The Undertaker #3: The Thin Black Line

The Undertaker #3: The Thin Black Line, by John Doe

February, 2026  Tocsin Press

Great news, everyone – the third volume of The Undertaker is finally here! Published by Tocsin Press, The Thin Black Line sees everyone’s favorite funeral director-slash-executioner Victor “The Undertaker” Underhill return for more darkly-humorous payback…and this time his sights are set on contraband and human trafficking, the immensely talented John Doe delivering a plot that takes in ICE, Border Patrol, and the Cartels. 

You’ll want to just order the book, but I’ll go ahead and rave about it anyway. This one comes off like a combo of Death Transition in that it has a serious plot that is treated with dark humor, and only later on does it bring in the slapstick vibe of Black Lives Murder. It’s also slightly longer than the previous books, but Doe does a phenomenal job of ramping up the tension as the book progresses, expertly bringing together the various strands of plot. 

One thing I was surprised about was that ICE protesters are not given much narrative space; after the pitch-perfect gutting of the BLM and antifa cannon fodder in the previous book, I figured we’d get more spoofery of people who are so deluded that they carry around “No Kings” signs without it occurring to them that they live in a society where they actually have the freedom to carry “No Kings” signs. Instead, Doe’s focus is on ICE, Border Patrol, and the Cartels, and the protesters are mostly in the background – save for a hilarious part where redheaded dufus Deputy Harris, returning from the previous two books (and the guy who so humorously re-enacted the George Floyd situation in the previous book, though Harris was just trying to give a special Vietnamese massage), acts as ICE liason during a protest. 

It’s a year after Black Lives Murder, and series protagonist Ivan Gore, a deputy in charge of homicide in Milton, is proud of himself that he’s gone all this time without encountering Victor “The Undertaker” Underhill, that John Milton-quoting funeral director with a penchant for disguise and for avenging the dead – an interesting take for sure, in that unlike most lone wolf men’s adventure protagonists, Underhill isn’t so much concerned about the living as he is about the dead. 

John Doe also elaborates on a sort of metapysical bond between Underhill and Gore; that Gore has the same sort of potential as Underhill. As I’ve said before, The Undertaker is very much a Destroyer for today, and it seems clear that Ivan Gore will eventually become the Remo to Underhill’s Chiun, but I could be wrong. The Thin Black Line is cool because it focuses on how Gore keeps trying to ignore his “true self,” even though he and Underhill only share a few pages together in the book. 

As we’ll recall, Gore has a history in the funeral business himself, given that his family ran a funeral home; Doe delivers a great prologue in which we see young Gore helping his uncle with the pilot light on a cremator – which so beautifully sets up a tense moment in the climax that I won’t spoil it. But now Gore is in his 30s and is a homicide detective for the sheriff’s department in Milton, and he’s trying not to think about Underhill anymore – and also not to think about Underhill’s sexy assistant, Alyssa Jensen, who was introduced in the previous volume and has a much larger role in this one. 

As ever the series is set in the present day, and Doe brings in the current hot topic of ICE, which has shown up in Milton and nearby blue city Pandemont. Gore gets involved in ICE action when he responds to a call for cars, and he sees an Hispanic guy shot down by ICE as the guy is frantically knocking on the door of a house in a residential area – setting up a recurring “ringing ears” syndrome that plagues Gore through the book. That, and Gore’s certainty that something rotten is going on. 

Taking up the dead man’s cell phone while no one is looking, Gore eventually goes to Alyssa, knowing she’ll be able to break into it. Meanwhile we readers learn via a variety of new characters that the cartels are involved, and – again not giving anything away – it also involves childcare services and human trafficking. The main character for a long stretch of the novel is none other than Deputy Harris, who is desperate to join ICE so he can be a big man; Doe’s humor is particularly acidic as the bumbling Harris is witness to all sorts of illegal activity, but is blissfully unaware of what he is really seeing. The Warren Murphy vibe is very strong in the scenes with Harris. 

There are also great parts where Gore’s devotion to his wife, Amanda, is sorely tested. Out of state with family for the weekend, Amanda leaves Gore home alone, and he’s plagued by those ringing ears and his certainty that something rotten is going on, but struggling with whether he should go to Underhill with it. This sets up a great part where Gore first tries to take his mind off things by reading a “dog-eared copy” of a Super Cop Joe Blitz novel – probably the best imprint in-jokery since that night watchman mentioned that he had been reading too many volumes of The Executioner in The Penetrator #5 – and then later Gore must fend off the clear advances of Alyssa Jensen, who shows up with a bottle of wine and wants to talk about Underhill. 

John Doe has long hinted that there is something special about Gore, which allows him to “be like Underhill,” per Alyssa, with the possibility dangling that there is a supernatural bent to The Undertaker. The implication is that Underhill, looking at a corpse, can detect whether the corpse was murdered or came to death via foul means, and thus goes out in vengeance. The difference here is that Gore is more concerned with preventing murders, which sets up a nicely-handled confrontation between Gore and Underhill. 

This volume introduces a slightly more risque vibe with the Harris storyline; hanging out with some ICE agents – who curiously are all Mexican, sport tattoos, and appear to be former criminals – Harris sets his sights on a hotstuff Latina babe who takes him into her room for some drug-fueled shenanigans. This subplot has a great payoff later in the book, when Harris first goes to the massage parlor to proudly boast to his Vietnamese girlfriend that he’s now with ICE – which sets off a massage-parlor girl freak-out that could come right out of The Benny Hill Show – and then later Harris finds out he’s in hot water with the Latina babe, as well. 

This however sets up an even more humorous situation, which to continue with the ‘70s TV comparisons is full-on Three’s Company: in one of the goofy misundertandings that was central to the comedy on that show, Gore makes a panicked call to Harris, having figured out that the cartel is trafficking “girls,” and Harris misunderstands Gore and thinks the “girls” he means are the Vietnamese massage-parlor girls, all of whom are here illegally. This brings more of the risque vibe in a houseful of naked or semi-naked Vietnamese girls, many of whom are just looking for their panties. A very funny slapstick scene, up there with anything in Black Lives Murder. 

It isn’t all laughs, though; Gore’s painstaking trackdown of who the murdered Hispanic was and how he ties into another murdered Hispanic (this one a girl, who is coldly killed off in an affecting opening scene), is skillfully handled and the reader soon wants to see the villains pay, no matter what the reader’s politics or feelings about ICE may be. I thought this was incredibly pulled off, as John Doe makes the reader care about two illegals…both of whom are already dead. 

Milton County is again brought to life – I loved the goofy Krispy-Tako place Gore eats at – and series regulars Sheriff Bullard and Deputy Jackson also appear, bringing a lot of continuity to the books. The one character who does not appear much is the title character; as with Death Transition, Victor Underhill is behind-the-scenes taking care of business, only appearing infrequently to dole out poetic justice. His hearse also plays into the finale, and once again his gift for disguise makes for a lot of surprise appearances. That said, when Underhill does appear, he always makes for the most memorable character. 

The novel ends with Gore finding out something from his past that might indicate which side of the “thin black line” he’s on. And also, if he was concerned about his feelings about Alyssa Jensen before, its’ nothing compared to how he feels about her by novel’s end. She features with Gore in a great climax, which again I promise not to spoil, in which John Doe brings together the entire plot and the mechanics of cremation, even tying back to the opening scene with young Ivan Gore. 

All told, this was a great novel, and again Doe brings in a slight bit of a Don Pendleton vibe to the narrative, from periodic one-sentence paragraphs to paragraphs that begin with “Yeah.” He also does that Pendleton-esque stylistic gimmick of introducing a phrase early in the book and then periodically referring back to it; in the case of The Thin Black Line it’s how Gore, as a child, would stubbornly run through wild kudzu, and this becomes a metaphor of the overwhelming corruption and red tape the adult Gore still tries to run through. 

Overall, The Thin Black Line is another highly-recommended novel in The Undertaker, and you should head over to Tocsin Press to pick it up…and the first two volumes, if you haven’t already! Once again I’ve failed to get across how truly a gifted of a writer John Doe is…despite coming in at 270+ pages, the novel never lags, and the insanity builds and builds to such a feverish pitch that you’ll be wrapped up in it by the end. Here’s hoping it doesn’t take another four years for the next volume!!

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

Chaos, by Tom O'Neill with Dan Piepenbring

June, 2019  Little, Brown and Company

I thought I was done with Manson Family books, but the other week I was asking Gemini to seek out books that were written by former Rolling Stone reporters, particularly books that hewed to the old New Journalism style, and Gemini included Chaos in its list, saying that even though it was recent it came off like a lost piece of 1970s Rolling Stone journalism. 

Well, it sort of does. I guess Chaos is “New Journalism,” or perhaps “Gonzo” in the Hunter Thompson sense in that author Tom O’Neill inserts himself into the narrative. But otherwise we do not get the excessive word painting that most draws me to vintage New Journalism; interestingly, this is how Chaos pales in comparison to the book it is trying to attack, Vincent Bugliosi’s major bestseller Helter Skelter. 

While O’Neill spends 500+ pages excessively detailing how Bugliosi hid evidence, prodded witnesses to lie on the stand, and also beat his mistress half to death(!?), never once does he achieve the mise en scene that Bugliosi and co-writer Curt Gentry brought to Helter Skelter. O’Neill even seems to be aware of this, directly quoting the effective opening line of Helter Skelter; there are no equally-quotable lines in Chaos. And I doubt it will still be in print 50 years from now, like Helter Skelter still is. 

Granted, the difference between the two books is that Bugliosi and Gentry were writing back then, back in the era where it was all happening – when the Family was still out there, with the dangling threat that more murders might ensue, a la the plot of Manson cash-in novel The Cult Of Killers. O’Neill is writing decades later, after Manson himself is dead, not to mention Bugliosi, Gentry, Susan “Sadie Glutz” Atkins, Linda Kasabian, etc, etc. Thus his book is more of a history piece, about picking up the pieces of a puzzle many decades later. 

But then Chaos isn’t as much about the Manson mystery as it is about how hard it was for Tom O’Neill to write the book. Folks, I kid you not. A large majority of the text is comrpised of O’Neill telling us of his many and futile attempts to write about his findings over the course of twenty years. Yes, twenty years: Chaos started life as a magazine article O’Neill was assigned to write for Premiere magazine in 1999, but he kept jumping from one new revelation to the next...so many revelations that he couldn’t figure out how to write the article, which was so big it eventually had to be a book. 

And friends the funniest part is…he never does figure out how to write the book! You patitently read Chaos, pondering over the glaring inconsistencies O’Neill reveals about the entire “Helter Skelter” case and Vincent Bugliosi’s methods to prosecute Manson et al, and you keep waiting for this big moment where O’Neill ties it all togeter. That moment never comes. That moment never comes! O’Neill refuses to tie his many loose ends together, refuses to make a daring claim – instead, he presents his findings, and then at great length tells us it’s all supposition on his part, given the glut of circumstantial evidence, and ends the book by telling us he’s “still looking.” Twenty years on the job, and he’s still looking. 

Back when I was really into this Manson stuff I recall reading a lot of theories online, many of them more compellingly-presented than O’Neill’s own; for example, there is zero here about a compelling theory that the murders were really masterminded by Family members Tex Watson and Linda Kasabian, as revenge on a drug burn…O’Neill does not mention this theory, nor does he talk about the character Paul Krassner claimed without question was behind the murders in a 1975 Rolling Stone article (Charles Winans), after which Rolling Stone was sued and Krassner was forbidden from writing more about the subject. This is especially curious because Krassner’s suspect Charles Winans was a former military man who got involved with the counterculture movement, which aligns exactly with the theory O’Neill concocts in Chaos. I’ve even come across a theory that Winans was the “Candyman” Tex Watkins mentioned in his testimony. 

But you will find nothing like this in Chaos. Tom O’Neill has spent so long researching his book that anonymous blog runners and site runners have beaten him to the punch – and have given us more juicy storylines in the process. But what’s crazy is that O’Neill actually meets with Paul Krassner in the course of his research, but the Winans theory is never mentioned; instead, Krassner merely warns O’Neill that the Manson thing can “take over your life.” 

And yeah, chasing one red herring after another for twenty years would certainly constitute taking over one’s life. Now, I don’t want to say that Tom O’Neill has wasted his life on a twenty-year quest that brought up no concrete evidence; I mean, surely it wouldn’t be much more of a waste than being married to one’s worst enemy for twenty-plus years. (Just speaking theoretically, of course!) Still though, the helluva it is that many others have trod the same twisted path as O’Neill, but many of them have come up with more believable theories. 

For you win a no-prize if you guessed that O’Neill brings in that hoariest of hoary conspiracy theories: MK-Ultra. To his credit, he doesn’t jump right into it, and builds his case…but then it took him ten years of real-time research to get there. It was only after he hit one brick wall after another with the LAPD and the LASO (sheriff’s office). And the threads connecting are tenuous at best; there were shady individuals hanging around at the time, in particular one guy who claimed to be at the Tate house the night of the murders and might have been an undercover CIA agent (or, just as likely, he might have been a bullshit artist), and O’Neill follows the trail to Dr. Jolly, a CIA-funded shrink who was doing LSD research for the Agency in the Haight just when Manson happened to be there, in 1967. 

The only problem is, O’Neill can never find anything that ties all of these people together…as if the Agency has a book somewhere titled “How We Used LSD To Brainwash a Group of Hippies Into Killers.” Which, of course, would be placed right next to their book “How We Killed The Kennedys.” 

The thing about these alternate Manson theories is that they are no less believable than the Helter Skelter theory. I mean, you can’t claim that it’s unbelievable that Manson’s drug-fueled cult would kill innocents as a way to start a race war, all of it inspired by a Beatles tune…and then come up with an alternate theory involving government spooks and mind control and say that’s more believable. 

This is why I say Bugliosi ensured in Helter Skelter that all challengers would immediately be deposed, with the statement that Manson had claimed “No sense makes sense.” Like Frank Barone said on Everybody Loves Raymond, “You can’t argue with a crazy person.” And, to build on that, you can’t expect a crazy person to make sense. This is the problem with O’Neill and the other “myth-busters” of today…they are looking for an explanation for why lunatics hopped up on LSD and God knows what else would randomly butcher people. I mean, it’s kind of like when a Muslim guy runs his truck into people while yelling about “Allah” and the media wonders what his “motive” was. 

Then again, that’s the difference between Bugliosi’s day and our modern day. We’re a lot dumber now. 

O’Neill does keep the reader’s interest for the majority of the text, in particular in the first half, before Chaos deep dives into arbitrary digressions on MK-Ultra, LSD research, and Federal anti-leftism initiatives (we need to bring those back!!). Just as Bugliosi documented in his own book, there were many mistakes on the part of law enforcement…but O’Neill expands on this by focusing on Bugliosi’s mistakes, many of which appeared to be intentional. 

Getting access to police documents that had not been seen since Bugliosi’s day, O’Neill discovers discrepencies thatwould have undermined the entire “Helter Skelter” conceit. Chief among them would be a note in Bugliosi’s own hand from a deposition with biker Danny DeCarlo, who claimed that producer Terry Melcher – the guy who once lived in the Tate home, and thus per the Helter Skelter theory was the guy Manson was trying to send a message to with the Tate killings – visited Manson in the desert after the killings. And indeed even fell to his knees and begged forgiveness. This, clearly, would disprove the Helter Skelter theory…why would Melcher still be visiting (and begging) Manson if the Tate murders had really been meant as a message to him? What makes it all the more curious to O’Neill was that Bugliosi scratched out this statement of DeCarlo’s in his notepad…and never spoke about it with his co-prosecutor, or with the defense team, or indeed ever mentioned it at all. 

But here’s the thing…what if DeCarlo was wrong?? I mean folks, we’re talking about a drug-taking biker who hung out with a friggin’ cult, and we’re expecting him to know the exact dates things happened. Hell, we’re expecting him to even be believable! Never once does it occur to O’Neill that DeCarlo might’ve walked back his own statement, realizing he had his dates wrong or hell even had the wrong guy and that it wasn’t even Melcher he saw – hence Bugliosi scratching out the statement. 

No, O’Neill at this point has heard that Bugliosi is a “bad guy” and he immediately jumps to the conclusion that the DeCarlo statement is totally valid and Bugliosi didn’t introduce it to the court due to bad intentions. To make it all the more insane, only late in the book does O’Neill have another face-to-face with his “enemy,” Bugliosi…and is deflated when Bugliosi claims he does not even remember this statement, and certainly would have shared it. Again, the impression is he discarded the statement back in the early ‘70s, at the time DeCarlo was giving the statement, and scratched it out in real-time as DeCarlo realized his own story was wrong. “Sorry, man, I think I got the people and the dates wrong, you can scratch that. Hey, you got anymore beer around here?” 

O’Neill mainly takes issue with how Charles Manson, a convict with a federal rap, was able to get by with so many crimes – up to and including threatening cops with violence and being caught with underaged girls – but was let go time after time. O’Neill presses the surviving cops and deputies on this (many of whom have died in the time it took O’Neill to write the book), and none of them can give a valid reason…then also there’s Manson’s parole officer, a guy who studied drugs and whatnot and who gave Manson much freer rein than one might expect. 

Then there’s the big question, always brushed over in most Manson Family books, of how exactly Charles Manson was able to “brainwash” a group of drug-using losers into murderous psychos. We’re told that the CIA was not able to use LSD to brainwash people, but thanks to his industrious research, O’Neill discovers in the papers of dead Agency contractor Dr. Jolly that the good doctor did indeed succeed in implanting a false memory in someone with LSD and other head-shrink tactics. 

But the thing is…O’Neil’s never able to connect all the dots, because he wants concrete evidence. So the reader must infer from the incessant lead-chasing that the government, in order to quash the leftist counterculture movement, implanted CIA-trained doctors in the Haight and other counterculture areas, studied the effects of drugs on people, figured out via field testing how to brainwash them (ie, MK-Ultra), and then used Manson’s groups as guinea pigs, which explains why Manson was able to evade arrest for so long: higher-ups were telling law enforcement that Manson was untouchable. As one of O’Neill’s interviewees states, the Manson scenario was a case of “MK-Ultra gone right.” 

All of which, of course, is much more believable than some story about a madman going even more mad after too much LSD and binging the White Album and then sending his loyal followers out to kill randomly, so as to start a race war. 

Like so many others have written, “Helter Skelter” does just as good a job of answering all the mysteries as any other theory does. And as for the leniency Manson was given; the parole office himself states that it was “a different time” in the ‘60s, with a lot more leeway than situations would be given today. Indeed, one might suspect that it was due to Manson himself that such safeguards were even put in place. 

Perhaps Paul Krassner should’ve been more direct with Tom O’Neill. It isn’t that the Manson thing can take over your life, it’s more so that you have to keep your common sense about you. If you go around with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. My contention is that it isn’t so much “vast conspiracy” as it is people who did a lot of drugs and thus did not operate in what the rest of us construe as “reality.” I mean, go live in the desert for several months and do a bunch of Orange Sunshine every day and you too will probably start to believe that the song “Helter Skelter” is commanding you to start a race war. No sense makes sense. 

As for the cops and their various mistakes? Again, read Helter Skelter. Bugliosi makes the law enforcement agencies look like fools, complaining about the very mistakes O’Neill writes about here…but in O’Neill’s opinion, Bugliosi is just as guilty, and we’re often told how the cops disliked him so much. Gee, I wonder why? 

Speaking of cops, O’Neill often reminds us that none of the cops who worked on the Tate-LaBianca killings believed in Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter theory. Tellingly, O’Neill never states that any of these cops believe the CIA was behind it, either! 

The fact is, we never are given a theory on why the murders happened. This truly is the most frustrating thing about reading Chaos. As mentioned, we make our way through the book waiting for a big revelation, or an explanation of why it all happened…and nothing ever comes of it. We’re even told of a guy who might have been a later victim of the Family, but even that is inconclusive. 

To quote a certain failed presidential candidate, “What, at this point, does it even matter?” This is how I felt as I read Chaos, and it’s the same thing Bugliosi even asks O’Neill toward the end of the book. Does it matter if the Family butchered people because they were brainwashed by Manson, or because they were brainwashed by CIA spooks? Did it matter to the victims? Which, by the way, Bugliosi shows much more compassion for; O’Neill even informs us that he “made a mistake” when interviewing a reticent Paul Tate, and in desperation to get the man to speak, O’Neill said, “Think of the victims!” To the father of one of the victims! 

I had a similar experience when I read Sticky Fingers; I started to sympathize with the person the author was attacking. In the case of that book it was Jann Werner; here it’s Vincent Bugliosi…that is, until the end of the book, when O’Neill reveals all the many skeletons in Bugliosi’s closet, from stalking a man he suspected of having an affair with his wife to beating up a woman Bugliosi was having an affair with. Certainly not an indication of the man’s quality as a human being, but not really relevant to his abilities as a prosecutor. I mean it’s like saying that just because a guy once made a demeaning, off-hand remark about women, he couldn’t go on to become the greatest president in US history. Right, friends?! 

But on that note, O’Neill also catches Bugliosi on another blunder; there’s a confrontation between the two at the start of the book, where Bugliosi slips on something…and by the time (years later) that O’Neill realizes this, he and Bugliosi are enemies and thus he can’t just ask him about the slip. But basically, Bugliosi makes a casual statement about having knowledge of the Manson Family activities at a certain point before they were even arrested, but O’Neill later realizes that Bugliosi is admitting to being aware of Manson et al before he was assigned the prosecution case, which goes against what Bugliosi wrote in Helter Skelter. 

And since O’Neill never strings together his unified theory, it goes like this: the CIA used LSD to brainwash people and implant false memories, a project called MK-Ultra; Manson was one of the test subjects, likely being practiced on by Dr. Jolly in the Haight in 1967; the cops were told by the Feds to look the other way; Bugliosi contrived and suppressed evidence to create the hoax “Helter Skelter” storyline to dissuade people from finding out the truth. 

And yet these shadowy spooks are the same ones who couldn’t even keep the Iran-Contra deal a secret ten years later. And also, the MK-Ultra angle still doesn’t explain why Sharon Tate and friends, why Mr. and Mrs. LaBianca. O’Neill successfully argues that the Tate hit wasn’t to send a message to Terry Melcher, as Bugliosi claimed, given the wealth of evidence that Manson was well aware that Melcher no longer lived in that house. So then, why? Again, “Helter Skelter” does just as good a job of explaining why. Even better, in fact! 

The major undoing of Chaos is that Tom O’Neill took so long to write it, the book seems behind the times. Given his relentless investigative work, O’Neill tells us, the original 1999 magazine article was dropped, with a book planned for 2009…but he missed that deadline, too. If it had actually come out in 2009 it might have seemed more relevant. As it is, there are a wealth of blogs and sites and Reddit threads about Manson these days that are much more interesting than anything here – the link I gave above, for example, about The Candyman, is more interesting than the entirety of Chaos. But then, those blog runners don’t have to worry about a legal team clearing everything for publication, something which Tom O’Neill definitely had to endure…hence the lack of mention of Charles Winans, I’d imagine. 

Speaking of lawsuits, the cynic in me suspects that O’Neill waited twenty years to publish the book because he’s was waiting the clock until many of these people died, and could no longer sue him. I know this sounds callous, but I think it’s very plausible, especially given that Bugliosi straight-up promises O’Neill that he will sue him if he (O’Neill) publishes any of his “lies” about Bugliosi. Well, Bugliosi is gone, now, as are Terry Melcher, Rudy Altobelli, and many of the cops and other figures O’Neill interviewed over the years. No worries about lawsuits now. 

O’Neill seems aware that his book has arrived late; he tells us his frustation at seeing many documentaries and books that came out over the years, many of them featuring Bugliosi or even former Family members. This to me was one of the biggest “WTF?” moments in Chaos; given the comprehensive nature of O’Neill’s interviews, tracking down practically everyone he could…it never seems to occur to him to contact the Family members in prison! “Say, Tex, do you remember when Charlie started using MK-Ultra tactics on you in the desert? You don’t?” 

But then, shockingly enough, we are told (in the epilogue!!) that O’Neill interviewed Manson himself, I mean the main guy behind it all, but we’re only told in passing at the very end of the book that the interview, conducted long-distance by prison phone, went nowhere due to Manson’s ramblings. And the fact that someone later told O’Neill that Manson didn’t trust him, and would no longer speak to him. But wow…I mean this is how far into the weeds O’Neill got, folks. He didn’t even think to tell us about the whole Manson interview until the book was nearly over. 

Well, speaking of “over,” I’ve gone on way too long. Hell, my review is probably the length of the article O’Neill was originally supposed to write for Premiere! And I wrote mine in a few hours, never mind twenty years!! Man, I got the impression from this book that a reporter job must be the next easiest thing to a government job. (Pre-DOGE, of course!)

Glorious Trash Goes AI

I thought I’d share a litle fun I had with various AI programs: I gave ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Google AI the URL for my blog and asked each of them to write a Glorious Trash-style review for a fictional (ie nonexistent) men’s adventure series novel. 

First up is Gemini – this is what the Gemini App provided: 

In honor of your fantastic blog, here is a review of a non-existent 1980s Men’s Adventure paperback, written in the quintessential Glorious Trash style—complete with technical specs, a nod to the cover art, and a cynical yet affectionate breakdown of the carnage. 

THE BLOOD-VIGILANTE #4: NEON NIGHTMARE By "Chet Sterling" (actually a house name for a hungover ghostwriter) 

May, 1984 Gold Eagle / Worldwide Library 

Back in the mid-80s, the Men’s Adventure market was so overstaturated that publishers started throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick. If it wasn’t a post-nuclear nomad or a Mafia-hunting veteran, it was usually a guy with a punny name and a massive caliber handgun. Enter The Blood-Vigilante. 

I’ve covered the first three volumes of this series before (see my reviews of The Red Gutter and Kill-Zone Karate), and while they were serviceable Executioner clones, Neon Nightmare is where the series—and presumably the author’s sanity—really goes off the rails. 

Our hero is, as always, Stone Vengeance (yes, that’s his name). Stone is an ex-Black Ops specialist who retired to a quiet life of cleaning his many, many guns until a Japanese death-cult decides to kidnap his favorite waitress from the local greasy spoon. Why? Because the cult leader, a guy named Baron Shidoko who wears a neon-pink kimono and lives in a penthouse atop a defunct Sears building, needs her "purity" to power a laser satellite. Or something. The plot is really just a clothesline to hang various scenes of Stone Vengeance blowing things up. 

The book starts with Stone in a seedy Tokyo-inspired version of Los Angeles. "Chet Sterling" (who rumor has it was actually a sci-fi writer trying to pay off his gambling debts) spends about three pages describing Stone’s customized .44 Magnum, which apparently has a barrel so long he has to carry it in a modified trombone case. 

The action is relentless and increasingly absurd. In chapter six, Stone infiltrates a warehouse by driving a stolen garbage truck through the wall while firing two Uzis simultaneously. Sterling’s prose is pure purple pulp: 

“Stone felt the hot lead singing a song of righteous fury. The cultists folded like cheap lawn chairs under the weight of his 9mm justice. The room smelled of cordite, cheap cologne, and the impending arrival of the Reaper.” 

One thing you have to love about these Gold Eagle-era titles is the casual disregard for physics. At one point, Stone jumps off a moving motorcycle, performs a mid-air somersault, and snipes a helicopter pilot with a flare gun. It’s glorious, high-octane trash of the highest order. 

There’s also the mandatory "soft-core" chapter where Stone meets a female ninja named Jade who is "deadly as a cobra but soft as a silk sheet." They spend exactly two pages "bonding" before she is inevitably killed off in the next chapter to give Stone an excuse to get really mad. 

The climax involves Stone storming the Sears building. He doesn't use the stairs; he uses a grappling hook attached to a motorcycle. Don't ask how it works. By the time Baron Shidoko gets his head disintegrated by Stone’s "Justice-Magnum," the body count is somewhere in the triple digits, and half of downtown LA is on fire. Stone simply lights a cigarette, mutters something about "the trash being taken out," and walks into the sunset. 

Neon Nightmare is a prime example of the "more is more" philosophy of 80s paperbacks. It’s loud, it’s dumb, and it’s over in 160 pages of tight, breezy typeface. It’s not "good" in any traditional sense, but if you want to see a man named Stone Vengeance punch a ninja through a neon sign, this is the book for you. 

Final Verdict: 4 out of 5 Spent Casings. Great cover art by Gil Cohen (probably), featuring a guy who looks suspiciously like a buff Burt Reynolds. 

Side Note: If any of you find a copy of The Blood-Vigilante #5: Arctic Ambush, let me know. I hear that’s the one where Stone fights a polar bear with a chainsaw. 

Next up is one by my buddy ChatGPT: 

Absolutely — and thanks for pointing me to the blog! I read a bunch of Glorious Trash reviews to get a feel for the tone: smart-ass pulp enthusiasm, cranky but funny critique, lots of meta commentary about writing quality, bizarre plot logic, sleaze quotient, and a genuine love for terrible books even while roasting them. 

Here’s a fictional review in the Glorious Trash style of an imagined men’s adventure novel: 

Talon Strike: Omega Dawn, by Rex Bladewolf 

Straight up? Talon Strike: Omega Dawn might be the dumbest damn book I’ve ever loved to read — and that’s saying something coming from someone who once devoured an entire novel about a CIA agent whose secret weapon was a bo staff made of compressed unicorn hair. Which, honestly, should’ve been the title of that novel. 

Plot (Such As It Exists) 

We open in the blistering sands of Zarqon Province, where CIA supersoldier Talon Strike — former Navy SEAL, ex-black ops, current narcissist extraordinaire — is chasing a rogue bioengineered death cult known only as The Final Dawn. They’ve stolen Project Omega Seraph, a lab-grown super-plague that turns people into glowing blue zombies who can still bench-press a Toyota. (Don’t ask how anyone figured that out — the book never explains.) 

Meanwhile, Talon’s ex-flame Serena Savage, a CIA analyst with a PhD in “knife shapes that mean trouble,” has to team up with him again because reasons. Specifically: Talon once saved her life with his bare hands… which honestly seems easier than explaining this book’s timeline. 

And just so you know this book has stakes: the head cultist — the chillingly named Azrael the Undying — is planning to release Omega Seraph at the World Peace Summit (or is it a Dog Show? They both have buffets and chaos, so roll with it). 

The Good 

If your idea of “good” is peak pulp insanity, this novel delivers: Talon once kills a bad guy using only a broken chair and an inspirational quote he learned from his drill sergeant. 

Serena rigs a lab explosion with seventeen paper clips and sheer willpower. One entire chapter is Talon monologuing about how endless war has honed his pecs into diamond-like perfection. (Gross yet compelling.) 

There’s also a fight scene on a moving freight train where Talon flips off one bad guy, then onto another — and honestly, I didn’t know that was physically possible. 

The Bad 

Oh lord, the prose. Dialogue like: “I see the truth in your eyes,” Talon said. “Burning like gasoline on a sunlit highway.” No one says lines like that unless they’re tied to a chair with acid dripping on their boots. Exposition dumps so heavy you’d swear Bladewolf was paid by the syllable. Plot holes you could parachute a Humvee through. But as with the finest of trash epics — I read every damn page. 

The Sleaze 

Like any self-respecting men’s adventure novel worth its salt, this book has: A femme fatale whose idea of subtle flirtation is kicking the hero in the groin, slowly. A cult ritual that’s 90% chanting and 10% gratuitous leather harness commentary. At least one inexplicable bare-chested desert sequence. 

Verdict 

Omega Dawn doesn’t just embrace its ridiculousness — it slays it with flaming twin pistols at sunrise. This is the kind of book where the hero’s laser pistol jam is worthy of fifty pages of internal monologue, and where the villain sometimes pauses just to explain his evil throughout. 

Would I read the next one? Yes. In a heartbeat. Because Talon Strike — for all his invulnerable abs and impossible luck — is a glorious, roaring explosion of pulp brilliance, and Omega Dawn is everything I want from a worthless, wonderful heap of glossy paperback trash. 

Rating: (Five detonators out of five — and I’d carry one to the beach.) 

Now here’s one by Gemini’s web version (ie not the app): 

The Kill-Chain Mandate (1978): A High-Octane Choreography of Cordite and Chest Hair 

The Setup: 

Ex-Special Forces operative turned "independent maritime consultant" (that’s 70s pulp-speak for "mercenary with a heart of gold and a liver of lead") Trace Stryker just wanted to finish his scotch at a dive bar in Macau. But when a mysterious woman in a silk cheongsam drops a microchip into his drink—and is promptly vaporized by a sniper’s bullet—Stryker finds himself caught in a web of global intrigue involving a rogue KGB general, a private island in the Philippines, and a satellite-guided laser system called Project Icarus. 

The Vibe: 

Imagine if a Sean Connery fever dream was transcribed by someone who had just consumed three pots of black coffee and a pack of unfiltered Luckies. Author "Chet Hammer" (almost certainly a pseudonym for a weary mid-list writer named Arthur who lived in a New Jersey basement) writes with the kind of frantic, muscular prose that suggests he was being paid by the adjective—specifically adjectives related to "hardened steel" and "musk." 

What Makes It Glorious Trash: 

The Hardware: Hammer spends three full pages describing Stryker’s customized .44 Magnum, which apparently has "the stopping power of a freight train and the grace of a ballerina." There is a weirdly erotic level of detail regarding the oiling of gun parts. 

The Hero: 

Trace Stryker is the ultimate alpha. He doesn't sleep; he "recharges in the shadows." He doesn't eat; he "fuels his mission." At one point, he cauterizes a wound using a heated Zippo and doesn't even flinch—he just uses the opportunity to light a cigar. 

The Casual Misogyny/Xenophobia: 

It’s 1978, folks. Every female character is a "femme fatale" with "eyes like switchblades," and every villain is a sneering caricature of Cold War anxieties. It’s problematic, it’s dated, and it’s exactly what you expect when you find a book with a shirtless man on the cover holding a rocket launcher. 

The Action: 

The final showdown takes place inside a hollowed-out volcano (of course). The body count is roughly the size of a small Midwestern town. Hammer describes explosions with such phonetic intensity—KRA-KOOOM!—that you can almost smell the sulfur coming off the yellowed mass-market paperback pages. 

The Verdict: 

The Kill-Chain Mandate is a masterpiece of the "Men’s Adventure" genre. It’s fast, it’s loud, and it makes absolutely no sense if you think about it for more than four seconds. It is a literary Slim Jim: zero nutritional value, questionable ingredients, but god help me, I couldn't stop until I finished the whole thing. 

Final Score: 4/5 Spent Casings. 

 Here’s one by Google AI (ie the basic “AI” feature on the Google search bar): 

BLOODY BAYOU (The Gator-Man #1) - By "Buck Savage" (1982) 

Welcome back, trash-fiends. Today we’re diving deep into the humid, mosquito-infested swamps of 1982 with a real piece of shelf-filler from the short-lived "Macho-Gore" line from Pinnacle. I’m talking about Bloody Bayou, the first (and thankfully only) outing for a protagonist who makes The Executioner look like a Sunday School teacher. 

The Setup: 

Our "hero" is Vance Power—yes, that’s his name—a former Green Beret who retired to the Louisiana swamps to "find peace," which in pulp-speak means "waiting for a reason to kill thirty people." Peace is interrupted when a local oil tycoon starts dumping radioactive sludge into the water, turning the local alligator population into six-hundred-pound killing machines with a taste for Coors-drinking locals. 

The Action: 

Author "Buck Savage" (almost certainly a pseudonym for a guy writing this in a weekend fueled by Scotch and spite) doesn’t skimp on the red meat. By page ten, a corrupt deputy is literally turned into a human po' boy. 

The prose is as purple as a bruised rib. Savage describes a swamp sunset as "the bleeding throat of God," and Vance Power doesn’t just walk; he "coils through the sawgrass like a spring-loaded engine of vengeance." 

The Trash Factor: 

What makes this Glorious Trash is the complete lack of internal logic. Vance has a "tactical airboat" equipped with dual M60s and a mini-fridge. There’s a three-page digression about how to properly skin a nutria that reads like a manual for a psychopath. 

The climax involves Vance wrestling the "Alpha-Gator" while a refinery explodes in the background. Does it make sense? No. Does it feature a man stabbing a radioactive reptile in the eye with a sharpened boat oar? You bet your acid-washed jeans it does. 

The Verdict: 

If you find this in a thrift store bin for fifty cents, grab it. It’s got everything we love here: questionable 80s politics, excessive descriptions of firearms, and a body count higher than the author’s IQ. 

Final Grade: 4/5 Slimy Scales. 

And finally, here’s one by Grok: 

Here's a Glorious Trash-style review of a completely made-up men's adventure series entry. I invented a nonexistent series called "Cobra Venom" (because why not?), with our hero being a lone-wolf ex-Special Forces badass who keeps getting dragged into globe-trotting mayhem. Think Penetrator meets Executioner with a dash of that sleazy '80s Pinnacle Books vibe. 

Cobra Venom #7: Saigon Slaughterhouse By “Jack Stryker” (house name) 

Pinnacle Books, February 1984 

Man, I don’t know what it is about these mid-’80s men’s adventure series, but by book #7 they either hit their stride or start circling the drain. Saigon Slaughterhouse falls somewhere in the middle: it’s got the requisite body count, sleaze, and one-liners, but you can tell the house writers were starting to run low on fresh ideas. Still, it kept me entertained for a couple of afternoons, and that’s really all we ask from this stuff, right? 

Our man Cade “Cobra” Harlan is back, still sporting that signature black leather jacket (even in the jungle humidity—priorities!), still chain-smoking unfiltered Camels, and still nursing a grudge against every communist, drug lord, and corrupt politician from here to Bangkok. This time the plot kicks off when Cade gets a coded message from an old ’Nam buddy who’s now running a black-market gun operation in what’s left of Saigon (this is 1984, so we’re still pretending the place is a hotbed of intrigue even though the war’s been over for a decade). The buddy’s been snatched by a rogue ex-ARVN colonel who’s built a private army in the Mekong Delta and is planning to flood the U.S. with a new super-heroin called “Dragon’s Blood.” 

How convenient! Cade just happens to be in the neighborhood (he was “laying low” after icing a Miami cocaine kingpin in #6), so he grabs his trusty .44 AutoMag, a duffel bag of grenades, and heads overseas. Cue the requisite barroom brawl in a sleazy expat dive where half-naked bargirls cheer him on while he smashes a VC holdout’s face through a table. Classic. 

From there it’s the usual rollercoaster: ambushes in rice paddies, torture scenes that get pretty grim (the colonel’s favorite trick is dangling captives over pits filled with bamboo vipers—ouch), and of course the inevitable beautiful Eurasian double agent who sleeps with Cade, betrays him, then gets a last-minute redemption when she takes a bullet for him. Her name’s Linh, and she’s described in loving detail: “long black hair like midnight silk, full breasts straining against her silk ao dai, and eyes that promised heaven—or hell.” You know the drill. The sex scene is abrupt, sweaty, and mercifully short; no one’s pretending this is literature. 

The action really picks up in the final quarter when Cade storms the colonel’s river fortress (because every good men’s adventure needs a river fortress). We get boat chases with mounted machine guns, flamethrowers, a helicopter attack that ends with the chopper getting a LAW rocket through the cockpit, and Cade personally executing about thirty bad guys with headshots and knife work. There’s even a bit where he straps dynamite to a sampan and rams it into the enemy dock—pure ’80s excess, and I was here for it. 

The only real drag is the padding: there’s a long stretch where Cade gets captured and has to listen to the colonel monologue about his “grand vision” for a new Indochinese empire. Yawn. And the ending is abrupt even by series standards—Cade blows up the heroin stash, walks off into the sunset with a fresh pack of smokes, and we’re told “the war wasn’t over for Cobra Harlan.” Cue next month’s adventure. 

Still, for what it is, Saigon Slaughterhouse delivers the trashy goods. Solid action, enough sleaze to keep things interesting, and that unmistakable sense of a writer banging this out over a long weekend with a case of beer and a deadline. If you’re a fan of the Penetrator or the later Executioners, you’ll find plenty to like here. Just don’t expect Shakespeare. 

Recommended for a rainy afternoon when you want something violent, stupid, and fun. Cobra Harlan will be back next month in Cobra Venom #8: Panama Payback—and if the cover painting of him straddling a motorcycle with dual Uzis is any indication, it’s going to be bonkers. 

(Posted with yer pal, taking a break from the real world to celebrate the glorious trash.) 

Overall I found it interesting that none of these AI programs treated their fictional books on the level; all of them were satirical, featuring wild plots that bordered on sci-fi. I also thought it was interesting that some of them included a rating system, something I’ve never done here on the blog. The AI reviews are also a lot more dismissive of the books than I am; personally I’d be thrilled to read some of these books, and certainly wouldn’t mock them in a review. In this regard I think Grok came the closest to capturing the tone of the blog, and also it was the only one that included a month for its fictional publishing date.  However, ChatGPT summed up my blog perfectly in its opening paragraph.

That said, some of the mockery was very funny; Gemini’s comment that one of the ghostwriters was a “weary writer named Arthur” made me laugh out loud, as did the Gemini app comment of the undercover sci-fi writer paying off his gambling debts. I also appreciated how Grok was the only one that put actual sleaze into the fictional book (even mentioning breasts!), whereas the others were more chaste – so perhaps Grok has less limitations on that, who knows. Grok did kind of go nuts a few months ago. 

I might do more of these in the future, just for fun – I’d like to get some that aren’t so satirical, and maybe even have them try some 1970s trashy potboilers or horror.

The Executioner #21: Firebase Seattle

The Executioner #21: Firebase Seattle, by Don Pendleton

January, 1975  Pinnacle Books

Definitely one of my favorite volumes yet, Firebase Seattle is a fast-paced Executioner that features Mack Bolan taking on a Mafia army that is setting up base in Seattle – or, at least, wiping out the base and its backers before the army can get there, presumably to exploit the Pacific North West. Or something; Don Pendleton is light with the details, but it all boils down to a hidden forward base on Puget Sound that’s stuffed to the gills with machine guns and weapons. 

As mentioned previously, Firebase Seattle was the original projected title of the second “Jim Peterson” Executioner novel, following Sicilian Slaughter. I’ve never been able to find out if Pinnacle mocked up covers for the Peterson version – I seem to recall William H. Young in his Study of Action-Adventure Fiction said that they did, and I’ve always wondered if they were the same Gil Cohen illustration as used on this actual published version – but it’s curious that Pendleton waited this long to get to the title. We also know from his interview in Young’s study that Pendleton never read Sicilian Slaughter, so this is clearly not the book that “Peterson” (aka William Crawford) would have written – yet, curiously, the end of Sicilian Slaughter featured a Mafia commando base in Seattle, which is sort of the plot here in Pendleton’s novel. 

Even more curiously, there’s a part in Firebase Seattle where Bolan poses as a news reporter, calling himself “Peterson!” Could this have been a sly in-joke from Don Pendleton, or just a fluke? I have a hunch it’s the former, but I could be wrong; Pendleton does come off a little too “serious” in his books, and it’s clear he doesn’t have the “laughing madly as I indulge myself in my most warped fantasies” nature that I demand in my pulp fiction authors. 

It would be interesting to know if the version of Firebase Seattle written to contract by Gil Brewer was anything like this; as I also mentioned in my Sicilian Slaughter review, Brewer’s manuscript is stored at the University of Wyoming. But then, we also know from a comment Don Pendleton’s wife Linda left on my Sicilian Slaughter review that nothing in Brewer’s manuscript was used in Don Pendleton’s Firebase Seattle. (Speaking of Linda Pendleton, I did not learn until much later that she’d passed away a few months after posting those comments on my review.) 

To be sure, there is little here in the actual Firebase Seattle that pairs with the story promised at the end of Sicilian Slaughter. As we’ll recall, the finale of that book features a commando badass named Mr. Molto who ran a sort of national operation in which he was tracking the Executioner, and he was about to go on the offense. There is nothing like that here – and, so far as I’m aware, Mr. Molto was never mentioned again in the series, even in the Gold Eagle era – but we do get the promise of a mob strike force here in Firebase Seattle, and also the guy in charge of them, Captain John Franciscus, is somewhat like Mr. Molto…but only if the reader strives to make this connection. 

As it is, Franciscus barely appears in the text, and his few appearances do not give a good impression of him: getting kicked down a stairwell by Bolan and then later being rousted from sleep by undercover Fed (and secret Bolan aly) Leo Turin, who goes on to berate a hapless Franciscus. So then this is not nearly the formidable character that Mr. Molto promised to be. 

Speaking of Turin, there’s a crazy part where he and Hal Brognola – the “Head Fed” who is tasked with bringing Bolan down, we’ll recall – hang out on Bolan’s warwagon (ie that massive mobile home that has rocket launchers hidden on the roof), talk strategy, and then drive to some remote mob location and sit there as Bolan blasts the place apart with the rockets. Helicopter pilot Jack Grimaldi also appears frequently, flying Bolan to three combat sites; he has a brief radio discussion with Leo Turin, who is back in the warwagon, and this is the first the two characters talk, though no one knows the other’s name. This was interesting because the characters would all continue in the Gold Eagle books. 

Grimaldi appears from the start, dropping Bolan onto a site on the Puget Sound where Bolan does a “soft probe” and discovers an underground bunker in the process of being built. Bolan’s immediate suspicion is that the mob will be using it as a forward base for expansion into the PNW and on up into Canada, but ultimately Pendleton will take a page from James Bond and concoct this wacky plot where the Mafia, like a low-rent SPECTRE, plans to topple the global economy and then corner all the gold, storing it in an underground vault(!). It was all so preposterous that I was reminded of the similarly-outlandish ideas the Legion of Doom would come up with in the Superfriends cartoon. 

For once Pendleton doesn’t stick to his template, meaning there are no scenes where some one-off local character, usually a cop, will come upon the wreckage of a Bolan hit and then exposit with another character about what might have happened. Also, suprirsingly, Bolan gets laid – courtesy a hotstuff “natural” girl named Dianna who has gotten involved with the Seattle mob scene thanks to her stepfather. 

This is further indication that Don Pendleton is now making The Executioner as escapist as the other men’s adventure pulp of the era; with his high-tech warwagon and resourceful team of helpers, Bolan at this point is like something book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel might have created. Bolan previously shunned getting too close with gals; this time, having saved Dianna and taking her back to his warwagon to wash off her blood, Pendleton develops a steamy sequence where Dianna announces she’s super turned on and basically pulls Bolan into the shower with her. That said, there is precious little exploitation and the entirety of the sexual shenanigans occur off-page…indication that this is not the product of Lyle Kenyon Engel! 

Pendleton, warming to his theme, even introduces another hotstuff gal into the book: Dianna’s mom, Margaret, a “mature” version of her daughter and just as friggin’ sexy, we’re constantly reminded, and there’s a sitcom-esque moment where Bolan comes back from a mob hit and runs into the forty-something babe as she’s walking naked out of the shower. (I am thinking specifically of that episode of Who’s The Boss?, of course.) But, despite lounging around in a robe and making insinuating comments, the older lady subtly informs Bolan she’s too old for him, as if Pendleton had tired of the whole angle. 

Indeed, the two women are summarily dispatched from the narrative once Bolan has rescued Dianna when she stupidly goes to her mob friends to argue on Bolan’s behalf, and Pendleton spends the second half of the novel focused on Bolan and his guy buddies: Brognola, Turin, and Grimaldi. All this is more indication that the lean and mean vibe of the earliest volumes is long gone; Pendleton is now more enamored with Bolan’s high tech warwagon augmentations than he is with delivering taut action scenes, and we have sundry scenes of the guys enthusing over the sci-fi augmentations of the vehicle. 

Which is to say the action scenes are, for the most part, perfunctory. Bolan is so superhuman now it’s not even fun anymore. He parachutes into mob sites, takes down a few guys with his “TranGun” (a tranquilizer dart gun that brings to mind the “Ava” of fellow Pinnacle hero The Penetrator), then later on ‘chutes into another place where he goes in and out without much fuss, until finally wiping everyone out with an M-16/M-79 combo in a harried finale that lasts all of a few pages. 

Bolan also blows up the unfinished underground bunker – and, by the way, the strike force we were promised in the opening pages doesn’t even appear. Pendleton has pulled this before; Firebase Seattle isn’t the first Executioner to promise but not deliver a mob commando force. But at the end of the book Bolan realizes this is his “hardest touch” of the mob yet in his war, and the conflagration he creates will leave a lasting impact on the Mafia. 

There really isn’t much continuity anymore; Grimaldi occasionally refers to the action in Texas Storm, but for the most part Bolan’s life is now a surreal one, venturing from one Mafia site to another in his massive motor home, filled with an emptiness he knows will be a part of him until he dies. Overall, though, Firebase Seattle was my favorite volume in the series in a while; I was happy to see that Pendleton had loosened up a little and decided to make the series a little more pulpy. I still like to imagine though what The Executioner would’ve been like if Lyle Kenyon Engel had gotten his hands on it.

The Devil’s Heart (Devil’s series #2)

The Devil's Heart, by William W. Johnstone

No month stated, 1983  Zebra Books

I actually loved the book. Even though the missed spelled words but what author don’t and the grammar was ok. 

 

-- From an actual Goodreads review 

Eleven years ago I read The Devil’s Kiss, the first volume in the Devil’s series by William W. Johnstone, and at the end of my review I promised that I’d move on to this second volume once I’d sufficiently recovered. Well, it didn’t take me that long, and it’s mostly because I read other Johnstone novels in the interim, but I’m finally now recovered enough to read this second volume of the series. 

And boy, I could’ve just as easily read The Devil’s Kiss again, because William Johnstone writes the exact same story! In fact, he even uses the same character names throughout, even though these characters are the children of the protagonists in the previous book! What’s more frustrating and confusing is that Johnstone bides his – and the reader’s – time for 300+ pages, not picking up the pace until around pg 228…and the novel is only 382 pages long. 

Actually, I shouldn’t say “only.” As with any other Zebra horror novel from the ‘80s, The Devil’s Heart is way too long; as I’ve speculated before, there had to have been some sort of requirement authors had to follow for this publisher. I mean it becomes painfully clear that Johnstone has an ending in mind, but has to waste nearly 300 pages until he can get there. If over a hundred pages were cut out, this would be a much better novel; I kid you not when I say that so many pages are repetitive, with characters worrying how or when something will happen, and some divine or evil force telling them to wait, and they wait, and then it’s the next day, and they wonder “when will it happen?” again, and the divine or evil force tells them to wait…I mean over and over, throughout the entire book! 

To get it out of the way posthaste, I read Johnstone’s horror novels mainly to see how perverted they are, and I’ll say up front that The Devil’s Heart, while sleazy and lurid, is nowhere in the league of The Nursery. And it’s also not as action-packed. The Devil’s Heart is seriously let down by the aforementioned stalling, which goes on, literally, for the entire book. From page one we know that Whitfield, the small town that factored in the first book of this loose “series,” The Devil’s Kiss, will be destroyed…and we’re reminded throughout the book that its destruction is imminent…and 300+ pages later we’re still waiting for it…and then it finally happens like on the very final pages. 

In the interim, we’re treated to a lot of sleaze and filth, but it’s muted when compared to The Nursery. This one is more along the lines of its predecessor, but even The Devil’s Kiss had more going on than The Devil’s Heart, mainly because this one retreads a lot of stuff from the previous book. It’s really as much a rewrite as it is a sequel. That said, I was happy to see that Johnstone slightly whittled back on the “Satanists stink because they don’t bathe, but forget about that while I tell you how hot their women are” schtick. Then again, we are told that they “reek” at points, so it’s still there…just not as OTT as it was in the previous book. 

So what’s it about? Well, it’s a little over twenty years after The Devil’s Kiss, which as we’ll recall took place in the late 1950s. Don’t worry if you didn’t read that book, though, as Johnstone essentially refers to it throughout the entirety of this book and tells us what happened. And the characters from that book are back – even hero Sam Balon, who died in the denouement of the previous book, is back in this one, as a deus ex machina force who shows up to voice vague warnings, suggestions, and other such stuff, appearing as a “ghostly mist” and basically telling all of his old pals they’re going to die in nine days. 

This includes Jane Ann, the young woman Sam fell in love with in the previous book, who now is in her 40s, married to a doctor named Tony King (a Satanist, like everyone else in town), and mother to a 24 year old named Sam, who is the hero of this book, and also of course the son of Sam Balon – so, yes, “Sam” is the star of this book, but it’s not the same Sam as the previous book. 

Warming to his theme, Johnstone has another progeny of Sam Balon, Nydia…who is named after her mother, the Nydia of the previous book…who also appears in this book, but as “Roma!” So the Nydia of this book is not the same Nydia as the previous one…but the old Nydia is here, but has a different name. Not sure why Johnstone didn’t just name the new Nydia “Roma,” but whatever. I’d say he was going for some sort of thematic content, but if so he didn’t execute it very well. 

For reasons of laziness, the “Sam” I refer to in this review is the new Sam, who presumably will be the hero of the next two books in the series (The Devil’s Touch and The Devil’s Cat). He’s basically the same as the previous version, with the exception that this one, obviously, is too young to have fought in Korea. But he’s a former Ranger and saw a lot of action around the globe; unlike his dad, he’s not a minister, but he’s plumb curious about Christianity. 

Then there’s Nydia, a raven-haired beauty like her mom…who, we’ll recall, is an ancient witch who has been granted immortal beauty by the devil and who spent the entire previous book trying (and succeeding) to bed Sam Balon. Well for the past 20 some years she’s hooked up with another immortal black magician, Falcon (who replaces the previous book’s character Black – but don’t worry, there’s another Black in this one), and they have a big estate up in the wilds of French Canada. Unlike her mom, this Nydia is not only a sort of good two-shoes, but a virgin to boot. 

Sam and Nydia meet each other in the first pages; Sam is visiting French Canada with his army pal, Black…yep, same name as the character in the previous book, but this Black is Nydia’s brother, and also the son of Sam Balon and Roma (ie the old Nydia). These characters all basically repeat the scenarios the previous versions of the characters experienced in The Devil’s Kiss. And meanwhile the survivors from the previous book, still living in Whitfield, also encounter the same tribulations as in the previous book, to a lesser extent – for the most part, the Whitfield characters only appear infrequently, and, you guessed it, their appearances are relegated to, “How much longer until the town is wiped out and we die?” 

The Satanists here are typical of those in Johnstone’s other novels; only in the Whitfield scenes do we see a few of the cultists, and they lack the sodomitic fervor of the Satanic reprobates in The Nursery. But despite which the cult members are worse than Satan himself – for, whether unintentionally or not, Johnstone gives us a Lucifer who is prone to yell in frustration, “Can’t I make a joke?” before huffing and puffing about the Almighty. 

Curiously, Satan and God are supporting characters in The Devil’s Heart, and there are several scenes where they will argue with each other. But the thing is, both figures are reduced in their appearances; Satan, as mentioned, comes off like a pompous blowhard, and God comes off as vague and absent-minded. It’s very bizarre, because Johnstone’s depictions of the figures do not correllate with the figures as they appear to their followers – the vague-minded God demands unwilling obedience from his flock, and Satan demands torture and vile acts from his (though, despite us often being reminded that it’s “acceptable to Satan,” the devil isn’t very crazy about homosexuality). 

The God-Satan arguments are just another way for Johstone to pad the pages. Satan insists that God made a promise back in the first volume that Whitfield could become Satan’s one day, but here God tells the devil that the place will be wiped out in nine days. “My team against yours,” Satan challenges, which should be all the indication you need that this isn’t Milton. And yet it seems evident given the goofiness of these exchanges that William Johnstone is not taking the book or himself seriously – he pulled the same trick in Wolfsbane. 

If you look at The Devil’s Heart as an intentional comedy, it’s a great success. For one, despite being a ghost, Sam Balon is able to interract with people and even write them letters; there’s a hilarious bit where he sends his son a handrwitten note from beyond, in which Sam Balon states that “it’s difficult for me to write,” and then goes on to write a four-page letter! 

This extends to the prose style, which trades off between actual quality writing and clunkers like, “Her ears had been listening” and “The feeling of foreboding suddenly became much more intense.” Or even, “Utilizing a hand-held handy-talky.” What’s weird is that there are flashes of actual introspection amid the banality, but Johnstone never sees it all the way through, either due to lack of awareness or lack of ability. Or, perhaps, lack of care – it’s debatable how much he cared for the horror genre. 

And you know how in horror novels where people take forever to realize they’re in a horror novel? Johnstone takes that conceit and runs with it for the entire friggin’ book…folks, from the get-go Sam and Nydia are having encounters with the beyond, from Sam receiving ghostly visits and messages from his father (and even the archangel Michael), and Nydia coming to grips with both her mental powers and the fact that her mom is an ancient witch…and despite this, the two continue wondering “How did that happen??” throughout the damn book!! Or worse yet, each of them will get divine flashes of knowledge – which is to say deus ex machina exposition – and then they’ll be like, “I won’t even ask how I knew that.” 

Really, it’s laughable given how stupid it is. And given the sophomoric nature of God and the devil, one wonders what these two are even fighting for! To his credit, Johnstone has the Satanic figureheads Roma and Falcon asking these very same things…but any profundities are glossed over quickly as soon thereafter we’ll have Falcon ramming his “inhumanly large” dick into some unwilling female, or Roma will be conspiring to bed Sam so she can sire a demon child through him, even though Roma knows the birthing of the demon will kill her. Hey, maybe this is where Danzig got the idea for the Samhain song “The Birthing!” 

Another Johnstone schtick is to have characters act polite and normal to each other, while secretly hating each other or knowing they are divinely-opposed enemies…yet pretending that nothing amiss is going on. This happens a lot in The Devil’s Heart, particularly with Sam being cordial with Roma while thinking “evil bitch!” to himself and the like. And Roma being nice and friendly while wondering, “I wonder if he has his father’s cock?” (Of course she eventually discovers that he does!) This is all well and good, but Johnstone does it for like the entire novel – people pretending everything’s normal to one another and questioning how and why all these strange things are happening, even though they know they’re in the middle of a war between God and the devil and are on opposite sides. 

Oh, and not content with Roma and Falcon being immortal black magicians, they’re also vampires! This isn’t even followed through on, other than either of them randomly displaying their fangs and drinking some blood. This also raises the question of how Roma could give birth to Black and Nydia – and, indeed, why Nydia is of a different age than Sam if she was also conceived by Sam Balon – but Johnstone as ever doesn’t concern himself with the partticulars. 

There are periodic sequences that recall the wildness of The Nursery, which by the way is probably my favorite horror novel, if only due to how wild and depraved it is. Especially a bit where Sam and Nydia with her “full breasts” get it on, in full-on sleaze detail, Sam taking his half-sister’s virginity…but then after they’re constantly plagued with doubt, that they’ve sinned in some way…leading to a crazy bit where Satan intervenes as a test and makes ‘em super horny for each other, complete with Nydia fondling herself as she pleads for Sam to take her, and Sam screaming, “Fight it!” 

But then there is grimness as well, and out of the blue stuff at that – like when Falcon rapes Nydia (off-page), after which Sam makes love to her but has to be gentle because she “hurts.” This is understandable, given that we’re often informed of how inhumanly large Falcon’s dick is. There’s also a lot of grimness in the finale, in which Jane Ann endures the fate she’s been awaiting the entire novel – frequent, constant scenes of the ghostly Sam Balon telling her that her end will be violent – and she’s raped by all and sundry in the town, multiple times, and then crucified. Again, absolutely no reason is given for why Jane Ann has to so suffer for her own (and Sam Balon’s) salvation, given how goofy and unserious God is. Imagine a soldier going off to die in a war that Kamala Harris started, and one might understand the pointlessness of the sacrifice.  

We get that recurring bit of “God’s Warrior” kicking ass on full-auto, but it’s muted compared to The Devil’s Kiss; though Sam uses his dad’s gun, a Tommy subgun, which is “mysteriously” left for him in his room. Cue another of those “How did that get there?” conversations between the constantly-befuddled Sam and Nydia. 

Speaking of our heroes, the novel ends with Sam acting as their minister, just as his father married himself to Jane Ann (again, the book basically retreads its predescessor throughout), and also Nydia is pregnant – but the question is whether it will be Sam’s child or a demon child from Falcon. After stalling for the entire novel, Johnstone brings in a ticking clock finale where Sam’s seed must beat Falcon’s seed, before it’s too late. 

Humorously, Johnstone has stalled for so long that he rushes through the stuff he’s been promising for the entire friggin’ book; he so runs out of time that the old folks from The Devil’s Kiss, the ones who stayed in Whitfield and are told in the opening of this book that they’ll die in nine days…well, their entire fate is summarily rushed through, and Jane Ann’s happens off-page, though we see her in the afterlife with Sam. A scene which, despite it all, actually succeeded in bringing a tear to my eye, as did the off-hand comment that God, after Jane Ann has suffered and still demands to forgive her torturers, knows that “He had chosen well.”

Johnstone ends on a cliffhanger, with a normal baby born to Sam and Nydia, but meanwhile an eleven year-old girl they’ve saved from Satanic sodomy (Janet) is an undercover demon or somesuch, and who knows what might happen next. The story continues in The Devil’s Touch, which I’ll read a lot sooner than it took me to read this one. 

Overall, The Devil’s Heart moved fairly well for its near 400 pages, despite its constant stalling…like a Pavlov’s Dog, I kept reading for another dose of sleaze and perversion, and while the book never reached the heights (or depths) of The Nursery, or even The Devil’s Kiss, it kept me entertained, and it made me want to read the following installment.

The Penetrator #46: Terrorist Torment

The Penetrator #46: Terrorist Torment, by Lionel Derrick

June, 1982  Pinnacle Books

This altogether timely installment of The Penetrator concerns the fight for a Palestinian homeland, which of course entails terrorism, the loss of innocent life, and the violent abduction of western politicians to be used as hostages. Fortunately Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin exists in this fictional world and can bust up these Palestinian terrorist scumbags. 

I almost get the impression that this volume was written in reaction to the then-new Gold Eagle imprint, which took former Pinnacle stalwart The Executioner and turned him into a superhuman counter-terrorist, which is exactly what Chet Cunningham does to Mark Hardin in this one. I’m going to run with my theory, especially given that Cunningham even wrote a few volumes of The Executioner for Gold Eagle…though, curiously, fellow Penetrator series writer Mark Roberts did not. Maybe he just never got the invite. 

But regardless, I really had to drum up the enthusiasm to keep reading Terrorist Torment; it could almost be seen as a take on another Pinnacle series, Death Merchant, in how it’s essentially just one long action scene. The only problem is, Chet Cunningham has long ago toned down the spectacular gore he brought to the earliest volumes of this series, and is very much a “get shot and fall down” sort of writer at this point, meaning that the novel comes off more as a bore than a thrill. 

Cunningham is to be congratulated for perhaps the most convenient plotting in men’s adventure history; Mark becomes aware of the PLO threat simply because some terrorists happen to be performing target practice near the Penetrator’s desert stronghold, and Mark goes out to investigate, gets in a firefight with them, and then follows along after them in “The Brown Beast” (ie his augmented camper), eventually running into a PLO plot to capture several western politicians and hold them as hostages! As the Church Lady would say, “How convenient!” 

But man, it’s more tiresome than anything. On the positive side, there’s at least some action, and Mark does kill again – but we get another reminder that this isn’t like the books of the decade before, as the Penetrator waits until the PLO thugs shoot at him in the desert before he shoots to kill. He takes out a few of them, then radios the Professor back at the Stronghold to tell him he’s off in pursuit; and as I read this, it occurred to me only now, all these years later, how unimportant Professor Haskins is to the series. Given the setup of the series, you’d think the guy was the M to Mark’s Bond, but that’s not the case at all; I’m going to assume that Professor Haskins was something Pinnacle came up with for the series, back when they conceived it, but the two series writers did nothing to flesh out the character. 

I developed an almost compulsive need to see Terrorist Torment as a spoof of the Gold Eagle books; otherwise there was nothing to keep me reading the book. But still, Mark is very much in superhero mode this time; he just follows after the terrorists, figures out that they have a camp deep in the Nevada woods, and goes about the “simple task” of infiltrating their base and setting off C4 explosives. I mean, there’s nothing to it! 

The Brown Beast hasn’t factored in the series for many a volume, but Mark uses it this time throughout, taking guns from the vast arsenal he has hidden within it. But he does make tracking and taking down terrorists seem very easy; all it requires is trekking through the woods, knifing one of the terrorists in the back and taking his uniform, and then approaching the terrorist base and saying “Speak the English!” when you come across any other terrorists. I was reminded of that great scene in Team America where the main puppet went undercover as a terrorist. 

That said, Mark does get captured at one point, and is put in the most grim situation I think he’s ever faced in the series; they cut off his pants and tie a string around his scrotum, which a PLO thug uses to lead Mark around. Cunningham really lays it on with the misery Mark endures, often puking due to the intense pain. And yet he still manages to escape, courtesy a Jean Claude Van Damme-esque spinning back kick to the thug’s head – quite a feat for a guy with a rope tied around his balls. 

Things get even goofier when the PLO launches its assault and, off-page, captures a bunch of politicians. I forgot to mention, but the whole deal is that various western leaders are meeting in secret in Nevada to discuss alternatives to Middle East oil, and the PLO plans to capture them and hold them hostage, killing one leader per hour until their demands are met and Palestine is given to them. Among the captive world leaders is none other than Margaret Thatcher, who gets shot in the arm, no less (she doesn’t seem to mind much); she features in a short scene where Mark frees her and together they escape through the woods, Thatcher even taking up a .45 to help out the Penetrator. I should also mention that the US President is not at the meeting – and, given the few chapters in which he appears, he seems to be Ronald Reagan, though is never mentioned by name. 

Cunningham really tries the reader’s gullibility when Mark goes back to the secret PLO base to free the other captured leaders, and again goes undercover as an Arabic terrorist (“Speak the English, fool!”)…and somehow, apropos of nothing, deduces that the PLO will use two-man teams in the firing squad, so he comes up with the plan of putting blanks in the carbines that will be used for the executions! He even slips up to the captured leaders and whispers to them that he’s a friend and that they need to play dead when they’re shot by the firing squad! 

In this capacity Mark liberates the Canadian prime minister (who at the end of the novel asks the Penetrator to come up to Canada, to help out with a “big job,” presumably setting up a future Cunningham installment), and then things come to a head with another big attack on the place. But it’s all kind of listless, lacking the craziness one might wish for – the only memorable bit comes at the end, when Mark follows the escaping PLO “shariff,” who has a violent encounter with a mama Grizzly bear. After which the PLO boss clearly wants to die his own way, and one suspects this is foreshadowing of how The Penetrator series itself will end: 

One might notice that there are no women featured on the cover. But there are two hippie-type girls in the book, who appear for a total of five or six pages…long enough to enjoy some shenanigans with “the Penetrator!” Sure, it’s left off page, and it happens on the final page at that, but Mark midway through the book encounters a pair of twenty year-old gals in a “Volkswagen convertible” who give him a lift…and, after leaving a casino in Nevada at the very end of the book, Mark runs into them again! 

Sure, it’s ridiculous – as if the entire novel itself hasn’t been – but it is nice to see a little sleaze return to the series; the girls don’t have money to stay anywhere that night, so Mark takes them in, and soon enough he can tell they’re nervous about the sole little bed in the camper, and before you know it the girls are talking about a “three way” and pulling off their tops, revealing their “full breasts” for the Penetrator’s viewing pleasure. But then there’s a two line break of white space, after which Cunningham picks up the narrative a week later, letting us know how satisfied the Penetrator is after a week in the camper along Lake Tahoe with the two girls! 

Overall, Terrorist Torment was not a very good installment of The Penetrator, notable only for the “balls on a rope” bit and the “bonkers” finale with the two girls (lame pun alert). Oh, and we also got a return of AVA, Mark’s dart gun – which, for the first time in forever, is used to kill people in this one, instead of just knocking them out.