Donovan’s Devils #2: Blueprint For Execution

Donovan's Devils #2: Blueprint For Execution, by Lee Parker

No month stated, 1974  Award Books

It’s been some years since I read the first volume of Donovan’s Devils, and fair to say I didn’t enjoy it much at the time. Judging from my review, I found it dull and too focused on scene-setting and character-building. So, I’m happy to report that this second volume is much better – though still nowhere in the leagues of the author’s other series, The Liquidator. 

As I mentioned in my review of The Liquidator #1, an author named Larry Powell was responsible for both The Liquidator (as “R.L. Brent”) and Donovan’s Devils (as “Lee Parker,” and again, thanks to James Reasoner for figuring that out, years ago). He also wrote two volumes of Nick Carter: Killmaster. All of these books were published by Award, so fair to say someone there liked Powell’s work. And it’s not hard to see why, as he’s a very talented pulp writer, with a strong prose style that gives just enough information to keep the story moving, and doesn’t get bogged down. I have been continuously impressed with his work on The Liquidator, of which I only have one more volume to read. 

But, having read Blueprint For Execution, I can see what Larry Powell’s kryptonite is: he’s not as good when he’s writing a “team” book, particularly one with a military focus. Judging from the hardboiled, lone wolf tone of The Liquidator, Powell is much more confident when he’s writing about one guy up against a handful of enemies, with more of a focus on tension and suspense than all-out action. Handling a cast of seven characters on a global stage, he seems very much out of his element. I understand now why the first volume of Donovan’s Devils was so focused on setting up the storyline; it afforded Powell the opportunity to handle one character at a time. 

Because as it is, he does the same sort of thing in this second volume: whereas The Assasination Is Set For July 4… spent most of its narrative introducing the cast of characters and bringing them together, Blueprint For Execution spends most of its narrative with the team split up, with Powell alternately dealing with each separate group. As with the first book, only in the very final pages does Donovan’s Devils actually work together as a unit. 

It’s the same cast, this time; at least Powell doesn’t have Donovan setting up a new team each book. Powell clearly likes some characters more than others; Bogan, aka “the black guy on the team,” is so barely-featured that the poor guy’s name is misspelled as “Bogon” in the pseudo-report from Donovan that opens the book. I mean the boss himself doesn’t even know the guy’s name. There’s also a big biker named Randolph who doesn’t do much at all, until the very end – where, despite being in a warzone in Jerusalem, manages to get hold of a motorcycle. I suspect that Powell was catering to editorial and/or publisher demands with this cast: “We need a black guy in there. Oh, and make sure there’s a biker in there, too. Bikers are big now!” 

Even Donovan himself isn’t in the book much; despite being the protagonist, there’s a large portion of the narrative where he’s unconscious from a head wound. Rather, Powell’s favored character is clearly Quinn, a cipher-like living weapon who acts as Donovan’s right-hand man…and who is very much like Jake Brand, the Liquidator. Quinn’s background is a mystery to the others – Quinn isn’t even his real name – and he’s essentially Bucher in all but name. With his penchant for carrying two guns and staying cool in the heat of battle – not to mention his occasional smart-ass quip – Quinn is clearly the sort of character Larry Powell is more comfortable writing about, a guy who fights mobsters instead of terrorists. He’s actually more of the star of Blueprint For Execution than Donovan is, as when the teams split up Quinn is put in charge of one group and has to make all the decisions. 

There’s also Houdini, the master thief, and Carey, a cardshark (or something) that the others don’t like because he’s a coward (or something). These two vie with Quinn as the main characters, with Carey in particular taking up the spotlight midway through. There’s a long but involving scene where Donovan and Carey get in a firefight in the desert, and Carey gets behind a machine gun that’s mounted on the back of a jeep and, Rambo 2008 style, blasts everyone to smithereens. After which he engages some “desert flower” babe in fairly explicit sex. 

Yes, that’s another thing that’s better about this second volume: Larry Powell ups both the action and the sex quotients. While the novel is never outright gory – just as The Liquidator books aren’t – the surprisingly-frequent sex scenes are quite graphic. Carey gets busy with a “full-bossomed” terrorist chic in the desert (she offers her body in exchange for her life), Joe Dean (the expert driver who is the last member of the Devil’s I haven’t yet mentioned) bangs two native babes in the short course of the novel, and Donovan himself gets it on with a “full breasted” Israeli spy-babe in the very final pages…like I’m talking six pages before the end of the book, Powell clearly catering to another publisher mandate. I mean folks, what an incredible world to have lived in, where publishers required authors to insert a certain number of sex scenes in their manuscripts. Those days are long gone, and it’s no wonder our world has gone to shit. (Though fortunately we do have Tocsin Press, at least…) 

The novel features an effective opening – another Powell specialty – in which Houdini discovers that the Devils contact in Jerusalem has just had his throat slit…and soon enough Houdini himself is captured by the Arabic bastards who did it. This sets up the “split up the team” dynamic that runs through the entire novel: Donovan and Carey go look for Houdini, while Quinn, Bogan, Randolph, and Joe Dean hold down the fort…and get in firefights of their own. Powell fills the pages with a few big setpieces that sort of go on and on…and it becomes clear, at least to me, that he does so because he’s uncomfortable writing about a group of six fighting men all together at the same time. 

To confirm this, Powell excels in the scenes where he’s just featuring one character: the bit with a blood-crazed Carey behind the machine gun is the highlight of the novel, as is his conquest of the “desert flower” (in true men’s adventure fashion, Carey has the girl panting and screaming, breaking through her icy “I’m just doing this to live, not because I want to” façade). Quinn seems to be the hero of another men’s adventure series who has somehow wandered into the book; the scenes from his perspective are terse and taut, and have him reflecting on the mobsters he killed. One suspects Powell would have turned in an even better series if all the characters, including Donovan himself, were jettisoned, and Quinn was featured as a globe-trotting lone wolf commando. But then, that’s essentially what The Butcher gave us, and again I find it very curious how similar Quinn and Bucher’s backgrounds are. 

I’m not sure what the title has to do with the story; again, I get the suspicion Award Books ran the show and gave Powell the title and the gist of the storyline, and he filled in the details. There’s no “execution blueprint” per se, and Donovan and team spend most of the novel hunting down a terrorist named Karem. He’s part of a group called ALF...which of course made me chuckle, imagining Donovan’s Devils up against furry little Gordon Shumway: “Hey, Willie! They’re tryin’ to kill me! HA!” 

This ALF is the Arabic Liberation Front, and overall it’s another sad reminder of how ‘70s Muslim terrorists were of an altogether tamer breed. These Muslim terrorists fear for their own lives – as mentioned, the “full-bossomed” terrorist babe gives herself to Carey precisely so he won’t kill her – and there’s a sad bit (sad because it’s a reminder of much saner times) where it’s explained how the ALF terrorists will blow up airliners…but parachute out of them before they go down, and etc. In other words, even in the violent world of mid-‘70s men’s adventure, the idea of a fanatical and suicidal terrorist was too much of a stretch. 

More evidence of Powell’s true forte is Donovan’s intro, which has him meeting with his boss, cigar-chomping and lame-legged General Brick Blaine. They sit by the poolside, the two men appreciating the “full-breasted” young beauty who is swimming in the general’s pool while they discuss the assignment. It all just has the same ring as the stuff in The Liquidator, just that cool, hardboiled ‘70s pulp that Larry Powell was so good at, that you wonder why the guy is such a mystery. 

Where he sort of fails, though, is in the action scenes. When it’s just one guy, like in The Liquidator, it’s fine. But Powell cannot seem to handle big action setpieces, and thus resorts to almost “See Spot Run” type of description, giving flat, declarative description of what happens: 

This sort of thing comes off as almost outline-esque to me, and lacks the immediacy of an action scene that is more relayed from the point of view of the person doing the fighting. What I mean to say is, it just comes off like bald description of what happens; you don’t feel the impact of the bullets, or the tension of the battle. Again, I’d say this is because Powell is outside of his element, trying to relay a battle from the perspective of seven characters – and, also, he does not have this problem in The Liquidator, where it’s only Jake Brand who does the fighting. 

That said, Powell keeps the action moving, though some of the middle sequences do get bogged down. There’s an interminable part where Quinn and the others, wondering what happened to Donovan, try to strong-arm their way into an Israeli army encampment, and it comes off as padding…indeed, it comes off as Powell trying to figure out how to cater to the “team” dynamic of the series and show the other characters doing something. And this “large team” setup also robs other characters; early in the book, Donovan and Carey run into a hotstuff Israeli babe (whose boobs are so nice that multiple characters refer to them), and Donovan develops a simmering, bantering relationship with her – capped off by him knocking her out. 

The lady, Reva, is a spy, sent along to shadow Donovan and team, but she essentially disappears from the text because Powell is busy catering to the other members of the team. Humorously, she casually gives herself to Donovan in the final pages – right before the climactic battle – so that Powell can check off another publisher mandate: ensuring the protagonist himself gets laid. But then, this too is a fairly explicit sequence, and Powell furthers the “bantering after sex” vibe that he had with Jake Brand and his latest girl in The Liquidator #4. 

As for the climactic battle, it’s so, uh, anticlimactic that it, too, is humorous. Powell has so page-filled with all the character-jumping that he rushes through the final battle in a few harried pages…and, again, it’s more on the “military fiction” tip, with Donovan’s crew leading a paratrooper assault on an ancient Crusader castle. It’s over and done with in a few pages…Powell just as humorously giving us another brief Donovan-Reva conjugation on the very last page. 

I’m only nitpicking because Larry Powell is a damn fine writer, and it’s a shame he was given a series with a setup outside of his comfort zone. He was clearly better at a lone wolf sort of hardboiled setup, as evidenced by the much superior Liquidator series. But even here in diluted form, his writing is a cut above the genre norm, and I also appreciated how he’d take characters and situations in unexpected directions. 

There was one more volume of Donovan’s Devils to go, and I’ll check that out, as well as the two Killmaster novels Powell wrote for Award around the same time: The Butcher Of Belgrade (apparently co-written with the lackluster Ralph Hayes) and The Code.