Death Merchant #34: Operation Mind-Murder

Death Merchant #34: Operation Mind-Murder, by Joseph Rosenberger

June, 1979  Pinnacle Books

This 34th installment of Death Merchant is another one that promises a helluva lot more than it ultmately delivers. That is, if you’re expecting the plot that’s outlined on the back cover. But if you’re expecting an endless series of action scenes, then that’s exactly what you’ll get. Personally, I was hoping for the story promised on the back cover…that Richard “Death Merchant” Camellion would venture into a desolate Soviet experimental station where people are tortured via mind-control means, some of the prisoners holdovers from WWII. Instead, the entire friggin’ novel is Camellion battling his way to the station, just so he can take photos of it and vamoose. 

It's clear Joseph Rosenberger was interested in mind control and fringe science in general, so it’s surprising he didn’t elaborate more on his own setup here. I guess mostly he just used his interests as a framework for the series-mandatory action setpieces. I’m not sure why Rosenberger did this so often. In the Death Merchant novels where he relaxed a little from the action onslaught, like for example The Burning Blue Death and The Cosmic Reality Kill, he delivered novels that were actually enjoyable to read. But with ones like this or Hell In Hindu Land, it’s like he had these cool setups but just didn’t have the fortitude to commit to them and instead went for a knee-jerk “action” approach. But then maybe there are readers who prefer that. I would’ve preferred an entire novel with Camellion stuck in a mind control facility. 

But at the very least Rosenberger is commited to delivering copious amounts of battle sequences. To the extent that we meet Camellion once he’s already on location, holed up with a few Chinese-American CIA agents on Wrangel Island, eighty miles from Siberia. This white hell is a real place, as Rosenberger informs us via footnote. There are a ton of footnotes throughout Operation Mind-Murder, to the point that it comes off like fastidousness on Rosenberger’s part. But basically Rosenberger read in some publication that here on Wrangel the Soviets installed a facility in which subjects – traitors, criminals, and even WWII prisoners – undergo harsh mind-conditioning torture. 

Camellion is purely in cipher mode this time; there was even more emotional makeup to Philip Magellan in one of Russell Smith’s instllaments of The Marksman. The three Chinese agents have no idea who Camellion even is; as usual, our hero has been put in charge of a strike force with no explanation of who he is to the underlings. Rosenberger indulges in his usual penchant for disguises with the off-hand note that Camellion is “fixed up to look like an Oriental,” so as to blend in with his compatriots (one of whom is named Dionysius Woo!). But other than this initial mention, nothing more will be made of Camellion’s disguise; for that matter, Rosenberger seems to forget it, mentioning Camellion’s blue eyes later in the book. (Or whatever color they are, I can’t remember – they just aren’t brown, which they should be if the guy’s truly been “fixed up to look like an Oriental.”) 

One thing I do like is that Rosenberger again brings in that bizarre “Cosmic Lord of Death” stuff. It’s not explicitly mentioned, but there’s a random part where Camellion tells one of his colleagues “you’re a long way from dying;” when the guy asks how Camellion can be sure, the Death Merchant just looks at him. Veteran readers will know that Camellion is seeing the guy’s aura, of course, and apparently it’s not in the color that denotes upcoming death or whatever. Camellion also makes cryptic comments about being on the side of the “Sons of Light” or somesuch. In other words he comes off like a total nutjob once again, and you kind of feel bad for these three agents who have been partnered up with an obvious psychopath in the middle of a snowswept hellhole. 

Camellion’s a lot more verbal about his psychotic hatred of Russians, though. Or “pig farmers,” as he typically refers to them. There are various roving bands of Soviet troops on Wrangel Island, the fodder for the endless action scenes Rosenberger bores us with, almost from the very beginning of the novel to the very end. And as ever they are no match for Camellion, even though they vastly outnumber him. He runs roughshod over them, mocking them as “commie pieces of trash” as he easily blows them away. It was a little interesting reading this, what with the real-world situation in Ukraine at the moment. But given the level of psyops and outright lies about that situation I’ll refrain from saying anything. (Well, maybe just one thing.) 

And Camellion does make it look easy to blow away pig-farmers. Rosenberger tries to inject some suspense into the tale; Camellion and crew are holed up in a cave on the island, the goal to loacate the mind-muder facility and take photos of it. There are various roving bands of Soviet soldiers all over the island, from foot patrols that stay out for a week to helicopter patrols and such. But man it’s basically a cakewalk for the Death Merchant and his newest toy, a .357 Automag made for him by Lee Jurras, an apparently real-life gun manufacturer who has been referenced frequently in this series. This is the weapon Camellion uses most in Operation Mind-Murder, even shooting down one of those Soviet helicopters with it. 

So here’s the plot of Operation Mind-Muder: Richard Camellion gets in a series of endless fights with an endless series of roving Russian army patrols. I mean it just goes on and on for 180+ pages, Rosenberger as ever overwriting to the point of tedium, to the extent that the reader is soon benumbed. And as ever he hops in and out of the perspectives of Camellion’s victims, one-off Russian characters for whom we are given full names, ages, backstories, and the like – moments, that is, before their brains are blasted out by our hero’s Automag. There are also periodic chapters where we get a glimpse of the action from the Russian side of things, with even more one-off Soviets arguing among themselves about the bloody developments on Wrangel Island. At no point anywhere do we get to see the material promised on the back cover. 

The festivities begin when Camellion makes a lone sortie onto the island, getting into a skirmish with a patrol. From there it just escalates with more and more skirmishes, with Camellion at one point even gunning down a bear. There are explosions, avalanches, the expected loss of some of Camellion’s colleagues, and etc. Here is a random example of what is in store for the reader, complete with footnote: 

The absolute slap to the face is that Rosenberger teases us with what could have been a better tale at the very end of the novel. On page 182 we learn that there is something called a “cosmic generator” on the island, but no one can figure out what it does, and they’ll need to grill the captured Soviets for more info. Meanwhile Camellion’s all fired up because he just got a message concerning his next assignment, which no doubt will entail yet more endless action sequences in the next installment. So in other words, he spends the entirety of Operation Mind-Murder fighting to get to this bizarre installation, only gets there at the very end, and then leaves, learning about the strange contraptions within via dialog in the final chapter of the book! 

As ever the most entertaining thing about Death Merchant is how bonkers its creator is. Rosenberger attempts to inject some humor this time, but it just further conveys his own strangeness. For one, Camellion calls people “turtle butts” (as usual he won’t curse), and also there are weird asides like, “Oh, gee whiz and all that sort of worried stuff.” We also get a comedic exchange between Camellion’s Chinese colleagues, during a firefight, about beer making you stupid, to which one of them jokingly responds, “Beer makes you smart…it made Bud Wiser.” Just weird, wild stuff, as Johnny Carson would say…but overall this was not an installment I enjoyed.