Stryker #3: Drug Run

Stryker #3: Drug Run, by William Crawford
October, 1974  Pinnacle Books

Now this is more like it – with the third volume of Stryker, William Crawford finally figures out how to write a fast-paced, violent ‘70s crime paperback; reduced – but not gone – are the random asides, arbitrary digressions, and incessant POV-hopping that mired his previous books. Same goes for the overwriting; Drug Run is a mere 146 pages, of pretty big print.

But the good stuff Crawford’s always done is here, and thus undimmed by the usual excess baggage: a hard-bitten bastard of a hero, moments of gory (but realistic) violence, and of course, characters puking and shitting themselves (a Crawford staple if there ever was one). Oh and lots of “flying fiction,” another Crawford staple, but not as pages-consuming as say The Assassin.

It’s some unstated time after the second volume; long enough for Stryker to go into “temporary retirement,” living on the family ranch with his mother. But Colin Stryker’s no ranch-hand mama’s boy like Dakota; within the first page he’s decided to go back out into the world and kick some ass. (Oh and it’s revealed this time that his mother’s sort of a witch…and that Stryker inherited a bit of a sixth sense from her!) The memory of Kitty Tiel, the pretty young blonde who overdosed in the previous book, enslaved into drugs and whoredom and whatnot by unscrupulous drug-runners, is what pulls Stryker back into his newfound role of vengeance-dispensing.

Stryker hops on his Cessna and heads on over to the little town in New Mexico where Kitty’s mom and dad live – only to find the dad dead via shotgun suicide and the mom about to OD on drugs. The same bastards have gotten hold of the parents; Kitty was forced to pose for “pornographic photos,” and these were sent to mom and pop, provoking the latter into suicide and the former into the squalor of drugs…which were provided to her by the very same sadists who got Kitty hooked. And, just as with Kitty, they’ve got mom turning tricks – in her own home! Stryker quickly displays that he’s not your average good samaritan action hero; he slaps Mrs. Tiel around, forces a water spicket down her throat, then stands by as she pukes several times – Crawford quickly developing his “someone will puke” theme.

Stryker also soon displays his bad-assery when it comes to his opponents; when two thugs come by Mrs. Riel’s place to ensure she’s dead from an OD, Stryker so savagely hits one of them that his jaw is broken in three places, and later guts him with an icepick. The surviving thug gets a molar ripped out and his face bashed to pieces, but Stryker’s true to his word and lets him live in exchange for info. Kitty, a promising actress, was ensnared by Hollywood players who were in reality drug runners; they hooked her on heroin and had her in porn flicks and turning tricks. So Stryker decides to just smash the heroin pipeline itself.

This entails that other Crawford staple – a long sequence set in Mexico. In fact, practically the entirety of Drug Run occurs in Mexico. Stryker learns of a major kingpin in the siera mountains, and looks to an old colleague named Flok – a former Mexican cop – for info. Stryker discovers the kingpin is named Villa, and heads into the mountains to snuff him out. He’s promptly captured, another mainstay of Crawford’s fiction; stripped naked and held in a pitch-black cave, his only cellmate a screeching bat. This is definitely a hackle-raising sequence, and Crawford skillfully plays out the tension and creepiness.

Stryker’s interrogated by two of Villa’s men, one a big brute and the other a cane-wielding sadist. This sequence plays out unexpectedly, thanks to the presence of the elderly female cook employed by Villa; Stryker gets one look at her and realizes she is a witch on the level of his mother. There’s a strange supernatural element here with Stryker getting a quick whiff of some unholy stench (which of course causes him to barf), and later it’s intimated that this was the ghostly stink of the woman’s long-dead husband and son, both of whom were apparently killed by the brutish thug. It’s not explained, left as a mystery, but it all works in Stryker’s favor – a bit unsatisfying so far as the genre goes (an action-series protagonist should never get out of a jam thanks to supernatural mumbo-jumbo), but it’s at least played mostly on the level.

Stryker gets himself an M-1 carbine and a couple horses and heads out of the mountains before Villa and his men can return. This leads to another nice action scene, where Stryker walks into an ambush but again turns the tables. Crawford’s action scenes never have the bigscale vibe of other men’s adventure novels of the era, operating more on a personal, as I say realistic, level, but when they hit they hit pretty hard. So here we have heads blown into gory mush and a dude soiling his britches when Stryker gets his grips on him. This leads to another good bit, where Stryker stages a raid on Villa’s place, gets the man himself, and tosses him out of his Cessna – a sequence only ruined by unnecessarily-technical flying description.

Curiously the book seems to end here, but limps on for an unspectacular final quarter as Stryker heads to LA, looking to take out at least one of the runners who got their heroin from Villa’s pipeline…heroin they’d use to prey on naïve starlets and hook them into whoredom. The book is on the same level of drug-paranoia as Maryjane Tonight At Angels Twelve; Stryker (and Crawford) isn’t just against heroin – he thinks marijuana is a tool of the devil, as well. But then as I’ve mentioned before, there’s a lot of similarity between the writing styles of Crawford and Martin Caidin; both have incredibly reactionary tones along with interminable “flying” sequences.

Unfortunately all this comes off like anticlimax after the material with Villa. Stryker sets his sights on a former actor turned drug runner; he might not be the guy who got Kitty, but he’ll just represent the whole damned group and suffer for it regardless. But instead of gun-blazing action, Stryker goes about an elaborate sting operation where he poses as the “new Villa” and tries to get this guy to go in with him, intending to set him up and burn him. Unfortunately the guy’s guard is a heroin junkie himself and decides to take matters into his own hands – a tense scene which has the ludicrous climax of Stryker bad-mouthing the guy until he puts down his gun!

Crawford here develops a subplot that a lawyer wants to help Stryker get all the charges from the first volume dropped, so Stryker can “go home,” ie be a cop again. The novel ends with Stryker back on the ranch with his mom and blinded daughter (who humorously has yet to get a single line of dialog in the series), planning to give the lawyer a call. There was only one more volume, so perhaps it will serve as an actual resolution to the series. Crawford was poised to be Pinnacle’s “house” writer – as William W. Johnstone later was – but it seems that his involvement with the publisher came to a sudden end in 1974. His last publications were pseudonymous novels for book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel. I’d still like to know more about the guy, but my assumption is he passed away sometime in the late ‘70s.