Killinger #2: The Rainbow/Seagreen Case

Killinger #2: The Rainbow/Seagreen Case, by P.K. Palmer
January, 1974  Pinnacle Books

The second and final installment of the Killinger series is an exercise in tedium, author P.K. Palmer doling out a slow-moving tale that’s rife with repetition. It seems clear though that Palmer, who passed away before publication, intended Killinger to be a sort of Travis McGhee for the Pinnacle line; Pinnacle editor Andy Ettinger is even namedropped in the narrative.  But Palmer forgot to make his tale compelling.

More damningly, The Rainbow/Seagreen Case is almost a direct lift of the previous volume. Once again we are presented with a slow-burn tale which occurs over a few days, with our hero Jedediah Killinger the Third, marine adjustor extraordinnaire, not doing much of anything as he slowly goes about his latest case. And just like last time there are a few busty and bodacious babes around to distract him while he tries to deal with wealthy opponents who scheme behind the scenes. Also like last time, there’s a paucity of thrills and sex, though again the ample ladies are amply described.

But the biggest drag which returns from the previous volume is P.K. Palmer’s frustrating, measured style, in which he constantly stalls forward momentum with his penchant for overwriting. Sequences are repeated over and over again from multiple perspectives, and not in some interesting Rashomon way; no, we’ll just read as Killinger does something, and then read four or more sections in which various foreign agents watch as Killinger does what we just read about him doing. Seriously, the actual content of this 244-page book would only take up about 90 pages. The rest is tedious over-description about menial details…details we’ve already read about several times.

Anyway, picking up “about a year” after the events of The Turquoise/Yellow Case, this volume has 41-year-old Killinger (who we’re informed was a Lt. Col. in the Marines) investigating the crash of a privately-owned B-25 in the Pacific ocean, outside of Santa Barbara. The plane was insured for eleven million dollars, and Killinger, who lives on his fashionable Chinese junk in nearby Oxnard, is hired at great page-length by Marcel Renard, the same Paris-based insurance executive who hired Killinger last time.

Filthy rich “little old lady” L.G. Browne owned the crashed plane and is calling in the insurance policy; Killinger’s job is to ensure against fraud. Browne has dispatched her fussy, dowdy, virginal assistant, Audrey White, to Killinger’s junk; Audrey, who turns out to be Browne’s granddaughter, dresses in old-fashioned clothing from the turn of the century and treats everyone with disdain. She also has different-colored eyes, just like her grandmother, one “soft violet” and the other “icy blue.” This dual-eye color schtick is itself a rerun from The Turquoise/Yellow Case. As I said, this entire book is just a retread of what came before.

Audrey immediately runs afoul of Marjorie, Killinger’s mini-skirt wearing secretary who first came to work for him in the previous volume. Audrey clearly doesn’t like the young lady because she’s black, which elicits a blowout between the two. After making Audrey apologize, Killinger does a repeat of the unfunny “say ‘prunes’” deal from the previous book, ie when Marjorie’s lips pucker when saying “prunes” he sweeps in to kiss her. But after this Marjorie, as well as Killinger’s various other houseboat guests, are removed from the narrative, all of them taking off for a week of surfing in Santa Barbara.

But Killinger instantly suspects something is afoot here. Something appears to have been on the crashed plane, something Browne wanted destroyed. We know it is a “sea green” piece of pipe, because super-hot and super-stacked Marja-Liisa Kikkonen, a “six-foot Viking queen from Finland,” also referred to quite often as a “tigress” and an “Amazon,” happens to find this piece of pipe while scuba diving in the Pacific. With her “wonderously full breasts” and “tawny-gold hair to her waist,” Marja is hot stuff indeed, and is an assistant professor at the University of Santa Barbara.

Marja, despite the “Finland” mention, actually turns out to be from Wisconsin. But she’s still pretty damn exotic, even keeping a pet Cheetah in her posh home. But this strange piece of metal causes trouble for her; she takes it to the chem lab of the university, asking a friend there to run tests on it, to see what it is – the only thing about it is that “AJB” is stamped on it, along with a string of numbers. Instead this sets off an endless “comedic” bit where various foreign agents, both Chinese and Russian, along with CIA, arrive on the scene to find out where this metal was found.

Because, as it labriously turns out, “AJB” is a private military contractor, and this tail piece is part of some experimental MacGuffin L.G. Browne, a board director of the company, funded. However it was apparently a bust, and Browne schemed to destroy it entirely. But the Red Chinese, headed up by Peter Tsai (who poses as a left-leaning professor at Marja’s college), as well as the KGB, headed up by Peter Wegendorff, are looking for the rest of the gizmo. There’s also Marc and Juno, a pair of CIA agents; Juno, as you’d guess, is a smokin’ hot, auburn-tressed beauty with a body nearly the equal of Marja’s.

The reader will of course understand that “ruggedly virile” Killinger is going to bang both these broads, and sure enough he does, even if it takes practically the entire novel. And, again, author P.K. Palmer is a total prude when it comes to the sex, fading instantly to black, even though he has no qualms with going on and on about “wonderously full breasts” and whatnot. But anyway, Killinger himself eventually gets wind of this whole AJB business; that is, once he’s had a number of confrontations with L.G. Browne.

The cantankerous billionaire, who lives in seclusion, reveals that she had an affair with Killinger’s grandfather, calling him a pirate. She also says that she should’ve been his wife, but Killinger the First instead married “a no-good squaw.” She further reveals that the “squaw’s” mother was “part Negro,” having been sired by a “runaway slave.” Killinger is not only aware of this, but proud: “The blood of a brave black man is in my veins,” he says. Palmer tries to build up more “comedy” with this constant banter between Killinger and Browne, but like everything else in the novel it soon grates on the reader’s nerves.

The novel is given over to endless parts where Peter Tsai’s men and Wegendorff’s men monitor Marja or Killinger from afar, reporting back to their superiors – over and over again we read as these spies report back on the exact same info. Throughout The Rainbow/Seagreen Case, you will read the same material again and again. But anyway these spies want to know where Marja found that AJB pipe. Soon Killinger himself shows up at Marja’s doorstep, lead there due to her recent call to AJB HQ.

Here we get one of the few action scenes, as Killinger busts out his “karate quick” moves to take out a pair of studly guys who are actually undercover agents for the Chinese and the Russians. He and Marja have instant chemistry, Killinger escorting her back to his junk in his cherry red ’57 Chevy and making her a big meal, with the understanding that they’re about to have some hot sex. Once again we get tons of detail about Killinger’s teak-made Chinese junk, especially the constantly-mentioned lattice work with all of the sexual depictions on it.

But as mentioned when the two finally get down to it, Palmer cuts straight to the next day. He’s all tease, more content to dole out inconsequential bits of fluff and padding to fill the unwieldy word count. Look, the book is so deadening that I’ll just cut to the chase – Marja found the AJB piece because it was in a channel of fresh water in the sea. There are seven underground lakes that flow into the sea, and Marja is unsure which is the one that spat out the AJB piece. But one of the seven will have the wrest of the wreckage hidden within it.

So, at great friggin’ length, Killinger devises a method of uncovering which lake it is – he will drop all seven colors of the spectrum, ie the “rainbow” of the title, into each lake. So, yellow for one lake, blue for another, etc. It takes at least 30 pages to explain this, not to mention all of the many, many pages devoted to the various CIA, KGB, and Red Chinese spies who watch Killinger from afar and report back to their superiors. People, it’s so mind-boggingly overwritten as to be nauseating. It’s just so boring.

Palmer introduces yet another character to Killinger’s list of companions: Doc Kinneally, a black helicopter pilot who is also apparently a chemist or something. He comes up with the rainbow dyes for Killinger, and there follows a few scenes where he flies Killinger and Marja over the lake as they drop the dye, getting shot at from hidden enemy agents. Palmer has no understanding of suspense or tension, as Killinger et al continuosly fly back to the same lake, despite the hidden snipers afoot. Oh, but we learn that Marja becomes “sexually excited” by it all.

Speaking of Marja, Palmer ushers her out of the text in the final quarter, with some hastily-explained reason that she has to give a conference in Connecticut(?). Killinger escorts her to the airport and returns to his junk…only to find yet another busty bombshell waiting for him. This is auburn-haired Juno, CIA agent who doesn’t even waste time with preliminaries; she screws Killinger straight away, though again it’s another “cut to the next chapter” copout from Palmer. So now, through Juno, the CIA is basically monitoring Killinger as he waits the three days until the dye will filter through to the underwater channel, and he’ll be able to know which lake hides AJB.

The finale features some tepid action, with Killinger again blithely swimming around the same area in which he’s been shot at several times, “surprise” attacked by scuba-outfitted Red Chinese and Russians. Killinger actually kills one of them, gutting the dude with his knife; Killinger’s first and only kill in the series. Meanwhile Juno, a cipher stand-in for Marja, waits anxiously on a boat (rented from “Andy Ettinger’s Boat Sales”) for Killinger to return to the surface. And Doc gets shot but he’ll be okay.

So, L.G. Browne’s fraud uncovered – something about the AJB being a device she funded which turned out to be a bust, so she planned to crash it into the sea and then collect on the insurance to pay back her loss – the old woman’s hauled off to prison. Juno returns to wherever it is that hot CIA agents go, and Killinger ends the novel (which occurs over a single weekend) with yet another female conquest – none other than Audrey White, who apropos of nothing has flowered (likely just due to Killinger’s rugged virility) from a virginal shut-in to a hot-stuff mama who announces to Killinger that she’s about to have sex with him. The end.

Overall, a terrible, terrible book, filled with constant stalling and repetition. But whereas the first volume at least had a goofy, ‘70s charm going for it, this one squanders all promise through its deadening style. In other words, good riddance Jedediah Killinger the Third.

The Spider #75: Satan's Murder Machines

The Spider #75: Satan's Murder Machines, by Grant Stockbridge
December, 1939  Popular Publications

The Spider returns in an installment published a few years after the previous volume I read, Death Reign Of The Vampire King, though not much has changed – he’s still thrust into a relentless sequence of chases, firefights, and life-threatening traps, all while separated from his usual supporting cast of characters, author Norvell Page (ie “Grant Stockbridge”) showing his protagonist little mercy.

The first novel collected in Baen’s 2008 mass market paperback Robot Titans Of Gotham, Satan’s Murder Machines sees hero Richard “The Spider” Wentworth going up against another villain with a name that would one day become associated with another character: The Iron Man. Unlike the later Marvel superhero, this one’s a murderous psychopath who commands a legion of almost-indestructable robots that are tearing apart Manhattan as the novel begins.

The Spider’s already on the scene, this time wearing a mask and veil, so I guess sort of like the original magazine cover depictions of the character mixed with the Shadow’s look? Wentworth has more problems than just the robots, which have torn down a few buildings and killed several people – he’s being framed by whoever’s behind them, framed as both a thief and a murderer. This leads to the novel’s central confrontation: Wentworth versus Commissioner Kirkpatrick, aka Wentworths’ best and only “friend.”

It’s pretty obvious that Kirkpatrick knows Wentworth is the Spider – I’m currently reading an earlier (and crazier) volume of the series, The Red Death Rain, and Page basically states as much in the narrative – but throughout the entire ten-year run of the series it was a constant question if the commissioner would ever get proof of it. As he constantly reminds everyone, as soon as he gets verifiable evidence of who the Spider is, that man will be arrested promptly.

Yet despite all this, Wentworth and Kirkpatrick are pals. Not that you’d know it this volume. While the robots are tearing up the city, Wentworth is busy being shuttled around by Kirkpatrick and his cops, the commissioner almost outright accusing Wentworth of being a murderer. Long story short, someone’s planted stolen artwork in Wentworth’s sprawling penthouse, and also one of his pistols has been stolen, used by this same perpetrator to murder someone.

The opening half features a handful of entertaining scenes in which Wentworth either uses guile or trickery to get around Kirkpatrick and his men, like when he recovers his pistol from the crime scene before the cops can spot it. More entertaining though is the increasingly-hostile banter between Wentworth and Kirkpatrick; no two men could remain “friends” after the amount of vitriol they pour upon one another. Standard with the “series reset” which occurs after every installment, though, I’m sure they’ll be back to being pals by the next volume.

Meanwhile the robots! Early in the novel, while in his Spider guise, Wentworth encounters them. While we never get a good idea how tall the things are, they are sufficiently bulky and massive enough to cause terror in their wake. They also have glowing eyes, and teeth which are memorably compared to shovels. They stampede over everything in their wake, nearly killing Wentworth and his assistant, Ronald Jackson, who served as a sergeant to Wentworth’s major in World War I.

Wentworth soon suspects that these “robots” really house men inside, especially when one of them begins to speak, the booming voice projecting from a grill on the chest. Eventually Wentworth learns he’s correct; these robots are more so powered suits of armor, with men inside them, yet even after this is revealed they’re still referred to as “robots.” Anyway per series standards how exactly these robot suits were created is never explained; Page is more focused on action and thrills.

And he succeeds -- Satan’s Murder Machines is a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it even more than Death Reign Of The Vampire King. One of the main reasons for this is that the supporting characters get more of a chance to shine, this time. In particular Nita Van Sloan, Wentworth’s fiance – there are a few scenes where she not only saves Wentworth, but poses as the Spider herself, usually so as to distract the cops. This includes a great moment where Kirkpatrick and his cops are escorting Wentworth out of a building, and are shocked by the sudden appearance of the Spider, who shoots over their heads and thus gives Wentworth opportunity toe scape.

The Wentworth/Nita moments provide a better understanding of why these two stay together, perennially “about to be married” but never taking the plunge due to Wentworth’s commitment to fight crime. But Page makes it clear that Nita is the same as her man, just as (psychotically?) devoted to taking on criminals, even if it means “true happiness” must be curtailed. Like her fiance, Nita even enjoys donning disguises; in this installment she takes on an apparently-frequent guise of a streetwalker, which leads to some humorous banter between her and Wentworth in a bar.

But really Satan’s Murder Machines is Wentworth’s show; while Nita, Jackson, and “Hindustani” colleague Ram Singh make scattered appearances in the opening half, Wentworth is relegated to working alone, mostly due to his wanted status by the police. Also, Jackson gets arrested for moving a body, so as to help foil the scheme to frame Wentworth, and Nita gets captured after drugging Wentworth and, once again, going out to do the Spider’s work on her own.

This is just another highlight in a novel filled with them; Wentworth midway through gets in an underwater battle with a few robots in the East River, trying to track them to their hideout. He manages to destroy one, but due to the freezing cold (the novel occurs in December, the same month it was published) he’s come down with the flu. Refusing to allow her man to go back underwater to find the robot shell, Nita instead slips our boy a mickey and then goes out to do it herself!

But as mentioned, she gets caught, and now Wentworth works alone again, trying to free her from the minions of the Iron Man. Speaking of which, the villain gets little narrative time, and in fact isn’t even described. There’s a part where Wentworth is fighting a few robots, one of whom is stated as being the Iron Man, but how Wentworth knows this is not mentioned. Is his suit of armor larger, or differently colored? Page doesn’t inform us, but then he was banging out about a million words a month, so we can forgive him if he sometimes misses little details.

Speaking of costumes, Wentworth wears a variety of them this time, from the “mask and veil” getup to the more-standard Spider disguise of the hunched back, lank hair, and fangs. I do love his thoroughness, though; when in a late sequence where he takes out one of the robots and appropriates the armor, Wentworth stamps his spider seal on the forehead, so everyone will know that this particular robot is none other than the Spider!

One thing missing this volume is the OTT violence of the series; since his opponents are armored robots, Wentworth is unable to blow their faces off as per usual. He does still find ways to kill them, either by ramming cement trucks into the robots or electrocuting them. Innocents still suffer, though, with men, women, and children being torn apart by the marauding robots, in particular a part where they destroy a tenement building. Here Page goes to the trouble of describing a woman and her child meeting a horrible fate at the metal hands and feet of the robots.

The novel is filled with scenes of Wentworth narrowly evading the robots, destroying one or two of them if he can, and keeping others from danger, in particular Kirkpatrick and his cops. There’s a great part where Wentworth, again as the Spider, poses briefly as a cop, commandeering the bullhorn in Kirkpatrick’s car to call off the cops, who otherwise would be destroyed by the robots. This climaxes with Kirkpatrick and the Spider meeting face-to-face; I got a chuckle how Kirkpatrick immediately went for his gun and snapped off a shot. Cops in the ‘30s didn’t mess around.

Wentworth pulls off many superhuman feats, from wrestling robots beneath the Hudson to shooting through the finger-muzzle of one of them, blowing up its entire arm. He does all of this while still clearing his name (thus leading to a truce with Kirkpatrick) and figuring out who the Iron Man is. Unlike what I assume is the standard norm, this particular secret identity seems to be at least a little planned out, with Page introducing the person midway through the tale and spending an entire sequence with him. It’s my understanding that most of these “surprise reveals” turn out to just be random characters briefly mentioned.

This was another fast-paced Spider yarn which barely allowed the reader to catch his breath, plunging Richard Wentworth into one confrontation after another. What’s most surprising then is how Norvell Page is still able to shoehorn in some fun dialog and memorable character exchanges amid all of the chaos; there are even minor references to earlier adventures, which no doubt would be pleasing to long-time readers.

The other Page novel collected in Robot Titans Of Gotham by the way is the first and only volume of an obscure 1939 pulp “series” titled The Octopus (which coincidentally or not happened to be the name of the villain in the 1938 Spider serial The Spider’s Web). It’s my understanding this novel was only co-written by Page. At any rate I haven’t read it yet, and will instead move on to more Spider volumes.

Midnight Lightning (Steel Lightning #1)

Midnight Lightning, by Kevin Sherrill
August, 1989  Pinnacle/Zebra Books

About as obscure as a paperback original can be, Midnight Lightning is one of those late ‘80s publications that bears the Pinnacle imprint but in reality is a Zebra publication. It’s also the first of a three-volume men’s adventure series,* even though there was no series title or volume numbers. (The spine however labels the book as “Men’s Adventure.”)

Kevin Sherrill appears to have been a real person, as the book is copyright him. Style-wise he proves himself capable of doling out the OTT thrills the genre demands, though ultimately the book is stymied by its exorbitant page count – 351 pages, the typically-overblown Zebra paperback length. And the guy POV-hops like crazy, sometimes even changing the character perspective in the middle of a sentence He commits almost as great a sin by referring to his characters by various names in the narrative, which can really confuse a reader.

The novel comes off like an ‘80s take on Death Wish, a total Canon Group type of movie idea, where a gang of New Yorkers, their lives ruined by acts of crime, band together beneath the guidance of a tough veteran cop and become a well-armed, well-trained urban vigilante squad. Be warned though that the vast majority of Midnight Lightning is all about the training; the actual vigilante stuff doesn’t even get started until around page 300. Glances through future volumes indicate that they more quickly get to the good stuff.

When Sherrill gets going, he proves himself in the caliber of David Alexander, and there were times I wondered if “Kevin Sherrill” was the pseudonym of our old Phoenix-authoring pal. This similarity is mostly displayed in the opening pages, which purport to illustrate the cruelties that our heroes suffer, the injustices which make them become vigilantes. But it’s all done so over the top that it comes off as farce.

First we have Barbara Cohen, an attractive young lady with one bizarre backstory, a backstory which Sherrill appears to change as he goes along. I also couldn’t figure out if she was a brunette or a blonde, as I think she’s described both ways. Anyhow, poor Barbara is on the way from work late one evening, where she apparently serves as the assistant to the DA or something. (And yet, we’re also informed she was once a hooker…as well as a drug-addicted porn star??) A pair of men ambush her outside of her Lower East Side apartment, take her away, and proceed to rape and abuse her for pages, even slicing her up in unspecified ways. Indeed, Barbara’s injuries are never fully described, which makes it all the more unsettling, as it plays on your mind.

Next there’s Joseph Vernick, a WWII vet who ownes a small grocery store in the Lower East Side. One night a gang of hispanic youth come in and terrorize the place. When burly and beefy Vernick fights them off, one of them whips out a pistol – and shoots Vernick’s wife. Now the elderly lady has been rendered to a vegetable, life support the only thing that keeps her alive.

Moses White is a former pro footballer, where he acquired the nickname “Dr. Pain.” But that was years ago, and now Moses is happy living with his white girlfriend. The fact that Moses is black is very upsetting to a group of neo-Nazis, all of whom begin terrorizing him. This has its beginnings one afternoon when Moses is ambushed by a group of them, including some Nazi girls. Moses fights them off, but is shot several times by the leader of the gang. As with the others, the cops/legal system prove incapable of bringing them to justice.

Next there’s Miguel Negron, a streetwise hispanic who grew up in the Lower East Side and has avoided the gangs and the drugs. His joy in life is playing the saxophone, which he does on the street corner for small change. He’s mugged one night and when the men try to take his precious sax, he goes nuts. When they threaten to slice off his lips, he goes even more nuts. But the thugs end up mutilating his lips anyway, slicing them in half and thus ruining Miguel’s chances of ever playing sax again.

Finally there’s Brian Benson, whose sad backstory is the most horrific of all, which is to say it’s also the most farcial. A closeted gay and incredibly shy and introverted, Brian lives alone and works as a data programmer. One night he comes home to find three burly bikers waiting in his apartment. The men proceed to rape him horribly, culminating in their lighting Brian on fire. But despite the flames which engulf him, Brian lives on, even staring the bikers down as they flee the burning apartment.

Meanwhile we are introduced to John DiNatale, a 40-something veteran NYC cop and ‘Nam vet. Sherrill seems to have clearly had Bruce Willis in mind here, as DiNatale’s balding pate is often mentioned – just like Bruce Willis’s hairline circa 1989. Despite his awesome record, DiNatale was kicked off the force for outright murdering a serial killer/pedophile, shooting the man point-blank during a police interrogation. This in addition to his other flagrances of the law (also depicted via overlong flashbacks) finally resulted in DiNatale’s dismissal.

But in a retread of the earlier Hawker series, DiNatale is contacted by a wealthy businessman who offers to fund a private war on crime. Just as in that earlier series, DiNatale will be set up with state-of-the-art technology and weapons, and will get to be field commander of an army he creates. Now he just has to find his soldiers. Walking through the Lower East Side one night, DiNatale comes upon a public gathering where the locals are listening to a speech by the police commissioner, who promises to curtail the rampant crime, something which brings forth a lot of laughter.

DiNatale encounters our unfortunate victims, every single one of whom has gathered here tonight, “as if by fate.” Now, Sherrill never says exactly how long ago each of them suffered their horrors, but they’re all healed up enough to be out and about. Even Barbara Cohen, who was apparently beaten and cut to the state of being unrecognizable, is back to looking like her usual hotstuff self. And Brian Benson is there, a scarred, skeletal shambles of a man whom Sherrill will exploit throughout the narrative, comparing him to a monster.

Anyway, DiNatale knows he’s found his soldiers as soon as he sees them. They meet at a bar, where he offers them the chance to strike back at crime. Brian even shows up, and we readers see that he has become a completely different character, consumed with vengeance. He’s almost been burnt to a crisp, and wears dark glasses. He also enjoys exploiting his own “freakish appearance” by scaring people who openly stare at him. He speaks in a ragged whisper, and seems more like a figure from a horror movie than a real person.

Now begins the Dirty Dozen-esque training, which serves to take up the majority of the narrative. Sherrill hopscotches around his large cast of characters, making for a bumpy ride, because the dude POV-hops like a mother. One paragraph we’re in say DiNatale’s thoughts, and the next paragraph (or even sentence) we’re suddenly in say Barbara’s thoughts – no white space or anything to clue to the reader that the perspective has changed.

Worse yet, Sherill lacks consistency with character names: DiNatale is referred to as “DiNatale,” “John,” and even “J.D.;” Moses is “Mose,” “Moses,” and “White,” and most confusing of all Miquel is referred to as “Miquel,” “Negron,” and even “Micky!” And all this in the narrative, mind you; it’s fine for the characters to refer to each other by various names, I mean that’s just like in real life. But when the narrative itself jumps around – sometimes without even warning you, like with the “J.D.” and “Micky” stuff – you can get easily confused.

Anyway the training stuff goes on and on, from DiNatale teaching them how to defend themselves with martial arts to even laughable stuff where he teaches them how to use ninja throwing stars – part of every New York cop’s bag of tricks, I guess. Finally the gun-porn arrives and goes on for quite some time, with each of the characters picking up their own favored piece. Most memorable is Brian, who takes to a .44 Magnum with relish, furthering his image as a sort of shadowy personification of Death itself.

True to Zebra form the book is vastly overblown, meaning there’s all kinds of shit Sherrill likely added to meet his word count. In addition to the rampant and unecessary flashbacks that pepper the first half of the book, there’s also lame and bizarre stuff past the midway point like where DiNatale takes his “troops” out into the no man’s land of Brooklyn and has them get in a chase with some cops. Even more time-wasting is a part where he takes them out to the Catskills, to run across a field while they’re shot at by cannons fired by a psychotic old ‘Nam pal of DiNatale’s who’s become a mercenary.

It’s not until page 300 that we get to the actual revenge – and even then it’s only minimally dealt out, Brian being the only one who gets to take vengeance on his tormentors. Meanwhile the scum who destroyed the lives of the others go free; in particular Sherrill leaves a whole subplot unexplored, where neo-Nazis are terrorizing Moses and his wife. Perhaps this stuff will be dealt with in the next novel, but still you sort of wish Sherrill had skipped all of the time-wasting stuff and just gotten down to the gory revenge scenario promised by the front and back covers.

I forgot to mention the gadgets and gear DiNatale supplies his team with. First there’s the “war truck,” or watever you want to call it; a ‘40s Dodge panel truck that’s been armored and remodeled into a tank on wheels. There’s even a gadget in the dashboard that foils police scanners into misreading the truck’s actual speed. The team is outfitted with state-of-the art weaponry and endless ammo, and they operate out of the Meat Locker, a Lower East Side tenement that spans three floors and has been converted into basically an army base; DiNatale lives there with his girlfriend. Finally the team has been outfitted with “Kevlar suits,” which while not fully bulletproof should prevent major harm.

Brian’s tormentors are chosen as the first to taste the wrath of DiNatale’s unnamed group of vigilantes. These are a group of degenerate bikers who run out of a condemned building where they sometimes bring back kidnapped children to drug and rape! And of course the courts and police can do nothing to stop them due to the usual action-novel nonsense. Currently they’re in the process of debasing and degrading a preteen runaway whom they plan to kill off once they’re sick of her. One thing’s for sure, Sherrill really makes the reader want to see these motherfuckers pay.

In the final pages we get a violent action scene as Brian first taunts out the bikers who tortured and raped him – and opens up on them with a flamethrower! After which the rest of the troops bust into the burning building and raise hell on full auto. In these sequences Sherrill finally cuts loose, and it’s unfortunate he doesn’t more often in the novel. As it is, only the opening and closing portions of Midnight Lightning reach the lurid excess this genre demands. But when Sherill’s on, he’s on, almost up there with David Alexander – he even has that author’s penchant for veering into straight-up homoerotica when writing about guns:

[Brian] now wore his “Dirty Harry Special” all the time. And the fully-charged stunner was never far from his hand. He could haul his big rod out and shoot a load or two or more at the least provocation. His rod felt hot in its holster because the men to whom he had promised an Instant Replay weren’t far away at all.

He’s talking about his .44 Magnum, of course!

Speaking of erotica, Sherrill even delivers a fairly-explicit sex scene, as DiNatale graphically bangs his live-in girlfriend, an incredibly young druggie/hooker or something. This girl doesn’t deliver much to the proceedings, other than to call up DiNatale on the Meat Locker’s intercom and ask him to come over to her room for a quick fuck. We also get some stuff about Barbara Cohen now being a lesbian, unable to think of men “that way” anymore after her horrific rape…so Sherrill compensates by throwing in an out-of-nowhere flashback/dream sequence to her days as a porn star.

As mentioned, only Brian gets his vengeance in this first novel, and its bloody (and fiery) vengeance indeed. But by the time DiNatale’s troops roar out in their armored trucks, just as the cops show, the novel’s already come to an end – and the other criminals are still out there. Here’s hoping the next novel delivers, and also that it isn’t hampered like this one was by pointless digressions and padding.

*Midnight Lightning was followed in 1991 by Steel Lightning. The series concluded in 1992 with the similarly-titled Steel Lightning: Slash and Burn. To make it even more confusing, these two novels had identical covers, only with “Slash And Burn” on the cover of the third volume differentiating the two. (Also, this third volume was published under the Zebra imprint, whereas the first two bore the Pinnacle imprint.)

The Spider #26: Death Reign Of The Vampire King

The Spider #26: Death Reign Of The Vampire King, by Grant Stockbridge
November, 1936  Popular Publications

Again I have Zwolf to thank – or should that be blame? Because, thanks to his awesome Spider overview, I’ve gone off the deep end, and within the span of a few weeks have picked up like 60-some installments of this 1933-1943 pulp series.

I was only slightly aware of the Spider, one of the longer-running pulp heroes, mostly just due to mentions I’d seen of him over the years, but mainly due to the DVD copy I acquired a few years ago of The Spider’s Web, a 1938 serial based on the character – and suprisingly faithful to its source. When I was a kid I was obsessed with these ‘30s pulp heroes, these masked crimefighters who appeared to be just as bloodthirsty as the criminals they opposed, but back then I couldn’t find any reprints of the various pulps.

However one of the few good things about our miserable modern era is that stuff like this has become much easier to acquire. In fact, Will Murray and Radio Archives have released scads of pulp novels in eBook format, including the Spider run. I’m not sure if they have yet released all 118 volumes, but they’ve got to be damn close. So then, for around $2.99 you can actually read these old novels, which for decades were nigh impossible to find.

While in this case I’m in favor of eBooks, I have to admit that I didn’t read my first Spider novel that way; instead, I read Death Reign Of The Vampire King in the 2008 Baen mass market paperback Robot Titans Of Gotham, which compiled two Spider novels and another pulp novel that was co-written by Norvell Page, who wrote pretty much the entirety of the Spider series.

Norvell Page sounds like one interesting dude. As Zwolf mentions in his overview, Page would sometimes dress like his character when turning in his Spider manuscripts, likely just having fun with it. But damn the guy was a writing powerhouse, turning out a novel a month! And he did this for almost ten years, and that’s not even including the novels he wrote for other pulp magazines. But anyway Page was the “Grant Stockbridge” (ie the house name the series was published under after initial series author RTM Scott left), even though he didn’t come onto the scene until the third volume.

Zwolf’s also on point with his theory that Joseph Rosenberger was probably an admirer of The Spider. My friends, as I read Death Reign Of The Vampire King, there were times I had to remind myself I wasn’t reading a Rosenberger novel. The styles are pretty similar, with a sort of skewed, off-the-wall vibe mixed with endless action and a breathless tone, with exclamation points all over the place. However, Page is a much more refined (and, uh, better) author than Mr. Rosenberger, and while I’d consider reading a hundred or so Rosenberger novels a pointless endeavor, I’m so impressed with Page and his characters and storylines that I hope to someday read all of his Spider work.

But for those of you who are more into ‘70s or ‘80s men's adventure novels novels and don’t think ‘30s or ‘40s pulps would be your thing, you will be in for quite a surprise. If Death Reign Of The Vampire King is any indication, this series is very similar to the men’s adventure novels of the 1970s. In tone, content, and even page length, the series is almost the prototype of what came a few decades later. It even has the lurid vibe of those ‘70s novels, though obviously not as exploitative as some of them – though to be sure, there’s some definite exploitation afoot here.

This 26th volume is proof enough. The villain is a deformed monster with fangs and wings who commands an untold number of vampire bats, there’s a femme fatale who gets off on torture and wants to watch as our hero is killed by bats, there’s a scene in which said femme fatale apparently has sex with the hero’s accomplice – the accomplice taking advantage of that aforementioned turned-on nature – and finally there’s thousands of people around the country getting killed by the vampire bats. This isn’t even mentioning our hero, who goes around in the disguise of a hunchback with a big nose and vampire fangs of his own.

Like Rosenberger, Page throws us right into the action and doesn’t stop until the final page, with only a few moments here and there for introspection and reflection. But again, whereas Rosenberger’s endless action onlsaught can quickly become nauseating, Page’s style is so much more assured and measured that you can’t help but keep reading – seriously, the dude was a master of the craft, and should be enshrined as pulp royalty. As the novel opens those damn vampire bats have already killed a bunch of people, though must of the victims have been gamblers and horse-betters and other such people; ie, no “innocents.” At least not yet.

Enter hero Richard Wentworth, wealthy gadabout known to all and sundry as a famous criminologist. He’s also the Spider, hunchbacked and fanged enemy of the underworld (despite the cover depictions, the Spider didn’t actually wear a domino mask…though sometimes he did). That Wentworth is the Spider is quite obviously known by New York Police Commisioner Kirkpatrick (who doesn’t appear this volume), though this “does he know or not” element is apparently played out throughout the series, with these two ostensible friends constantly at war, with Kirkpatrick bound and determined to someday arrest the Spider….no matter who he may turn out to be.

But make no mistake, Wentworth is nuts. Will Murray perfectly sums up the character in his series overview which appears in all of the Radio Archives Spider eBooks, so be sure to check one of those out – and Murray’s overview is also important because it actually gets the reader excited to read one of these books. (Unlike the pretentious and annoying one in Robot Titans Of Gotham, which only succeeds in grating the reader’s nerves.) Anyway, Wentworth is very similar, again, to the Death Merchant, in that he’s basically an inhuman warrior. Though, unlike Rosenberger, Page actually succeeds in making his hero both human and likable.

Anyway, Wentworth is already on the trail of these vampire bats when we meet him, on the scene in Philadephia, away from his home turf of New York. An interesting thing to mention is that, other than a few pages at the begninning, Wentworth is not in the guise of the Spider throughout the entire novel, so really it’s more so the adventures of “Richard Wentworth, Criminologist.” But he’s in the cape, slouch hat, deformed nose, “lank-haired wig,” and of couse the fangs of the Spider ensemble as the novel opens, sneaking onto the property of a criminal he suspects might be next on the vamire bat death list.

While Wentworth is brilliant and all, he apparently has poor judgment at times, as he sneaks onto the property carrying a bird cage with bats in it!! And yet he’s surprised when later a witness accuses him of being the person behind all these bat attacks. Wentworth’s aren’t vampire bats, just decoys, and when the real vampire bats actually do attack, we’re thrust into the first of the novel’s many action scenes. Here we see how bloodthirsty our hero is, as he guns down various crooks with his twin “automatics,” which are never specified but if the series covers are any indication are good ol’ Colt .45s.

Here we get to see the Vampire King himself – the “Bat Man!” Unlike the more famous character (who hadn’t been created yet, anyway), this Bat Man can actually fly, flapping about on his massive bat wings. Page builds up a supernatural element with Wentworth spending most of the novel wondering if the Bat Man is even human. But the villain escapes, his victims dead, and off Wentworth goes in pursuit; he spends most of the novel like ten steps behind his quarry, while soon people all over the country begin dying…and not just gamblers and underworld riffraff, either.

Wentworth as mentioned is soon called out by a witness, who claims she saw him setting those vampire bats free; this is June Calvert, a hotstuff gal who is the above-referenced femme fatale. She claims to be the sister of a man who was killed by the Bat Man – and she thinks the Spider and the Bat Man are one and the same. Wentworth brings her along, pretending to commandeer his own Daimler – even to the extent of pretending to kidnap his faithful servant/chauffer, Ram Singh, a hulking “Hindustani” who appears to be a little too eager to go out and shed blood with his curved dagger.

Speaking of accomplices, Wentworth’s fiance Nita Van Sloan is flying in from New York to assist. Nita is fully aware of Wentworth’s double life and also takes part in it, sometimes even taking up the Spider mantle herself. However nothing like this happens in Death Reign Of The Vampire King; Nita’s unfortunately-brief storyline has her becoming reacquainted with Fred Stoking, an old flame who just happens to run into Nita and Wentworth in Philadelphia. Apparently Page’s intention is for readers to suspect that Stoking might be the Bat Man – the villain’s true identity is a big source of mystery for everyone – but if so, this element is quickly dropped.

Actually, none of Wentworth’s accomplices are around much. He’s pretty much a one-man band here; even June Calvert quickly disappears from the text, though when she appears again she’s morphed into becoming like the Bat Man’s sadistic and depraved female minion. In the best scene in the novel, Wentworth and another of his colleagues, Ronald Jackson, are captured by the “Jivaro Indians” who serve the Bat Man. They’re taken to the Bat Man’s underground lair in Jersey City(!), where he sits on a throne, surrounded by his bats and barely-clothed Indian warriors.

The Bat Man is straight out of a horror film, with huge wings, fangs, and the twisted, demonic face of a bat. Also, he squeaks when he talks, and can command his bats with his voice. Did I mention yet that his bats have poisoned fangs? Anyway, June is here as well, dressed in a form-revealing red dress with bands across her breasts, like she just walked out of one of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. While there is of course no sex in these books, I have to say again how “modern” they seem, at least so far as the style goes, as June’s ample charms are constantly mentioned, in a matter not unlike that which would be common in the men’s adventure novels of the ‘70s.

The Bat Man orders Wentworth and Jackson stripped nude and tossed into a cell in which they’ll be drained to death by swarms of vampire bats. And June Calvert demands to be allowed to watch! It’s all very Myrna Loy in The Mask Of Fu Manchu, as June even pulls up a chair outside of the cell so she can avidly watch it all go down. And while fending off the innumerable bats, Wentworth can’t help but notice how excited June looks…and also how Jackson himself can’t seem to keep his eyes off the evil yet ultra-hot woman.

So Wentworth does what likely no other pulp hero would do – he tells Jackson to fuck June, right through the cell bars! Of course, he doesn’t use these exact words, and Page does leave it to our imagination, but it’s still pretty clear what goes down…despite the vaguery of the narrative, Jackson uses his macho charms to capitalize on June’s sexually-excited nature. While Wentworth keeps his back turned, still fending off the bats, June and Jackson soon begin panting and thrusting away behind him.

And it works – the evil woman is ensnared by her own sadistic impulses, and soon enough has fallen in love with Jackson. She helps them escape, which of course really pisses off the Bat Man, and he sends more bats and Jivaros after them. Wentworth kills scads of both, and while Nita sits out the majority of this installment, June Calvert basically stands in for her, serving as Wentworth’s asskicking female assistant. Eventually it’s just him and her working together, with Jackson too disappearing into the narrative aether along with Nita, Ram Singh, and Nita’s old boyfriend.

Once again my review is reaching absurd proportions, so I’ll stop synopsizing. Long story short, Death Reign Of The Vampire King is an endless, breathless sequence of Wentworth either stealing cars or planes and chasing after the minions of the Bat Man. I think there are like ten plane crashes in this novel, Wentworth’s commandeered planes getting shot out of the sky again and again (and yet he and everyone else on board always surviving, of course).

One of these crashes leads to an interminable sequence in which Wentworth and June must walk through the rough terrain of the Appalachian mountains. This part goes on and on and serves to drag the novel down; surely Page could’ve come up with something more exciting to fill the pages. In true pulp fashion he has no problem with shoehorning in coincidence; June, besides being an expert pilot herself, was also briefly a school teacher in the Appalachias(??), and thus uses her knowledge of the redneck world to steal a truck, making the journey faster.

Also in true pulpster fashion, Page clearly runs out of pages in the homestretch, and thus we are graced with a finale that’s a little unsatisfying. Having figured the Bat Man’s next big attack will be in Michigan City (where 3,5000 people are killed by bats!), Wentworth steals another plane, gets in another aerial dogfight, and then breaks out his own wings as he jumps from this latest crashing plane. Employing wings he’s had made to match the Bat Man’s, now Wentworth himself can fly around, and thus battles the Bat Man in the sky.

Any hopes of a big climax are dashed; the Bat Man merely plummets in the scuffle, and only later does a dazed Wentworth discover that he succeeded in shooting him to death. There’s also a Scooby-Doo reveal where it turns out the Bat Man isn’t some mutant monster, after all; instead he’s some random character who was briefly mentioned earlier in the novel. Apparently these “surprise reveals” were part and parcel of Page’s schtick; see this humourous Will Murray article at the essential Spider Returns site for more on that.

The thing that most impressed me about Death Reign Of The Vampire King, besides its hectic pace and bloodthirsty protagonist, was how modern it seemed. In fact there were even parts where Wentworth thought of various things, ie house architecture, as “old fashioned;” an interesting sentiment to encounter in an 80-year-old novel. Speaking of which, this installment was one of the four that Pocket Books “modernized” in the 1970s, editing the text so “the Spider” became just “Spider,” and other such bizarre changes which still draw fan spite.

While this particular installment of The Spider didn’t knock me out, it entertained me enough that I immediately began reading the other Spider novel compiled in Robot Titans Of Gotham, Satan’s Death Machines, which I’ll be reviewing next – and which I enjoyed even more.

Above I mentioned the eBooks, but for those like myself who still prefer print, you can find the 25 Spider “Pulp Doubles” published by Girasol, which compiled two novels per volume. Unfortunately, they were not published in any sort of order, however they did retain the interior illustrations, something lacking in both the eBooks and the two Baen mass market paperbacks. The eBooks are obviously much cheaper – and also there are many volumes of the series that were never reprinted by Girasol, Baen, or the others. (Actually, Girasol has published the majority of the series in “Pulp Replica” format: exact replicas of the original magazines…at a hefty forty bucks each!!)

Another thing to note is that the Spider novels are sometimes referred to as “novellas.” I don’t think this is accurate. The Spider novels compiled by Baen run to about 150-160 pages each, which again is basically the same page length as the men’s adventure novels of the 1970s. I picked up all of the “Pulp Doubles” as well as a handful of Spider reprints published by Bold Ventures and Pulp Adventures Press (both of which also retain the original interior illustrations), so there will be many more Spider reviews forthcoming – you can definitely count me a fan.

The Executioners (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #55)

The Executioners, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1970  Award Books

Not as entertaining, crazy, or sick as his earlier installment, The Sea Trap, The Executioners is only a middling entry in the Nick Carter: Killmaster series, courtesy Jon Messmann. Also worth noting is that, unlike that earlier volume, this one is in first-person, which already results in a demerit so far as I’m concerned.

And given that first-person narration, The Executioners lacks the setup of the earlier volumes that were in third; it opens with Nick Carter already en route to Australia and on his latest case. The setup is clunkily rendered via Carter’s expository flashbacks to files he read in boss David Hawk’s office on Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. Long story short, the Australians have been fucking up recently, and three separate accidents during military training have resulted in lots of death, destruction, and loss of money.

The US military took part in these training exercises, and since America too has suffered loss AXE has been called in to investigate. Worth noting is that these three accidents are stated as taking place over the summer of 1969, with the latest one occurring in September. Thus, the novel takes place in September, 1969; it appears that these early volumes of the series were pretty constant in locking it all down in a specific place and time. The side effect though is that Nick “Killmaster” Carter comes off as one busy dude.

Carter hooks up with Australian intelligence, which is located near a small city named Townsville. The affable commander in charge tells Carter that his main intelligence contact will be – you guessed it – a super hot and super stacked redhead named Mona Star, who promptly makes her interest in Carter obvious. Surprisingly, Carter has not gotten laid yet, even though we’re already around 20 pages in. All joking aside, there’s actually less sex afoot here than typical, so far as the series goes, and the lurid factor of The Sea Trap is completely missing.

With Mona’s assistance, Carter researches the military training exercise mishaps. They span the three branches of the Australian military: the army, the air force, and the navy. In each case a disaffected soldier was at fault, and officially it’s been marked down as human error. However AXE suspects sabotage, and a grander, darker scheme at play; AXE has named this mysterious threat “The Executioners,” which ultimately has zilch to do with the plot and is likely the title Award Books came up with; book producer Lyle Kenyon Engel complained that the publisher often changed the titles of the books, usually without even informing him.

Dawsey, who crashed a tank, has been discharged from the army since, but Carter discovers that the guy appears to be rather affluent. Carter barges in and outright accuses him of being a traitor in exchange for cash, and then tails Dawsey to a bar called the Ruddy Jug. There he sees Dawsey talking to an attractive but downbeaten waitress. But then the waitress has Carter kicked out of the bar, after which he’s jumped by three guys at Dawsey’s house and taken away.

This is just the first of several instances in which “the Killmaster” is caught in The Executioners. This time he’s taken to a smelting plant, where he escapes in one of the most unbelievable sequences ever; I mean, the thugs actually leave Carter’s Luger in his pocket so it too will be smelted and destroyed! Uh, all Carter has to do is jump away…and then shoot them with his Luger. I’ve never seen such a brazen disregard for genre tropes.

Carter kills these guys, discovers Dawsey’s corpse back at his house, and heads back for the Ruddy Jug to confront the waitress who ratted him out. This is Judy, who might not be as bad as she seems; she’s merely paid to point out disaffected servicemen to a “concerned group” of Australian men who claim they’ll help these soldiers. Otherwise she professes no knowledge of the sabotage acts or Dawsey’s murder, etc. Plus she’s got these awesome breasts and Carter just wants to believe she’s innocent.

Speaking of tits, Carter’s oggling them throughout the novel, like a regular Nick Merlotti. In what has to be some intentional humor, the women’s breasts are always mentioned in every single scene, beyond even the genre norm. I’m not complaining, just noting. Anyway, Carter is next almost killed by Dempster, the air force pilot who was involved with another of the “accidents.” Once again coming off like a fool, Carter just hops in a plane with this guy…and Dempster jettisons him right over the outback!

We get a long sequence of survivalist fiction as Carter somehow makes it through the unforgiving elements; a sequence which sees him saved by a group of aborigines. But he recuperates enough to eventually get back to Mona Star’s place outside Townsville – I forgot to mention, but the two are now an item, Mona being the first (and only) woman Carter scores with in the novel, in a sex scene that isn’t nearly as explicit as anything in Messmann’s earlier The Sea Trap. I thought these kinds of books got more explicit and graphic as the ‘60s became the ‘70s, but this particular novel would prove that’s not always true.

There is though lots of sensationalistic stuff as Carter uses his male mystique to woo Lynn, Dawsey’s ex-girlfriend, a man-starved woman who too has “full breasts” which Carter enjoys oggling. While he never has “full-blown sex” with her, Carter gets pretty hot and heavy with the lady, using her obvious interest in him to figure out if she knows more about the plot than she admits; in a goofy bit of coincidence, Messmann has it that all three women are somehow involved with whoever is planning the sabotage, but only one of them is intentionally so.

“The Executioners” operate out of a ranch outside of Townsville, and there follows another sequence where Carter is again captured, and the dumbasses toss him into the lot with a bunch of maddened steer…leaving Carter with his stiletto! Of course, he’s able to escape, and frustrated by the whole mystery he then tells everyone he’s leaving and doubles back in disguise as a disaffected Australian worker, who has signed on to build the new dam which is being overseen by an American engineering company, much to the chagrin of the locals.

Long story short, a disguised Carter is soon introduced to the saboteurs thanks to Judy, who doesn’t know it’s really Carter. And when Carter demands to meet “the head man,” he’s nonplussed to discover it’s actually…Mona Star! Messmann has already planted a few kernels so this isn’t a total surprise, but still, it’s revealed so late in the tale that it comes off as anticlimactic. And what’s worse is the pulp stuff really comes out here, in the veritable homestretch of the tale.

For you see, Mona and her compatriots are headquartered in an underwater lair built into the Great Barrier Reef! Carter scuba-dives down to find it…and is promptly captured yet again. Here a bikini-clad Mona informs Carter that her real name is Caroline Cheng; she’s an Australian who grew up in China, and after her father was drummed out of the Australian military for demanding equality among all ethnicities, she decided to get vengeance, especially now that equality is the accepted norm.

So, she married Colonel Cheng of China’s intelligence outfit, and demanded he let her plan this whole “executioners” gambit. But, just as in The Sea Trap, Carter’s already called in an underwater strike on the location, so there follows a tension-filled climax in which they’re all caught in the cramped underwater headquarters while a US Navy destroyer launches missiles at the place.

Also, Carter goes easy on this female villain; when Mona is trapped by a giant clam along the reef (the claim itself another callback to that earlier Messmann installment), he gets her free and then pulls her to safety. But the “Oriental” side of her nature demands death before dishonor…and she intentionally swims into a pack of blood-crazed sharks! Meanwhile Carter’s looking forward to boffing Judy the bartender a whole bunch back in the States, as he’s arranged via Hawk to get her an extended visa…

While it wasn’t fantastic by any means, and kind of repetitive throughout, The Executioners wasn’t a terrible installment of the series. This is mostly because Messmann keeps things moving throughout. One interesting thing to note is that the tone is very different from The Sea Trap, likely another repercussion of the unfortunate series switch to first person.

The Black Eagles #14: Firestorm At Dong Nam

The Black Eagles #14: Firestorm At Dong Nam, by John Lansing
February, 1988  Zebra Books

After reading the first volume, which was courtesy Mark Roberts (and the only volume of the series he wrote), I didn’t really consider another installment of the Black Eagles series. But when I came across a pristine-condition copy of this 14th volume for half off the cover price, I couldn’t pass it up.

The copyright page acknowledges a Patrick E. Andrews, who supposedly was the author who wrote the majority of the series, which was edited by William Fieldhouse. I don’t know anything about Andrews, what or any other series he might have worked on, but so far as Firestorm At Dong Nam goes, he has a very breezy and readable style, which plunges you facefirst into the bloody hell of ‘Nam.

Don’t get me wrong, the novel’s no The Short-Timers. I mean, just look at the cover! As I mentioned in my review of the first volume, the Black Eagles series was graced with some of the greatest covers ever; each and every one of them could’ve been like the cover of a Megadeth or Metallica single. But beyond that, this book doesn’t delve into the “war is hell” angle mandatory of “real” Vietnam fiction; the novel’s as mired in realism as the average David Alexander book.

Like every other Zebra publication, Firestorm At Dong Nam is too long – 256 whopping pages. But boy it’s got some big ‘ol print, and Andrews’s style is so breezy that I read the book in record time. Little concern that I’d missed 12 volumes since readng Roberts’s initial installment; while this one makes the occasional reference to previous missions, there’s really no heavy continuity. But even if you’re still worried you missed something, Andrews helpfully shoehorns aout 20 pages of background into the first quarter of the book, an entire chapter which, believe it or not, synopsizes every previous volume of the series!

Anyway, there have been some heavy changes to the series regulars, with apparently lots of redshirts dying in the interim. That appears to have been a schtick of this series, killing off “regulars” at regular intervals, but my friends, these characters are such ciphers that you don’t even realize they’re alive. Honestly, eight of the seventeen Black Eagles die in the events of Firestorm At Nong Dam, and only maybe one or two of those deaths even register with you. And of course, each of them are dudes who just showed up in the previous volume or such.

But the series regulars are still here – Lt. Colonel Robert Falconi, strong-jawed leader of the squad, and Malpractice, the medic. Andrea Thuy is also still afoot, though much less psychotic than she was in Roberts’s hands. In fact Andrea has been removed from the squad; in an underexplained development we learn that she was removed from active duty by the squad’s CIA rep, Chuck Fagin, due to her “love affair” with Falconi. Andrea’s still around, but now she works as Fagin’s admin assistant…and rushes off to screw Falconi whenever he’s off duty.

To clarify though, Andrews unlike Roberts doesn’t provide a single damn sex scene. He’s more in the Fieldhouse realm of men’s adventure writing, more so into the guns and action side of things, and less so about the lurid or sleaze element. Anyway, Archie Dobbs is also still around – apparently the jokester of the squad, and busted down to private for going AWOL in a previous volume. Oh, and Malpractice has married a Vietnamese girl named Xinh, whom he insists upon calling “Jean” in a total disregard for cultural sensitivities.

Anyway, the plot of this 14th volume concerns Lt. Colonel Gregori Kraschenko, leader of the newly-organized Red Berets, the “cream of the Iron Curtain’s elite forces.” Kraschenko, a monster of a man, has whittled 100 recruits down to just 30 men due to rigorous training; the novel opens with the further whittling down to 17 total, including the Lt. Colonel. Sewing a patch emblazoned with a red bear onto their jungle camo, the Red Berets head to ‘Nam to take on the Black Eagles.

Kraschenko apparently was the KGB liason with the NVA forces in previous volumes, and thus is familiar with Falconi and team, but Andrews doesn’t make it clear if the dude actually appeared in those previous volumes. We do get the clarification that he and Falconi have never met, and even Falconi has never heard of Kraschenko. But at any rate, the KGB commando has a burnin’ yearnin’ to kill Falconi, and thus through his intelligence contacts issues a challenge.

This is where you know you’re reading pulp – CIA goon Fagin informs Falconi that the Red Berets have challenged the Black Eagles to a battle to the death in a neutral zone. No backup, no heavy weaponry, just whatever they can carry in on their backs. And if the Black Eagles refuse, the US will be badmouthed in intelligence circles! It all sounds ridiculous of course, but Brigadier General Taggart, who has the final say in what the Black Eagles do or don’t do, demands that they accept the challenge.

Falconi makes it clear that it’s a volunteer mission, but of course the rest of the squad is all for it. Andrea Thuy fights back tears as the men all leave to go fight their secret little battle, and you wish she’d go along, as she was by far the most memorable character in the first volume. But as mentioned Andrews is in the Fieldhouse/Gold Eagle realm, and this is a man’s world; women can’t take part in it. We do though get the occasional page-filler sequence where Andrews cuts back to Andrea and “Jean” as they worry over their men out in the field, as well as Archie’s white trash nurse of a girlfriend.

Another thing to mention about Firestorm At Dong Nam is that there isn’t much action, until past the halfway point. There are no opening firefights or anything; it’s all just plot development, incidental dialog, and previous-volume catchup. The sparks don’t fly until the two squads parachute into the neutral zone in which they’ll wage their war. But even here Andrews fails to give us the OTT blitz we’d want, by throwing a group of Vietnamese refuges into the mix; soon enough, Falconi’s team is saddled with protecting them.

By prior arrangement this zone was supposed to be free of any natives, yet the refugees of course are unaware of such pacts; they’re just trying to escape the battleground that has become of their previous village. The Red Berets make short work of them, blowing away all of the men and going for the women. While scouting the jungle Archie Dobbs and a squad come across the fleeing women, and after a quick firefight with the Soviets they head back to the Black Eagles camp.

Here Falconi remains for the duration, playing mother hen to the natives. He sends out small teams to take on the Red Berets, which leads to several action scenes which are written like military fiction. It’s not that they’re bad, just that they lack emotional content, to quote Bruce Lee. It’s all sort of rendered in summary, relaying the tactics of the various “fire teams” as they shoot at each other in the jungle. And as mentioned while plenty of characters die, even the deaths are quickly rendered, which further undercuts the emotional impact.

The “biggest” team death would probably be Doc Robicheaux, another squad medic, and who apparently joined up a few volumes ago. This death appears to affect the team the most. (Speaking of which, Chen and Park, two characters I seem to recall from the first volume, were killed off a long time ago.) As for the Red Berets, the only character we spend much time with, other than the leader, is a cossack named Ali Khail, whom Archie Dobbs is determined to kill in vengeance.

All of the action is saved for the second half of the novel, and it goes on and on, with periodic cutovers to the three gals back home. It appears Andrews has worked a soap opera aesthetic into his storyline, in particular with Archie and his white trash girlfriend, but so far as this volume goes, nothing much happens on that front. It’s more about Falconi trying to get the refugees to safety while the Red Berets chase after them. And for that matter, the Soviets basically win for the first half of the battle, until Rocky style the Eagles come back and win the day through superior strategy.

Andrews also stays true to the military fiction style with aiming for “realism” for the most part, with no big “action moments” or anything. The Eagles basically just kneel in the foliage and blow away whatever Red Berets they can with their M-16s. Luckily Kraschenko’s send-off is played out a little, with the Red Beret leader being the last survivor of his squad, pleading for his life, and then trying to outfox Falconi, only to suffer for it as expected.

The novel ends with the Eagles flying back into camp and the three gals shedding tears that their men, at least, have survived. Falconi doubtlessly went about refilling the empty slots, but he didn’t have to go all out; the next volume was to be the last. If I see it someday I’ll grab it, but it’s not high on my list. But if you ever see a copy of The Black Eagles for half off the cover price at a used bookstore, you’d really have nothing to lose by picking it up.

The Red Rays (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #41)

The Red Rays, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1969  Award Books

Given that The Golden Serpent was a great entry in the Nick Carter: Killmaster series, I thought The Red Rays would be as well, since it was also written by Manning Lee Stokes. But man this turned out to be a rum entry in the saga of Nick Carter, only notable for being the first volume to be written in first-person.

But if you thought Nick Carter narrating his own adventure would result in a quick-moving tale, boy you’d be wrong. Maybe this is so in the other first-person installments by other series authors, but in the hands of Stokes, The Red Rays comes off as incredibly slow-moving, Carter reduced to a nauseating bore as he drones on and on and on about little of interest.

In fact, it surprises me that this book even saw print, let alone paved the way for the eventual series transition to first-person. According to series creator and “producer” Lyle Kenyon Engel, in a 1981 interview with Will Murray that was published in Paperback Parade #2 (1986), Award Books made the demand that the Killmaster series be in first-person, as that style worked for the successful Matt Helm series.

Engel stated that he never thought first-person was the correct style for Nick Carter: Killmaster, and I agree with him – indeed, he also claimed his dislike of this style was one of the reasons which lead him to leave the series in late 1973, when it went over to Charter Books. Strangely though, Engel also claimed to envision, outline, and in some cases actually write the books in the series that carried his “producer” credit. So then, if Stokes turned in a first-person manuscript, why didn’t Engel change it to third-person before submitting it to Award?

I’ve never been able to find an interview with Stokes, but in his super-informative article “The Saga of Nick Carter: Killmaster,” published in The Armchair Detective volume 15 number 4 (1982), Will Murray states that Stokes (whom he memorably describes as “an industrious and hard-drinking writer”) claimed it was his own decision to write The Red Rays in first-person, as he’d enjoyed using that style in some of the suspense novels he wrote in the 1950s.

But still, given Engel’s control of the Killmaster series – writers apparently had to send him detailed outlines before submitting their manuscripts – I have to wonder how the first-person narrative even got past him in the first place. Maybe he thought it was an interesting, one-time-only experiment? Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, if Engel so hated the idea of this series being in first-person, why did he send The Red Rays to Award in the first place?

And that’s just the narrative style; even beyond that, this book sucks. Like most other Stokes novels I’ve read, The Red Rays has a great, pulpish plot, but falls flat in the execution. The front and back cover have it that the Red Chinese have invented a “bizarre sex ray” and have taken over the airwaves of the western world, broadcasting porn 24/7, with further mentions of Nick Carter finding himself in Hollwyood, aka “La-La land,” before some sort of gas drives everyone crazy…

Yeah, none of that shit’s in the book. Yes, the “Red Chinese” have taken over the airwaves, but despite Carter often mentioning that they’re playing porn, we never get to see any of it – every time Carter actually watches TV, it’s just playing some woman in a devil mask mouthing anti-US propganda. This will usually be followed by travelogues of China. That’s right, friends – travelogues! And there ain’t no “bizarre sex ray” to be found anywhere in the book. As for “La-La Land,” this is where Carter’s eventually sent once the plodding plot has finally kicked in gear.

Before that, though, he’s in Beirut, getting laid. This is by an attractive female agent named Kezia Newmann who works for Shin Bet, but, as Carter well knows, is also an agent for the KGB. And she’s also involved with AXE, Carter’s agency. Carter knows that her time is limited – she’s marked for death by the KGB. Not that Carter plans to do anything about it. In fact, he displays a disquieting, morbid obsession with this girl throughout the novel, wondering often if she’s been killed yet – and wondering if they raped her before killing her!

As if that wasn’t enough, Carter even chuckles to himself that he’s screwing a corpse, as he has sex with Kezia, or at least a soon-to-be corpse, given that she’ll no doubt be dead within a day or two. Yes, friends, this is our hero. He tells himself that there’s little he can do to save the woman, anyway, so to hell with it…and then every few chapters he’ll wonder to himself if she’s been raped and killed yet! (And of course, we find out on the very last page that she has been – Carter’s boss Hawk blithely informing Carter that Kezia’s corpse was recently found.)

When Carter finally gets back to the US, he’s summoned to Hawk’s office in DC, where he’s appraised of the latest global threat. Namely, that the “NeoComms,” a faction of Red Chinese who want to break away from Mao and the “old” Communist guard and side openly with the USSR, have overtaken the airwaves and now every channel in the US and etc broadcasts nothing but NeoComm propaganda – along with, we’re often informed, hardcore porn. Why this porn stuff is even there is unexplained, and I’m betting it’s something Engel came up with in his original idea for the novel, and Stokes just failed when it came to actually fleshing it out into a novel.

Because Stokes fails over and over again in The Red Rays, committing the worst sin a pulp author can make: he delivers a boring story. Focusing more on suspense and intrigue, Stokes works up a sideline where AXE has to work with the CIA, and after lots and lots of exposition and setup Carter goes to Hollywood, where he’s to meet with a female CIA agent who will be posing as Peter Pan at a costume party held at the mansion of Rona Matthews, a former silver screen siren.

Rona it’s explained is aligned with Dion Hermes, an openly gay Hollwyood type who himself is aligned with this llama or something, and the three of them hold big parties in Burbank for older rich people, trading on some secret that will bring back their youth and vitality, all for lots of money, etc, etc. It’s shoehorned into the main plot that Rona is apparently the woman in the devil mask; the CIA has determined this via analysis of the NeoComm broadcasts. Oh, and they’ve figured out that the NeoComms are broadcasting from somewhere in Peru.

And yet, instead of heading for Peru and kicking ass, Carter instead poses as a security guard at Rona’s mansion. Here we get lots and lots of gay-bashing as Carter gets his first glimpse of Dion Hermes; the name alone unleashes Carter’s homophobia, as he can’t believe how gay it is. (As for me, I thought “Dion Hermes” sounded more like the name of a ‘70s pimp.) But then, The Red Rays is clearly from a different era; but then again, Carter’s bashing of Hermes is beyond even what you’d read in the typical pre-PC pulp. At any rate, Carter doesn’t come off like a very broadminded individual.

At Rona’s he meets Pat Kilbride, the young CIA contact, who seems nervous. After showing Carter who’s who, she gives him a chaste kiss and returns to the party, and then Carter gets in a fight with a suspicious guard, kills him, and then runs afoul of Dion Hermes. Then Carter’s dosed by some paralyzing nerve spray, and at great page-length Hermes concocts this lurid scenario where it will look like Carter was in the process of raping Pat Kilbride before they both were killed in a fire(!). Uh, all so as to discredit Carter and AXE, or something.

Anyway Pat actually does die in the fire, but Carter escapes, and now he’s consumed with vengeance. I should mention that none of the above stuff has any tension, as it’s all relayed via flashback, Carter obsessing over it even once he’s gotten to Peru, where he hooks up with a few more CIA dudes and then poses as a Peace Corps worker. Now he has to drive like 500 miles through rough terrain as part of his cover.

But Carter’s found out instantly and taken captive by a pair of Commie guerrillas – Jorge, a hulking drunk, and El Rubio, aka “The Blonde,” a super-hot Spanish native who leads a group of Cuban guerrillas and whose real name is Inez Gaunt. But as usual Stokes can’t keep it simple, and it develops that Rubio and Jorge are at war, and Rubio uses Carter – whom she somehow knows to be an AXE agent – to kill off Jorge.

Believe it or not, Carter does not have sex with Rubio, despite her pleading with him to screw her, given how turned-on she is after watching him kill Jorge. In fact, Carter only has sex with one woman in the entire novel: Kezia Newmann, the doomed triple agent from the beginning of the story. (And the sex scene, by the way, is nothing explicit or outrageous, per the publication date.) Carter instead proceeds to treat Rubio like shit, tying her up and threatening to kill her if she attempts to escape. He even tortures her a little with his stiletto.

The NeoComms are broadcasting from the top of Condor Craig, and Carter announces that he and Rubio are going to blow it up – despite the fact that Rubio, he’s determined, is secretly a NeoComm agent. One who works for Dion Hermes, to boot. So we get lots of tedious mountain-climbing material, where finally, in the last few pages, Stokes unveils the pulpy stuff: the NeoComms are situated in a SPECTRE-type fortress in the caverns beneath an old Incan temple, and their guards walk around toting laser rifles!

But even here Stokes fumbles; rather than slam-bang action, Carter instead takes out one guard, only to find Dion Hermes waiting in ambush with a laser rife. But El Rubio takes the blast that was meant for the Killmaster, and Hermes runs away…and later Carter finds his corpse! I mean, Stokes couldn’t even deliver a payoff for the long-simmer vengeance plot he himself came up with!! Instead a CIA dude is presented as the true villain, an eleventh hour reveal that only further serves to tick off the reader.

As usual, Stokes takes too many divergent plot threads and does little to make sense of them all. I mean, the stuff with Rona Matthews and the llama and the old people they were conning? Forget about it. Hell, Rona Matthews doesn’t even have any dialog in the novel, whereas the first section has you expecting her to be some sort of Tokyo Rose who would bait and taunt Carter. But instead she’s relegated to a nonentity in the narrative, Stokes more concerned with word-painting about the scenery or plumbing the morbid thoughts of our “hero.”

I’ve said before that I like Stokes’s style, and I still do, but sometimes he gets to be a bit too much (sort of like me in these reviews, I guess). But still it would’ve been great if he’d backed off on the “suspense” nonsense and instead just written a straight-up piece of pulp. But then, he could’ve been trying something different, along with the first-person perspective. The actual text would hint otherwise, though; I think it’s more a case of that “hard-drinking” element Will Murray mentioned.

Long story short, The Red Rays is the least entertaining Nick Carter: Killmaster novel I’ve yet read. Here’s hoping Stokes’s other installments are more along the lines of The Golden Serpent.