Snowball In Hell, by Adam Lassiter
November, 1986 Bantam Books
It’s not a very auspicious end for the short-lived Dennison’s War; this final volume is more evidence that Steven “Adam Lassiter” Krauzer was attempting something other than the typical “mercs versus terrorists and/or KGB” storylines in the 1980s men’s adventure marketplace…but unfortunately the story is tepid, the writing is overdone, and there are annoying authorial quirks throughout.
To recap, Dennison’s War is an unusual men’s adventure series in that it does not feature the same person or groups of people each volume. Krauzer introduces a concept that the titular Dennison is more like Charlie in Charlie’s Angels, and instead of Angels he has a bunch of hardbitten commando types at his disposal…the ex-mobster, the tough cop chick, etc. So each volume he sends out the operative he deems best suited for the mission at hand, meaning that there was no real consistency to the series. One volume might be about one guy, the next about another, etc.
This volume features Conte, the ex-mobster, who featured in the earlier Conte’s Run (which I do not have). But Snowball In Hell also features…Dennison himself, as if Krauzer realized he should have the titular character doing something other than bossing people around. That something is taking care of the hit the Mafia has put on Conte for leaving the mob.
Dennison is described as a forty-something former spook who started up his own operation ten years ago; he is slight of stature and has an easy-going smile, but we are to understand he’s a badass. However, the way the novel pans out, it’s actually Dennison’s hotstuff assistant, Miss Paradise, who does all the bad-assery. The only problem is, Krauzer manages to make her come off like a prototype AWFL, constantly mocking everyone, bullying everyone, and taunting people…the people who actually work for Dennison! I’m not sure what Krauzer was going for, but somehow he manages to make Miss Paradise thoroughly unlikable.
And, more damningly, he makes Conte seem like a whimp. First of all, the dude has to be convinced by Dennison to take the job, then he worries about the danger, and then he goes through the book either getting captured or getting beaten up. Admittedly, he occasionally hits people with a “leather sap” he carries around, but this dude is nowhere near the upper echelon of 1980s men’s adventure heroes.
As for the job, it takes place in Snowball Springs, somewhere in the Ozarks (Krauzer is not specific): a hayseed town that has been taken over by the duplicitous Bert Dolly. Oh, friends, be prepared to know that name well if you ever read Snowball In Hell. Krauzer writes “Bert Dolly” every single time the character appears or is mentioned.
And not just him! Casey Weathers, Tommy Chin, and others besides – every time these minor characters are mentioned in the text, whether it be dialog or narrative, their full names are given; the annoying authorial quirk I mentioned. I mean, I know these men’s adventure novels were under the radar, but surely some editor at Bantam could’ve been bothered to tell Krauzer to knock it off?
But then, Krauzer’s writing is so flowery and overcooked that he constantly stalls forward momentum. I had bad flashbacks to Stark; there is too much of a focus on word painting, and while that’s all well and good, it’s just the wrong genre for it. Especially given that so much focus is given to scenery description and character introspection that when the actual action happens, it’s rushed – and very bloodless.
The story is essentially Buck Town: Casey Weathers, the towering ex-military girl from hayseed Snowball Springs who has become the local deputy, hires Dennison to help her take down Bert Dolly, a mobster who has taken over town and turned it over to the thieves. Meanwhile the real mob is moving in, so Dennison decides to send Conte, the former mobster, to pose as a mobster, and hopefully start a war between Dolly and the mob.
A convoluted setup for sure, but really Conte just spends his time trading barbs with Dolly and his redneck thugs…or dodging their infrequent attacks on him. Meanwhile Dennison and Miss Paradise track down the New York mobster behind the hit, looking to lean on him and get the contract on Conte removed.
I was not very entertained by the novel at all. It was slow and ponderous, and Krauzer seemed embarrassed by the stuff people want from the genre. When Conte and Casey have their expected conjugation, it happens so far off-page that I wasn’t even sure anything did happen. As for the action…Conte doesn’t even make his first kill until page 93, and after that we’re treated to an endless bit of exposition as he tells Casey about his past.
Even the stuff with Dennison isn’t much fun; it mostly concerns them kidnapping a mobster and threatening him with torture (something Dennison hates but Miss Paradise takes to naturally). It’s all just kind of tepid and it comes off as if Krauzer has lost interest. Even the finale, with Conte and Casey getting into it with Bert Dolly’s men and some mobsters, lacks much spark, and could’ve been the climax of an average A-Team episode.
As I mentioned in my review of the similarly-underwhelming Hell On Wheels (and the heroine of that one, by the way, isn’t even mentioned in this one), Krauzer also wrote a seventh volume of the series (title unknown), but it went unpublished. Snowball In Hell leaves little wonder why. It is clear Bantam was cutting back on it; this volume does not feature a foldout cover, as the previous ones did. I was heavily into men’s adventure novels in 1986 – I’d just discovered them the year before – and I was not aware of Dennison’s War at the time. So this is one instance where I can attest that the series wasn’t even well-received in the era it was published.
