Revenge At Indy (Don Miles #3)

Revenge At Indy, by Larry Kenyon
June, 1967  Avon Books

The third Don Miles takes place four years after the first volume, and we’re reminded of this often because ultimately the main villain of Revenge At Indy turns out to be a character from that earlier book. This also means that Challenge At Le Mans took place in 1963, as Lew “Larry Kenyon” Louderback makes it clear that this installment occurs in 1967.

At 176 pages of small and dense print, Revenge At Indy is as busily-plotted as the previous two books. This seems to have been a thing with Louderback, as evidenced by his Nick Carter: Killmaster novel Danger Key, which featured enough plots for ten books. This one isn’t as bad but it’s close. That being said, Louderback is a fine writer and delivers some big action setpieces, not to mention a cool pulp touch. 

In fact the opening is pulp heaven; we meet Don as he’s barreling across some land in Indiana in his Panther sportscar, being chased by a black helicopter. At his side is his secretary, Sierra Stover, a hotstuff blonde who was once a racecar driver herself; I think this is the first time we’ve actually seen her in the series. The helicopter shoots at them and Don crashes, and a bunch of submachine gun-toting women in form-fitting black leather catsuits get off the ‘copter. Indeed, “jut-breasted” women with swishing thighs and knee-high boots, plus eye masks. Leading them is a Fu Manchu type in a cape.

Then some dude yells “Cut!” and we see this is all a movie – Don’s doing stunt-driving work for a TV show pilot called Owlman based on “the old pulp series.” A “high camp for adults” sort of thing masterminded by a fellow vet named Tom Jerrold, who is producing. Jerrold, we learn in complex backstory, was a POW in Korea in ’50 with Buck Garrett, Don’s Texas-drawling mechanic and himself a top-secret agent of SPEED, though in more of an advisory capacity than Don’s field duties. And for any who don’t get the Batman spoofery, we’re informed that in the show Don’s Panther will be referred to as the “Owlmobile.”

Playing the female Owlman lead is Chan Pelletier, a super-gorgeous and stacked Eurasian babe who has made her name modeling and is now starring in her first movie, mostly as a favor for her new husband Tom Jerrold. But it’s clear Chan can’t be contained by one man and is having an open affair with the lead actor. All this we learn in opening setup with the various characters congregating on the shooting location, among them the mysterious Hong, a professional magician who is playing the Fu Manchu-esque villain in the pilot.

Soon enough yet another new character is introduced: Kay Yen, one of the “black leather gang-girls,” all of whom are Asian women who are part of Hong’s magic show. Part of the belabored setup is that Owlman is being filmed here in Indianapolis because Hong’s a locally-famous magician and refused to go to Hollywood. But this is also tied in with the upcoming Indy 500, which of course Don is about to take part in.

Kay asks Don for a ride back to his hotel and he gives her one, and given the genre and Don’s studly manliness and all it’s clear they’re about to have some sex. Kay is worried and claims she’s in trouble, and further has come to Don for help, but she refuses to divulge any details until after she and Don have screwed. But when Don comes out of the shower and is ready for some lovin’, he finds a nude Chan waiting for him in his hotel bed and Kay is gone without a trace.

Don isn’t one to stand on ceremony, though, and gives Chan some brutal loving. There are only two sex scenes in this volume, but they each get more risque than the previous books. The Don-Chan conjugation goes on for a few pages and doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. Also Chan wears an expensive French perfume which stirs memories of Ulla, the hotbod evil spy from the first volume; there are frequent flashbacks to Ulla and that first volume throughout, so you certainly want to read Challenge At Le Mans before this one.

On his way out of the hotel Don sees a crowd of onlookers and sure enough there’s Kay’s corpse on the pavement; she’s clearly been tossed off the roof way above – and Don’s suite is on the top floor. This sets up an annoying, go-nowhere subplot where a local redneck cop sets his sights on Don and is determined to bring him down on murder charges, mostly out of jealousy because the cop himself is a never-was on the racing circuit. This entire subplot could’ve been taken out and the book would’ve benefitted from the loss.

Don soon learns that Kay was really an American Indian of the Namakan tribe who was briefly famous several years ago for leading an all-female “squaw squadron” in rebellion over fishing rights in Namakan territory, in Minnesota. Yet now here she was posing as an Asian actress in a magic act in Indianapolis. The Indian stuff ties in with Buck’s time as a POW, as one of his fellow soldiers was a Namakan Indian named Wayne Deerfleet who turned traitor and began working with the Reds, before coming home to the US.

Louderback piles the “Indian stuff” on pretty thick: when one of his crew gets sick, Buck basically hires some guy off the street named Gump Pine Tree who himself is a Namakan Indian, but Buck doesn’t see anything coincidental about that. Later in the book Don goes to the local university and checks out a thousand-page tome on the tribe, treating us to lots of page-filling “excerpts” from the book. But when Don sees it’s been written by a teacher at the college, he heads onto campus to grill the guy.

Only, in one of the more arbitrary “I need to write another sex scene” incidents I’ve ever encountered, the professor who wrote the book turns out to be a hotstuff blonde babe…who is more than ready to hop in bed with Don. It’s not as long as the material with Chan, and Louderback tries to incorporate more exposition about the tribe here. Ultimately all this stuff will play out, with the Namakan Indians being part of the latest plot against the United States, a plot which has something to do with Buck and Tom Jerrold’s POW time in Korea seventeen years before.

Louderback’s scheme gradually becomes clear, and he carries it off well – the opening fake-out Owlman stuff turns out to be the ultimate course of events. For it becomes more and more apparent that Hong really is evil, and he also retains a squad of Asian women…indeed, the very same women who portray the “black leather gang-girls” in Owlman! Halfway through the book I figured that’s the way it was going, and hoped I was right. Sure enough the final quarter of the novel sees Don in full-scale combat with Hong and his black leather-garbed female commandos – and Louderback is one of the few men’s adventure writers to actually have his hero killing female opponents.

The book as usual is a little overstuffed; part of the elaborate, overly-complex plot has it that there’s a guy in Hong’s circus called Mr. Memory, who can spout all kinds of trivia and answer high math questions in seconds. But otherwise he has the mental capacity of a child; Don eventually learns that Mr. Memory was in prison and was part of a test group that was taken to a top-secret experimental weapons factory in Texas called the Jefferson Proving Grounds. Don flies down there and goes on a tour of the facility, complete with a lecture on its setup, and again it’s material that should’ve been cut.

In fact the problem is the plot becomes hard to buy, which is sometimes the kiss of death in this genre. Like for example Chan chases after Don’s Panther on the freeway and another car shoots at her and Don comes to the rescue. She claims her husband, Tom Jerrold, is trying to kill her. Further she claims to be a secret agent, and says that Kay Yen was also an agent, and these people who were trying to kill Chan also know that Don himself is an agent. But she offers no more details. So Don hides her from Tom in his trailer at the speedway.

And through all this…Tom Jerrold continues to film the TV pilot, with Sierra Stover doubling for the missing Chan. And Tom keeps confronting Don over “stealing” his wife/lead actress…and it becomes more and more evident that Hong isn’t just a villain on-screen but off as well. Yet the wheels just slowly grind for a good poriton of the narrative as Don slowly puts things together, even though they should be apparent to him from the get-go.

But things perk up in the final quarter. There’s a fun action scene where a carnival barker shoots at Don while keeping up his spiel for the audience over the P.A. system. Also here we first see Hong’s female soldiers in action, complete with Don hitting one of them right in a delicate part of her anatomy. After this, again as if in complete disregard of plot logic, Louderback has Don getting in a helicopter with Tom Jerrold as he films the make-believe takeover of a small town.

And sure enough…fantasy is reality, and those gang girls in black catsuits and eye masks are toting real submachine guns, and the residents of little Indian Springs, Indiana are being taken hostage for real. Tom here reveals himself to be part of the plot (duh) and Don’s taken captive; he’s put on various manual labor duties with the other captured townspeople. The belabored plot is this: Jerrold and Hong plot to simulate a nuclear explosion, which will not only trigger a US-USSR war but will also entail the removal via train of various top secret weapons from the Jefferson Proving Grounds. This they happen to know thanks to the photographic memory of former prisoner and Jefferson test subject Mr. Memory.

Honestly you wonder why Louderback even put so much effort into this stuff – the series is about a racecar driver who doubles as a secret agent. The plot almost writes itself but Louderback insists on turning out intricate storylines that are a lot more complex than they need to be. Oh and by the way Don’s racecar driving is more of a nuissance than anything this time around; there’s actually more of it, with pages-long sequences every few chapters of him racing various heats. But it has no bearing other than to fill the “racing quota” Louderback doubtless was given by series producer Lyle Kenyon Engel. In fact the novel ends with Don about to start the Indy 500, so we don’t even see him actually race in it.

But the finale’s pretty cool, and makes all the busy plot-building mostly worth it. Don frees himself, arms some of the townspeople of Indian Springs, and kicks “black leather gang-girl” ass, then gets back his Panther and books it at a steady 150 mph for several hours, racing for Minnesota. Apparently not a single cop is on duty during this cross-country race, but whatever. Here everything gets even more pulpy, with Namakan Indians in full war paint taking Don captive upon his arrival in their territory.

Louderback does an admirable job of tying the disparate strings together. So the gang girls aren’t Asian after all…they’re really Namakan women, and Hong himself is a disguised imposter. The entire thing is really an American Indian plot, in conjunction with the Red Chinese. Pretty bonkers stuff, and it gets even more surreal…spoiler warning here friends so skip to the next paragraph if you don’t wanna know. But Chan herself is an imposter…she’s really Ulla, the evil spy babe from the first volume, after some cosmetic surgery to make her look Asian! She became part of this plot and, against orders, involved Don in it so she could exact her revenge (and get a little more sack-time with him, I guess). Anyway Ulla is sucked into some quicksand at novel’s end and seems gone for good now, but Don wonders.

Louderback always keeps the action moving, save for the aforementioned plot and exposition heavy stuff. He’s one of those men’s adventure authors who knew how to deliver the goods but at the same time seemed to doubt himself; you don’t need this much setup for a series about a racecar-driving secret agent. I guess readers in 1967 must’ve felt the same, as there was only one more volume to follow.  

Hickey & Boggs

Hickey & Boggs, by Phillip Rock
No month stated, 1972  Popular Library

Hickey & Boggs is a cool crime movie from the ‘70s – the decade when all the best crime movies were made, in my opinion – but it’s been semi-forgotten in the ensuing decades. And now what with Bill Cosby’s name being ruined and all, it will probably stay forgotten for many more years to come. This is unfortunate, because Cosby and co-star Robert Culp (who also directed) are great as hard-bitten, cynical, weary private eyes in this Walter Hill-scripted caper.

But as good as the film is…well, if it had been more like this novelization by Phillip Rock, it would’ve been great, and perhaps might’ve done better upon release, and be better remembered today. I can only assume Rock was more faithful to Hill’s script than Culp was. Because Rock gives us Lethal Weapon about a decade early – black-white partners bicker and banter their way through a case that turns out to be a lot bigger than they expected.

I can tell you another thing: Warren Murphy without question read this book. His Razoni & Jackson series, which began the following year, is so close as to be plagiaristic. The only thing changed is the locale (New York instead of Los Angeles) and the profession (cops instead of private eyes). Otherwise Murphy’s series is identical to Rock’s novel, even including the same sort of recurring jokes; for example, early on we learn that Boggs (Culp’s character) is trying to sell his house, which is small and located directly underneath a highway. Hickey (Cosby’s character) pokes fun at him about this through the entire book. It’s all exactly like something you’d get in Razoni & Jackson…but the thing is, none of it’s actually in the film! Hickey and Boggs’s dialog mostly just sticks to plot advancement in the movie, with none of the colorful commentary we get in this novel. Indeed the film protagonists are basically terse ciphers when compared to their much-more-memorable novel incarnations.

I rewatched Hickey & Boggs after reading the book and had to wonder why so many changes were made. If it was the director’s doing, then Culp did himself a disservice, because Boggs has all kinds of extra dimensions in the novel when compared to the film. But then, all the characters have more dimensions, even the trio of hoods who shadow our heroes and periodically try to kill them. These three are given their own share of the narrative with their own recurring bickerings and banterings in what comes off like a proto-Tarantino sort of thing. In the film these characters barely even talk. 

Just to close out on the Warren Murphy angle, I realize of course he was already a prolific writer and was doing similar sort of bickering protagonists stuff in The Destroyer. But the thing is, in an interview with Justin Marriott years ago Murphy specifically stated that he was thinking of Culp and Cosby when he created Razoni & Jackson, though he was referring to their work together on I Spy. I’d say in reality it was this particular film, and probably this very novelization, which was the true inspiration behind his series.

Anyway, Rock’s novel is great and if it weren’t “just” a movie tie-in it would likely be remembered as one of the better crime novels of the ‘70s. It is in many ways the opposite of Leonore Fleischer’s Prime Cut novelization; whereas that one stuck close to the film, only elaborating here or there, Rock’s novelization comes off like an original work and features all kinds of material that didn’t make it to the film.

This is evidenced posthaste in a Prologue that comes off like a self-contained short story; here we actually witness the heist of the $400,000 that will serve as the Maguffin of the plot. The movie merely opens with a woman getting off a train and then riding in a taxi. The book is so much better; a team of heisters in rubber animal masks hit an armored truck in Pittsburgh, and it gets bloody quick. Rock doles out some admirable gore, like one dude’s arm literally getting blown off by a .357 Magnum slug. This was probably my favorite part of the entire novel, just a fast-moving and bloody crime story…again with the kicker that none of it’s actually in the movie!

All but one of the heisters are killed on the scene, and the one who manages to escape is himself dying from wounds he’s sustained. When next we see him he’s already dead and his girlfriend has the stolen money; she puts it all in a case and leaves his corpse behind. The woman is named Mary Jane Bower (actually this is a fake name, we gradually learn), and she acts like a phantom through the rest of the novel – everyone, including the syndicate, is after her, but she proves almost impossible to track down. She is a completely different character here than in the film, which features a lame-in-comparison opening of Mary Jane arriving in Los Angeles via train and burying a suitcase of money for her husband to find. The film also has a similarly lame subplot about Mary Jane having a daughter. In the novel Mary Jane stays behind the scenes, only appearing at the very end.

This is where we meet our protagonists and Rock introduces them to us with little fanfare; like the movie poster says, Albert Hickey and Franklin Boggs aren’t “cool slick heroes;” “they’re worn, tough men.” They’re also down to their last dollars, living in veritable poverty in L.A. and co-running a P.I. agency that’s doing so poorly they had to let go their secretary. They can barely even pay for the answering service. One gets the impression these men haven’t bathed in a long time; Rock drops the gross tidbit that Boggs only has one suit, which he’s worn so much that the collar has turned yellow at the edges. None of this is reflected in the film, where Hickey and Boggs come off as much more presentable and less destitute.

This is another crime novel that takes place in the midst of a grueling, hellish summer; Rock excels at conveying the brutal heat of Los Angeles. And for that matter the guy clearly was familiar with the city; he drops street directions and names of various places with the casual familiarity of someone who has actually lived there. But as for our main characters, we don’t get much background for them, other than that Hickey was a decorated cop back in the late ‘50s and Boggs was a top soldier in Korea.

Now though they’re at the bottom of their respective barrels; there’s no backstory on why or when they became partners, nor even much detail on how Hickey fell from grace in the police force. And any expectations that Boggs’s military service will result in an action-ready protagonist, a la Riggs in Lethal Weapon, are soon dashed in the few action scenes; Boggs’s advice is to run from anyone with a gun, and in another of those recurring jokes we see that Boggs never actually hits anyone he shoots at, even though he carries a .357 Magnum!

The details behind the heist are never made clear. But long story short, the money belongs to a syndicate bigwig based out of Los Angeles named H. Hammond Brill; he has his own share of the narrative, trading memorable dialog with a flunky named Floyd Ballard. Brill tasks Ballard with finding the money and Mary Jane. To this end Ballard calls in the three-man team he apparently uses for all such jobs: a “wheel jockey” named Monte, a Browning Automatic Rifle-toting killer named Nick, and finally Fatboy, a gargantuan nitwit who serves as the muscle.

Hickey and Boggs come into it thanks to a guy named Carlton Rice, who leaves a message with their answering service and meets with Hickey along the beach the next day. Rice is clearly gay and there’s a fair bit of gay-bashing in the text for those readers who are sensitive to such things. He hires Hickey and Boggs to find Mary Jane, just saying she’s an old girlfriend – something Hickey immediately doubts. Rice gives Hickey a paper with various names written on it, people he claims knew Mary Jane.

So this is the simple plot of Hickey & Boggs; our heroes drive around Los Angeles (either in Hickey’s Nova or Boggs’s half-dead ’59 Edsel) and track down various leads, all while bickering and bantering like an old married couple. And speaking of which Hickey’s subplot has him trying to get back with his ex-wife, Nyona, with whom he has a five-year-old daughter, and Boggs is desperate for the love of a stripper who has left him so many times it’s become a joke. Boggs is also a drunk, and Hickey is a straight arrow.

While the plot is simple it’s all done so colorfully that I figure I’ll read the novel again someday; that’s how much I enjoyed it. As with Murphy’s novels the highlight is the bantering, like when a hungover Boggs grudgingly takes a ride on the L.A. freeway with Hickey, who turns out to be a wildman behind a wheel – when Boggs informs Hickey that their exit is here and Hickey’s not even in the right lane, Hickey’s casual response is, “I will be in a second,” and then immediately cuts over three lanes of traffic.

The violence comes from the three heavies who themselves are trying to find Mary Jane; in one gruesome moment Fatboy literally crushes a guy’s skull with his bare hands. Hickey and Boggs run into the trio three times; first at the home of one of the names on Cartlon Rice’s list, where Boggs slams a window on Fatboy’s hand and then blows up their GTO, and later in two big action setpieces, the first at the L.A. Coliseum and the second at Dodger Stadium.

Both of these sequences are cool because they come off as big setpieces even though they’re relatively smallscale. In the first Nick guns down a “bagman” with his BAR while Hickey and Boggs seek cover and deliver ineffectual return fire. The final big action piece in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium is even better, with Nick strapped into the back of a station wagon (a replacement for the destroyed GTO) and blasting away with the Browning. This time Hickey actually hits someone with his .38.

These setpieces seem so big because Hickey and Boggs are such menial protagonists, at least when compared to the genre average. When the bullets start flying they’re more about diving for cover and screaming for each other in all-caps. I mean it’s not like we’re talking about a pair of Mike Hammers. Boggs for that matter can barely even run, due to a hernia, and doubles over in pain anytime he chases someone. Part of the concept is that Hickey and Boggs are downtrodden, loser P.I.s up against a syndicate so big it has its own private army, but despite it all they keep hammering away at the case, and Rock conveys it all so wonderfully that the reader is fully swept up in it.

The action also brings in the mandatory “stupid chief,” an LAPD captain who is determined to revoke Hickey and Boggs’s licenses. But our heroes aren’t entirely losers and are able to figure out things the cops can’t. Like when Boggs visits a crime scene after Hickey’s aborted attempt at finding anything there; Boggs is able to bullshit his way past the patrolman guarding the closed-off area, makes nice with the landlady who barely even let Hickey inside the apartment (a nice, subtle bit of racial commentary here), and proceeds to find a few hundred thousand dollars hidden inside an otherwise empty package of frozen peas. Something the cops completely missed in their search.

The action has more dire consequences: in another mandatory development for ‘70s pulp, those closest to the hero must suffer. Thus Hickey comes home after the Dodger Stadium fracas to find Nyona’s nude corpse waiting for him, and Boggs finds his home trashed. It’s never outright stated in the text who the perpetrators were, particularly Nyona’s murderer, but we know H. Hammond Brill was behind it. However there’s no comeuppance for the main villain; our heroes are much too small to handle the big fish.

Instead the finale proceeds on that smallscale but hard-hitting vibe; having determined that Mary Jane Bower is actually Mary Quemando, wife of one of Brill’s thugs, the heroes stake out the rural area where Mary Jane intends to finally unload the cash, using her just-released-from-prison husband as bait. But this too quickly goes to hell, with Monte now in a helicopter and Floyd Ballard manning a machine gun – and once again it’s Hickey who manages to take anyone out, despite Boggs trying to shoot at the ‘copter’s engine with his Magnum (and missing).

While much is changed, at least the ending stands the same, with Hickey gesturing for Bogg’s .357 so he can dispense justice – namely, blowing away Fatboy, who happens to be charging toward them while brandishing a helicopter blade! The film at least makes it more clear that Fatboy was behind Nyona’s murder, thus Hickey was exacting his vengeance; the novel isn’t as obvious in this regard. At any rate, the end leaves ample opportunity for more adventures for the duo, but it’s my understanding Hickey & Boggs didn’t much resonate with viewers of the day, most of whom probably yearned for the less-grim vibe of I Spy.

Phillip Rock published other novels, most of them originals, but the only other book of his I currently have is another novelization, for the first Dirty Harry movie. I definitely look forward to reading it.

Bodyguard #2: The Blonde Target

Bodyguard #2: The Blonde Target, by Richard Reinsmith
No month stated, 1980  Tower Books

The Bodyguard series started off at lowly Tower Books for two volumes before moving over to sister imprint Leisure, and Richard Reinsmith, a real person and not a house name, handled the entire series. This second volume is the first one I’ve read and the writing is better than I expected it would be, but be aware there’s some lurid material that might not sit well with sensitive readers of today – or probably did with readers in 1980.

The titular Bodyguard is Ray Martin, who, other than his gray hair, isn’t much described. This is because Ray narrates the books. I’m really not into first-person narration in men’s adventure novels, I think it always comes off more like hardboiled detective fiction than action fiction, and such is the case with The Blonde Target. But this seems to be Reinsmith’s intent, as the novel is more influenced by Spillane than Pendleton.

A unique thing about Bodyguard is that, at least judging from this installment, the action comes to the hero. Usually it’s the other way around – the men’s adventure hero tracks down some quarry and eliminates him. But Ray Martin is a bodyguard, operating out of the Maryland area, and the quarry comes to him…it seems he just locks down his latest client in one of his two safehouses and waits for the bad guys to take a shot at them.

Another unique thing is that Ray Martin is constantly – practically incessantly – referring to past cases. A good quarter of the narrative is comprised of references or even straight-up flashbacks concerning previous bodyguard jobs. This does lead to humorous revelations, like that Ray doesn’t actually pay anyone. His assistant Pop is a retired private eye who does the work for fun, and Ray’s secretary (unseen this volume) performs her duties in exchange for living in one of the houses for free. We also learn of Ray’s other cost-cutting measures.

The “blonde target” of the title is April Harris, an up-and-coming Farrah Fawcett-type actress on the cusp of fame who has been targeted by some unknown killer. In bizarre backstory we learn that April made her break thanks to a photo of her signing a bum’s autograph in an airport. Now whenever she goes to an airport she’s surrounded by bums looking for autographs, all of it a strange PR gimmick thanks to her agent, Tony. But most recently the bum April was autographing a photo for got his head blown off by a sniper, and Tony has insisted she get a bodyguard.

This is how Ray has come onto the case, and when the novel opens April has just moved into his safehouse deep in the Maryland woods; probably around where I grew up, now that I think of it. Reinsmith takes care of the expected sex scene posthaste – the first-page preview even spotlights this scene – with the two trading some dialog after Ray wakes April up in bed to get more info on the stange case.

Here Reinsmith displays his talent with dialog and character, at least when compared to the genre norm; Ray won’t be bought by anyone, and ends up literally burning five hundred bucks of April’s money – she wants some orange juice, he tells her where to get it (he’s her bodyguard, not her assistant, he says), and when she gives him $100 to go get the juice, he puts the bill in an ashtray and burns it. They go through this four more times.

The cash-burning does get April nice and randy, though, leading to the aforementioned boink. It happens completely off-page; Reinsmith isn’t even one to exploit the ample virtues of his female characters (though he has no qualms with having them raped, as detailed later). He is though pretty good with the dialog, with humorous exchanges between April and Ray. Reinsmith isn’t as good with the lame “mystery” behind the plot, as it’s clear from the get-go who is trying to kill April, given that only one person knows where she is.

There are a lot of red herrings, like Ray making a few calls to have a lecherous old movie producer checked out, or even dumber Ray checking to see if the killed airport bum was the true target of the sniper hit and not April. This even after Ray himself is attacked at an airport; agent Tony is having a screenwriter flown in to hand over his script (as explained in ridiculous backstory), and while on an escalator April is attacked by a dude with a switchblade. Ray ends up pushing him off and the dude falls down and breaks his neck.

Ray’s arm is slashed up and he recuperates in a very hardboiled manner; mixing up endless pitchers of some vodka cocktail. Meanwhile April successfully sex-blackmails him (man I wish I could get blackmailed that way) into letting her friend Jackie come stay with her. Jackie turns out to be a cute brunette but again Reinsmith doesn’t do much in the way of describing her. She expectedly comes on strong to Ray when Pop and April leave for the other safehouse, Ray staying behind to see if any strangers come by to scope out this house, thinking everyone’s left.

Again it’s mostly done via dialog, with Ray and Jackie monitoring a strange car from the cramped, sweltering attic space, and the conversation somehow turns to blowjobs. Here Jackie reveals she’s “one of those girls” who just love oral stuff, and gets to work posthaste. Later they end up in bed for another off-page go around. But Ray isn’t too smart because he just casually leaves the house, and he and Jackie are instantly knocked out and taken away by the occupants of that strange car.

Here comes the stuff that will be off-putting for sensitive readers. Ray wakes up to find himself on a ship, bound to a chair, and across from him is a half-nude Jackie strapped to her own chair. She’s been raped repeatedly and while Ray lays there the four captors come in and have their way with her again and again. This is the only novel I know of where a female character keeps up a humorous running commentary while being raped; the “punchline” is that Jackie claims she has an orgasm with each rape. Later though she’ll reveal this was all an act for Ray’s part, so he’d think she was strong, and she suffers a sort of nervous breakdown, but still – the rape stuff goes on for a long time, with even Ray tossing in his own jokey dialog.

Here Ray realizes that the captors show absolutely no interest in where April Harris is; not once have they even asked him about her. Instead they just tell Ray they’re going to kill him, but claim they’ll let Jackie go, but this seems to be a clear lie. Their escape from this situation is hard to buy, but Jackie talks one of the rapists into untying her so they can use the bunk bed, and further asks for her purse so she can put on lipstick. Of course it turns out she has a little pistol hidden in there. Something neither Ray nor we readers were aware of.

Reinsmith isn’t one for exploitation of the violence, either. Jackie shoots two and Ray shoots two, but there’s no gore to speak of. The vibe is very much of a hardboiled tale from decades before, other than the sometimes-raunchy dialog and the rape stuff. Even the beatings Ray endures comes off like a hardboiled yarn; at one point he’s even run over by a car, but literally walks it off. Ray’s customary weaponry is a .38 and a Schmeisser submachine gun he carries around in a case. He doesn’t use the latter until the finale, which sees him taking out a group of would-be assassins in similarly-bloodless fashion.

Despite the title being The Blonde Target, Jackie is actually the lead female character of the book; April disappears for the majority of it, in the safe house with Pop. The biggest setpiece is actually Ray and Jackie’s imprisonment on the ship and Jackie’s rape. After freeing themselves Ray and Jackie get a motel room and here Reinsmith further brings the poor young girl to life, with her backstory, how she inadvertently became the owner of a charter boat, and etc, and all of this Ray’s gambit to keep her talking so she doesn’t have a complete breakdown, the reality of what happened to her finally coming home.

Also Jackie is adamant that April not find out she was raped, so Ray has to lie to April and Pop about their abduction. All that taken care of, he goes back to chasing a few red herrings, one of them an old boyfriend of April’s who turns up dead so clearly isn’t behind anything. At this point it should be more clear than ever who is behind the assassination attempts. And sure enough the finale features this character showing up to take April home, only for Ray to confront him on what’s really been happening. This leads to that assault on Ray’s house by a squad of armed men, but Ray takes them out in pretty quick fashion.

And that’s it for The Blonde Target. Overall what I liked was the snappy dialog, and I also liked Ray’s close knit group of recurring characters. But the mystery itself was subpar, as was the action. I’ve only got two more volumes, from later in the series, and I doubt I’ll hunt down any more.

Prime Cut

Prime Cut, by Mike Roote
No month stated, 1973  Award Books

A big thanks to my man Marty McKee who sent me a DVDR of Prime Cut six or so years ago; I’d only just discovered the movie, it shames me to admit, and Marty hooked me up with a copy. And man, what a movie it is – I’d rate it at the very top of the list of ‘70s crime films (either it or Charley Varrick, another unjustly obscure one).

I saw that there was a novelization of the film, but didn’t pick it up, because it was by Mike Roote, pseudonym of veteran film novelist Leonore Fleischer. She also wrote the Enter The Dragon novelization, and from my years of Bruce Lee obsession (I even got married on the 29th anniversary of his death! Okay so it was a coincidence, but still!) I knew that Fleischer’s novel treatment wasn’t held in high regard. But I finally got it and I’m glad I did, because it appears that the Prime Cut novelization has recently gotten a bit too pricey on the used books market.

And I’m also glad to see I was wrong to dismiss Fleischer’s work without ever having read it myself, because simply put her Prime Cut novel is great. It captures the vibe of the grim, exploitative film perfectly while adding a few touches. In my reading experience I’ve found two kinds of film novelists: those who turn in what comes off like original novels and those who turn in near-transcriptions of the film, with only a few additions. Fleischer I would say is the latter type of novelist, with the caveat that her writing is strong, she adds a depth to the characters that film won’t allow, and her additions to the tale are not obtrusive. 

Years ago I checked out a book about Film tie-ins from Interlibrary Loan, the name of which escapes me, but I recall there was an interview with Fleischer in it. She stated that, like most film novelists, she either worked from an early draft of the script or a rough cut of the film, the latter usually in the presence of film critics who, Fleischer suspected, were laughing at her behind her back. She also shared the humorous story of how she once went to a screening of a Woody Allen film, one that featured a line poking fun at film novelizations, and she knew the critics around her were silently laughing at her.

In this case I’m betting Fleischer saw a cut of the film that was close to final, as there isn’t much different here than what you’d see in the actual movie. I guess this would’ve been a blessing in those pre-VHS, pre-cable days; if you wanted to remember a movie, you had to read the book. So in that regard her novelization is a success. But in this era of Blu Rays and DVD and etc, the modern reader hopes for a bit “more” in an old film novelization, the hint of missing and now lost scenes, or perhaps even an entirely different plotline, as was the case with the Rambo III novelization.

But that’s not the case here; the only “new stuff” I noticed was the occasional dip into the past of main character Nick Devlin, portrayed in the film by the ultimate tough guy Lee Marvin. Fleischer also develops – without outright describing – a longstanding grudge between Devlin and Mary Ann, sadistic Midwestern mobster memorably portrayed in the film by Gene Hackman. There’s also a part, which I wonder was filmed, where during the drive from Chicago to Kansas City Devlin’s limo passes a cattle car, and inside it Devlin thinks he sees a bunch of caged women instead of cows. He’ll later discover his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

I’m getting ahead of myself; anyone who has seen Prime Cut will know it’s one of the more exploitative movies to ever be released by a major studio. The plot’s about a hitman for the Irish mob being sent to Kansas to exterminate a dude who auctions sex slaves and who turns his enemies into sausage! To me, Prime Cut is the closest anyone’s ever come to capturing the lurid vibe of a Sharpshooter or Marksman novel. You could easily see “Nick Devlin” as being a stand-in for Johnny Rock, wiping out a particularly nasty Midwestern branch of the Mafia. He even uses pretty much the same weapons: a pair of Beretta 9mms and an M76 submachine gun he carries around in an attache case, similar to the weapons case Philip Magellan always lugs around.

The opening follows the film, even the entire credits sequence, which sees Mary Ann’s meat processing plant in action. Here Mary Ann’s muscle-bound moron of a brother, Weenie, temporarily handles the conveyor belt that propels freshly-killed cattle into the various rippers and choppers – just as a pair of human feet come into view, stashed in there with the cows. We follow the process until this unfortunate victim is turned, literally, into sausage links, and then mailed to Chicago.

Devlin’s intro is one of those parts where Fleischer is free to wax creative; it’s a bit more elaborate here, with an Irish mob boss pulling up to a bar in Chicago, going inside with his latest hotstuff babe, and scoping out a too-cool-for-words Devlin, who sits at the bar with his ever-present chaffeur-bodyguard, Shay. And also here Devlin is a bit more resistant when offered the job, however his interest is captured when he’s told he’ll finally get the chance to punch Mary Ann’s ticket. There’s also a bit more setup here – again without an actual explanation – of a woman named Clarabelle, who apparently was once Devlin’s but is now married to Mary Ann.

Again it’s clear Fleischer saw the film and transcribed it dutifully; even the long limo drive to Kansas City is featured, but here Fleischer takes the opportunity to dip in and out of Devlin’s thoughts. In the film he’s presented as a cipher, Lee Marvin’s badassery more than enough to bring the character to life. Fleischer captures that tough vibe in the novel, but augments it with Devlin’s occasional thoughts of his hardscrabble past and how he fought his way up in the Chicago mob. She also brings a little more to life Shay and the three young Chicago enforcers Devlin’s brought along.

More importantly, she greatly brings to life the grungy, white trash brothers Mary Ann and Weenie. She also implies there’s a bit “more” to their relationship, mostly conveyed via an impromptu wrestling match that is a bit more rough than necessary and features Mary Ann telling Weenie how much he loves him. Also Mary Ann as described is a bit brawnier than Gene Hackman, but I believe Fleischer has done this to convey a more threatening nature to the situation. I mean, Lee Marvin versus Gene Hackman?

Mary Ann’s slavery operation is also slightly more developed, with the additional sicko tidbit that he “owns” a bunch of little boys. The majority of the film and novel takes place during a county fair, and in the film we see a group of boys getting first place for their steer. In the novel we learn that these boys “belong” to Mary Ann, and presumably are part of the human beings he has “raised special,” same as the women he sells off for sex. This latter part is where all the exploitation comes in, with Sissy Spacek getting the main female role as Poppy, one of Mary Ann’s sex slaves.

Mary Ann’s intro follows the film, same as everything else, with a bit more elaboration. Devlin barges in on Mary Ann’s massive farm just as one of those sex-slave auctions is underway, “healthy Midwestern types” walking around and casually inspecting nude young women as they lay in an opium stupor in hay-covevered pens. This is also where Poppy is introduced, and Devlin takes her on “account” for the half-a-million Mary Ann owes Chicago. But also he takes her because he sees a spark in the doped girl’s eyes and feels something for her – this is an element Fleischer captures much better than in the film, where the relationship is harder to buy.

Fleischer here does add something new; in the film, Devlin wraps Poppy in a blanket and carries her into his hotel, telling the clerk to send up clothes for her. Fleischer gets a bit more outrageous, and I wonder if this was in the rough cut she watched, but I doubt it. Here, Devlin carries Poppy’s still-comatose form into the hotel clothing store, tells the lady behind the counter he wants clothes for her, and when asked for Poppy’s size Devlin merely takes off the blanket, displays Poppy’s nude body, and tells the lady to guess her size!

Given that Fleischer also dips into Poppy’s thoughts, the budding romance between the two characters is easier to buy than in the film. Here we learn that Poppy is young, like just out of her teen years, and grew up in an orphanage with other girls – an orphanage owned by Mary Ann which is run expressly for his slavery operation. Devlin is the first “real man” she’s ever seen, and he’s saved her to boot, so she’s instantly in love with him. Devlin for his part sees a totally innocent human being in Poppy, and this attracts him more than he could’ve expected. Plus she’s hot and all.

An interesting thing about Prime Cut, the film, is that it’s not overly sleazy, despite the subject matter. While Sissy Spacek gets fully nude, the camera does not dwell on her nor the other naked girls who are up for auction. And the violence is not overly bloody, despite the fact that characters are sometimes literally turned into hamburger. This I think adds an extra impact to the film, as it’s so professionally staged and shot – it’s like any other big budget crime film from a major studio, only with an horrific extra nature. Whether by accident or design, Fleischer’s writing follows suit: she does not exploit the nude bodies of the women, and Devlin-Poppy’s expected sex scene takes place off page. As for the violence, this is very much a “get shot and fall down” sort of novel; Fleischer doesn’t indulge in any gore.

As with the film Fleischer saves all the action for the final third. It begins with a visit to the fair, where Mary Ann has promised to give Devlin the money he seeks. Instead Mary Ann sends in a bunch of shotgun-toting blonde farmboys (more of Mary Ann’s oprhanage kids?) who try to blow away Devlin and comrades during a turkey shoot. This features the memorable “movie moment” of Devlin and Poppy being chased by a massive thresher, which ends up eating Devlin’s limo instead. 

The finale is even better, with an M76-toting Devlin and his surving comrades staging an assault on Mary Ann’s farm. However this scene is not as action-packed as in the film, and Devlin’s confrontation with Mary Ann and Weenie is a bit anticlimactic when compared to the movie. That being said, the end I think is handled a little better than in the film, where it’s made clear that Devlin and Poppy have freed the kids and young women in Mary Ann’s orphanage. We also get the implication that Poppy in her own way is as tough as Devlin.

I really enjoyed this novel. It’s well written, much better written than you might expect. Fleischer especially excels at capturing the bitter vibe of Devlin’s thoughts and impressions. While it’s pretty much exactly what you see in the film, and of course could never serve as a replacement for the film, it’s still an entertaining read, and adds a slight extra dimension to the story.

Room At The Bottom (Jeff Tyler #2)

Room At The Bottom, by J.L. Potter
No month stated, 1962  Chicago Paperback House

In a parallel to Ennis Willie’s Sand, Jeff Tyler was a hardboiled pulp series that was published by a sleaze imprint that grossly overhyped the exploitative elements. Unlike Sand, this series, which I think ran for three volumes, hasn’t gotten its due; I could hardly find anything about it online. I don’t even remember how I came across this volume.

Jeff Tyler, who narrates the books, is a WWII vet (a frogman in the Pacific action) who now operates the Loafalong, a reconditioned sea-air craft that’s over 80 feet long. He makes his living as a salvage consultant and his home base is New Orleans. Writing wise the series comes off like Mike Hammer guest-starring in a Travis McGee novel. Mickey Spillane is a bigger influence on the series than John D. MacDonald (not to mention that the McGee books hadn’t even started yet), with Tyler a hard-hitting, two-fisted ladies man who answers to no one but himself.

First a note of confusion. I can only find three books in the series. This one, which is numbered “A103” by the publisher; Or Murder For Free, which is numbered “A104,” and Kill Sweet Charity Kill, which is numbered “A109.” All three are from 1962. The numbering would imply that this one, Room At The Bottom, is first in the series. However, the back cover says it’s “the latest saga” about Tyler, and further, the back cover copy of Or Murder For Free seems to introduce Tyler. Thus I’ve concluded that Or Murder For Free must be first in the continuity, followed by this one, with Kill Sweet Charity Kill being the last volume; I can’t find any others listed, but it looks like Potter did a non-Tyler novel for Chicago as well, Jambalaya Loverman, published in 1961.

Anyway, this is a very hardboiled novel, as evidenced in the very beginning. Tyler when we meet him is in a deep diving suit, salvaging an old wreck outside New Orleans. Later we’ll learn the boat sank “15 years ago,” specifically 1942, when it was on a New Orleans-Liverpool run for WWII. Curiously this would set the action of Room At The Bottom in 1957, but then there are no topical details in the book to speak of, and at any rate the ‘50s setting just gives the novel even more of a hardboiled vibe. 

Tyler’s air is running low, and then he’s trapped by a steel beam in the collapsing ship. He talks to his tender, “the kid,” up on the boat way above. (Later we’ll learn the kid is named Jimmy, but we don’t get much detail about him.) Tyler tells the kid his oxygen will be gone very soon and to call the Navy, etc. All very calm. Then the kid comes back on and says the closest Navy guy is 5 hours away and there’s no help anywhere else.

Here’s how Tyler responds to this veritable death sentence: “Looks like supper’s a long way off.” That’s how hardboiled the novel is. Tyler has similar toughguy quips and retorts throughout the novel, which really gives the impression of Mike Hammer.

This opening sequence was my favorite part of the novel. Jimmy the kid, against Tyler’s stern admonishings, gets on his scuba gear and comes to the rescue. But he quickly runs out of air, so now a freed Tyler has to get both himself and the kid back to the surface, and they’re now both out of air. 

It’s all very tense and conveyed with none of the overwrought atmosphere you’d get today. Tyler is a professional and drowning is just one of the potential hazards of the job. He of course manages to get them to safety, after which he berates the kid for refusing orders to stay topside – and then thanks him for saving his life. Meanwhile Tyler has even more problems: he was hired to get a couple hundred thousand dollars from the safe of the sunken ship. But the safe was empty, save for the log book. Tyler suspects someone else has been down there in the past 15 years, or else Tyler’s been set up.

He figures it’s the latter when he visits the office of Laird’s Casualty and Marine Insurance, the outfit that hired him for the job. Goldbaum (or “Goldpop,” as Tyler refers to him, saying that Goldbam doesn’t make that big of a noise in his book – admittedly, one of Tyler’s lamer smart-ass lines) flat-out accuses Tyler of taking the money himself, hiding it on the ocean floor, and planning to collect it at a later date.

The majority of the narrative features Tyler going around New Orleans seeking out the survivors of the crash, all those years ago. In this regard the novel works like a private eye yarn, and the Loafalong stuff doesn’t return until the end of the tale. I forgot to mention, Tyler has a crew that follows him around, but they don’t take much part in this particular adventure: in addition to Jimmy, there’s Jack Price, the “red-headed first mate,” deckhand Stuke a “brawny Polack,” and also a cook whose name I’ve forgotten, who is sort of cowardly when it comes to the guns and action and stuff. 

The cover overhypes the sleaze quotient by a country mile. Tyler gets laid a lot but Potter keeps it all off-page. Even the customary exploitation of the female characters and their ample charms is minimal…even more minimal than the average pulp publication of 1962. Kind of makes you wonder why J.L. Potter even published with Chicago House in the first place; with a more reputable publisher and better distribution it’s possible Jeff Tyler might’ve been more successful, or at least better remembered.

Tyler’s first score is the sexy roommate of a woman who is married to one of those shipwreck survivors; Tyler heads over to their apartment to interview the latter, finds she’s at work (dancing at a strip club), and ends up getting cozy with this lady; her name is Daisy and she too is a stripper, but also a fortune teller and other odd jobs to pay the bills. Later Tyler will score with the other roommate, who’s husband is in prison.

It’s certainly not an action-packed novel. Tyler sort of drives around New Orleans and gets in conversations with various shipwreck survivors. The first, the old captain of the ship, proves to be the most fruitful, at least so far as Tyler’s love life is concerned; he takes an instant shine to the man’s sexy young daughter Ellen. You know she’s going to be the main female character because Tyler doesn’t immediately have sex with her. Instead they go on a couple romantic dinners and Ellen constantly begs off before the dirty deed can be done.

But par for the course in hardboiled pulp, Tyler runs afoul of various thugs. At one point he’s accosted in his trailer home (which impresses the ladies!) by a duo of torpedos, who punch him around a little bit; he later manages to get some payback with help from Ellen. Here the plot gets all twisty because the dude who pays the thugs is named “Goldbaum,” same as the name of Tyler’s boss at the insurance company, and gradually we’ll learn this is the stepson of that older Goldbaum…and also was a passenger on that wrecked ship. There’s also a little lurid stuff late in the game, when Tyler comes back to his trailer home and finds the strangled, nude body of one of the women waiting for him. Another attempt at a setup courtesy the villains.

Tyler carries a .38 but uses it sparingly, most memorably during a nighttime chase featuring those two torpedos from the earlier scene. Throughout he doles toughguy smartass quips that would have Mike Hammer red with envy. Oh and I forgot to mention that Tyler is sort of famous now in New Orleans due to events that happened in the previous novel (I assume), which I guess took him to Nicaragua. Anyway his crazy escapades there are the source of much conversation, and he even bothers to tell others what happened to what I presume was that volume’s leading lady (they’re taking a break or somesuch), so there was definitely a bit of continuity in the series.

The climax takes us back to where we started, with Tyler and crew (this time with two of the female characters in tow) heading back out to the wreckage site. Here Tyler and Ellen finally consumate their budding romance, but as ever it’s totally off-page. This features a humorous cap-off in which the girl tells the guy this was just a one-time thing! She’s engaged and just wanted to sow her wild oats with Tyler, who comes off as so dashing and handsome and whatnot.

The underwater sequence isn’t as gripping as the one at the opening, but that being said this time Tyler’s attacked by a scuba diver at the wreckage site. Here he finds out what’s been going on (basically, a rotten deal between the two Goldbaums back in 1942) and turns the tables on his enemies (planting an explosive on the underside of their ship). After which Tyler gets his name cleared and is free for more adventures – of which as mentioned there was at least one more.

I wasn’t blown away by Room At The Bottom but I suspect if I’d read it during my hardboiled kick a couple years ago I might’ve enjoyed it a lot more. J.L. Potter (I believe his first name was also “Jeff”) is no Ennis Willie, and Jeff Tyler’s no Sand, but I do like the sea adventure vibe of the series, so maybe someday I’ll seek out the other volumes.

Mafia Women

Mafia Women, by Joseph Cenni
No month stated, 1973  Award Books

Mama always told me about those Mafia women. Actually she didn’t, but that just sounds like the great country music hit that never was, doesn’t it? Anyway I used to always wonder what this ultra-scarce Award PBO was about, assuming it was just a sleazy cash-in on The Godfather. Turns out that it’s more of a study of various Mafia-world women, with more literary aspirations than sleazy ones. In fact it’s a wonder it wasn’t published by Pocket or Dell or Bantam or the like, as it’s more along the lines of those imprints than something from the publisher of Nick Carter: Killmaster.

Per the Catalog of Copyright Entries “Joseph Cenni” was the pseudonym of an author named Miles Donis. According to the pre-failing New York Times, Donis was a “novelist, screenwriter and former advertising director for Columbia Picutres.” Per this obituary, he died at the young age of 43 in 1979, the pedestrian victim of a car wreck. The article cites only three novels for Donis, so obviously his authorship of this pseudonymous novel wasn’t known at the time. But then it would appear he was a relatively obscure novelist, and of course now has only become more so.

The novel centers around several women who were either born or married into the Mafia, and the various trials and tribulations they’ve gone through as a result. There is no crime novel stuff per se, even though the novel opens with 50-something godfather Joe Banno being assassinated. The news of this is relayed to his wife, now widow, Lorraine, who acts as martriarch of this New York-area family. Donis uses this development as a frame to hang the novel around; Loraine will think of this or that Mafia woman who comes to visit her and help prepare for the funeral, and then each chapter will focus on this new woman and her past and all that. I was surprised though that Donis didn’t elaborate much on Banno’s assassination; we learn he was shot dead in a car, a young woman also murdered with him, but this plot thread isn’t resolved.

Instead we hopschotch from one Mafia woman story to another, so that the novel has more the vibe of a collection of short stories. Lorraine’s story is first and it’s fairly bland. She’s become godmother of this family through nothing more than just being the wife of Joe Banno. There’s no lust for power on her part and really not much of interest happening. She gets married, she’s a happy housewife, she’s the godmother of the Banno family, and now she’s in her fifties and her husband’s brains have been blown out by a rival family.

Linking the various flashbacks is this framework story, in which Donis introduces the concept that these Mafia women are basicaly kept women, with no ability to make any decisions on their own other than keeping the home and raising the kids. Donis will proceed to beat this story to death over the course of the short book. Even her husband’s funeral is something that is taken care of for Lorraine, so that she just sits in the house as other women come visit her, the family consigliere keeping her up to date on the funeral and ensuring guys are there for security. As each new woman comes to pay her respects Lorraine will consider her for a moment, and then the next chapter will be devoted to this new woman.

So after Lorraine we have Angela, the “most beautiful of them all,” and also at 25 the youngest. Her story takes us back to two years before, when she moved to New York from a small town and became involved with a young torpedo named Sal. After setting Angela up with a job at a club, Sal was arrested and sent to prison, and soon Angela was being propositioned by Frankie Gatto, owner of the club and a bigwig in the Banno family. When he has a limousine around to bring her to his place that night for some sex, Angela bluntly turns him down, for which she’s given increasingly-expensive presents, and ultimately a marriage proposal. But even after marriage Frankie won’t have sex with her, wanting just a blowjob, so Angela begins a secret relationship with Johnny, groomed as Frankie’s replacement. The reader can see where this is going a mile away, and by chapter’s end Angela is back to her “cage” aka expensive home, there solely to provide the oral needs of Frankie Gatto.

Joan’s story, up next, is sort of similar. This one takes us back to the mid 1950s, and Joan falls in love with dashing Vince, who heads up various rackets for the Banno family. But it becomes increasingly obvious that Vince gets his jollies by slapping Joan around. This starts with random slaps to the head and proceeds to full-on whippings, with Vince so excited that he has sex with her immediately after the beatings, then walks away afterward and refuses to discuss it. As mentioned though Donis never goes for outright sleaze, writing even the sex scenes in a pseudo-literary style. There’s a darkly humorous part where Joan is mistakenly informed that Frankie’s been killed by a rival family. This chapter caps off with Joan trying, as Angela did in her story, to escape, but is caught and dragged home. For this she is so beaten she ends up in the hospital, but Frankie lies to the doctors that she fell down the stairs, and the guy’s so friendly and cordial who could doubt his story?

Cynthia’s story follows this theme of being unable to escape the Mafia. Her husband’s in prison for tax evasion, so Cynthia, still attractive and young, starts openly hitting on young torpedos in the family. Her friends and the consiglierie intervene each time, so Cynthia resorts to booze. Soon she’s a roaring drunk, so the family stages an intervention, and she’s sent to an upstate rehab spa. Here she encounters a handsome young doctor, and soon they’re engaged in some hot pseudo-literary lovin’. At least Cynthia’s paramour escapes death; she returns home “cured” of booze, her love affair still a secret, with the promise that the family will send her back up there every couple months to ensure she stays cured.

Up next is Theresa, another pretty and young one, whose husband Rickie is an up-and-comer in the Banno mob, but who refuses to get his hands dirty in the “old way.” In other words he’s one of those executive types who were changing the face of the Mafia at the time, away from the “Moustache Petes” of the 1930s. Theresa is similar to Lorraine in that she’s content to just be a happy housewife, but she does become hooked on their ever-more-exorbitant lifestyle, thanks to the pay Rickie is getting for his jobs. But when Rickie pulls a hit because it’s path to an even bigger promotion, she calls him a “Murderer” that night and closes herself off to him. This story seemed pretty half-baked, not helped by the fact that it offers no resolution.

The last Mafia woman is Dorothy, in what is by far the goofiest chapter. The only one who isn’t Italian, Dorothy is a heavyset mother of three who reads magazines and likes to think she’s more intelligent than she really is. Thus she’s incensed by how the Mafia are presented in TV and movies like ‘30s gangsters. So Dorothy calls up the paper and gives an interview as the “wife of a prominent mafioso,” for which her husband is properly pissed off. He’s instructed by the consiglieri to beat her, but he can’t. Next Dorothy decides all the gals need to go on a popular afternoon talk show hosted by David Erskine. She talks all the other women save for Lorraine into it, but when she arrives at the studio the next day, none of the others are there. When she calls them she learns all of them are “sick,” ie clearly prevented from appearing by their more-domineering husbands, so Dorothy runs from the show.

And that’s it for Mafia Women; we close with Lorraine in the limo to her husband’s funeral, reflecting how it’s the woman’s place to bury the man. As mentioned there’s no followup to who killed her husband, who the mysterious woman was that was also killed in the car with him, or any of that jazz. The focus is really more on telling the same story over and over again – you marry into the Mafia, you say goodbye to your freedom. But then pretty much the same could be said for any marriage, Mafia or not.

The Adjusters #3: Doomsday Vendetta

The Adjusters #3: Doomsday Vendetta, by Peter Winston
No month stated, 1968  Award Books

My assumption is this third Adjusters was written by whoever did the second volume, which I’m guessing was Jim Bowser, who, in addition to Paul Eiden and Jack Laflin, was one of the three writers on this short-lived series. I don’t think it was Eiden, who clearly did the first volume, given internal evidence. Eiden’s style doesn’t seem as apparent in Doomsday Vendetta, the “Adjusters” setup follows that of the previous book, and the female characters are only mildly exploited.

However the similarities to The ABC Affair are strong; “hero” Peter Winston is pretty much a sexist asshole, even more so than the genre norm, and one gets the impression the author watched the Connery Bond films, took notes, but forgot to temper his hero’s assholic, arrogant nature with any charm. I’m repeating myself because I wrote the same thing in my review of the previous volume. Well anyway the complaint holds true for this one. But if anything it’s more overboard. Winston, who has a “special kind of viritily” which makes him have to shave twice a day, is such a babe magnet that he merely has to look at a woman and she’s his. But like with the previous book, his frequent scores are off-page.

With no setup from previous books, we meet Peter (as he’s referred to for the most part) as he’s just arrived in Tangier – and promptly being propositioned by the sexy young babe who acts as the White Whittle rep here. Like last time there’s a huge underground network of “A” operatives for the company, which is known around the world as a construction and etc type of outfit, but also dabbles in a little “adjusting” for liberty and justice. So this girl, Pat, knows that Peter is a specialist from the company, but apparently has no idea he’s an undercover agent sort of dude. Anyway she’s too busy telling him she’s going to jump his bones as soon as possible.

Peter is here because Pat’s boss, the main White Whittle rep in Morocco and another of those undercover “A” agents, has been murdered. Our hero will stay here in Morocco for the duration of the novel; this is the first installment that doesn’t give us a scene at the company HQ in New York. While checking out the office Peter’s shot at by some unseen assailant, and ends up chasing him through the bazaar, toting his Magnum revolver. This will prove to be one of the few action scenes in the novel; like last time, much too much narrative is given over to Peter sitting around.

The action scene out of the way, the author gets to the sex posthaste; this volume I guess you could say gets a bit more raunchy than the last one, mostly courtesy goofball lines like, “They fused together and [Peter] gave her the caveman type of love she begged for.” As mentioned Peter’s a bit of a dick, so to speak, so he makes sure Pat understands this is a casual sex sort of thing and he’ll be free to screw any other woman he pleases, and also don’t expect him to stick around ‘cause he’s an important Adjuster and all. I mean this sort of thing should be understood, it just comes off as assholic when the dude bluntly tells it to the lady’s face.

And right on cue Peter comes upon another lady, Kristina, sexy blonde who is part of an all-female magic act. No exaggeration, Peter will spend the rest of the novel banging her. That’s pretty much the extent of what he does in the novel. Honestly it’s like a pseudo-sleaze paperback with Morocco travelogue replacing the actual hardcore material. The murdered Adjuster uttered a phrase to the attending doctor, his last words: “Newk she wrote.” Peter at length deduces the “she” is Kristina, blonde American beauty who had a thing going with the murdered Adjuster – or was it another girl in her magic act? Peter also deduces – quite ridiculously – that the dying Adjuster was struggling to say “new king,” which just came out as “newk,” likely referring to the new king of Morocco, who is pro-American and in danger from the native radicals for it.

If nothing else this allows the author to pad pages as Peter investigates this line of reasoning, even though it should be clear as friggin’ day that “newk” means “nuke.” Peter won’t figure it out until near the end of the book – which by the way is again deceptively slim. This is a very slow-going book. Gradually Peter will hit on the fact that Kristina and her magic group are up to something nefarious. And meanwhile Kristina’s throwing herself on him with abandon, which leads to more of that Peter Winston “charm” in action: Kristina rakes his back rather sharply before the expected sexual tomfoolery, for which Peter slaps her “hard” in the face, telling her, “Don’t you ever, ever do that again, you hot little bitch!” Of course, this only makes Kristina all the more eager for some of that good Adjuster lovin’.

And as mentioned this is pretty much the extent of Peter’s “work” for the majority of the novel…he dates Kristina, going around Morocco with her group, sleeping with her every night. Along the way he also finds the time to get cozy with Toni, the other hot blonde in the magic group; she’s initially frosty, but that rugged Peter Winston virility soon thaws her out for some more largely-undescribed sex. There’s also some lame mystery here that Toni might’ve been the “blonde” seen with the murdered Adjuster in his final days; she wears a wig during the shows, because Kristina demands she get the star treatment as the only blonde in the group. 

Action is even more sporadic than previously. There’s a part where Peter contacts another local Adjuster – like last time they’re all over the pace – and they pose as air conditioner repairmen or something and end up getting in a shootout and then briefly caught. Peter frees himself with a gadget watch that has a blade in it. We see some of the same gadgets Peter used last time, like the noise blaster thing that deafens opponents. His trip down south here only confirms that Kristina’s involved in some bad stuff – printing anti-American propaganda for the native radicals – but our boy continues to sit on his hands, biding his time.

Later on some dude attacks him and Peter tosses him off a cliff, killing him…and in one of those arbitrary pulp developments it turns out not to be a spy or anything, but Toni’s abusive husband! After showing Peter the proper appreciation, she begins spying on her magic group for him. It just sort of goes on and on. Peter even has the time to head back to Tangier and “reconnect” with Pat. That’s how leisurely-paced this installment is. Not until the homestretch does the author realize he’s writing an action yarn, and suddenly gives us the book this should’ve been all along. Peter deduces that the “newk she wrote” was actually “nuke ship Rota,” ie a nuclear submarine heading into the Morroccan port of Rota.

Now, way too briefly due to the dwindling pages, we have Peter scuba diving and setting bombs, then getting in a gunfight with Kristina’s group. Crazy shit here that’s barely explored due to all the page-padding that came before, like the revelation that one of the “women” is really a dude in drag! Per pulp standards, though, Peter himself doesn’t shoot any of the women, with them either hit by friendly fire or being inadvertently blown up in the explosives Peter set.

And that’s all she wrote for this third installment of The Adjusters, which was marginally better than the previous volume, but still not that great. Man, I know they can’t all be winners, but I’ve been reading some blasé books lately. Well, I still love them all, even the ones that suck – I’d still rather read Doomsday Vendetta than whatever crap Oprah’s peddling.