Thursday, November 8, 2018

Dark Angel #4: The Godmother Caper


Dark Angel #4: The Godmother Caper, by James D. Lawrence
July, 1975  Pyramid Books

Friends, it’s a damn shame this was the last volume of Dark Angel. While James D. Lawrence floundered with the previous volume, this time he turns in a wild, wild novel that comes off like 192 pages of madcap sleaze. His operating principle appears to have been: When in doubt, have someone try to take advantage of heroine Angie “The Dark Angel” Harpe. And boy do they try to take advantage of her throughout The Godmother Caper, sometimes in the most outrageous ways imaginable.

Just like last time, it’s clear that Lawrence is plowing ahead with no clear direction for the narrative. But last time this resulted in a ponderous, repetitive book with few thrills. This time he practically throws everything in just to keep things moving. More importantly, everything is ramped up in this final volume. While the series was always pretty kinky, this time it’s downright hardcore – not up to the pages-filling boffs of The Baroness, but much more detailed in Angie’s frequent sexual shenanigans, whereas previous books would just give some juicy details and then fade to black. Here Angie gets it on in graphic splendor throughout, and Lawrence even treats us to a girl-on-girl scene as Angie seduces a “closet lesbian.”

Also the violence has been greatly expanded; I think the previous volume was the first time Angie even killed anyone, and that was only relayed briefly, almost as an aside, in the final pages. This time she’s “drilling” would-be rapists and muggers left and right, blowing them away with her Baby Browning or backup .25 with nary a thought. Previously she’d just bust some heads with her martial arts skills or her lead bar-lined purse and then run away. Now the Dark Angel plays for keeps, resulting in a novel that has more graphic sex and violence than the previous three installments combined. Lawrence also doles out an eleventh-hour subplot in which it’s revealed that Angie, in the past, has done contract spy work for various super-secret intelligence agencies, some of them “kill” missions, implying that future volumes might’ve seen the series progress in more of a Baroness direction.

Regardless, Angie is in full private eye mode here, as usual offered a job that turns out to be vastly more complicated and dangerous than she initially suspects. Only problem is, the back cover copy sort of blows the mystery. Angie’s approached by a platinum blonde in “goofy” glasses with “voluptuous tits;” as ever, the cover art faithfully captures characters and scenes from the novel, even down to the “Negroid Faye Dunaway(!)” ensemble Angie sports for this meeting. The blonde gives her name as “Marilyn Johnson” even though her cigarette case is stamped “GM.” Angie will spend the upcoming 180-some pages of dense, small print pondering over who this woman really is, until late in the game she realizes it’s the infamous “Godmother” of New York’s most exclusive cathouse, thus the “GM” on the woman’s case. Meanwhile, the back cover text – not to mention the title of the novel – already clues us in.

Marilyn Johnson offers Angie five thousand bucks to look into the rape of her 20 year old niece, who says she was just raped on the streets of Manhattan by a Mafia torpedo named Carlo Fosca. Angie, suspecting there’s a lot more to this than she’s being told, takes the job, and when she goes to Fosca’s place she finds a pair of balls nailed to the wall. Perhaps Lawrence wanted to be sure we were aware that this would be a “balls to the wall” sort of novel. And it is, as Angie’s jumped right on the scene by a pair of hoods who try to rape her. Lawrence is one of the few men’s adventure writers to offer topical details of his era, and it’s these touches I love so much; he also often mentions rock acts of the day, and this folks has got to be the one and only mention of Black friggin’ Sabbath in a ‘70s action novel, as Angie’s forced to strip and dance a go-go to “a hot and heavy number” by Ozzy and the boys.

This sequence in a nutshell gives us another indication of the prime concern of the novel: Angie getting raped. Indeed one almost gets the intention that it was Lawrence’s express purpose to piss off any feminist who might, for whatever reason, happen to read The Godmother Caper. Angie throughout is getting stripped down, fondled, assaulted, and nearly raped, and that’s not even mentioning the number of times she’s propositioned. In one particular sequence she actually throws a guy a mercy fuck just to get the intel he’s promised her. The rape stuff was there in previous volumes, but like the sex and violence it’s been ramped up tremendously this time; here the two hoods in Fosca’s place force Angie to strip and then one prepares to rape her while she’s forced to give the other a blowjob. Or as Lawrence refers to her as she performs the act: a “n – fellactrice!” For once again, Angie’s only referred to as black (in the most derogatory manner possible, of course) when she’s being mocked; otherwise she’s consistently referred to as “bronze-skinned.”

Here we also get our first taste of how Lawrence is just going to keep throwing plot developments at us, some as arbitrary as can be – the most egregious being the aforementioned bit where Angie, apropos of nothing, is contacted by a “glutinous”-voiced Peter Lorre type who works for a top secret agency called ALICE and tries to draft Angie’s services, complete with a necklace he insists she wear which serves as a two-way radio and homing beacon. It can also tighten on her throat Running Man style, to the point of decapitation, so as to keep her in line; the “slave collar,” the cretinous agent calls in – and then goes on to inform Angie he must know all of his female agents “carnally.” You guessed it, another attempted rape ensues, with Angie saved at the last moment by her main squeeze in the novel, a young stud named Jeff North. After which the two run away – and the incident is just brushed under the narrative carpet. And that’s just one example of the arbitrary subplotting that goes on throughout.

The main plot has to do with an ancient bust of the goddess Selene which was stolen from Turkey and smuggled into the US, eventually landing in the hands of Nimrod North, elderly art dealer who was a friend of Angie’s. But Nimrod’s dead of a heart attack and his hunky nephew Jeff is certain someone caused the cardiac arrest. He runs into Angie when she is, naturally, fully nude, escaping from that attempted rape-blowjob scene described above. She jumps in his car and they take off and Angie knows Jeff can barely contain himself, what with all the “naked tits and pussy” on the car seat beside him. But Jeff’s engaged to a knockout named Beryl who insists on putting off sex, so he doesn’t respond immediately to Angie’s propositions that night in her swanky pad. Of course he eventually gives in, and becomes Angie’s main bedmate.

That isn’t enough for Angie, though, as later on she meets Beryl, who worked as Nimrod’s assistant, and succeeds in seducing her, as well. The second volume had a brief lesbian sequence, but here Lawrence goes full-bore with it. Angie even suggests a three-way, but surprisingly that doesn’t happen. The stuff with Marilyn Johnson and her raped niece and the literally emasculated Carlo Fosca gradually plays into all of this, as does seemingly-unrelated stuff like an anti-rapist and mugger vigilante group and a possibly-related enforcement wing of the group called “LF.” Lawrence gets way out with this; when we finally see the LF in action, sticking up a dingy bar that Angie of course happens to be in, they’re wearing “UFO getups:” green coveralls with masks that have speaker grills that distort their voices. “Buck Rogers stuff,” as another character refers to them, perhaps indicating Lawrence’s past writing the juvenile sci-fi series Tom Swift.

But this is just the framework for lots of sleaze and attempted rapes. The novel occurs over two or three days, and these are hectic days for Angie to say the least. She’ll go from bed with Jeff to almost getting raped on the street to dining at the Y with Jeff’s fiance to a gunfight with some Mafia hoods, all within a few hours, like a Blaxploitation 24 or something. Much of this too is as arbitrary as can be, like when Angie decides to scout around New York to see who is spraypainting all the vigilante slogans, finds one guy in the act, and sneaks up on him, only to discover too late that he’s spraypainting an anti vigilante message! You guessed it, this guy tries to rape her, too – indeed, he strips off her panties and prepares to do her “Greek” style. Or rather, “Angie could feel his penis start to anally penetrate her.” But Angie manages to save herself with a ring that contains a small but razor sharp stiletto.

It goes on like this throughout, with action and sex sprinkled here and there. The Godmother stuff doesn’t even play out until the final pages; Angie spends more time chasing various leads and red herrings trying to track down the missing bust of Selene. The finale brings it all together, though, with Angie retaining the services of a ‘Nam pilot vet (a smooth black guy who likely would’ve turned up again in ensuing volumes) who drops her and Jeff off on the Godmother’s Manhattan building. Dressed in black jumpsuits with hoods and toting Sten submachine guns (a recurring theme from the finales of previous volumes), the two storm the cathouse. Lawrence busily wraps everything up here, and even manages to throw in a guy with an acid-disfigured face who wears a metal mask and mummy-like wrappings.

And I haven’t even mentioned all the other random wildness, like the part where Angie, offered a job by a creepy old Mafia don, instead pulls her gun on him and forces his men to strip and strike homosexual poses for photographs that will be used for blackmail purposes, should the don attempt any reprisals on her! Or when Angie visits the Godmother’s cathouse and deems the place a “veritable cuntropolis,” given the number of customers and sex acts being performed behind unlocked doors. Or the guy who gets Angie in a chair with cuffs that rotates around and turns into, you guessed it, a handy platform for raping her. Lawrence has so much fun with this particular sequence that he doesn’t even bother telling us how Angie breaks free of the cuffs, though I figure she used that stiletto ring.

Really, The Godmother Caper suffers from a lot of problems – messy plotting, random subplots, bald exposition serving as plot developments. But as trash it’s pure gold. It was by far my favorite volume in the series, and really I enjoyed them all except for the third one, which was tepid. But this one makes me wish there had been a fifth volume. My assumption is the readers of the day just didn’t take to a “bronze-skinned” heroine in the male-dominated world of men’s adventure, and more’s the pity.

Monday, November 5, 2018

Abandon Galaxy! (Commander Craig #2)


Abandon Galaxy!, by Bart Somers
March, 1967  Paperback Library

The second and final volume of the short-lived Commander Craig series is much better than the first one. It seems that Gardner Fox (aka “Bart Somers”) spent the time between volumes actually figuring out what his publisher wanted; whereas in the first book he turned in a juvenile snoozefest with a too-amorphous threat and a lackluster hero, this time he delivers just what Paperback Library no doubt wanted from the beginning: James Bond in space.

And this is the movie Bond for sure; like Connery’s take on the character, Commander John Craig now sexually harrasses all the hot women he meets (playfully, of course), likes to indulge in the occasional bit of gambling, and goes up against oily, despicable villains straight out of SPECTRE. The exploitative elements have been greatly expanded – nothing too explicit, though – with copious mentions of nude women at the various space-dives Craig frequents, waitresses in “transparent boleros,” man-hungry cougar types, etc. The lead female character is even a super high-class courtesan from a planet named Veneria in which all the women are trained love-artists, boasting that they’ve discovered a hundred and some ways to have sex.

There is only infrequent reference to that previous volume; it’s a short time later, and we are informed that Craig has broken up with his girlfriend, Eva Marlowe. No doubt because Fox has learned the last thing you want to give your swinging intergalactic spy is a steady girl. He’s gotta be stone free, baby! Fox has also learned to truly make the series “intergalactic,” too; no more constant mentions of Earth cities. Instead, Fox has gone overboard in the opposite direction; Abandon Galaxy is stuffed with arbitrary mentions of far-off planets, places, and people, not to mention bizarre alien oaths and curses. My favorite would definitely have to be, “By the nine births of Lamarkaan!”

When we reconnect with Craig he’s already on his latest assignment, which sees him watching over a lovely young museum curator on one of those far-flung worlds. Her name is Irla, and she’s become a target of LOOT – the League Of Outer-space Thieves. (Pretty sure that would actually be “LOOST,” wouldn’t it?) Ultimately we’ll learn it’s because the bastards intend to bump her off, replace her with an android, and use the android to steal a priceless artifact belonging to the Rim Worlds and thus start a war between the Empire (aka the US) and the Rim Worlds (aka the USSR). We see from the outset that there will be more action this time, as Craig takes on the LOOT thugs, even engaging them in an air car chase.

Also, Craig is more brutal this time; he melts sundry faces with his “rayer” gun; the novel is by no means gory, but Fox does often mention exploding blood and flesh, which is a far cry from the juvenile tones of the previous book. And also he appropriately exploits his female characters a bit more; we’re often reminded that hot redhead Irla has one helluva nice body, and she’s often getting nude for various reasons. However Fox does not dwell on the juicy details when the bumping and grinding finally happens – all of Craig’s sexual encounters happen off-page.

After all this, Craig looks forward to a nice vacation on Pleasure Planet, a sort of global resort where vacationers can let it all hang out. But on his way to the planet, riding with other vacationers in a massive cruise spaceship, he’s contacted by his boss, Dan Ingalls. This is one of Fox’s more interesting creations: a gadget that rides over the cosmic waves and allows you not only to hear the person you are talking to, but to feel their emotions as well. At least Craig has updgraded from that stupid “sack” he put everything in, last volume. Ingalls informs Craig that LOOT is up to more trouble; they are planning to plant a megapowerful bomb on – you guessed it – Pleasure Planet itself. Once again the hope is to spawn a war between the Empre and the Rim Worlds.

It's all very much on the Bond tip. Craig figures out that one of his passengers is the secret LOOT agent, and sure enough it’s a smokin’ hot babe who is posing as a sexually insatiable “tigress” headed for Pleasure Planet for some illicit fun. Her name is Kla’a Foster, and she’s met at the Pleasure Planet landing site by an oily, creepy-looking obese man named Alfred Bottom, who will soon be revealed as the main villain. True to the template, Bottom and Craig are soon challenging each other in high-stakes gambling matches, and Bottom is wining and dining Craig in his luxurious villa while a half-nude Kla’a sits at his side, tempting Craig. However the two never get it on, and Kla’a is sort of a dropped ball on Fox’s part, only returning to meet her hasty demise – not at Craig’s hand – in the finale.

The main setpiece of the novel is just as depicted on the cover; Craig takes up Bottom on his challenge to Schiamachy, an ancient, rarely-indulged Pleasure Planet feature in which two contestants vie against one other on a sort of elevated chessboard. Each level has a different challenge, and if the contestants survive to the top they have to fight each other to the death. Only Bottom at the last minute reveals he doesn’t plan to compete himself; the rules allow a stand-in, and Bottom will retain the services of his “bruitor” henchman, a massive alien creature with three eyes and tentacles, giving him four arms to bash his human prey.

It's a cool, pulpy scene, with Craig up against a giant spider, an android, and even an invisible killer plant. The battle with the bruitor is also nicely done. The only problem is it’s over too quickly and the novel sort of pads around for the last half. There are some cool pieces here and there, though, like Craig swimming through a monster-infested ocean to spy on Bottom’s beachfront villa. Craig throughout though is able to spend some quality time with his new lead female character: Mylitta, a “dusky” skinned, “slant eyed” ultra babe from the planet Veneria, which isn’t a planet of nasty diseases but one of high-class whores, of which Mylitta is the best of them all. Craig wins her as part of that Schiamachy duel.

Mylitta proves herself to be a memorable character; initially she’s only concerned with her courtesan reputation and is put off by Craig’s constant refusal to bed her(!). This is because Craig’s more concerned with the attempts on his life he’s sure Bottom is about to make, and his concerns of course are quickly validated. But once they finally get all that out of the way (off-page of course), Mylitta becomes more active in the action scenes, even using her disguise skills to make the two of them look completely different so as to elude Bottom and his men. That being said, there’s actually a part where Craig disguises himself as a janitor, folks, complete with a mop and pail. The future!!

The climax plays out in Lewdity City, to which Bottom, Kla’a, and the other LOOT villains have retreated after Craig, with some governmental help, prevents their ship from leaving the planet. Here upper-class citizens come to indulge in their lower-class tastes, posing as bawdy villagers and the like. It’s all very goofy, as is an arbitrary plot point Fox quickly introduces that allows Craig to rally the villagers to his cause and assault Bottom’s fortress. The climax is unexpectedly brutal, though, with eyeballs getting scratched out, people falling to their deaths, and a knock-down, drag-out fight between Craig and Bottom. Also more exploding flesh and blood thanks to Craig’s rayer.

It’s kind of a pity that this wasn’t the first installment of the series; if it had been, perhaps there would’ve been more than two volumes. I feel that Beyond The Black Enigma did little to engender the interest of sci-fi readers of the day, what with its general suckiness and all. In fact I wonder if this is why that first book was reprinted in 1968, to see if there was any interest in further Commander Craig adventures. Clearly there was not, and that was it for the adventures of Commander John Craig.

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Soldato #2: Death Grip!


Soldato #2: Death Grip!, by Al Conroy
No month stated, 1972  Lancer Books

The second volume of Soldato is further evidence that this series is more Parker than The Executioner, and Marvin Albert (aka “Al Conroy”) is more intent on writing a crime thriller than an action yarn. That being said, there’s actually more action here than in the first volume, as Johny Morini, former Mafia soldato (aka “soldier”), is fully set on the path of a full-time mob buster.

It’s a couple months after the previous volume, and Johnny (as Albert refers to him, likely cause it’s easier to type all the time than “Morini”) has become a hardscrabble drunk, whereas he was a driven family man in the previous volume. This is because Johnny’s wife has divorced him after losing the child she was carrying – Johnny figures the miscarriage was caused by all the turmoil she endured. So all that messy business taken care of, Albert has given us a Johnny Morini who is free to become the protagonist of a running series, with nothing to tie him down in his all-consuming quest to destroy the Mafia.

I like the setup Albert has concocted: Johnny is contacted by Riley, returning from the previous volume, where he was Johnny’s handler at the State Dept. But now Riley has gone into the private sector, and his legal services have been retained by wealthy Sicilian immigrant Pannunzio, whose brother was killed decades ago by the Mafia. Now old and enfeebled, dying from leukemia, Pannunzio wants to start dishing the Mafia bastards some payback in the short time he has left. He wants Johnny to be his one-man army and will set up a trust fund, managed by Riley, that will fund Johnny’s efforts for years to come.

Johnny debates the offer for a hot second and takes them up on it (otherwise the series would’ve been even shorter!). His first assignment sends him to Pennsylvania, where the story goes down in more rural environs than one might expect. As with the first volume, this appears to be so Albert can work in the extended “man hunted in the wilderness” setpiece he doled out in the previous book, only whereas it was Johnny hunted by two guys in the desert last time, this time it’s Johnny hunted by two guys in the woods.

But anyway Johnny when we meet up with him again has gone through the trouble of setting up his cover identity with the local yokels, posing as a career criminal looking for a big score – the novel seems to occur over a long stretch of time, at least a couple months, but Albert doesn’t much elaborate. Johnny’s target is Don Vigilante, who operates out of Philadelphia. A big failing with Death Grip is that neither Don Vigilante nor his co-ruler/enemy Don Aldo are presented as being overly evil. In fact I don’t think we ever even get a proper understanding of their criminal enterprises. But regardless, they’re Mafia scum and they must be destroyed.

Johnny becomes friendly with a hot but bitter blonde waitress named Laura who soon engages Johnny in some off-page sexual shenanigans; Albert as ever is not one to get sleazy. He does though bring in just a touch of emotional content (to quote my man Bruce Lee); Johnny drinks to forget about his ex-wife and lost child, the path his life didn’t take. To his credit Albert doesn’t schlock this up with the treacle that would be mandatory in today’s fiction; I mean, it’s not like Johnny’s sadness keeps him from banging hot truckstop tramps. Albert certainly doesn’t dwell on any treacle; Johnny sort of develops feelings for hardbitten Laura, whose ex-husband is part of the local mob, but when Johnny finds out she’s being used against her will to spy on him, he hits the road without looking back.

Instead, the crux of the novel is Johnny being hired by Don Vigilante’s men to get himself a job with Don Aldo’s men, so as to foster discord within their ranks! So basically Albert just writes a variation on the main plot of the novel itself; even Johnny must contain his laughter at this development. So Johnny poses again as a career conman looking to get a little family backup, the same bait that worked for him with Don Vigilante’s hoods. He ends up playing the two sides against each other, starting fights when the opportunity arises. A late subplot has Johnny being requested to take part in a heist run by the sadistic Doyle, known for killing cops and innocents in his jobs, not to mention losing most of his own men.

This part seems to be a fake-out – Johnny learns of the job, which involves a hit on a gem run, then says to hell with it and leaves – but comes back pages later when Johnny rips off Doyle and his sole surviving accomplice. This leads to the mandatory “men hunt Johnny” sequence, as Doyle, bearing an M-3 Grease Gun, and his equally-sadistic comrade, bearing a Garand rifle, hunt Johnny through the woods. Unlike last time, Johnny’s better armed here – he has an M1 carbine and a .38. This is a taut, gripping scene, and I’d say better than the similar one in the previous book, most likely because this one’s much shorter and thus more intense.

One thing that makes this sequence stand out is that Johnny’s a central part of it. There are too many sections of Death Grip where our hero steps aside and lets the criminals do one another away. True, it’s due to situations Johnny’s set up, but at the same time I prefer to see my ‘70s lone wolf vigilante blowing out his own mobster brains, not getting someone else to do it for him. For example there’s a climactic shootout between the two families in which Johnny doesn’t even appear. Instead, it’s back to the “tense” tip for the climax, as Johnny’s ambushed by a couple hoods who have figured out his game and have tracked him down.

This is another effective, taut sequence, playing out in a junkyard of battered and smashed cars. It’s a bit ruined by the deus ex machina appearance of a timed explosive Johnny apparently set up beforehand. But after this justice is again dealt from afar, and Albert stays true to the “Johnny Morini the shadow” vibe, with our hero “fading into a limousine” at the close of this assignment and heading off to the next one. He’s become a man without any real identity except as a mob-buster. Pannunzio, we learn in a brief epilogue, has several more missions planned for Johnny, however Albert would sit out the next two volumes (which would be courtesy Gil Brewer), not returning until the fifth (and final) volume.

And is that a tiny Al Jolson on the surreal cover being squeezed to death by the giant disembodied hand? “Mammy!!”

Monday, October 29, 2018

The Ginger Star (The Book Of Skaith #1)


The Book Of Skaith, by Leigh Brackett
May, 1974  Ballantine Books

Two decades after her last published story featuring Eric John StarkLeigh Brackett returned to the character with this paperback original sporting an awesome Steranko cover.* It would be the first in a trilogy dubbed The Book Of Skaith, and unlike those pulp tales of the ‘40s and ‘50s, here Stark would be flung into the far cosmos, Brackett’s “Old Solar System” with its ancient Martians and whatnot now thoroughly discredited by those buzzkilling scientists.

Yet I wonder why Brackett didn’t persist, as Skaith, the outpost-esque planet which orbits the titular “Ginger Star,” is basically a stand-in for Brackett’s Mars, with a little of her Venus thrown in. More pointedly, the year before Lin Carter had begun publishing his own “sequence” of novels inspired by Brackett’s pulp novellas, Mysteries Of Mars, so if he could get away with setting tales on a now-discredited “Old Mars,” then why couldn’t Brackett? My assumption is she must’ve felt the only way for her work to be taken seriously was to cater to the style of the time, thus it was goodbye to her decadent Mars and psychedelic Venus, and more’s the pity.

But other than that…all I can say is, I’m very glad I read Brackett’s early work before reading The Ginger Star. Because the author who wrote this is a pale reflection of the author who delivered such standout novellas as “Enchantress Of Venus,” “The Moon That Vanished,” and “Sea-Kings Of Mars.” Whereas those earlier stories burned with a special kind of fire, filled with inventive ideas, fully-fleshed characters, and memorable dialog, this one is a tired, turgid trawl that endlessly repeats the same sequence of events. And shockingly enough, the characters here are practically ciphers; there was more character depth in Brackett’s pulps, all of which were half the size of this novel.

Without any exaggeration, here’s the plot of The Ginger Star: Eric John Stark will go somewhere on Skaith, meet a few cipher-like characters, exchange some exposition with them, then they’ll all get ambushed and someone will knock Stark out and abduct him. Stark will be taken along by this new group of cipher-thin characters, trading exposition with them, and then another group will spring from the woodwork, ambush them, and take Stark captive. This goes on for the entire novel. There’s even a part a hundred pages in where Stark vows to never be abducted again…which is a laugh, because he’s captured yet again not too long after!!

Or to put it another way…when I read Brackett’s pulp novellas, I was so enthralled that sometimes I found myself re-reading sections. But with The Ginger Star I found myself skimming sections.

I’m not sure how this could’ve happened to a writer of Brackett’s caliber. And certainly she returned to Stark because it was her main character – her Tarzan or Conan – so she must’ve felt some drive to go back to him after so long. In fact I’m sure she wrote the unpublished-for-decades “Stark And The Star Kings” shortly before this one, so it would appear she was planning to return to Stark for a while. And yet even that novella, cowritten with her husband, was subpar, especially when compared to her ‘40s and ’50s material, so had she just lost her mojo?

Regardless, I can’t really recommend this novel, as I found it a trying, tiring read, with little of the spark Brackett once so easily displayed. But for posterity, it goes like this – Eric John Stark when we meet up with him is headed for the distant world of Skaith, newly introduced to the galactic union, something which I believe wasn’t mentioned in those early novellas. But then, not much of those stories are mentioned at all, other than a bit more fleshing out of Stark’s background, in particular how he was raised by a sort of space bureaucrat named Simon Ashton, a character often mentioned but who only appeared in the first Stark novella, “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs.”

Ashton is central to this because he was last seen on Skaith, trying to bring the desolate, decadent, and dying world into the union, and after a couple months boning up on the planet’s culture and languages, Stark is on an interstellar voyage to find him. Not much detail on the space trip, by the way, but it doesn’t appear to last very long – another difference from those earlier yarns, where hyperspace travel didn’t appear to exist. Bracett is more concerned with the Robert E. Howard-esque setting of Skaith, which is fine by me – I’ve never much been into “hard” sci-fi that goes to elaborate lengths of explaining how things work.

When Stark arrives on Skaith it bodes well for the novel ahead; it seems like vintage Brackett, with this dessicated, ancient world and its mysterious people and Stark the mysterious newcomer everyone’s after. There’s a vintage pulp vibe when he takes on these sea creature things, almost holy monsters that the natives of course avoid due to superstition. Stark takes care of one of them with his blade. But sadly that’s about it so far as Stark’s bad-assery goes; he’s been whittled down a bit, same as he was in those mid-‘60s rewrites The Secret Of Sinharat and People Of The Talisman. Because from here on out it’s the endless cycle of Stark meeting some new people, traveling a bit, getting knocked out and captured, traveling some more, then getting knocked out and captured again.

There are interesting touches at the outset, though. Brackett initially seems to be doing a parable of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, with an indolent group of hippies called the Farers who range around Skaith and get high off illegal plants. They’re like the children or something of the never-seen Lord High Protectors, who control the planet from their hidden fortress, the Citadel; a sadistic lot called the Wandsmen are in charge of law and order, apparently serving the whims of the Protectors. Stark runs into the Wandsmen posthaste, as well as their loyal Farers: in particular there’s a fully-nude, bodypainted Farer named Bayas who has an instant lust-hate thing for Stark, trying her damnest to get him killed. But ultimately she’s one of the main characters who is introduced, given lots of narrative space, and then abruptly dropped from the text.

I almost forgot – there’s a prophecy, of course. Some native witchwoman named Gerrith has prophecized that a “dark man” from space will come and lead the people of Irnan to freedom, and he’ll destroy the Citadel, mystical home of the Protectors…it does go on. And apparenty every single person on Skaith has heard of this recent prophecy, so now everyone wants Stark, who is of course clearly this figure from the prophecy. First Stark hooks up with Yarrod, a guru who commands a “pod,” basically real hippies as opposed to the plastic fantastic Farers in that they’re more into hivemind mentality and Oneness and such and not just laying around and getting high.

But this is just another of the many unexplored elements Brackett doles out; we get an offhand statement that these pods only live a few years, implying that the members all die, but instead we get in-fighting between resident tough guy Halk and Stark. Yarrod meanwhile has of course heard of the prophecy and saves Stark from some attacking Wandsmen and Farers; he and his people are from Irnan and have come here to try to find out how to escape the planet. They eventually meet up with prophecy-spouter Gerrith, however it’s the daughter of the woman who made the actual prophecy(!); the original Gerrith has been killed by the Wandsmen due to her “false” Dark Man prophecy.

Anyway this Gerrith is a smokin’ hot blonde and she ends up being Stark’s sole bedmate in the tale…not that Brackett really gets into too much. Gerrith tags along with Stark as he makes his seemingly-neverending journey across Skaith, as does Halk and a few others who don’t do much to make themselves memorable for the reader. And Brackett’s similar names don’t help much – we’ve got Gerrith, Gelnar, and Gerd, all in the same book (one of them’s a dog, by the way). She also rarely describes anything – gone, friends, is the evocative word-painting that was so central to Brackett’s pulp masterpieces. Gone! Action scenes, when they happen, also lack the blood and thunder of vintage Brackett, though Stark does make a few kills in the book.

Stark and company make their laborious way across Skaith, moving from the coastal area into a forest area and finally into a frozen area. The Lords live remote from the people, so remotely that they are considered supernatural beings by the rank and file. Their Citadel is guarded by the large mutant telepath Northhounds, canine beasts that apparently will be featured more in the second volume. Brackett ties in Stark’s oft-mentioned but seldom-displayed “wildman” history in that, thanks to his own “animal” cunning, he’s able to break through the telepathic hold of the Hounds and challenge their leader, thus becoming the alpha of the group. He uses the beasts to run roughshod over the Lords, who of course turn out to be spindly, weak old men.

Folks it was a plumb beating getting through this book. I’m sorry to say it. I love Leigh Brackett, you all should know that. I’m new to her work but by damn I rank her as one of my favorite writers of all time, ever. But The Ginger Star makes it clear that there was a huge difference between 1950s Brackett and 1970s Brackett. The author of this book comes off like someone desperately trying to mimic that earlier, superior author’s style, and failing miserably. Here’s hoping that the next two books are better.

*Steranko’s cover painting is actually of a barbarian character of his own creation, but the story goes that when Leigh Brackett saw his artwork – probably on the cover of Comixscene #5 (July – August, 1973) – she declared it the greatest representation of Eric John Stark ever, and was able to use it for The Ginger Star. Steranko went on to do the covers for the next two volumes, but as you’ll note Stark looks a bit different on them. Also it’s worth noting that on none of the three covers does Stark have the “sun-blackened skin” Brackett always made a point of mentioning.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Donovan’s Devils #1: The Assassination Is Set For July 4...


Donovans Devils #1: The Assassination Is Set For July 4..., by Lee Parker
No month stated, 1974  Award Books

The cover blurb of this first volume of Donovan’s Devils proclaims it an “action-packed fighting series,” but folks don’t you believe it. Action is sparse, and the novel, a deceptively slim, slow-moving 160 pages, is more concerned with plot and character development, introducing too many characters – and detailing their backgrounds – for such a short book.

According to Hawk’s Author’s Pseudonyms, Donovan’s Devil’s was the work of Robert H. Turner. However Brad Mengel in his Serial Vigilantes credits an author named Larry Powell, who also wrote The Liquidator for Award. I suspect Brad is correct; I’ve never read Powell, and I’m no expert on Turner, but The Assassination Is Set For July 4 doesn’t read like anything I’ve read by him. There’s no spark to this one, and the novel seems to have been written by someone who wasn’t certain what exactly was expected of him. I mean folks I’m not kidding, the “action” doesn’t even start until page 119, when the unwieldy seven-man team choppers into Paraguay to prevent the titular assassination…and even then it’s a while until the fireworks get going.

Judging from this first book, one can see why Donovan’s Devils only lasted three volumes. Hopefully the next two volumes will be quicker-moving, because this first one does the heavy lifting of introducing the members of the team and putting them all together into a unit. But clearly I think there was some confusion about this whole project – the Devils, we gradually learn, all worked together a few years ago in ‘Nam, snatching a Chinese officer from VC forces…and this is the event depicted on the cover! Indeed Powell focuses so much on that ‘Nam mission in copious flashbacks that you wonder why he didn’t just make it the plot of the novel; as it is, the reader feels as if he’s missing some earlier installment.

The action opens in Paraguay, as local terrorist leader El Tigre captures the US ambassador, his expectedly-hot young daughter, and a doctor who unbeknownst to Tigre is actually up for the Nobel, and thus a valuable captive in his own right. El Tigre, accompanied by his former madam-turned terrorist sidekick Maria (who provides the novel’s few sex scenes), sends his demands to America. The President calls in old asskicker Brigadier General Brick Blaine, who oversaw that “impossible mission” in ‘Nam a few years ago in which he put together a group of Army misfits, some of whom were even in jail, and ran the aforementioned Chinese officer mission. So for whatever reason, the President wants this whole El Tigre thing to be handled the same way.

Blaine then calls in his personal asskicker – Captain Jim Donovan, who when we meet him is conjugating (rather non-explicitly) with his fiance. He’s about to get out of the service, but when Blaine’s call comes in Donovan can’t deny his purpose and tells his fiance so long. He and Blaine reconvene in Virginia and begin the laborious, page-consuming task of putting together their team of misfits, which is in no way, shape, or form to be confused with the Dirty Dozen, because there are only eight of them. They are, straight from the back cover:


Humorously, there’s actually another member, one who didn’t make the “back cover cut:” PFC Nathan Carey, cowardly but arrogant, hated by the other men. In particular he and Irwin have a heated rivalry. But this dude has zero skills, other than being able to mimic other voices(!). Why he was included is anyone’s guess, but so far as the plot goes he volunteers for the mission, as he figures whoever saves the captives will become famous. But as you can see, there’s nothing special that unites these guys, and none of their specialties actually factor into the plot, which I’d say is more evidence that Powell really had no idea how to write this book. My assumption is the publisher came up with the series title and perhaps even the character names and specialities, and then hired the wrong ghostwriter to tackle it.

There’s no training involved, as all members are on active duty, so at least that’s one part of the cliché Powell doesn’t dole out; instead, it’s almost casual – the team is introduced one by one, we get somewhat-egregious rundowns on their histories, they’re put together at a base in Virginia, and Blaine and Donovan brief them. The final quarter is where all the action occurs; they chopper into Paraguay and hump it through the thick jungle to the old plantation El Tigre uses for his base. Three of the Devils get injured right off the bat, ambushed at the landing zone by El Tigre’s men. There’s also a crocodile attack as they make their laborious way through the jungle.

The climactic firefight is a bit tepid, unfortunately; Powell isn’t much for violence. This is very much a “get shot and fall down” kind of book, with none of the outrageous gore I demand in my violent pulp fiction. Donovan becomes so concerned with rescuing an undercover agent (a hastily-introduced eleventh hour subplot) that the rescue of the three “main” captives is almost perfunctory, as is the sendoff for El Tigre. But the mission is a success, and the President deems that “Donovan’s Devils” will be needed for more missions – little does he realize that there will only be two more.

And here’s Zwolf’s review.

Monday, October 22, 2018

The Cop-Killers


The Cop-Killers, by Steve Scott
No month stated, 1972  Manor Books

“We got a new manuscript from that book packager guy, Lyle Kenyon Engel. Somethin’ about commie terrorists killin’ cops. Waddaya think we should do for the cover?” 

“Lemme think a minute…okay, how about a closeup photo of a hand on the ground, with a broken bottle beside it, so you get the idea this poor bastard just got his clock cleaned…and we’ll have a cop hat lying there with the badge showing, so you know it was a cop. And a bunch of blood everywhere, so you know he’s dead…maybe some bloody gobs of brain matter, too.” 

“I love it!...Hey, you wanna do Chinese for lunch?”

              -- Possible conversation in the offices of Manor Books, 1972

One of the earliest novels published by William Crawford, here posing under yet another pseudonym, The Cop-Killers was part of an obscure “series” book producer Lyle Kenyon Engel created in the early ‘70s titled “The Now Books For Today’s Readers.” I’ve only been able to discover four books in this series, and three of them were written by Crawford under various pseudonyms: The Wasters as by Bill Williams (Macfadden Books, 1972), The Dynamite Freaks as by Donald Ryan (Manor, 1972), and this one. (The fourth, High Heaven by Peter Harmon, is also from Manor in ’72 but it’s so scarce I have no details on it…but Justin Marriott has a copy! Per the Catalog of Copyright Entries “Peter Harmon” is also a pseudonym, so it might be Crawford again.) Like other Engel productions, this series started life at Macfadden-Bartell but went over to Manor when Macfadden folded.

The so-called “Now Books For Today’s Readers” were basically the same as the standalone crime paperbacks Engel would later “produce” in the ‘70s, so I’ve tagged them thusly for convenience. They’re really the same thing: for the most part, lurid crime thrillers featuring older, right-wing cop protagonists. Actually The Wasters is about the My Lai massacre, but in that regard it’s similar to another standalone Crawford later wrote for Engel, this time under his own name: Gunship Commander (Pinnacle, 1973). It appears, judging from the blurb in The Wasters, that the “Now Books” were intended to capitalize on the affairs of the day, to seem so timely that they were hot off the presses, as it were.

This is clearly indicated by the plots of The Cop-Killers and The Dynamite Freaks, both of which concern left-wing hippie terrorists sticking it to the Man. But given that Crawford was the ghostwriter chosen for the job, it’s a safe bet we won’t get a peek into the minds of these terrorists, to see what makes them tick. As ever, Crawford’s “hero” is a hardcore cop who is such a bastard even his fellow cops despise him. He’s also part of an older mindset, and doesn’t cotton much to all this progressive liberal bullshit that’s soiling society as we know it. As for the hippie terrorists, they’re heroin-addicted bloodthirsty freaks who make Antifa look like the Hare Krishnas.

We already know our protagonist, Lt. Warren “Web” Burnell, is in for a hellish time when we meet him; the novel opens with Burnell nude, shackled, maimed and beaten, the punching bag of a muscle-bound sadist named Clacker. All we know is Burnell’s gotten into this predicament because he was taking things “personally.” At length we’ll learn that Burnell, a Korean War vet, is the chief (and sole officer) of his city’s Intelligence Unit, and he alone suspected that this rash of cop-killings around the country was part of a plot. His bullheaded research has led him here, captured by the very people he has been seeking.

Curiously, Crawford never tells us where all this takes place – he just keeps referring to it as “the city.” It’s clear it’s near the Mexico border, so one can assume it’s in New Mexico, familiar Crawford stomping grounds, as demonstrated by Stryker. But we know the city is large enough that it requires it’s own police intelligence unit, and Burnell, we learn via the usual Crawford arbitrary-backstorying, has been placed in charge of it because his fellow cops hate his guts and they want him out of their hair. Why? Because Burnell bucks authority and resents the spineless twits who run the police department, all of whom are more concerned with politics than protecting the people. 

And speaking of which, Crawford displays all his strengths and weaknesses throughout the text; any character, no matter how minor, is given inordinate setup and background material, and the background stuff is almost brazenly shoehorned in with absolutely no regard for narrative flow. Different characters are given similar names: Bennie, Berny, Burnell. We’re “treated” to abritrary “cop world” details, usually relayed via overlong flashbacks to cases Burnell worked on in the past. But then flashes of ultra-sadistic violence will come out of nowhere, with at one point even a character’s eyeball getting knocked out by a chain and dangling there by threads of muscle. Not to mention Crawford’s strange focus on characters shitting themselves – at least a few of them, including Burnell himself, soil their drawers before the book ends.

But as I’ve mentioned before, what makes all this sadistic shit so strange is that Crawford is unwilling to use the word “fuck.” To me this is actually creepier than anything, and perhaps an indication of this guy’s strange personality…I mean, he’ll use racial slurs (brace yourself for the dreaded N-word), feature scenes of rape and torture, and have characters shit themselves, but he writes “F –” instead of “fuck” every single time. It’s just bizarre. I mean why draw the line there? And for that matter, there’s no sex, also as usual for Crawford, other than that rape bit, which is part of another of those overlong, arbitrary backstories; it’s his model girlfriend Robi who was the victim, one guy “in her” and the other burning her with a lit cigarette, and Burnell stomped the two to pieces, killing one in the process, and thus met Robi, who later became his on-again, off-again girlfriend. 

Other than the flashback stuff, which ranges back over the years, the main plot of The Cop-Killers occurs over a few days. Cops are being massacred around the country, but “Jesus Edgar Hoover” of the FBI insists it is not a conspiracy. So too does the lily-livered chief of police in Burnell’s city, even after a couple of his own cops are shotgunned to gory pieces in an ambush. Burnell bucks authority and tracks down leads…but humorously, it’s all practically handed to him by Robi in some of the laziest plot-developing ever; basically, Burnell visits Robi and mocks her reading habits, and this ultimately leads him to the cop-killing terrorists!

Robi, hotstuff member of the jet-set, is a big fan of the “spy thrillers” of Millard McKinna, which sound awful but regardless are huge sellers – left-wing diatribes narrated by a spy for hire, with simple plots, capitalist villains, and “America is rotten” themes. McKinna is the pseudonym of Keith Ross, a liberal college professor (redundant term, I know) who lives, wouldn’t you believe it, right here in the city, and is so famous students fight to be in his classes. He lives in a secluded, gated and guarded community called Picana, and Robi was recently at one of his parties, hence the latest signed book on her shelves which sets Burnell off.

But Robi says maybe McKinna’s gone too far, as at this party a group of people were talking about the cop killings and they were all laughing and excited, and Robi’s certain McKinna and his crew, including a big guy named Clacker and a nuts-looking gal named Margo, are somehow involved with the murders. Burnell decides to investigate the whole lot of them. We get another Crawford staple: the interrogation-torture, as Burnell captures and beats around a hapless punk named Berny who has taken up with the terrorists. But Burnell kind of pities the kid so this part doesn’t have the merciless brutality of similar scenes in Crawford’s oeuvre.

Unfortunately, McKinna doesn’t get much text time – he is as expected small and wimpy, and spreads his left-wing, anti-cop, “power to the people” invective from the safety of his heavily-guarded mansion. (Crawford understands that hpocrisy is always lost on these types – the book is certainly timely in that regard!) Rather, big brawler Clacker comes off as the main villain, though late in the game Crawford changes his mind and brings in psycho-babe Margo, who turns out to’ve pulled the shotgun trigger at a few of the massacres, so eager to kill cops that she’s willing to take out her own comrades if it means she’ll get a chance at killing Burnell.

The novel, which runs 160 pages, quickly builds toward the incident it opened on: a captured Burnell, naked and in chains, captive of Clacker and Margo, his “insides busted” from merciless beatdowns. His left ear in particular is cauliflowered beyond repair, and Clacker continues to beat on it, sending Burnell into shamelss crying, puking, and shitting fits. As Zwolf said, Crawford’s work is almost “scat-porn” in that someone’s always “evacuating” at some point in his novels. Then Margo comes in, shotgun at the ready and crazy eyes fixed on Burnell, and our hero tries to use their insane, drug-addled impulses against them.

There isn’t much action per se in The Cop-Killers; indeed, all of it’s in the final pages, which features as mentioned a chain to the eyeball, someone getting shotgunned in the arm, another person being forcibly OD’d, and another shotgun blast to the chest at point-blank range. But Crawford leaves too many threads dangling. McKinna never returns to the narrative, and we only learn via dialog that he and his comrades will eventually be killed by their own kind, thanks to the disinformation Burnell managed to plant in their terrorist network – and Burnell’s not going to do a damned thing to save any of them. In fact he displays his hardcore makeup in a memorable finale in which he basically gives the kiss of death to someone he trusted, someone he’s only just learned was part of the terrorist group.

Overall The Cop-Killers was a quick, mostly satisfactory read, but it just wasn’t any fun…and it only now occurs to me that this is true of all the Crawford books I’ve read. None of them have the fun, escapist nature I demand in my lurid pulp yarns. They’re brutal and sleazy, sure, but there’s just something too nasty about them. Or maybe it’s just the arbitrary backstory page-filling and sloppy plotting that sets me off. (Or maybe it’s just the disgusting cover?) But at least this time such stuff is toned down a bit, likely because this one’s a good 20-30 pages shorter than the others of his I’ve read – the lower Crawford’s word count, the better the novel.

Thursday, October 18, 2018

The Vigilante #4: Chicago: Knock, Knock, You're Dead


The Vigilante #4: Chicago: Knock, Knock, You're Dead, by V.J. Santiago
May, 1976  Pinnacle Books

Three short weeks after the first volume and two days after the previous one, antihero Joe “The Vigilante” Madden heads to Chicago, where he can kill more criminal scum. At this point Robert Lory wants it to be clear that Madden is nuts; whereas before Madden at least made gestures toward protecting society and the like, now he’s practically a thrill-killer. This time his stated goal is to kill FALN terrorists who are targeting banks, but the somewhat messy plot has him ultimately taking on the merciless crime boss who finances them.

Madden’s back in New York for the first time in a few volumes, and we get to see how his coworkers at the engineering firm are just as casual about that whole “sorry your wife was brutally murdered” thing as ever. Instead it’s all about the job – Madden’s to be sent off to Chicago to help another client, a bank that’s looking for tips on video surveillance. Also, shortly after this Madden will be sent to Detroit, so we’re given a hint of where the fifth volume will take place. I’d imagine then that at this point Lory felt comfortable enough that the series would continue, thus was planting seeds for future installments. Unfortunately, the next volume would be the last!

This is most apparent in a subplot featuring Sgt. Leo Delancy of the NYPD, returning from the first volume. Delancy is the cop investigating the murder of Madden’s wife, the trio of punks who did it thus far having eluded capture. Delancy calls Madden into the station because his credit card, stolen that night, turned up, and Madden checks out a lineup to see if any of the men on display are the ones who killed his wife and stole his wallet. None are, however Lory here appears to develop a thread that Delancy might be coming after Madden himself.

Humorously enough, Delancy casually discusses the pile of cases he’s working on – one of which happens to be the stuff that went down in the second volume. This is because Madden has been doing his vigilante work with the same revolver he appropriated in the first volume, not realizing the bullets he left behind would eventually be matched up. Delancy tells Madden that whoever did all the killing in New York and Los Angeles surely wasn’t a professional, as a pro wouldn’t be stupid enough to use the same gun across the country. It’s not hinted that Delancy suspects Madden, but it’s definitely a setup for future developments.

Madden finally dumps the .32 in the Hudson and bullies an underworld fence to rassle him up some new guns. He still has the Mauser from the second volume, but this is a ‘70s crime novel, so a revolver is demanded; the fence gets him a .38 Colt, which Madden doesn’t like as much as he did the .32. We get more of those flashbacks to simpler times when Madden simply hides the guns in his check-in luggage for the flight to Chicago. Lory proves again he’s a savvy men’s adventure writer, not wasting much of our time with the whole “engineering” schtick; Madden appraises the situation, learns about recent FALN terrorist bombings in the Chicago area, and helps out with video surveillance setup.

Instead the focus is on Madden hunting down the terrorists on his own, but here Knock, Knock, You’re Dead sort of loses its way. That being said, this one’s pretty sleazy at times, so it has that going for it. This is demonstrated posthaste, as Madden follows a teenaged FALN bomber back to his place, makes him call his superior to arrange a meeting, and then blows the kid away. Later Madden stakes the meeting place out, watching from a dive bar where the blonde bombshell waitress, a former hooker named Jean, gives him free booze and makes interested remarks. Apparently that horrific scar Madden has across his face is quite the turn-on for certain women.

This unexpectedly leads to the novel’s first sex scene, and the most explicit one yet in the series – but not with Jean. Madden sees a sexy hispanic gal wandering around the meet place, then abducts her, takes her to a sleazy hotel, and starts slapping and punching her around for info. You guessed it, folks, this turns her on good and proper. Before you know it, she’s naked and begging Madden to do her. This he does, for a few pages of graphically-depicted sexual a-happenings, Lory actually detailing back-to-back bangings, like this was The Baroness or something. He also works in the “man’s conquest” theme he explored in the John Eagle Expeditor entry The Glyphs Of Gold, which also featured a sexy Hispanic babe “challenging” the hero’s masculinity by seeing how long he could last in the sack – or, as Lory puts it, “to see who drains who.” Of course, just like John Eagle, Joe Madden proves his worth, and then some.

Madden is increasingly becoming the most obnoxious “hero” in men’s adventure fiction; after boffing the girl, Juana, into wilting submission, he gets more info out of her about her FALN comrades – and when she relays that her kid brother was recently murdered, Madden happily informs her that he was the one who pulled the trigger! Also throughout the novel he bullies and bosses people around, even beating Jean’s boss at the restaurant to a pulp when he goes back there later on and insists she drop everything, walk out of her job, and go to a nearby hotel for some quick sex(!). Also, I wondered why Lory named his sole two female characters so similarly (Jean and Juana), but figured it must’ve been like a theme or some other sort of literary trick that escaped me. But the two characters never meet so it doesn’t get too confusing.

Part of Madden’s assholishness is just a play; for some reason he decides to bluff it that he’s a Mafia rep, and he’s cornering these FALN bombers because they’re hitting property that belongs to his “family.” It’s kind of goofy, but the terrorists, just kids, go for it. It gets even goofier when Madden meets the chief bomber in a park and bullshits the kid that he, Madden, has a sniper hidden in the distance with a bead on the kid’s head, and one wave of Madden’s hand and it’s bye-bye commie terrorist! But here’s where things get sloppy. The terrorist is really looking to branch out of the whole commie thing, and to auction off his bomb skills to the highest bidder, his most recent employer being a shady entrepreneur named Jake Pontis.

So we’ve bounced all over the place at this point – including even arbitrary bits where Madden goes out into the nighttime city to randomly kill creeps and crooks – but Lory has now settled on Jake Pontis, not the FALN, as being the main threat Madden’s up against here in Chicago. But here his bullshitting technique doesn’t work out. In the novel’s most tense sequence, Madden tries to bluff Pontis with the usual syndicate stuff, when Pontis immediately calls him out on it and declares that Madden’s just a phony, one whose time it has come to die. Then Madden finds himself in a desperate fight against a couple thugs and crooked cops, but it’s all in a pitch-black park and relayed more via the tension and fear than slam-bang action.

A recurring idea in The Vigilante is that Madden gets by on luck, but at this point it has worn a little thin. He of course manages to escape the park ambush but it’s really because the villains decide to turn on each other. At any rate it leads to another tense sequence, where Madden corners the FALN bombers, including Juana, while they’re on a job. Here Madden displays his cold roots, in particular so far as Juana is concerned. But still, something is lacking here, and I’m pretty sure it’s because Madden just doesn’t seem as driven. He’s out there killing crooks with the best of them, but there’s just no impetus for him to even be here – I mean this guy’s gone up against muggers and rapists and white slavers; why’s he suddenly taking on a big-time crook who plans to bomb his own factories for insurance payoffs?

But at least there’s a nice sleazy vibe throughout (even down to off-hand weird stuff like Pontis being described as looking “like a girl-type bitch”). Madden also finds the time to shack up with Jean, and here Lory builds up a growing relationship between the two, with Madden even wondering if he’s falling in love. It’s to Lory’s credit that, while he goes the expected route of Jean being abducted in the final pages, he doesn’t deliver the expected Death Wish-esque payoff. Instead, Madden gets to play the hero, and while it’s just him up against two thugs, it still packs more tension and entertainment than the typical “one man army” action scenes of the men’s adventure genre.

Overall I enjoyed Knock, Knock, You’re Dead, same as I have the other entries in the series, but this one seemed a bit muddled when compared to the previous books. Hopefully Madden will get back to his safe space next time. And finally, this is the first installment to feature a painted cover. Not the greatest ever, with Madden’s bizarre grimace and that massive tie he apparently borrowed from a clown. Bring back the bored-looking cover model!