Mafia Death Watch (The Sharpshooter #16)

Mafia Death Watch, by Bruno Rossi

No month stated, 1975  Leisure Books

Well folks I can hardly believe it, but here we are: the final volume of The Sharpshooter. It’s taken me over ten years but I’ve now made my way through this entire series – a series which was published in the span of two years! – and I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself now that I have no further adventures of Johnny “The Sharpshooter” Rock to look forward to. 

But on the plus side, I’ve been looking forward to reading Mafia Death Watch since I started collecting the series all those years ago. Rayo Casablanca memorably declared “take a shower after this puppy,” noting the outrageous sleaze element of this final volume – something Lynn Munroe and Justin Marriott also pointed out. But if you all know anything about me from the reviews on here, you’ll know this one sounded right up my twisted alley! And I have to say, Mafia Death Watch certainly delivers on the sleaze angle: we’ve got copious female exploitation, several explicit sex scenes, gory firefights, and not one but three separate characters who receive their fates courtesy a bullet to their nether regions. Indeed there seems to be a sick fascination with shooting people in their bodily orifices. 

This final volume was courtesy a writer named Dan Reardon, of whom not much is known – save that, in 1980, he also published an installment of the Nick Carter: Killmaster series (Tarantula Strike, which I have but haven’t read). What makes this interesting is that there are a lot of Killmaster elements in Mafia Death Watch. “Johnny” (as Reardon refers to Rock) uses a “luger” as one of his favorite firearms, a la Nick Carter’s Luger, and Johnny also carries a “golf ball” that emits tear gas, similar to Carter’s mini-bomb “Pierre.” Johnny also carries a derringer in a “crotch holster,” which brings to mind where Carter generally stores Pierre. Anyway, I found all this interesting because it’s as if Reardon was already thinking of a Killmaster installment when he wrote this book. 

But folks there’s no volume of Killmaster as perverted and sleazy as Mafia Death Watch. We get our indication posthaste of what sort of novel we’re about to read: the novel opens with a chapter in which “Mafia chieftan” Joe Bartolo, in Detroit, meets with a lovely young girl named Nancy Jenkins; Nancy is a new hooker, you see, one who is part of the Mafia’s stable, and she’s had second thoughts. In fact her uncle down in Florida wants to pay for her to go to college. Bartolo is kind and understanding, telling her no problem – but first he’d like to try her out. This leads to a crazed moment rivalling the opening of Corporate Hooker, Inc.: Bartolo, having gotten Nancy naked on his pool table, whips out an automatic shotgun and has her fuck it while she blows him – and then pulls the trigger when he climaxes! 

Meanwhile Johnny Rock is visiting his parents’ gravesite in New York; we learn it’s four years after the first volume, and Johnny, despite his better interests, still visits this grave each year. We’re told the Mafia has yet to figure out that “Johnny Rock” is the son of this murdered couple, and interestingly Reardon does not make Rock the legendary figure he is in the other Sharpshooter novels. Indeed throughout the book Johnny refers to himself by a variety of sarcastic titles – ie “I’m just a citizen,” and etc – and there’s never a part where his Mafia prey realize he’s the same guy who has been raising hell for them for the past four years. 

Speaking of Johnny’s origins, I think it’s clear Reardon was brought into the series the same way earlier ghostwriter Len Levinson was: series editor Peter McCurtin gave Reardon a few Sharpshooter books and told him to read them. But in Reardon’s case I’m certain it was one of Len’s books he was given to read, for Mafia Death Watch is a direct sequel to Len’s second contribution to the series: Night Of The Assassins. Johnny is attacked at the gravesite by some men who overpower him; they knock him out and fly him to Miami, a city Johnny last visited “a few months ago” (later stated as being “last spring”). The captors turn out to be Miami cops, and the guy who put them on Johnny turns out to be Detective Jenkins of the Miami police force. 

I couldn’t recall if Jenkins had been in Night Of The Assassins, but I did remember that there had been a “Detective Jenkins” in Len’s Bronson novel, Streets Of Blood. I checked my copy of Night Of The Assassins and, sure enough, a “Detective Jenkins” appeared in it as well. So I went to the source: I told Len that Reardon’s Sharpshooter was a sequel to one of Len’s own, with Len’s character Detective Jenkins appearing, Jenkins even mentioning the “Peter Dominick” pseudonym Johnny had used in Len’s novel. However Len’s Bronson novel was set in New York, not Miami, so I asked Len about the Jenkins character, and if he was aware that this final Sharpshooter was a sequel to one of his own books: 

John Jenkins was my supervisor when I investigated child abuse in Dade County, Florida, which included Miami. He was a retired NYPD police officer. I have used his name in several of my novels. I never heard of Dan Reardon. 

So then my assumption is Night Of The Assassins was probably the most recently-published installment when Reardon started working on his manuscript (from Len I know it took “about a year” for these manuscripts to see print), thus Reardon used it as a springboard for his own novel. However Johnny doesn’t remain in Miami very long. Jenkins turns out to he the “uncle” who was going to fund Nany Jenkins’s college education, and he’s since found out that the girl was murdered – “shot through the genitals.” Jenkins wants to finance Johnny on a blitz campaign against the sadist who killed his niece. Jenkins doesn’t have the details, he just knows the Mafia was involved, and he also knows from the events here in Miami “last spring” that Johnny Rock is the number one killer of Mafia. 

It’s interesting to note that Johnny Rock is in no way, shape or form a hero in the hands of Reardon. Not that he ever has been in the hands of any of the series ghostwriters, but here he’s particularly crazed and sadistic. For example, he is in no way pleasant to Jenkins, and even takes the opportunity to punch him in the gut after they’ve eaten a lobster dinner. Granted, Jenkins hired some men to knock Johnny out, drug him, and take him to Miami. But through the course of the novel Johnny will show no heroic nature; there’s a shocking part midway through where he even shoots a dead girl in the head so as to taunt a mobster. The implication is he’s just as bad as the Mafia he’s sworn to kill, and the portrait is so crazed you wish there’d been more volumes of the series just to see how much crazier Reardon could’ve gotten. 

We get more rampant sleaze in a cutaway sequence in which we meet Tonia, yet another Mafia hooker; this one trainbound for Detroit with her pimp, Tony, as well as a Mafia stooge named Cardo. The implication is clear that Tony is going to give Tonia as a “gift” to Cardo once they get to the city. Or, as Cardo puts it, “I kept thinking about them nice tits of yours.” As with the opening chapter, we get a very explicit sequence told from the girl’s point of view as Cardo “eats it out of” her – despite her revulsion over the heavyset thug, Tonia’s body reacts to just about any sexual stimuli. There’s a big focus here on how Tonia’s body reacts to the various probings, that’s for sure. The scene has a nice conclusion, though, with Tonia getting hold of Cardo’s gun and blowing his guts out – after which Johnny Rock arrives on the scene. 

But for a character that is so built up, Tonia is almost casually dispensed with. She gives Johnny some info on the Detroit mob scene, engages him in the expected bedroom shenanigans (which unbelievably occur off-page), and then is almost shockingly removed from the narrative. Later Johnny will meet yet another hooker with a heart of gold, Anne, and she will turn out to be what passes for the main female character in Mafia Death Watch. But she’s so similar to Tonia – who gets more of an intro and more character development – that you wonder why Reardon didn’t just combine the two characters into one. 

At least Reardon keeps the focus on Johnny throughout, and doesn’t forget the action. He’s merciless in his attacks on the mob. There are frequent scenes in which he’ll take his Luger or .38 and go out blasting; an extended sequence in the final quarter has Johnny staging a series of lightning strikes on various Mafia bigwigs, blasting them away from afar with his rifle. But despite being prone to aggressive action, Reardon’s version of Johnny Rock still displays some of Len’s take on the character in that he’s a little too concerned with things at times. There’s a bit too much needless explanation on how such and such things happen, or what Johnny thinks might happen, or how certain things came to pass. What I mean to say is, Reardon often stops the narrative to explain too much, and sometimes Johnny comes off as too thoughtful, as did Len’s. But as we’ll recall, this was in Len’s first two installments; in his last one, Headcrusher, he delivered a Johnny Rock who had no anxiety hangups and, per the directive of McCurtin, “killed in cold hate.” 

Actually the occasional anxiety jibes against Johnny’s otherwise bullish behavior; he meets Anne by going into a mob bar and starting up a ruckus, setting his sights on Anne because she looks more sophisticated than the other hookers there. Johnny basically just follows a string of names to figure out who was behind the murder of Nancy Jenkins, and Anne helps him make a lot of connections. But there’s a fair bit of coincidence at play, too; Johnny will find someone in the chain, only to discover they are related to someone else in it, or what have you – what I mean to say is, we aren’t talking a highbrow mystery here. Oh and also I love it that Johnny specifically goes back to that bar to dish out bloody payback to the thugs who beat him up during the ruckus, even blowing out the knees of the bartender before killing him. 

And Johnny is certainly brutal in Reardon’s hands; I mentioned already the shocking part where he shoots a dead girl in the head. But later, when one of Johnny’s new friends is almost beaten to death, our hero finds out that Bartolo’s “main girl” was behind it – yet another hooker, one who has been elevated to becoming the top man’s mistress. Johnny breaks into Bartolo’s compound, kills a few guards, and surprises the girl in her bedroom (dressed in a negligee and reading a “paperback,” no less). Here Johnny does something not even Russell Smith would’ve come up with in his most fevered moment. Johnny plays a variation on “an eye for an eye” and treats the girl to the same death Nancy Jenkins experienced: “The .38 spat twice into the gaping orifice.” A “vicious rape” indeed, and well beyond any of the sadism Johnny Rock committed in any previous volume…which is really saying something. 

Surprisingly, Johnny isn’t done shooting into “gaping orifices.” The finale borrows from McCurtin and Russell Smith in that Bartolo and his various underlings conveniently gather together in one spot; this even takes place on a boat, same as the usual scenario courtesy those other two series writers. Instead of blowing the place up with a bazooka or whatever, Johnny gets on the boat and delivers Bartolo with a fitting sendoff – Bartolo by the way having disappeared from the narrative since the first chapter. SPOILER WARNING, but I mean come on we aren’t talking Citizen Kane here or anything. Johnny holds his rifle on Bartolo and has him stand in front of his underlings as a sign of what happens to men who shoot unarmed girls in the groin – and then jams his rifle up Bartolo’s ass and pulls the trigger! 

Indeed, Mafia Death Watch is so depraved and grimy that it equals other such lurid crime paperbacks of the era: Death List, The Savage Women, and even Bronson: Blind Rage. Sales must’ve been really low for the series not to have continued past this point; I can imagine Peter McCurtin was thrilled to discover a writer who could deliver such wanton sleaze and violence…with pretty good prose stylings, to boot! But this was it for The Sharpshooter; last we see of Johnny Rock he’s gotten out of the hospital, where he spent three weeks recuperating from injuries he received in the climax (Anne by his side the entire time, we’re informed). He heads down to Miami to meet again with Detective Jenkins – telling Jenkins that the money he was going to use to pay for Nancy Jenkins’s college education can now be used to pay for Anne’s. 

And that’s it for The Sharpshooter. I could re-read the series, as I’ve done with other series I’ve finished, like The Baroness, and have planned to do with TNT and John Eagle Expeditor. And maybe I will. But given the jumbled nature of this series, with manuscripts from The Marksman brought over and changed to Johnny Rock stories and etc, I don’t see how much reward there would be in the re-reading. Then again maybe I’ll change my mind in a couple years. In closing, The Sharpshooter was one of the series that inspired me to start this blog in the first place – I remember how excited I was to learn about it, and quickly went about collecting all the volumes. I know my reviews are overlong and pedantic, but I hope over the years I have inspired similar excitement in other readers.