Black Samurai #2: The Golden Kill

Black Samurai #2: The Golden Kill, by Marc Olden

May, 1974  Signet Books

The second volume of Black Samurai dispenses with the revenge-driven angle of the first volume and instead features hero Robert Sand, the Black Samurai, acting more in the capacity of your typical men’s adventure protagonist. He now “works with” (not “for”) William Baron Clarke, former President of the United States, and goes about the globe to stop various threats. But again indicating the rapid speed which Marc Olden wrote this series in, the threat Sand is determined to prevent in The Golden Kill is very reminiscent of the one in the first volume: an entire city is going to be wiped out. 

The revenge stuff that fueled Sand in the first volume is gone, but in its place is the Olden mainstay: lots of villains, who have their own subplots. The pulp vibe is also more apparent, mostly in the form of Talon, a harelipped sadist who employs vultures and dogs to torture his prey. Talon works for Print Drewcolt, a sort of proto-Bill Gates who has amassed great wealth in his business ventures. Speaking of reminiscent, Drewcolt’s name brings to mind the name of the main villain in #6: The Warlock: Janicott. I mean it’s nothing major, but it just seems to me another example of how Olden rejiggered material throughout the series. But it’s not like we’re talking about The Butcher, where every volume was the same. However The Golden Kill isn’t nearly as pulpy as The Warlock, despite having a villain who lives in a castle. It’s still mostly grounded in realism, as was the first volume…despite featuring a modern-day samurai who happens to be a black man who “works with” the former President of the US. 

But then Black Samurai isn’t nearly as grounded in realism as the other series Olden was writing at this time: NRC. Actually there’s a bit of a Narc vibe in the opening of The Golden Kill, to the extent that I wonder if Olden ever considered teaming up his two protagonists. I mean the opportunity was there – both series were courtesy the same publisher, and Olden outed himself as “Robert Hawkes” on the copyright page of each volume of Narc. This opening sequence could give an indication of what such a team-up might’ve been like, as it features Robert Sand in New York, trying to foil the assassination by bombing of a Chinese official…and Sand soon finds himself in the cluthces of a trio of fake cops who are working with the assassin. It’s all very tense and up to Olden’s usual high standards, as Sand is taken off to a remote cabin and handcuffed, waiting for his opportunity to strike. 

With this series Olden wants his cake and to eat it, too; Sand is of course “The Black Samurai,” and we’re often reminded of the superhuman training he endured. But at the same time we’re reminded that he’s not superhuman, a la a fellow martial arts progatonist of the day, Victor Mace. So even though you’d think three random thugs would be absolutely no match for a dude who trained for years in the art of samurai and whose body is basically a living weapon, Olden still writes the ensuing action scene with an eye for realism, as Sand seizes the chance to free himself and fights earnestly with his kidnappers. In other words, he doesn’t just decimate them without a sweat. 

It's like this throughout The Golden Kill, and also of note is that Olden doesn’t play up on the whole martial arts vibe as in Mace or Jason Striker; Sand is just as prone to use a .45 or even a bow and arrow as his hands and feet. But also he doesn’t go up against fellow martial artists, as in those other series. In other words, the action never devolves into endlessly detailed kung-fu moves as two specialists fight each other. Sand’s samurai background has more relevance insofar as his character is concerned: he’s stoic, terse, and always prepared. He’s gotten a bit more sass this time, though, talking back to Clarke and other characters in a way he didn’t in the previous volume. And most importantly so far as the trash quotient is concerned, Sand gets laid this time – by two different ladies, as if Olden were making up for the lack of boinkery in the first volume. Not much in the way of explicitness in these sequences, I’m sorry to report. 

The setup of the series is intact with this volume: William Baron Clarke literally briefs Sand on his mission, meaning there’s none of the revenge impetus of the first volume for the Black Samurai himself. He’s merely acting in the capacity of an action protagonist, trying to thwart Print Drewcolt’s plan to wipe out a city in China so as to foil a Russia-China trade agreement involving gold. Drewcolt meanwhile is a classic villain: he has his own army, lives in a castle, and employs a sadist as his chief security agent. This would be Talon, a harelipped freak who uses vultures and dogs to torture and kill prisoners who are chained naked in the court of Drewcolt’s castle. We see this happen a few times in the course of the novel, and it's all wild – like when Talon uncovers two of Clarke’s informants in Drewcolt’s ranks, and puts one of them in full suit of medieval armor while the other is ripped apart, Talon toying with the man until it’s his turn. 

Not only that, but it’s intimated that Talon is…well, intimate with his animals, in particular a vulture he favors. I wonder if director Al Adamson was inspired by this stuff when he made his Black Samurai film, as it features Robert Sand fighting a vulture in the climax – even though no such thing happened in The Warlock, which is the volume of the series Adamson’s film was based on. But with Talon you can see what I mean above: he’s a sadist, and he’s merciless, but he’s not a specialist in any form of unarmed combat, as you’d expect in a martial arts-themed series. He’s just a freak who trains animals to kill. So it’s not like Sand will square off against him in some kung-fu fest in the climax. Indeed, the confrontation with Talon at novel’s end is a bit anticlimactic. 

Clarke is given a bit more of the spotlight this time, and Olden well plays up the schtick of a former President using his vast global resources to make things happen. It’s never been stated what party Clarke represented, but he’s from Texas and he’s definitely a salt of the Earth type. He does at one point refer to the “idiot” currently in office, which would be Nixon given the period in which Olden was writing, but that could just be a general dislike and not party animosity. But Clarke isn’t the only character who gets a bigger focus this time, as all the supporting characters have their share of the spotlight. We get a lot of stuff from the perspectives of Drewcolt and Talon, as well as the various underlings who find themselves going up against Sand. As with Olden’s other novels, this sometimes has the effect that the Black Samurai comes off like a supporting character in his own novel. 

And whereas Black Samurai #1 was pretty much a “men only” deal, Olden features two female characters in The Golden Kill. The first is Lisa Warren, lovely young “interior decorator” for Drewcolt’s castle, aka his mistress. She’s one of Clarke’s informants, and will be the damsel in distress Sand must save in the finale. Then there’s Andrea Naiss, who a la Doctor No takes Sand’s photo at an airport at the behest of one of Talon’s security men. Apparently of mixed races (black and Filipino, I believe we’re told), Andrea has been ignored all her life, despite being very pretty. Sand ends up giving her the goods in a scene that’s mostly off-page (as he later does Lisa Warren in a scene that’s entirely off-page), but curiously Sand shows no awareness that his interest in Andrea might cause some dire ramifications for the poor girl. 

Olden certainly knows his market, as there’s a fair bit of lurid stuff in The Golden Kill, from Andrea’s torture to Talon’s various executions. There’s also an early scene where Sand swings into the apartment of a high-class escort who is about to be raped by a sadist. This part features Sand turning up the building’s heater to over a hundred degrees and then climbing up the wall to bypass the men waiting outside the door. Throughout The Golden Kill Sand uses strategy more than he does his fists and weapons; there’s another tense action scene later on where he gets the drop on the men who are transporting a nerve gas. As ever though Olden hopscotches around the various perspectives, like the guy in charge of the nerve gas transport, or the thugs in the escort’s apartment, which I feel somewhat nullifies the impact of the action. But this POV-hopping is part of Olden’s schtick. 

The finale would be a case in point of the overall impact being lessened. Sand, armed with his bow and arrow, swoops onto Drewcolt’s castle, planning to use a bomb Lisa will set as his diversion. Things don’t go as planned, with Lisa soon dragged out into that courtyard and Talon’s vultures employed. But Olden keeps hopscotching around the perspectives, including even the guys who control the vultures for Talon, to the point that it keeps delaying the fireworks. For that matter, this results in that anticlimactic faceoff I mentioned earlier, with Talon; Sand doesn’t even realize he has dealt with Talon until later, which really harms the vicarious thrill the reader needs after putting up with the sadistic arrogance of Talon for the entire friggin’ novel. But Olden is just getting started, because The Golden Kill ends with Sand about to go take care of the last remaining villain…and we don’t even get to see it happen! 

So overall this second installment of Black Samurai was entertaining, but lacked the emotional content of the first one. And also one can see how the “Olden factory” of writing is getting in place, with constant cutovers to the thoughts and feelings of various characters, no matter how minor they are in the grand scheme of the plot. That said, there is still an undeniable something about the series which elevates it above the rest. I think the issue in these earliest books is that Olden still hasn’t fully embraced the pulpy aspects of his own creation – as he will, with much gusto, in The Warlock.