Thunderstrike In Syria (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #125)

Thunderstrike In Syria, by Nick Carter

No month stated, 1979  Charter Books

According to his 1981 interview with Will Murray, this was the only volume of Nick Carter: Killmaster Joseph Rosenberger ever wrote, for the following reasons: “the advances are low, because I don’t have the time, and, mainly, because there isn’t a byline.” Despite the latter, Rosenberger’s stamp is all over Thunderstrike In Syria, complete with even a character named “Josef Risenberg.” The novel comes off like the first-person installment of Death Merchant that never was. 

I really mean it; throughout I had a hard time remembering that narrator Nick Carter wasn’t really Richard Camellion. And, other than an early meeting with his AXE boss David Hawk and occasional references to his trademark weapons, our protagonist does come off more like the Death Merchant. There are a lot of opionated asides, random bursts of arcane trivia, and detailings of various weapons and vehicles which seemed to me outside the typical Nick Carter realm. In short, the “Nick Carter” who narrates this book seems more like a roving one-man army than the secret agent of the other books. There’s also a ton of martial arts stuff, very reminiscent of Rosenberger’s earlier Mace series. 

It’s clear though that Rosenberger reigned in his usual impulses and catered to the series style guide. The narrative is a little more tame than the average Death Merchant, with none of Rosenberger’s typical “the goof woke up and found himself in hell” sort of phrases. Also there are no footnotes nor any mentions of the Cosmic Lord of Death. Rather, Rosenberger hits the bases required by all the series ghostwriters, with Nick scoring with two women (I believe the series guideline was three per book, though) and sticking to his trio of weapons: Wilhelmina the Luger, Hugo the stiletto, and Pierre the gas bomb. Rosenberger even referes to the AXE tattoo on Nick’s forearm, something which I believe had been phased out by this time and was really only present in the earliest books. 

But Thunderstrike In Syria can in no way be confused with the novels in the Lyle Kenyon Engel years. It’s not even similar to the Nick Carter installments that came later in the ‘80s, which for the most part went for a Ludlum-esque “realistic” espionage angle. What it is like is…you guessed it, a Death Merchant novel. Ever been reading one of those and thought to yourself, “Man, it would be great if Richard Camellion himself was telling this story?” Then you owe it to yourself to read Thunderstrike In Syria. And heck, here you’ll even find Rosenberger writing a first-person sex scene, and if that doesn’t raise your hackles, nothing will. 

And as mentioned, Rosenberger certainly attempts to cater to the series mandate in this regard, as within the first pages Nick’s telling us about his colleague Leah’s awesome bod: “breasts full and round, that always seemed to be struggling for release.” Often throughout Nick will remind us of the ample charms of various women he encounters, which again is much different than the typically-asexual Richard Camellion. Leah is an Israeli agent and the two are in Jerusalem to probe a suspected SLA front. Nick informs us he’s already been briefed by Hawk: intel has it that the SLA plans to unleash nerve gas in New York and somehow blame it on the Israelis, so that the US will stop sending money to Israel. Boy, Thunderstrike In Syria is certainly from a different era – today supposed elected leaders cry on the House floor when they vote to fund Israel! (But on the other hand, uh, speaking of “struggling for release…”)  

Rosenberger wrote a pro-smoking book in the ‘60s, and he’s still a proud inhaler: when Leah mentions that the Surgeon General has stated that smoking is dangerous to one’s health, Nick responds, “The Surgeon General [is] dangerous to the health of smokers.” Rosenberger brings another Death Merchant gimmick here in that Nick and Leah are dressed up like old people, complete with heavy makeup…and will be in this guise in the coming firefight. Rosenberger did this frequently, I believe, most notably in The Cosmic Reality Kill, which was published this same year. And of course the action scene, as Nick and Leah wipe out the SLA terrorists – their front being a store that sells religious trinkets – is along the lines of anything in Death Merchant, heavy on the firearms and ammunition detail, but the gore is toned down. 

Not so with the ensuing sex scene, as Nick and Leah, out of their old person disguises and back in Nick’s hotel, get cozy in explicit fashion: “I felt her tightening in that lubricious haven to which I constantly strove with all my might.” A sentence like that takes talent – I personally never would’ve thought of pairing the words “lubricious” and “haven.” But that’s it for Leah, as Nick is sent on to Damascus, where he’s to hook up with a double-spy named Miriam. An SLA agent, Miriam approached AXE with info on the plot and claims to be driven more for money than ideology. And speaking of which Thunderstrike From Syria is from an earlier era in another regard: the Muslim terrorists here are presented as mercurial, driven by money, and the thought of them dying for their beliefs in suicide missions is hard for Nick to understand. 

“I couldn’t help but have erotic thoughts about her,” Nick tells us, as sure enough Miriam’s a hotstuff Arabic babe with a killer bod. And she doesn’t stand on ceremony, either, basically insisting that she and Nick do the deed posthaste: “I…push[ed] the lance full-length into her begging orifice.” Humorously though, this sex scene, which occurs shortly after the one with Leah, will prove to be the novel’s last, as if Rosenberger decided to hit his quota early and be done with it. In fact, from here on out Miriam is no longer treated as a sex object, but as a potential traitor; Nick’s uncertain how true her story is, and wonders if she’s leading him into a trap. Miriam has a van with food, two beds, guns, and other gear, and proposes to drive it through the desert to the secret SLA camp, which is running by a mysterious terrorist known as “The Hawk.” Yes, the exact same name as Nick Carter’s boss! No one even mentions this. 

And yep, that’s two beds – Rosenberger’s over and done with the naughty stuff, and Nick doesn’t even much mention Miriam’s looks or body anymore, even when the two have to strip down due to the desert’s heat. As I say, the focus is now on unrelenting action. Sure enough a posse of outlaws hits the van, leading to a cool action scene where Nick grabs various guns from the van’s arsenal and goes out to deal with them one by one. From this point on the novel is essentially a Death Merchant, only in first-person. There’s a ton of gun detail…Nick apparently knows the make of every gun in the world, the type of ammo fired, and etc…up to and including artillery. He’s more commando than secret agent here. 

The Hawk isn’t even an interesting villain; he’s just a basic terrorist type who doesn’t seem to believe his own hype. Nick of course is captured and has an argument with the villain, then Nick’s thrown in the prison camp. Here he meets a few captured Israeli soldiers, among them a guy named Josef Risenberg. What the reader doesn’t know is that this sets the course for the rest of the novel: Nick gets into the confidence of the Israelis, orchestrates their escape…and they all get in an endless battle with the Hawk’s SLA terrorists as they try to make their escape across the desert. I mean folks, that’s the rest of the novel, over half of the book – a seemingly-neverending desert battle sequence. All careful plotting is lost, there’s no attempt to bring the Hawk to life, nor any changing of the locale. 

The action is fast, furious, and exhausting as Nick shoots, kicks, knifes, and blows up various stooges. At one point he and the Israelis commandeer a tank, which brings to mind a sequence in Super Death Merchant. Of course Nick knows how to drive and operate a tank. Later they get into an armored personnel carrier and continue to make their way across the desert, blasting away at their captors. Finally Nick talks the Israelis into launching an assault on the Hawk’s camp, which leads to the novel’s climax. The action here (and throughout) could come from any single installment of Death Merchant: 

And true to Richard Camellion, this version of Nick Carter could care less if he’s shooting at a man or woman. There’s an off-putting part at the end where a female character begs Nick for mercy, asking for her safety in exchange for info on more SLA plots. Nick tells her no deal – her SLA team’s all dead, so there are no secrets for her to give…and then he guts her with his stiletto! This sort of leaves a bad taste in the reader’s mouth…I mean I get it that the woman’s bad and all, but the hero doesn’t have to be that cold about it. Anyway this was the only Killmaster Rosenberger wrote, and while it wasn’t terrible Thunderstrike In Syria certainly wouldn’t rank high in my list of favorite volumes of the series. It’s mostly interesting for the novelty value, in that it’s a pseudo-Death Merchant in first-person.