Black Samurai #3: Killer Warrior

Black Samurai #3: Killer Warrior, by Marc Olden

July, 1974  Signet Books

Within the first few pages of this third volume of Black Samurai we see it’s going to be a slightly more pulpy installment than the previous two; Marc Olden opens the tale in France, where an Apache Indian warrior, armed with an axe and wearing facepaint, brutally kills two Muslim terrorists who tried to burn the Apache’s boss in a weapons deal. 

Around this time Olden also wrote Narc #2, which also featured an Apache villain; here though the character has more precedence in the plot, and also I’m happy to report that for once Olden doesn’t short-change us in the climax. Both in Black Samurai and Narc Marc Olden had a tendency to pile on too many villains and then brush them aside in the harried finale; Narc in particular suffered from too many climaxes in which the villains got away, never to be heard from again. This is what happened with the Narc Apache warrior, in fact. But in Killer Warrior Olden delivers on the climactic confrontation between his hero, Black Samurai Robert Sand, and the Apache villain, the wonderfully-named Mangas Salt. 

The plot of this one is similar to the previous volume: Sand tries to prevent the destruction of a city in America. And once again he doesn’t know which city. This time the main villain, sort of, is a Japanese guy who wants revenge for Hiroshima. But as Marty McKee noted in his review, this villain, Saraga, is “something of an afterthought” in the novel. Really it’s Mangas Salt and his employer, arms dealer Valbonne, who serve as the main villains of Killer Warrior. Saraga only appears in the finale, though several of his Japanese stooges frequently appear so Robert Sand can have a few redshirts to bump off. 

It's only now occurred to me that Black Samurai is everything I’ve always wanted The Destroyer to be. I mean it features a character who is almost superhuman due to his martial arts skills, and it features memorable villains, but it’s all played on the level, without any of the satire of the Sapir/Murphy series. I like my pulp straight, no chaser! And Olden certainly plays it straight; the narrative is almost as humorless as Sand himself is. Everything is deathly serious – not to mention realisitc, at least insofar as the action scenes go. Sand only ever goes up against a few people at a time, and Olden strives to not make the Black Samurai come off like a superhero…even though that’s exactly what he is. 

As evidence of this, Killer Warrior opens with Sand training in Japan with an elderly sensei who was friends with Sand’s original sensei, Master Konuma, murdered in the first volume. Part of the regimen includes Sand wrapping a chain around himself and doing leaping exercises. Sand actually breaks the friggin’ chain with the force of his jumps, causing even the old Japanese dude to gape in astonishment. And utter, “Samurai!”, which is like the ultimate compliment from old Japanese senseis. Marc Olden excels at such subtle but touching moments; one can tell his heart was really in this series. 

A recurring schtick of Black Samurai seems to be that the narrative will go from Japan to France, then to the US; this happens in Killer Warrior as well. One thing I like is that you see the series title “Black Samurai” and assume it will be a bunch of “Oriental” adventures, but for the most part Robert Sand spends his time in Europe. But then in Marc Olden’s world you’ll also find facepainted Apache Indian warriors in Europe. And by the way, Olden doesn’t play perspective hopscotch as much as usual this time; most of his adventure novels feature a lot of stream-of-conscious ruminations from the various one-off villains, but these sequences are few and far between in Killer Warrior. 

What I mean to say is, this is the most focused installment yet. Olden keeps the plot moving from beginning to end, and even indulges in a bit of ‘70s-mandatory sleaze, a first in the series. This doesn’t feature Robert Sand, though – however, as with the last volume, he manages to score again. Even if it happens off-page. But there’s a part where a one-off character, a scientist who is helping Valbonne create an atom bomb for Saraga, meets with a hooker, and Sand has given the hooker a secret message to convey to the scientist. A message she is to write in lipstick on a bathroom mirror…and the lipstick tube has been hidden in her, uh, ladyparts. Olden gets enjoyable sleazy here, with the gal getting naked and showing off for the guy, then plucking out the tube from her inner recesses. However when the actual deed is transpiring Olden fades to black, as is his wont. 

Action isn’t as frequent this time. Sand only gets in a few fights, and probably the action highlight of the novel occurs midway through when he dresses all in black and takes on a few of Valbonne’s men at an airport. There’s also a cool part at a zoo outside Paris where Sand first tangles with Salt. And speaking of which, I did find having both a “Sand” and a “Salt” in the same novel to be confusing, but I assume Olden was trying to demonstrate how they were two sides of the same coin – something very much reinforced as the novel winds to a close. Also there’s a “Saraga” in the book; too many characters whose names begin with “Sa!” Instead of all-out action, Olden goes for more of a suspense angle, like for example a bit seemingly lifted from Doctor No where Sand encounters a rattlesnake in his hotel room, one left there for him by Salt. 

But then Olden undercuts the suspense with a bit of lameness. For example, in that zoo battle in which Sand and Salt have their first face-to-face, Sand has Salt dead bang…but just has him lie down while Sand escapes. And keep in mind, we readers already know Salt is a merciless killer, and Sand knows this as well, having been thoroughly briefed by his boss William Clarke on how brutal Salt is. (Like Salt’s penchant for hanging victims upside down over a fire until their heads cook and their brains explode – something we see happen in the course of the novel.) I mean it’s understandable in a way; Salt is a warrior (whether Sand or Salt is the “killer warrior” of the title is up to the reader to decide – though again it’s probably more of that “two sides of the same coin” schtick), and Sand would not want to kill an unarmed warrior. Okay, that’s fine. But even worse is the later bit where Salt leaves the rattlesnake in Sand’s hotel room…and Sand is bitten by it…and Salt comes in to fight Sand, amazed that the Black Samurai gets to his feet and screams out a “Kiya!” despite suffering a bite that would kill a lesser man. And then Sand…passes out, and the chapter ends. 

And when Sand wakes up next chapter, he’s in the hospital and Clarke is there, Sand having been rescued at the last moment…and Salt, it turns out, ran off after Sand passed out, presumably assuming Sand was dead. It’s just lame. At first I thought Olden was going to go in an unexpected direction with Salt, due to his sudden respect for Sand, helping his former enemy escape, but that was not the case. That said, Olden works up an effective finale in which Salt, who this time is the one who is injured, decides to go out as a warrior, challenging his “brother” Robert Sand to one final fight. It’s cool and all, but at the same time kind of hard to buy given how merciless Mangas Salt has been shown to be earlier in the novel. 

Robert Sand shows even less personality this time than in previous books. He has none of the sass of other volumes, for the most part remaining terse. He still manages to score, though, with a pretty lady named Moraida who serves as a courier for Saraga. Sand saves her in another tense scene in which a few of Saraga’s goons accost Moraida in her hotel room and attempt to kill her. Olden also excels at depicting mortal combat in enclosed spaces; there’s also a cool part in that Salt-Sand confrontation in Sand’s hotel room where Sand uses the narrow space of his bathroom to his advantage. It’s little touches like this that convey how Marc Olden himself was familiar with martial arts technique. 

Overall I really enjoyed Killer Warrior, and it was another great installment of Black Samurai. And if I hadn’t already read The Warlock, I’d say it was my favorite yet.