ever who would read a book titled The Butcher #14: African Contract, don’t we? I mean, let’s be honest!) is in for a bumpy and unusual read when African Contract opens, not with the series template opener of Bucher in some unstated city being dogged by two colorfully-named Mafia goons, both of which Bucher will gun down before being briefly arrested by a slackjawed yokel cop…but instead, African Contract opens with Bucher already in South Africa, already on a job – and indeed, there is no part where he is stalked in some city and briefly arrested, etc. (BTW I was trying to see how far I could stretch out that sentence.) 

Granted, that part will come later, but this time Dockery grafts his usual recurring schtick within the storyline proper (such as it is). So we don’t get the customary scene of Bucher being arrested, the slackjawed yokel cop going on about how illegal Bucher’s silencer is, etc. This does not mean that African Contract is wholly new, though; there are trace elements of Dockery’s previous installments throughout. 

Most notably would be #7: Death Race, an earlier tale in which Bucher, would you believe, fell in love, and you get a no-prize if you guess what happened to the gal in question. This time Dockery throws an old flame of Bucher’s on us, with little in the way of setup; Bucher’s in South Africa, on his latest assignment, when there’s a knock at his hotel room door…and he’s shocked to see his old girlfriend, blonde beauty Franziska, a South African babe who “picked Bucher up” on the street in Paris, years before, and Bucher immediately went for the gorgeous young college student with her “plump breasts.” 

It seems that Bucher was already a White Hat agent when he met Franziska, as it’s stated he was “on a mission” when she threw herself on him in Paris; at any rate, she calls him “gunslinger” as a pet name, so she is aware of his mob background. But here’s the thing: Franziska was the most important woman in Bucher’s life (though obviously we’ve never heard of her)…but Bucher thought she was dead! There’s a hazy backstory that she flew back home to South Africa, but the plane crashed, and Bucher was devastated for days because he thought she was gone. 

But now here the blonde is, alive and well – and what’s more, she’s a doctor, now. (Dockery isn’t very specific on how much time has passed, btw). She explains that she got off the plane when they had a stopover, and she herself later heard of the crash; further, she claims she sent Bucher a cable telling him that she was still alive, but Bucher never got any cable…so he’s just staggered that Franziska is still alive, after all this time. 

But Franziska isn’t done with the revelations yet – she also says she was pregnant at the time, but did not tell Bucher…however, the baby was stillborn. I mean all of this is a lot to dump on a guy who thought you were dead (for how many years we do not know), but still one would think Bucher would be a little suspicious of Franziska…especially because it soon develops that the mob knows Bucher is here in South Africa, and they’re sending people to kill him! 

Oh and Franziska has become a doctor due to the loss of her and Bucher’s child, and Bucher takes her back into his arms, and she will be the sole female character in the novel. But, anyone who has read the previous Dockery novels will know he is a “fade to black” sort of writer when it comes to the sleazy stuff; there are zero sex scenes in African Contract, and, also as is customary for Dockery, there is zero exploitation of Franziska. About the most we get is a bit, bizarrely late in the novel, where Dockery suddenly decides to write about her boobs:

Another thing the veteran reader of The Butcher might note from the above excerpt is that Franziska talks like every other female character in the series. A very highfalutin, reserved, “I rarely curse or use contractions” sort of demeanor, so Bucher cleary has a type…not to mention this is another facet in the (eternally?) recurring plot of Dockery’s installments – every novel sees Bucher in a sort of purgatory in which he experiences the same sequence of events, meets the same sort of woman, over and over again. 

Another thing the cagey reader might’ve noticed from the above is that Franziska refers to Bucher and herself as “husband and wife!” And mind you, this is Chapter 10 of the novel, and this is how the reader actually learns the two have gotten married! Poor Bucher is really head over heels for this girl he thought was dead…this is after 9 chapters in which Franziska acts increasingly suspicious…like for example she takes Bucher on a trip into the jungle in her “bush buggy,” and despite being a doctor she’s got this tricked-out truck that’s positively stuffed with weaponry, from rifles to machine guns. And when Bucher questions her on the necessity of this stuff, she has an explanation for each thing, like charging rhinos and whatnot, and Bucher accepts her explanations, and you wonder how this guy became such a top mobster (not to mention special agent). 

The main plot has to do with Bucher trying to figure out if the Mafia has started up a “replacement parts” deal where they give new human organs to old and dying mobsters. What’s been happening is that high-level mobsters who were previously old and near death have suddenly shown up looking younger and healthier. And also one of them was about to turn state’s evidence, or something, and exploded, and the theory is that these replacement parts might be booby trapped or somesuch. 

But as usual with a Dockery Butcher, all this is just background detail. Dockery does cater to his recurring template, just a bit out of the typical order: two superdeformed goons do inevitably come after Bucher, in the jungle no less, but Bucher easily dispatches them. There’s also a lot of stuff with various tribes Bucher and Fraziska encounter in the jungle, in particular one that is led by a guy who speaks in perfect British English, courtesy an education abroad. 

There’s also a lot of “flying fiction,” which harkens back to #10: Deadly Doctor and #11: Valley Of Death, in which Bucher suddenly became an aviator – which might indicate that Dockery had read those two installments, which were courtesy Lee Floren. Here Bucher flies an STOL around the jungle…I mean folks the title is not misleading at all. This one’s really an African Contract, and it’s more about Bucher on safari than it is the gritty action tale you might expect. 

Action is infrequent and, as ever with Dockery, fairly bloodless. Honestly, The Butcher is an anemic series in Dockery’s hands, not to mention how little it has in the way of sleazy exploitation. That said, there is still a ghoulish vibe to the series, mostly courtesy the dark humor Dockery brings to his plotting. But the thing is, Bucher must consistently be made to look stupid, as he overlooks obvious things…and, once again, the finale is a nightmare of exposition as everything is patiently explained to Bucher. This too is part of the recurring template of Dockery’s books. 

Overall, there isn’t much to recommend African Contract. I mean, saying “at least it isn’t a retread of the previous volumes” isn’t the most sterling endorsement. But what we get in exchange is so lackluster that a retread would’ve actually been preferable. Also, someone entirely new to the men’s adventure series will suspect something is amiss with Franziska’s story, but Bucher has proven himself in past Dockery installments to be a fool when it comes to women. 

At this point, I am looking forward to when Michael Avallone takes over The Butcher, but that won’t be for many more volumes – not until #27, to be precise.