Book Of Justice #2: Zaitech Sting

Book Of Justice #2: Zaitech Sting, by Jack Arnett
February, 1990  Bantam Books

Luckily the second volume of Book Of Justice is better than the first. Interestingly this one’s copyright “Justice Enterprises,” whereas the first one was copyright Mike McQuay. I assume though he also wrote this one, as well as the ensuing two volumes: the “about the author” bio at the end of the book presesnts a fictional history for fictional “Jack Arnett,” implying that Arnett was once involved with global intrigue but now lives the life of a beachcomber. His age is given as 42, which I believe would correlate with McQuay’s age – McQuay died just a few years later, of a heart attack, at the young age of 45. (I say “young” because I’m 45 and I sure don’t feel old!...At least most of the time.)

We meet William Justice and his trusty team as they’re plying the waters outside Haven, the island republic Justice heads up. There’s some business about a near-revolution in nearby Cuba and Justice has some background with the man behind the failed revolution, Marto Chavez. Currently Chavez’s people are escaping Cuba on a boat that’s just entered Haven waters. Jusitce, on a yacht that’s secretly loaded with heat-seeker missiles and various other weapons, communicates with the captain piloting the Hind helicopter that’s chasing the refugees. Sardi, Justice’s turban-wearing right-hand man, implores Justice to seek peace. Meanwhile Bob Jenks, the brawny former Federal agent, insists Justice “blow the fuckers out of the sky.”

Instead Justice does what no men’s adventure protagonist should ever do – he bides his time, indecesive. He reaches what he thinks is a détente with the Cuban captain…who only pretends to fly away, but then turns back and opens fire on the ship of refugees. Finally Justice orders the Hind destroyed via those heat-seekers, after which he and his comrades board the refugee boat and gun down the surviving Cuban soldiers in cold blood. Meanwhile the refugees have almost all been massacred; lots of grim stuff here, with mentions of dead kids and even Jenks moved to tears by the sight. A bit too dour, I think, for this particular genre. Oh and throughout Kim, the hotstuff Eurasian babe who acts as the Smurfette of Justice’s main crew, goes around in a hot pink string bikini with a Wild West-style .45 strapped to her shapely thigh, blowing out the brains of surrendering Cuban soldiers with her AR-15.

Meanwhile Chika Stark, a half-Japanese lady who has also come to Haven to seek refuge, has troubles of her own: a pair of sadistic CIA goons corner her in her apartment, kill the teen girl Chika has befriended, and then tell Chika they’ll murder more innocents if Chika doesn’t come quietly with them. Apparently she created something the CIA now wants for American security, and they’re royally pissed that she “sold out” to the Japanese, apparently offering them the device. This brings Justice into the plot; while deep-diving to look at the refugee corpses – more dour stuff that seems like overkill at this point, though presumably it exists to show us how Justice gets “emotionally involved” with the people he tries to save – Justice witnesses the two goons trying to kill Chika when she jumps off their boat in an escape attemtp. Justice breaks the neck of one agent and watches as the other kills himself; we’re only like 40 pages into the book and there’s already been more action than last time.

But then, McQuay clearly wants to shoot higher than “just another men’s adventure series” with Book Of Justice; there are various subplots about politics on Haven (some local rabble-rouser named Caido Lienard wants to run against Justice as boss of the island republic), investment banking, and a muckracking Haven reporter named Stromberg who wants to get the goods on Justice. Unfortunately, rather than coming off like a big suspense series, I just found it all tedious and tiresome. Justice already has a large enough entourage, we don’t need extra stuff about yet more characters. Again, this is why ‘70s men’s adventure novels were so much better – they were just more primal, sticking to their sole lone wolf protagonists. Of course there were exceptions to the rule, but for the most part ‘70s men’s adventure was more streamlined. Zaitech Sting almost needs a Cast Of Characters page for the reader to keep up.

McQuay was a veteran of Gold Eagle and brings that imprint’s distrust of the CIA to this series; after digging up the corpses of the agents he killed (seriously, the first quarter of this novel is almost ghoulish, with several scenes of Justice either looking at or searching through dead bodies), Justice determines they were working for the US government. So he heads to the White House and, amid much televised hulabaloo, reveals the charred, mutilated bodies of the CIA agents to the TV cameras – which happen to be broadcasting the event live. Oh and I forgot to mention, but either McQuay bet on the wrong horse or just decided to set this series in an alternate reality, as it’s revealed that Dan Quayle is President! But then Haven’s already been presented as an island nation with UA status, so technically this series is alternate reality. Oh and to bring it all home – none other than Donald Trump is mentioned on page 53! And to bring it even further home – CNN gets mentioned in a negative light, pushing the fake news that “William Lambert” (aka the name the rest of the world knows William Justice by) is a terrorist, con artist, and general bad guy.

Eventually we meet this novel’s main villain, a Japanese dude named Shirishata who heads up a family-owned business and employs sadistic means to achieve his goals. He wants the “organic computer” Chika has designed, a computer that mixes technology with nature and runs off biochips. He sends his sword-wielding goons after Chika on Haven, resulting in some heroic sacrifice courtesy Chavez. Oh and meanwhile Kim gets friendly with Lienard, the Haven rabble rouser who challenges Justice to become “CEO” of the island republic; they even have a sex scene that’s so off-page we only learn anything even happened via casual dialog. However McQuay will occasionally try to exploit Kim’s ample charms, with her traipsing around Justice’s fortress HQ in skimpy, nipple-revealing clothing, but honestly it comes off like half-assed catering to genre demands, with little of the impression of sleazebaggery I demand in my pulp writers.

The saddest thing about Zaitech Sting is that it has the potential for pulp greatness, but squanders it for a good 170 or so pages (the book runs to a too-long 200 pages)…and then, in the final several pages, we have Justice, Kim, and Jenks fighting actual honest to Zod ninjas in Japan. And it’s straight out of MIA Hunter #4, too: all you’ve gotta do is point your machine gun, depress the trigger, and veritable hordes of the sword-wielding crazies will just fall dead at your feet. Anyway all this happens after Justice has gone through the trouble of finding out who Chika is – this courtesy Kim, who hacks the CIA database (Haven hacking!!) and learns that Chika was working on an “organic computer” via a molecule that could render “biochips” a thing of reality and thus throw the current geo-political-corporate landscape into riot. Now she’s been taken by Shirsihata, who lives in a castle surrounded by armed men and tons of ninjas. The plot finally kicks in gear as Justice and comrades fly over there and HALO jump into Shirishata’s domain.

Even here though McQuay can’t be content to dole out “just another action series;” while the bullets start flying in Japan, we have these interminable cutovers to Haven as the election goes down, “William Lambert” versus Caido Lienard, with Sardi handling it all given Justice’s disinterest in the whole matter. After a passionate speech about the good “Lambert” has done for Haven, Sardi succeeds in winning the election for his boss. Occasionally we’ll cut back over to the good stuff, with Justice running around in “black camous” and wielding an M-16/shotgun combo, blowing away ninjas left and right. McQuay slightly gets into the gore, with descriptions of “brainpains blowing out” and the like. But even here, while they’re getting shot at, Justice and Kim find the opportunity to discuss “all this killing,” and for Justice to allay Kim’s concern that perhaps Lienard might be a better leader for Haven, given his promise of peace. Justice quashes this, though, saying that Haven needs brutal warriors like Kim and Jenks and Justice and the others – the world is out to get Haven, and it needs defenders.

So concerned is McQuay with all this stuff that, when Justice finally confronts main villain Shirishata, who is holding a sword to captive Kim’s throat, McQuay barrels through the denoument in a single, unsatisfying paragraph: Justice goads Shirihata into attacking him, stops the blade in midair with his bare hands, and breaks the bastard’s neck with a single kick. Lame!! From there it’s back to Haven, where a defeated Lienard comes across Justice as he’s breakfasting by the sea and pulls a gun on him – a gun which Justice learned about when Lienard came to the island years ago, and which Justice secretly had broken. (Guns are forbidden on Haven, by the way – except of course for soldiers like Justice and his crew, which is about as New World Order as you can get…) Anyway Justice in his omniscience knows that Lienard was sent here as a mole by the French, his purpose to wrest control of Haven from Justice and turn it over to his evil French masters. Instead Justice offers Lienard a new mission: to become a triple agent, an inside man with the wily French government.

And here mercifully Zaitech Sting ends; impossibly, the next two volumes are even longer, with the final novel in particular appearing to be a veritable doorstop of a book. I think my greatest issue with Book Of Justice is that none of it’s very interesting…the characters are not likable, and Justice still seems more like “Mr. Malibu” than the cold-hearted killer he’s constantly proclaiming himself to be. I mean folks he even gives his followers the occasional pep talk with a hug. Also, given that it’s now the ‘90s, computers have entered the fray, so we get a lot of stuff about Kim hacking the CIA database and delivering all sorts of exposition about it. All of which is to say that Book Of Justice has more in common with the “suspense thrillers” that eventually cluttered bookstore shelves, and less in common with the men’s adventure yarns of the ‘70s and ‘80s, though given the ninjas it’s clear McQuay was trying to merge the two genres.