The Marksman #12: Mafia Massacre

The Marksman #12: Mafia Massacre, by Frank Scarpetta
June, 1974  Belmont Tower Books

Russell Smith turns in another wild installment of The Marksman, one that picks up from an earlier Smith volume, Muzzle Blast – which wasn’t even published as part of the Marksman series but was clumsily transformed by editor Peter McCurtin into an installment of The Sharpshooter! And speaking of McCurtin, I share Lynn Munroe’s sentiments in that McCurtin likely fixed up Smith’s manuscript for Mafia Massacre. For while psychotic hero Philip Magellan is still as nuts as ever, it would appear as if his rough edges have been somewhat softened.

When we meet him Magellan has just landed in fictional Opa-Locka airport in Miami, somewhere near Biscayne Bay, we’re told. The events of Muzzle Blast were just three days ago – and unsurprisingly we get no details on what exactly happened in the aftermath of that novel’s climax; as we’ll recall, Muzzle Blast featured one of the most arbitrary “endings” in published history – and Magellan has made the impromptu decision to come down to Florida. Why? Because he read in the paper about the massacre of the Tarburton family here in Miami and figured it for a mob hit.

Magellan, “thirty-nine, white and proud,” promptly left Provincetown after reading about the massacre, and now here in Miami he plans to find out what’s going on. So begins a Marksman plot that’s slightly more complex than the average installment. For we learn early on that crooked judge Vito La Malfa was behind the hit, his goal to move in on Tarburton’s vast interests. Tarburton was an island developer or somesuch, creating manmade islands in the Bay, Treasure Island being one of them. There the Tarburtons lived in a mansion, where all of them were hacked to death, save for one, who wasn’t there at the time – young Mary, a 23 year-old so mysterious and reclusive that it’s rumored she doesn’t even exist.

Smith as is his wont fills up lots of pages with bullshit backgrounds on his various Mafia characters, how they got started in the life and etc, and he’s also just as fond of wasting pages by having these characters engage in go-nowhere conversations. In many cases these dialog exchanges go over material we readers have already encountered, which only hammers home how egregious they are. In addition to Judge La Malfa and his various Mafia underlings there’s chief of detectives Captain Stagg, a dirty cop on Malfa’s payroll. Smith fills more pages with late revelations that Stagg gathers evidence on La Malfa in case he ever has to bust him to protect his career, which for once in this clumsy series is a subplot that actually goes somewhere.

As for Magellan himself, his sadistic impulses have been neutered for the most part. There’s none of Smith’s notorious stuff where Magellan will chop off heads or arrange mobster corpses in garrish displays. True, he does flat-out murder and massacre several of them, usually killing them in cold blood, but each time he does so we are reminded of Magellan’s rage and how he lost his hummanity after his wife and son were killed. In other words we are told, as well as shown, that Magellan has gone insane from grief and now lashes out in bloody vengeance. In previous Smith books it seems to me that there was much less telling and more showing, to the point that Magellan’s past was overlooked and it was more about him gorily torturing mobsters before killing them.

Otherwise Smith’s writing is the same as ever, with frenetic prose and exclamation points all over the place. We’re also barraged with the word “fuck,” especially in the first several pages. Here I must again agree with Lynn Munroe, who in the above-linked piece on McCurtin opines that many of Smith’s later Marksman manuscripts were polished either by McCurtin himself or by McCurtin’s go-to ghostwriter, George Harmon Smith (whom I once mistakenly believed to be the “real” Russell Smith; ie that “Russell” was just a pseudonym used by George H.) At any rate one can detect what appears to have been some editorial tinkering in Mafia Massacre, with some actual, genuine care placed on telling a believable story with believable characters.

Another change here – and which also calls back to the volumes actually written by Peter McCurtin – is that there’s more of a focus on action scenes. I mean genuine action scenes, with an outgunned Magellan ducking and dodging and returning fire. In most other Russell Smith volumes there isn’t any action per se; it’s just Magellan randomly and wantonly killing off usually-unarmed mobsters. Here though we have several sequences in which Magellan must actually fight. In one part he’s ambushed by a trio of gunmen with assault rifles, and in another sequence he gets in a machine gun battle with a boatful of Mafia soldiers.

Smith (or Harmon Smith, or McCurtin) also does a good job of keeping Mary Tarburton off the page for a long time, making the reader interested to find out if she’s real or not. Magellan shadows the young woman and black chaffeur (and boy are we reminded often and at length that this guy’s black) who supposedly work for Mary, which leads him into a few of those gunfights. Also when saving the chaffeur from some La Malfa thugs we get a brief return of the old Magellan, when our “hero” blows out one guy’s brains when he won’t answer a single question. Later Magellan handcuffs another thug to a speedboat and beats him into bloody hamburger. Oh, and Magellan also tortures a pair of cops for info at one point – however it happens off-page.

Mary, who turns out to be an oceanographer who lives on a swanky houseboat, is a tomboyish but beautiful blonde with “small, apple-sized breasts;” Magellan finds her after discovering a secret passageway which runs from Tarburton’s private cove on Treasure Island to his mansion. As usual with Smith this passageway is built up greatly in the narrative, with Magellan constantly marvelling over it, whereas the reader is more so “who cares?” The same goes for all of the nautical stuff in the book, which is a recurring theme in Smith’s installments, I’ve found; they all feature at least some action that takes place on wharves and harbors and sailing vessels.

For the most part the plot of Mafia Massacre trades off on Magellan trying to figure out who was behind the Tarburton massacre while, in their own subplots, La Malfa and his underlings discuss Magellan and how they can stop him. Smith also hopscotches in time, like he’s some low-rent Elmore Leonard, with most of the chapters featuring La Malfa and Captain Stagg taking place before the ones we just read with Magellan. It sort of drags on for the duration, until, per the norm, things ramp up for a clumsy finale.

La Malfa has called in a legion of soldiers, and Magellan perfunctorily and quickly massacres them all in Tarburton’s mansion, gunning them down with his favored Uzi. But Magellan does have his setbacks in Mafia Massacre; while he and Mary are on her boat for no reason at all, they are attacked by a boat filled with La Malfa’s men, and in the skirmish Magellan gets shot in the left thigh. Here the Marksman is actually injured, thus denting his otherwise superhuman armor for once. He even resorts to popping pain pills before gunning down those unarmed soldiers in the Tarburton mansion. 

But it all wraps up with Magellan and Mary capturing Stagg on Mary’s houseboat. Speaking of which, Smith builds up a rapport and respect between Magellan and Mary, not that it goes anywhere – as ever, the Marksman has the libido of a robot. Mary freaks out when it’s revealed, at long last, that La Malfa was in fact the man behind the death of her family – in another go-nowhere subplot, we learn that La Malfa has lusted after Mary since she was a kid. So Magellan pistol-whips Stagg…and then has him hop off the boat and swim back to Miami(!?).

So yeah, our boy Magellan has undergone some sort of personality overhaul; the old version of Smith’s character would’ve sawed off Stagg’s head. And meanwhile La Malfa, having learned of Stagg’s treachery, abandons ship and hops on his personal plane to the Bahamas or something…and Magellan swears vengeance.

Yeah, right! I’ll be surprised if La Malfa or the events here in Miami are even mentioned in another Marksman (or Sharpshooter) novel, let alone if the cliffhanger finale of Mafia Massacre continues in a later installment.

The Lonely Lady

The Lonely Lady, by Harold Robbins
March, 1977  Pocket Books
(Original hardcover edition, 1976)

“There’s no real story, no focus. It’s all open and spread out, like a kaleidoscope. Every time you turn it you lose the picture. By the time I finished reading it I was too confused to understand what I had read.”

This line of dialog, which appears on page 300 of this paperback edition, aptly sums up The Lonely Lady itself. Well, and every other novel ever written by Harold Robbins. But Robbins’s notoriously-loose “plotting” is especially messy in this doorstop of a book, one of his last big sellers, eventually turned into a trashy movie starring Pia Zadora.

Dedicated to Jacqueline Susann, who died before The Lonely Lady was published, the novel sort of takes Susann’s life and trashes it up; the heroine, JeriLee Randall, is basically Jackie Susann meets Brigitte Bardot. The novel is a surreally ridiculous morality tale of sorts in which poor JeriLee starts off life as a naïve hometown girl, briefly becomes an actress and playwright, and ultimately spirals into a sordid life of lesbianism, topless go-go dancing, drugs, psychosis…and eventual bestseller and movie blockbuster status. In other words the novel is a damned mess and seems to be three tales in one, none of them much connected to the other; indeed in the third of the three books which comprise the novel, JeriLee calls herself “Jane,” and you could easily be fooled into thinking it is a different character.

Part of the novel’s confusion is the awkward way it’s chronicled. Robbins generally hopscotches across various points of the lives of his characters, with none of his books really told in a simple A-Z format. But here he is all over the place. The Lonely Lady seems to open sometime in 1976, as a crying JeriLee, just having undergone her latest abortion (something due to an ongoing “RH issue,” which is not further elaborated or dealt with), flashes back to her teen years in smalltown New York; this flashback comprises the majority of Book One, Small Town. But Robbins will return to the “JeriLee sitting and crying” motif, even ending the book with the image, which would imply a full-circle loop of a tale, but for reasons mentioned below it doesn’t work.

I took The Lonely Lady with me on vacation, and to tell the truth I regretted my decision. Book One was hard going for me, as it’s 132 pages of like Peyton Place or something. JeriLee is an innocent 17 year-old in Port Clare, New York, who is wise beyond her years, has a brick shithouse bod, and can’t wait to have sex. Unfortunately she scares off her male suitors with her otherwise innocent pleas for a good screwing; when she forthrightly tells them “I want you to fuck me,” they cringe at how “girls aren’t supposed to talk like that” and shun her.

Brace yourself for this one, friends: there isn’t a single sex scene in the entirety of Book One! In very fact, there is a dearth of sexual or otherwise dirty stuff in The Lonely Lady, less than in any other Robbins novel I’ve yet read. None of the outrageously lurid stuff familiar from his other novels is present here, other than the occasional usage of the word “fuck” or some random mention of off-page sexual shenanigans. I mean, the one damn thing I read Robbins for wasn’t even here. Instead it’s doldrums of the first order, as the reader must endure the humdrum life of teenaged JeriLee.

The action only briefly picks up when JeriLee’s almost raped by a few boys, saved at the last moment by two of her friends. One of them’s a black pianist named Fred who will return later in the narrative. After this JeriLee becomes friends with Walter Thornton, the father of one of the boys who tried to rape her(!). Thornton is a famous playwright and old enough to be JeriLee’s father. They become close friends and Thornton writes a play about an older man falling in love with a teenaged girl(!?) and JeriLee clearly realizes the girl is based on her – but then the director of the play figures JeriLee would be a natural for the role, and JeriLee gradually accepts the part.

Then Book Two, Big Town, opens, and suddenly JeriLee is narrating the tale. Once again Robbins has jumped the timeline and JeriLee informs us that she’s about to divorce Walter Thornton…the play wasn’t made after all, though actually it was, after all, or something. But anyway Thornton has issues with impotency or something and JeriLee has taken to pleasuring herself with the Green Hornet, an electric dildo made in Japan. Whereas Book One was soapy and boring, Book Two is meandering and boring; JeriLee basically spends the entire book telling people she’s tired and going to bed.

Anyway it’s six years later and JeriLee has apparently made a name for herself in the theater business, but mostly because she was Mrs. Walter Thornton. She lives in New York City and has a frosty relationship with her mother, her dad having passed away – but then that’s her adopted father, as JeriLee’s real father died when she was a toddler and Robbins appears to make the tale about some sort of subconscious yearning JeriLee has for her real father – sort of like Jacqueline Susann’s relationship with her own father – but as usual for Robbins he plumb forgets all about it and it just comes off like another head-scratcher to confuse the reader.

JeriLee’s play does poorly and soon she’s sent around on various small acting roles – as mentioned she’s a writer but she has moviestar looks. Her agent gets her a nudie part in a low-budget film by a pair of producer/director brothers; the novel’s first sex scene occurs, off-page at that, on page 190, as JeriLee waltzes nude into the room of one of the brothers and demands he screw her. But the film part fizzles due to this guy’s jealousy trip, and JeriLee further serves to piss off various Hollywood professionals by spurning roles and refusing to do certain parts. This book winds up with JeriLee briefly engaging a Sophia Loren-type in a lesbian fling before finally reconnecting with Fred, now working as a DJ in the topless club owned by JeriLee’s mobster boyfriend.

Book Three, Any Old Town, returns to the third-person narrative of Book One. We’re suddenly back to the post-abortion moments of the very beginning of the novel, and we get some sort of quickly-abandoned subplot about a lesbian fling JeriLee’s had with a soap star named Angela. But from here it’s to the inevitable flashback, where we learn that JeriLee was in love with Fred and lived with him, but ultimately gave him up so that he could marry Licia, a beautiful cinammon-skinned lady. Licia is also a powerhouse in the music industry or something, thus has turned Fred into a veritable superstar of Stevie Wonder proportions. Meanwhile JeriLee is in love with Licia, and the two have a casual lesbian fling going on. Though again, no actual dirty stuff is written – it’s all relayed via dialog for the most part.

In the last hundred pages The Lonely Lady finally becomes the novel we’ve wanted it to be. It’s now the early ‘70s and JeriLee, relocated to Hollywood, has become “Jane Randolph;” we’ll learn this is a name Licia coined so JeriLee could dance topless in go-go clubs while protecting her real name, which is reserved for playwriting/acting work. (The go-go club scenes were the highlight of the book for me.) But the whole “working name” thing is nonsense, as eventually JeriLee gets a role in a drive-in biker flick which is based on a story she came up with; the producers want to make more of JeriLee’s stories into low-budget flicks, all crediting her as “Jane Randolph.” But JeriLee blows yet another opportunity, having begun an affair with her landlord, a joint-toking beach bum who turns out to be in deep with the Mafia.

When this guy is busted, “Jane Randolph” is taken down to the station with him, but a kindly older cop takes a shine to “Jane” and goes out of his way to clear her name and get her safely out of town – the Mafia has moved in on her, destroying her sole copy of her latest play and threatening her life if she informs on them. The cop puts JeriLee on a flight to New York…and then suddenly it’s a year later and the cop gets a letter from JeriLee. Still calling herself “Jane,” she blithely reports that she’s in an insane asylum(!) and would like the cop to come put in a good word for her, so she can be released!

The cop, feeling fatherly, JeriLee reminding him of his own daughter, heads on over to New York and finds out that JeriLee – all of it off-page – has become a drug fiend, busted multiple times in the past year for hooking and even appearing in a porn flick, one which was being shot in the massage parlor in which she was also working. Plus she went nuts and now, in an asylum, she seems to think “JeriLee” is her dead sister, and claims she’s just “Jane.” I mean what the hell?? The novel has suddenly become this bizarro tale of mental disturbance, and seems mysteriously similar in a way to Burt Hirschfeld’s Cindy On Fire, which also featured an innocent but precocious heroine who ultimately became a drug-addicted nutcase.

The final pages feature so many things happening that you just know Robbins wrote it all in a first-draft rush of coke and speed. Quickly we’re informed that JeriLee, having recovered her sanity (not to mention her name), moves in with the kindly older cop in Los Angeles and writes a book about her life titled Nice Girls Go To Hell. Robbins offers the first sentence of the book and it’s curiously Tom Robbins-esque. At any rate the novel is a super success – again this is only relayed via dialog, Robbins jumping all over in time with no warning – and three years later (or something) Hollywood wants to make a movie out of it.

Yet despite her bestseller status and her playwriting past, JeriLee still has to “fuck” every person involved with the film – from the lead actor to the old producer – to ensure it gets made. Why she cares enough to do all this is unstated; you would figure, given the 400 previous pages of JeriLee’s learning-from-turmoil, she’d have achieved a state of understanding. But no, she still “sucks and fucks” (again, all off-page) to get the picture made. And then like three pages after we’re informed there was even a novel, we’re told the movie’s been made and now JeriLee’s up for an Oscar for best screenplay.

The Lonely Lady climaxes with JeriLee winning the award and giving a venomous speech about how she’s had to screw everyone to get the movie done – again, it all has nothing to do with the rest of the book, because JeriLee’s just become involved with the movie biz! But she eviscerates her agent and her lead actor and etc, the director of the Oscars having to cut away from her tirade. Ultimately JeriLee strips off her dress and displays a golden Oscar painted on her nude body, the head pointed toward her crotch. One wonders if Robbins was inspired by a certain Pocket Books paperback cover from the previous year. (And if you want to check out a trashy masterpiece that features the greatest Oscars gutting of all time, be sure to read Boy Wonder.)

After getting a ride home from that kindly old cop(!!), JeriLee smokes a cigarette…and then sits outside her house and cries. And there the novel ends, thus taking us back to the opening image of the novel. This would imply The Lonely Lady is circular, but then that opening image was of JeriLee crying after her abortion, which apparently takes place after these closing events – or were they before? I must admit I got really damn confused, and likely Robbins did too. I even thumbed back in the book to confirm when all the opening/abortion stuff actually occurred, but ultimately gave it up due to the realization that I didn’t give a damn.

I didn’t much care for The Lonely Lady. It was probably my least favorite Harold Robbins novel yet. It seems to me he tried to write a Jacqueline Susann-type novel, honing back on the typical stuff you’d expect from a Robbins novel, but in the end I’d say it was a failure. At least for me. But then this one’s considered one of his best, so be sure to check out the positive reviews by Martin and Kurt.

Casino Royale (James Bond #1)

Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming
No month stated, 1965  Signet Books
(Original UK edition 1953)

Sometime in the summer of 1986, when I was 11 years old, I got bit by the Bond bug. Seemingly overnight I became obsessed with the world of James Bond, rushing to the local video stores to rent any of the movies I could. I still remember the first Connery movie I saw, Diamonds Are Forever, and thinking to myself – now that guy is James Bond! (Just imagine how I felt when I watched one of the earlier, less campy ones!)

At that time a British author named John Gardner was the official novelist of the Bond canon, Ian Fleming having passed away over twenty years before. I read all of Gardner’s books (five at the time) and began seeking out the originals by Fleming. Most of them were pretty easy to find, Berkley Books having reprinted them with silhouette covers that in retrospect positively scream “1980s.” However in those pre-internet days some of the Flemings were harder to find than others, Casino Royale, the first book in the series, being one of them. This is the first time I’ve gotten to read it. 

Before I go any further, I must point out Zwolf’s excellent and pithy review, which so very conciscely captures my own feelings on this overhyped novel. Luckily Ian Fleming went on to write better Bond novels, because this first one really tried my patience. Admittedly I knew going in I wouldn’t be crazy about it; even as a kid I was aware that Casino Royale featured a mostly-pedestrian gambling plot as its central storyline, and even then I found gambling stories boring. But still, it’s James Bond, right? And you read all these online reviews claiming this is the best Bond novel ever… But then, we live in a world where people praise Daniel Craig as “the best Bond ever,” so there goes that.*

Anyway, I’d read most of the Bond books as a kid; Doctor No and You Only Live Twice were by far my two favorites, the former in particular. I’d never really considered reading them again, but then this past October I was in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and for some reason I kept thinking of these novels. Gradually I realized why – those old Bond hardcovers always stated that Ian Fleming wrote in Jamaica (his home, GoldenEye, is now a mega-expensive resort – and it isn’t even all-inclusive!), and of course a few of the books took place there. I decided then to finally read the series in full, including the volumes I’d missed as a kid; as fortune would have it, I later scored the entire ‘60s Signet paperback run for a pittance.

About the only good thing I can say of Casino Royale is that it’s short. As Zwolf mentions in his review, word has it that Fleming wanted to create a British Mike Hammer – Fleming was a fan of Mickey Spillane, who was incredibly popular at the time (the irony being that today Bond is by far more famous than Hammer). While Fleming captured this vibe in later volumes, in this first one James Bond is for the most part a foppish dandy; to quote Zwolf, he’s “basically an ineffectual victim who only survives by the kindness of his enemies and gets fooled by double agents.” (Plus he also plans to get married!! Some tough guy!)

Fleming’s writing has that clinical feel typical of British pulp; “all manners and no grit,” to again quote Zwolf, who as usual succinctly sums things up whereas I go on and on. I wrote “pulp” but really the novel has pretensions toward literature; here you will find many ruminations on the color of the sky or the beautiful flowers of the French countryside and whatnot. To be sure, Fleming’s writing is good, and he effectively captures his scenes and surroundings. Perhaps if one were to read Casino Royale without the accumulated baggage of six decades of the James Bond franchise, one might think differently of it. And I did attempt this, but still, the novel fails…it seems to build toward something, (anti)climaxes too quickly and too soon, and then spends the final quarter in a listless freefall.

What’s fascinating is that Fleming wastes no pages on world-building or scene-setting. When we meet James Bond he’s already in Royale-les-Eaux, a posh resort in France. Word of warning: Casino Royale is one of those novels where practically every page is peppered with French words and dialog. This only serves to make it seem all the more stuffy and snobbish. The now-familiar formula of Bond meeting with M. and being briefed on the assignment, armed by Q department, etc, is only later relayed via brief flashback. The book is lean and moves fast – it just doesn’t go anywhere, unfortunately.

Bond has been picked for this task because he’s “the best gambler” in MI6; his assignment is to outgamble a Russian counterspy named Le Chiffre, a benzedrine-enhaling, sanpaku-eyed sadist who, MI6 knows, works for SMERSH, the executive branch of Russian secret service. But Le Chiffre screwed over his employers, as relayed via too many pages of excerpted documentation M. reads in that flashback portion. Swindling SMERSH of millions of pounds, Le Chiffre is now a dead man, unless he can win all of it back at Casino Royale here in Royale-les-Eaux. Bond’s job is to beat Le Chiffre at baccarat, a high-stakes game Bond specializes in.

Fleming’s secondary characters were usually more interesting than Bond himself, who is cold and cipher-like for the most part, especially in these early volumes. This time we have Rene Mathis, the most colorful of Bond’s comrades in this one, a French agent who briefs Bond on the local scene and acts as a radio seller in a humorous sequence. Next there’s Felix Leiter, CIA agent familiar from the films but never capably captured, though Joe Don Baker in GoldenEye was likely the closest, if a bit too old for the part. Leiter is a Texan and meets Bond for the first time here; the two become as friendly as spies can be, and Bond seems to have a jealousy/respect for Americans, which was very refreshing to read in today’s “America is the source of all evil” world.

Finally, and most importantly, there’s Vesper Lynd, a hotstuff brunette junior agent, for the most part an admin assistant, sent here by her station chief to assist Bond. Our hero is famously pissed at this, hating to work with women and spending most of the novel complaining about how they shouldn’t get involved in “man’s work.” Here I should probably insert the mandatory diatribes against the novel’s outdated misogyny and chauvinism and other such bullshit, as is apparently required for all modern reviews of the James Bond books, but I’m not going to do that. Bond has his sentiments and he’s entitled to them. The irony being, of course, that his deeds do not match his words – he only comes to harm in this book for trying to save Vesper.

Setting the standard for the “Bond Girls” to follow, Vesper is appropriately sexy and stacked; though Fleming doesn’t get as exploitative as he would in later books. Not that the Bond books ever really did, though the word “breasts” would appear more and more frequently, to the point where you wonder how much more salacious the novels might have become had Ian Fleming lived past 1964. At any rate Vesper is an okay character, but for reasons of plot she’s a bit withdrawn and distant, making Bond’s gradual falling in love with her a bit hard for the reader to buy.

The first half of the book is mostly setup for the big gambling faceoff between Bond and Le Chiffre. The villain himself doesn’t even appear, and the only bit of action we get is early on, when two Bulgarian assassins inadvertently blow themselves up instead of their target, Bond. Fleming doesn’t dwell on the gore much –again, the book has nothing on Spillane – and it’s interesting how upset and shocked Bond is by the atrocity. He is by no means the stone-cold badass of the films here; indeed he spends most of Casino Royale throwing various hissy fits and looking down his nose at everyone. He’s more Tony Randall than Sean Connery.

Fleming himself worked in intelligence in World War II, thus the novel is filled with a sense of realism; these are Cold War veterans and they treat their violent world with a casual attitude. I forgot to mention, but Bond has three guns this time, none of which he uses(!). The famous Walther PPK isn’t one of them; Bond wouldn’t begin to use it until Doctor No. He starts off Casino Royale with a .38 revolver, later has a Beretta .25, and finally has a Colt .45. But none of them are used, thus ruining the principle of Chekhov’s Gun. In fact all Bond does, action-wise, is kick someone in the shins and try to run away!

After a lot of buildup, Fleming spending more time on Bond trying (and failing) to score with Vesper, the “climactic” baccarat game is upon us before we even realize it. Le Chiffre like Vesper sets the standard for ensuing Bond villains, though he isn’t as properly exploited here. He’s got all the requirements – henchmen, a weird prop (the inhaler), a strange look (waxy skin, sanpaku eyes), and a fondness for torture – but he’s talked about more than he’s seen, and thus he’s got nothing on Doctor No or even Blofeld. The game, despite the high stakes, didn’t much resonate with me, mostly due to that aforementioned dislike of gambling stories but also because it’s mostly relayed via French dialog.

Finally the novel kicks into higher gear when Bond, victorious in the game (his ass only saved by Felix Leiter’s last-second granting of extra cash), chases after an abducted Vesper. Here the reader thinks he’s finally about to see some action as Bond fondles his .45 and berates the fact that Vesper was indeed out of her league in a man’s world. Then he crashes his car, tries to kick a guy in the shins, and next thing you know he’s naked and tied to a bottomless chair. Prepare for some unsettling stuff as Le Chiffre spends some time, uh, whacking Bond’s balls with a carpet beater. I broke out in a empathetic sweat as I read this, which should be testament alone to the occasional power of Fleming’s prose.

But as Zwolf pointed out above, Bond is saved yet again(!), this time by an anonymous SMERSH assassin who not only kills the two thugs guarding Vesper (off-page) but also kills Le Chiffre (anticlimactically at that, just shooting him between the eyes). And this guy doesn’t kill Bond only because he wasn’t ordered to!! Berating the red tape of his own system, the SMERSH assassin nonetheless goes to the trouble of carving “SMERSH” on Bond’s hand, which only begs the question why he doesn’t just kill Bond, given that he knows he’s a British secret agent – I mean, if this guy wasn’t ordered to kill Bond, then surely he wasn’t ordered to carve SMERSH on his hand. But that’s that, the SMERSH guy leaves, and the story is pretty much over, but there’s like 40 or so pages to go.

Here Casino Royale goes into freefall. After convalescing in a hospital for several weeks, where a visiting Vesper is his only source of daily joy, Bond finally checks out and goes on a vacation in the French countryside with Vesper. His big concern is whether he’ll still be able to have sex, and when Vesper finally gives herself to him it all happens off-page, this being 1953 and all. But we’re to understand the lady enjoys it and Bond discovers to his joy that all his parts still work. Oh, and he’s decided he’s going to marry her! This decision comes in an effectively-written scene where Bond goes swimming; Fleming was a dedicated swimmer and the parts in these novels where Bond scuba dives or snorkels are always highlights.

The final pages are given over to the growing bitterness of this new relationship, as Bond catches Vesper in a lie – he spots her sneaking off to call someone, though the girl won’t say who and keeps trying to underplay her deceit. It sort of drags on and on, as if we’re suddenly reading a different novel. Bond doesn’t make a good showing of himself, coming off like a simpering, heartbroken lug in his debut novel. Despite all this, Fleming still manages to gut readers with the last pages, in which Vesper, after spending another night with Bond, overdoses on sleeping pills and leaves a heartwrenching suicide note in which she admits she was a secret agent for SMERSH but fell in love with Bond and now begs for his forgiveness from beyond the grave.

“The bitch is dead,” Bond tells his contact; the last line of the novel, and a sign of the Bond to come in future books. It’s almost as if this first book was something he had to go through to become the Bond of later novels, but at the same time you figure Fleming could’ve come up with a more gripping and thrilling story. As it is, Casino Royale just sort of limps along for the duration, yet strangely enough the reader is compelled to keep reading despite the lack of thrills. The only other writer I can think of who can accomplish this is Harold Robbins, and again that brings me back to the ruminations above…I wonder what sort of James Bond novels Fleming would’ve written once authors like Robbins had broken the prudish boundaries of sex in print?

As mentioned Fleming’s writing is good, though he seems to be obsessed with the words “ironical” and “directly.” The latter in particular shows up about every other page, ie, “Directly Bond paid the bill and left the table,” and so forth. It’s almost as if Fleming just learned the word before writing the book and became fascinated with it, as in a skit I once saw back in the ‘90s on a show called The State (the word that writer just discovered was “and;” I only saw the skit once, and I was likely drunk, it being college and all, but I still thought it was hilarious).

Otherwise the book shows the promise of much greater things to come. I didn’t much enjoy Casino Royale, but I don’t regret reading it, and if anything it’s made me eager to continue with the series and appreciate how much better it became. I’m definitely looking forward to re-reading Doctor No. 

*Personally I don’t think Daniel Craig is James Bond – he’s just playing a character of the same name.

John Eagle Expeditor #13: Operation Weatherkill

John Eagle Expeditor #13: Operation Weatherkill, by Paul Edwards
October, 1975  Pyramid Books

The penultimate volume of my favorite men’s adventure series, John Eagle Expeditor, is courtesy Paul Eiden, a hit-or-miss writer if ever there was one. While his prose is good, Eiden’s plotting is often lazy, with some of his books, like #7: The Ice Goddess, given over to inordinate padding. But then sometimes he’s capable of greatness, as in #9: The Deadly Cyborgs.

Fortunately, Operation Weatherkill is Eiden on a good day. He keeps the action moving and the padding to a minimum. Sure, there’s stuff that could’ve been cut, but that’s typical for this series. Even at 159 pages (of small print), Operation Weatherkill seems longer than it really is. However it’s greatly improved by the fact that it’s the first installment since #10: The Holocaust Auction to return to the series formula of the earliest volumes: eschewing the tepid espionage plot of #11: Poppies Of Death, Eiden gets back to the series’s roots with John Eagle employing all of his sci-fi gadgetry as he takes on a world-threatening plot.

“Operation Weatherkill” is the name of a shadowy organization that’s blackmailing countries around the world with the threat of “climatic interference.” Somehow these bastards are toying with the jet stream and wreaking havoc with freak weather. America has been duly warned but the CIA, as ever, ignored the threat, and now, as the Weatherkill people are enacting their threats, it’s up to Mr. Merlin to handle things. Thus Eagle – for once described, stated as being 6’ 2”, two hundred pounds of muscle, with black hair, blue eyes, and “almost as tan as the Apache people he loved” – is sent to Stamford, Connecticut, where it rains for three straight days, flooding the city. Next he’s sent to Chicago, where the same thing happens.

The situation is explained to Eagle when he’s called back to Merlin’s HQ on Makaluha island in Hawaii. Operation Weatherkill is demanding a monthly payment of a ton of gold from the US, and possibly from the other countries as well – Merlin mentions that both Russia and Japan have also been suffering from freak weather and flooding. It was interesting reading this book when I did, as South Texas was experiencing torrential rains and heavy flooding, and even the bottom floor of the Louvre was being emptied out due to potential flooding!

Eagle heads for Madrid, where he’s to shadow the US destroyer that’s dropping off the first gold payment somewhere in the Mediterranean sea. Here Eagle becomes reacquainted with the Dolphin, his atomic-powered one-man sub, last seen in The Ice Goddess. Not sure about last time, but this time it’s specified that the Dolphin is painted bright yellow; perhaps its inventor was a Beatles fan. And while Eagle spends a few pages learning how to use a fancy new tracking gizmo on the sub, it’s nowhere in the realm of padding Eiden delivered in that earlier volume, to the point that Operation Weatherkill positively zips along in comparison. Indeed Eagle even brushes off more training, claiming how short time is.

Tracking the dropped-off gold to the island of Svete Hvar, off the coast of Yugoslavia, Eagle and the Dolphin are almost destroyed by depth charges dropped by enemy ships. Eventually Eagle will learn that the island is owned by Turkish billionaire Ferit Sunay, the man behind Operation Weatherkill. First though Eagle is almost arrested by secret police, only to be saved by a “beautiful blond” in a string bikini who acts like she knows him. Her name is Julie Anders and she claims to be Canadian, of Yugo-Ukranian heritage, but Eagle is certain she’s KGB . She also claims to be a nymphomaniac; “I want some sex when we get back to the hotel,” she instructs Eagle while they’re out on her catamaran – not that Eagle obeys her (more of which below).

Julie catches Eagle up on Ferit Sunay and the citadel he rules the island from; for her part, Julie suspects Eagle of being CIA. Like a regular pseudo-Bond villain Sunay stocks his ancient castle with legions of armed henchmen and guard dogs. Eagle, armed only with a knife, tries to survey the place one night, only to nearly get killed by the dogs; he’s saved by Julie, who appears brandishing a bow and arrow. After an interminable escape (the novel is filled with scenes of Eagle and Julie sneaking through the woods as they try to evade Sunay’s men), Eagle and Julie kill off a few more goons, Eagle slicing throats and Julie scoring kills with her arrows; she compares herself to Diana of the hunt. After this it’s time to get back to the hotel for some of that much-delayed sex.

Eiden as ever delivers the most explicit sex scenes in the series, yet this time it takes him a while to get to the good stuff. For some strange reason Eagle isn’t as prone to mixing business with pleasure in Operation Weatherkill, to the point that he even turns down sex from a sexy Spanish maid who slips nude into his bed one night in Madrid, offering herself. Eagle politely turns her down, not wanting to cause any “sexual jealousies” in the small Madrid-based group he’s working with, given that she’s the only girl there, and all the men are clearly lusting after her. And when Julie Anders first gets Eagle into to her hotel room and eagerly strips off both their clothes, Eagle kicks her in the ass(!) and tells her, “Next time, wait until you’re asked,” before storming off!

However when Eiden gets to the novel’s one and only sex scene he spares no details, with a two-page sequence featuring almost textbook documentation of each and every act: “Eagle slid the head of his shaft between the lips of her vagina and placed himself in her.” The same goes for the immediately-following round two: “She began the pulsing contractions of her vagina which would harden his shaft a second time.” (Hey, those are my favorite kind of contractions!) Eiden is also fond of exploiting the ample charms of his female characters; Julie for example must be nicely stacked, as within the first half-page of her introduction her breasts are described as “heavy,” “meaty,” and “bulging.” Julie is probably the best female character in the series yet (well, either her or the Sue Shiomi-esque Orchid Yang in #8: The Death Devils), and not just due to her breastesses; one can’t complain about a sexy KGB agent who enjoys killing her prey with bow and arrow.

She’s also handy with a submachine gun, carrying one in a big leather purse. Having admitted she’s KGB, Julie also acknowledges that the two men shadowing Eagle in the hotel are her comrades. The three decide to join forces to stop Sunay; Julie and team have come to Svete Hvar because the KGB was tracking the Yugoslavian climatologist Sunay is now using for the Operation Weatherkill satellite. The final sixty pages are mostly action, starting with Eagle, having gotten his plastic suit, dart gun, and explosives from the submerged Dolphin, getting in a fight with a pair of frogmen. Here we learn that Eagle’s C02 gun apparently works underwater, as does his suit’s chameleon device – as mentioned, this volume sees the return of all the gadgets that have been denied us in the past few installments.

Eiden doesn’t exploit the violence factor as much, though we do get occasional mention of the backs of heads getting blown off by Eagle’s darts; as ever in Eiden’s hands, the Expeditor goes for head shots. Eagle and Julie kill a slew of Sunay’s men here, as Eagle, chameleon unit activated, slips like a regular Predator onto Sunay’s boat and begins killing off the men who have surrounded Julie’s catamaran. Meanwhile Julie pulls out that subgun and blows off the heads of unarmed men, her “legs spread” as she wields the weapon. (Someone at Pyramid liked this phrase so much that they even used it to describe Julie’s fighting stance on the back cover!)

The climax becomes a bit muddled, as is Eiden’s wont. After some more action and chasing, Eagle and Julie spend too many pages foraging through the woods in the pre-dawn hours, trying in vain to meet up with Julie’s two comrades on the slopes of the cliff upon which Sunay’s castle looms. It goes on and on, not helped by the fact that Eagle watches through field glasses as the two KGB men get in a running battle with Sunay’s forces. Things finally kick in gear when Eagle and Julie storm the castle grounds. The “steel-vaned flechettes” fly fast and furious from Eagle’s C02 pistol as he kills a bunch of henchmen, Julie blasting them apart with her submachine gun – Eagle certain now the girl is a “thrill killer,” clearly enjoying herself too much.

Sunay is given a perfunctory sendoff; after killing several random soldiers Eagle and Julie break into Sunay’s private quarters and Julie guns him down just as he’s gotten out of bed with his mistress! More focus is placed on the climatologist Sunay’s used to create the Operation Weatherkill satellite; Julie wants to take him back to Russia to work for the Soviets, whereas Eagle argues that they don’t have the time or the resources to drag the old man back down the mountain. (The scientist takes care of the problem for them, offing himself with a handy cyanide pill.)

Julie’s thrill-killing reaches absurd proportions in the finale, with the KGB agent acting out of character as she suddenly runs around shooting down everyone, arguing with Eagle that “this is war.” As expected her own thrill-killing proves to be her undoing, shot down by a machine gun crew as she lobs some of Eagle’s “new purple grenades” down at them. I love the fact that Mr. Merlin has equipped his Expeditor with purple grenades, but one wonders what happened to the explosive vials Eagle used in the earliest installment. Ultimately it’s of no concern, as Eiden quickly wraps up Operation Weatherkill, with Eagle, having blown up Sunay’s entire citadel, safely escaping to the still-submerged Dolphin.

Speaking of Mr. Merlin, Eagle’s mysterious employer, he appears only briefly in the opening pages, per series formula, yet he is as memorable as ever in those few pages. Strangely though, these pages feature a clueless Merlin asking his honcho Samson a bunch of questions, whereas typically it’s vice versa. Eagle too is slightly different in Eiden’s hands. While he’s aggressively macho in the installments of Manning Lee Stokes and almost a monosyballic assassin in those of Robert Lory, in Eiden’s hands Eagle is more prone to self-doubt and concern. He also lacks the casual misogyny of Stokes’s version; when Julie is worried about her missing comrades and keeps looking to Eagle for guidance, our hero patiently consoles her. It would be hard to see Stokes’s version of Eagle showing such compassion. And Eiden’s John Eagle is more merciful; when Julie gleefully guns down those unarmed men on her catamaran, Eagle tries in vain to stop her, arguing that killing them would be meaningless.

And that was it for Eiden on John Eagle Expedtior, but then, there was only one more volume of the series to go, anyway. Eiden only wrote four installments (Stokes and Lory wrote five each), and they’re wildly disparate: The Ice Goddess had awesomely lurid potential but squandered it with a few hundred pages of padding until things sleazed up for a great but rushed finale; The Deadly Cyborgs, with its crazy plot of biomechanical yetis, was one of my favorite volumes in the entire series; Poppies Of Death seemed to be an installment of another series and came off like a boring espionage drama with little action; and finally Operation Weatherkill, which sort of melded the sci-fi plots of Eiden’s first two installments with the espionage fare of Poppies of Death.

As another overlong review will attest, I’m a total geek for the John Eagle Expeditor series. I’m having a hard time accepting the fact that the next volume is the last one.

Spykill

Spykill, by L.W. Blanco
No month stated, 1966  Lancer Books

I had no idea when I picked it up, but Spykill turns out to be the work of veteran hardboiled writer Lionel White, who six years earlier published the heist thriller Steal Big. I’m not sure if White wrote this one as a contractual obligation or to pay off a debt or even just for booze money, but surely it must’ve been written at least partly in jest, as evidenced by the goofy pseudonym he used, sort of a Spanish play on his name.

Cashing in on the mid-‘60s James Bond craze, Spykill features virile, tough, and ultra-wealthy secret agent Tommy Marco (identified as Thomas Jefferson Marco on the back cover) in his one and only adventure. Marco is basically James Bond meets pre-seclusion Howard Hughes. A lanky Texan with incredible wealth who owns a series of airliners, businesses, and whatnot, Marco flies about the country on his own plane and occasionally helps the US government in the fight against foreign espionage. It’s never mentioned how Marco got into this, what exactly qualifies him for it, so you just have to take it for what it is: a pulpy spy yarn.

At least, for the most part it is. Betraying his hardboiled past, White still finds a way to make Spkykill come off like a Gold Medal paperback from a decade before, as halfway through Marco finds himself in Vegas, confronted by a variety of gangsters. But that’s just one of the plots. I was only joking about the “booze” above, but as I read this book I began to suspect that Lionel White might’ve had some problems with the bottle, or at the very least couldn’t figure out how to plot a spy caper. Spykill starts off about one thing, changes into another, changes into yet something else, and then quickly wraps up in a few unsatisfying pages. The one thing I can be sure of is that it was quickly written.

Maybe White just wasn’t comfortable in the spy genre – according to Will Murray in the The Armchair Detective volume 15, number 4 (1982), White’s one and only contribution to the Nick Carter: Killmaster series, The Mind Poisoners (1966), had to be extensively rewritten by Valerie Moolman. Spykill was published that same year, so one wonders if this is what White’s original manuscript was like before Moolman reworked it. At any rate hero Tommy Marco is more along the lines of another Bond imitator, Mark Hood, in that he’s globally famous and uses that fame as a cover for his secret agent work. Unlike Hood Marco doesn’t have any fancy karate moves, and unlike Nick Carter he doesn’t rely on gadgets; his sole weapon is a .38 revolver, which again more so calls to mind White’s hardboiled work.

Marco when we meet him has been contacted by Greybone, Marco’s shady government contact; it’s never stated who exactly Marco works for. The complicated plotting begins here, as Greybone details how the Commies are using a small New York art museum as an info drop. In particular an 8-inch nymph statuette is being used to convey information; the original, it’s been discovered, was lead coated in gold paint, but the Commies don’t know this, and thus they have been replacing it with a replica of real gold. Apparently they’re stashing info in the statuette, and the prime suspect is an auburn-haired beauty named Carla Jason, who serves as secretary for a broker named Sigrid Winterset.

This proves to be the plot for the first quarter, as Marco meets with Winterset, claiming to want to hire him for a European deal – and meanwhile hitting hard on Carla. “Hitting on Carla” doesn’t really sum it up; rather, Marco bullies her, instantly assuming she’ll want to have dinner with him now and sex with him later. Carla bickers back and forth with him, going out on a date with Marco anyway, but spurning his advances. Later he saves her from two thugs who break into her apartment to murder her, making it look like a rape-killing; orders from Winterset’s KGB (or whatever) bosses, given that Carla’s now been compromised, or something.

The fight is again Gold Medal style, as Marco beats them around and shoots one of them. Carla sneaks off and meanwhile it’s over to the next plot, which has Marco heading to Vegas. Here, Greybone informs him, an Army sergeant working at a nearby missile base was recently killed, deep in debt at the Wrapper casino. Marco, posing as himself, hits the casino and gambles big like a regular pseudo-Bond, trying to figure out what the casino owner, a Mafia-type named DiAngelo, is up to. How these two plots intersect isn’t something White is concerned with, and you get the feeling he’s just using material left over from some earlier book.

This section’s bodacious babe is Charlene, a busty redhead who entertains at the Wrapper and is sent up to Marco’s suite with the champagne. He has her strip and gets in the shower with her, filtering out any possible bugs, trying to get her help on the recent killing. Instead Charlene sets him up and Marco himself is almost killed. The novel’s sole sex scene occurs off-page as Charlene, grateful to Marco for saving her from DiAngelo and his crooked empire, gives herself to Marco as they fly to California; Marco’s promised her a new life with a new name in Europe, working for one of his many companies, in return for her spilling the beans on DiAngelo.

Again, this Vegas stuff has nothing to do with the plot of the first half. Now Marco’s in LA and he tracks down a suspicious European-type seen in the Wrapper, a dude named Bole. When this guy, a contract KGB assassin named Harold, and none other than Carla Jason rent a boat for a three-day cruise, Marco first tails them via amphibious plane and then sneaks aboard the craft itself. Once again he saves Carla, who apparently was about to be killed, the two men meeting with a Russian sub from which a female scientist boards their boat. The idea being that the boat left port holding two men and one woman and would return the same, Carla, having been murdered and dropped in the sea, replaced by the Russian woman. Or something!

Marco apparently gets more sex-in-gratitude, though White forgets to tell us about it; next thing we know Marco and Carla are suddenly sharing a hotel room bed. Carla’s sob story has it that she fell in love with an Iron Curtain consulate guy, one wom she had a kid with, but the dude took off behind the Iron Curtain with the baby and blackmail letters began coming to Carla; if she didn’t work for Winterset and the Commies, her kid would be killed. Marco brushes all this off, assuring her the kid will be fine(!?), and finds out from her about a ranch in the Nevada desert owned by Winterset.

Given that we’re running out of pages – in true Lancer fashion, the novel is a mere 150-some pages of big print – this is where the “climax” takes place. Armed with a “machine pistol” that he doesn’t even use, Marco surveys the ranch…and is promptly captured. As is Carla, who has for no reason at all come along with him. Winterset, Bole, Harold, and all the other Commie villains are here, as are a bunch of Mafia-types. White himself appears to be confused, sometimes using the wrong names for the wrong characters.

And here Marco learns the plot – the Iron Curtain agents are about to take over that nearby missile base and launch one of its rockets at Fort Knox. With its destruction the US economy will collapse. Marco just sits there while the crooks shoot each other, and in the final pages he hits one guy and then shoots Harold. Then he makes a phone call to Strategic Air Command, or something, hoping for an air strike on the missile base. Instead, we flash forward to some time later as Marco and Carla sit on a beach, and via exposition we learn that the missiles had a self-destruct mechanism which prevented the catastrophe. The end!

Yeah, Spykill is a damn mess. It wants to be Bond but it feels more like Hammer, only in third-person, and the book is more a series of disconnected setpieces than an actual novel. Marco himself is too distant to be likable; he’s mostly a cipher, the usual virile superstud type, but his bad-assery is rarely on display. The villains are also interchangeable and forgettable; I spent the final pages hunting back in the book to confirm who was who. 

As mentioned this was Tommy Marco’s sole appearance. My copy has a hole punch on the cover, which I believe is the oldschool method of tagging books for the cutout bin. Most likely Spykill didn’t make much of an impression, lost in the clutter of other spy paperbacks of the day, and White moved on to other things.

Cybernarc #3: Island Kill

Cybernarc #3: Island Kill, by Robert Cain
April, 1992  Harper Books

The Cybernarc series continues to capture the vibe of a late ‘80s action movie with this third volume, however there’s something a bit subdued and padded about the proceedings, as if Wiliam H. Keith (aka “Robert Cain”) were losing steam. While I greatly enjoyed the first two volumes, Island Kill sort of tried my patience. 

For one, it misses the greatest feature of those first two volumes: the growing camaraderie of heroes Lt. Chris Drake and RAMROD, ie “Rod,” ie “The Cybernarc.” Their humorous bantering at times reached the level of Remo and Chiun in The Destroyer, only based more on respect and friendship than on insults. But this time Drake and Rod only exchange a handful of lines, with Keith pulling an unusual trick by keeping Drake off-page for much of the novel and making Rod the star of the show. Again Keith makes the reader forget that Rod isn’t human; only at times when he focuses his eyes on something far away or puzzles over some latest human mystery does the reader remember that Rod’s just a bunch of circuits.

But that humorous rapport is gone in Island Kill, and the book suffers. Indeed, Keith at times attempts to add a troubling confrontational aspect to their relationship, with Rod at times disobeying Drake’s orders (to save Drake’s life, that is) and Drake occasionally wondering what would happen if Rod were ever to go crazy or something and come after Drake himself. All of that heroic sacrifice from the previous two books, like when Drake or Rod would go through hell to save one another at any cost, is also gone this time. For the most part this one’s just a standard action tale with heavy anti-drug sermonizing and a robot protagonist. Otherwise it’s run of the mill late ‘80s/early ‘90’s action pulp, neutered stuff when compared to the sleazy and lurid examples of the genre from a decade or two before.

Another sign of the times is that Cybernarc is beginning to become more and more like military fiction. The men’s adventure genre didn’t completely die in the early ‘90s; it got a makeover and lost the pulp stuff, replacing it with a lot of military acronyms and SEAL team protagonists or whatever. Such is the case here, with Island Kill stuffed to the wazoo with lots of military terminology and tactics sprinkled throughout. This again makes one wonder what the originally-envisioned series might have been like, as mentioned in my review of the first volume, with the “whacked-out Vietnam vet” building his own robot to kill the drug dealers of the world. Now that wouldn’t have been military fiction! But it sure would’ve been fun.

Unfortunately, “fun” is what’s missing from this third volume. It’s all too serious throughout, starting with the kidnapping of a senator and his wife in the Bermuda Triangle and leading to one sprawling action scene after another. Part of the uber-seriousness is courtesy Drake, who as we’ll recall still suffers from the horrific murder of his wife and teenaged daughter in that first installment. I’m starting to think this was a mistake on Keith’s part, giving us a co-protagonist who is so emotionally shattered. For once again there’s absolutely no sex, with Drake razor-focused on killing drug dealers and with little interest in women given his recent nightmare. Speaking of which, Ramona Montalva, the sexy villainess from #2: Gold Dragon, doesn’t appear and isn’t even mentioned this time.

Anyway, Island Kill takes place in the Bahamas, where Rod and Drake (I always want to type “Rod and Tod”) are sent after the abduction of Congressman Rutherford. The politician has been taken captive by Carlos Ferre, a coke-paranoid drug kingpin who rules his own island empire called Pirate’s Cay. The titular “island,” Pirate’s Cay only has a few natives, most of whom are American transplants and all of whom are basically hostages here, unable to leave and forced to work for Ferre. Keith spends a lot of time jumping into the various perspectives of these one-off characters, particularly one of Ferre’s subordinates, and it comes off like what it is: padding. The book runs to a too-long 213 pages of small print, and a lot of it’s inconsequential.

One thing that returns is the gore factor, present last time but greatly reduced from the blood-drenched onslaught of the first volume. Once again Rod smashes heads apart with his bare hands, Keith gleefully detailing the cascading brains and skull-shards each and every time. Likewise the frequent gunfights are also gore-drenched, in particular the climactic assault on Pirate’s Cay, where Rod, in Battle Mod, hefts a XM-214 minigun and blasts various gunners into “red mist.” In fact the rampant violence is about the only fun factor in Island Kill, as it all has the uber-gory vibe of Paul Verhoven at his most unhinged. Again, Cybernarc would’ve made for a great film.

As mentioned Rod is for the most part the star of the show. Throughout the book he’s ditching Drake and running off to monitor Ferre’s operations, usually pulling off his own assaults in the process. But again Keith does a great job of showing how inhuman our hero is, in particular when it comes to his patience; there’s a part where Rod sneaks onto Pirate’s Cay and just sits around for a day or so without moving. Not to mention when he hooks himself to the bottom of a boat during a drug run or walks around on the seabed. This time we also get the unveiling of Rod’s latest app: Sea Mod, which is a sea sled attachment for his Battle Mod. This is briefly used when he and Drake head to Pirate’s Cay for the climactic assault, which comprises the final quarter of the novel.

Keith also includes a new subplot featuring Weston, the shady CIA rep in charge of the RAMROD project. Turns out a lot of politicians in Washington are dirty, in the pockets of the various drug lords, and they’re trying to close down “White Sanction,” ie the RAMROD kingpin-assassination operation. Otherwise Keith doesn’t pick up many threads from the previous two volumes, with more focus placed on the Pirate’s Cay characters and long action sequences. And we get a bunch of them, from an opening jungle fight in Columbia to Rod taking out scores of henchmen, including crooked cops, on some Florida docks. The action is very well handled, with as mentioned copious gore, but again it lacks the emotional connection of the two earlier books.

The novel ends with a new direction in the lives of our two heroes: White Sanction must go underground, reporting directly to the President now that it’s officially off the records and condemned by the House of Representaties as illegal. Also Drake and Rod move to Pirate’s Cay, freed from Ferre’s yoke, its natives eager to help out in the drug war. Here’s hoping the next volume reaches the heights of the first two books, though.

Danger Patrol

Danger Patrol, edited by Noah Sarlat
January, 1963  Paperback Library

Longtime men’s adventure magazine editor Noah Sarlat returns with another paperback anthology of men’s mag yarns; Danger Patrol, like the Sarlat anthology Women With Guns, is sourced from the various “Diamond Line” of men’s mags Sarlat edited (ie Male, Stag, For Men Only, etc). The four stories reprinted here are novella length, likely featured as “True Book Bonues” in their original magazine printings, and they each run to 40-some pages of small print.

Danger Patrol does not benefit from the strongest of openers. “Bar Maid Decoy for the Soviet’s Fishing Fleet Spies,” written by W.J. Saber and originally appearing in the September 1960 issue of Stag, is frankly a boring, ponderous tale that I ended up abandoning. Sorry! I tried, though. But while Saber’s writing is up to the usual Diamond Line standards, doling out a polished tale with well-crafted characters, the story was just so slow-going that I couldn’t take it. One wonders why it was chosen for inclusion in the book, let alone why it was given first place.

Occuring in March, 1960, “Bar Maid” features WWII vet Andy Balliol, a hulking, 280-pound mass of muscle who has lived in England since after the war. He goes from port to port on the North Coast, selling things to remote fishermen from his boat. The British government has bullied him into assisting MI5. Turns out the Soviets have been sneaking spies into the swarms of Russian fishermen who congregate around the North Coast, with even a submarine or two lurking outside the three-mile limit. Balliol is put aboard a fishing vessel which hides all sorts of fancy sonar gear and weaponry, his assignment to use his knowledge of the area to help out the crew in their search.

While it sounds like an interesting premise, “Bar Maid” is ultimately boring and tedious. Balliol is an aytpical protagonist, married (not that this keeps him from enjoying some illicit, off-page shenanigans with a bar maid or two), and just looking to keep his business running. I’ve never been the biggest fan of naval fiction, and ultimately that’s what “Bar Maid” is, as the crew trawls around the North Coast, daunting the Russian fishermen and trying to lure out the subs. Eventually this becomes a larger plot where the titular bar maid is used to distract the Russian spies, but by that point I’d jumped ship. Saber was a good writer, though, and a men’s mag veteran; his later story, the violent heist thriller “A Bullet For The Enforcer,” was much better.

The second story is a little more along the lines of what we’ve come here for. “The Yank Who Fouled Up Rommel’s Desert Assault” is courtesy Warren J. Shanahan and originally appeared in the October 1961 issue of Stag. What’s crazy is that Warren J. Shanahan and W.J. Saber were one and the same! Shanahan was his real name and “Saber” was one of his pseudonyms. At any rate, his talent is much better displayed in this yarn that takes place in the North African theater of World War II and calls to mind the 1920s desert pulps of Harold Lamb. Our hero is a young lieutenant named Bob Courtney who is plucked out of basic training and put into espionage training in London due to his mastery of the Arabic language, quite a rare knowledge in those days.

Courtney is another atypical protagonist for the genre; he’s untried in combat, more prone to studying Oriental languages (something he’s been interested in since childhood), but he’s still burly and studly, have no fear. In typical men’s mag style the story opens en media res; it’s November, 1942, and Courtney’s in the Sahara with a one-eyed French Foreign Legionaire named Georges Le Brun, their mission to sway the native Tuareg tribes to turn against the Vichy French. The desert warriors have given fealty to that Nazi-aligned branch of the French government, and Courtney is assigned to change their minds.

From here, true to genre staple, we flash back to Courtney’s beginnings and how he ended up here in North Africa. He’s taught Berber (Shanahan seems to think the Tuaregs and Berbers are one and the same, which is not the case) and instructed in the customs of the desert nomad warriors. After several months Courtney is sent to North Africa, where we pick back up with the opening section. Courtney’s secondary objective is to stop a “Nazi anthropologist” named Flaegler who is stirring up the Tuaregs and moving them around the Sahara for some nefarious goal. After much traveling across the desert our heroes find Flaegler and the Tuaregs; so begins a war of wills to win the support of their leader.

The Diamond Line was always sure to add some sex appeal to these yarns; soon enough the strong-willed Tuareg women, who unlike the men do not wear veils, declare a “love fest.” All the single men, including Courtney and Le Brun, must sit with the single women and praise their beauty. Courtney is paired up with foxy Menia, “[whose] beauty is known all over the desert.” But Courtney knows that much trouble can arise from having an affair with a Tuareg woman, so he keeps himself to words only, lifting lines from Shakespeare and further winning the approval of the desert peoples. It works, though, as Menia gives herself to Courtney there on the desert sand – not that we get any juicy details, of course.

The desert life stuff goes on and on, finally culminating in a fight with a jealous would-be suitor of Menia who comes after Courtney. Our hero escapes with Le Brun and Nazi Flaegler and the trio race across the desert with angry Tuaregs in tow. We get another brief action scene as they hold off a group of desert warriors, Flaegler trying to kill Courtney during the action but our hero getting the drop on him. And that’s it – “Whether his mission was successful is not directly known,” Shanahan lamely wraps up Courtney’s tale, thus bringing to end another middling story.

The third tale is courtesy Richard Gallagher, definitely one of my favorite men’s mag authors. “WW II’s Forgotten Sailor and His Desert Shangri-La” originally appeared in the January 1962 issue of Stag. It’s a little too similar to the previous story in the anthology, as once again it concerns an untried but plucky protagonist who is dropped into a hostile desert environment. In this case the desert is the Gobi and the protagonist is Navy Lt. John Mulhare, who when we meet him in May 1942 is the sole operator of “Mongolian Weather Station #1,” a remote radio broadcasting unit from which Mulhare sends weather updates to the Navy fleet.

Gallagher proves why he’s one of the better authors with a tale that featuers more sex and action than the previous two stories combined. In true men’s mag style it opens with both, as Mulhare is being bathed by his Mongolian consort, Numdah (whom we learn Mulhare had to force to bathe initially, Mongolian women being infamously dirty and unwashed), when “the Japs” launch an air raid on the village. The brief action scene also sees Japanese paratroopers dropping in just in time to get gunned down by Mulhare and the Mongol warriors.

But from there it’s to the inevitable flashback, where we see that Mulhare was dropped into the Gobi in January and had to become friendly with this tribe, led by Otan-shu, while setting up his station. Gallagher I’ve found is known for starting his stories out about one thing before veering unexpectedly in another direction. So is the case here. After the Japanese attack in May, Otan-shu orders the Mongols off, and now Mulhare is all alone. The story becomes a desert survival epic, and stays that way for the duration, as Mulhare makes his miserable way across the desert.

Mulhare eventually hooks up with another horde of Mongols, but these ones are mean and treat him like a “guest,” ie a prisoner. It’s all eerily similar to the previous tale as Mulhare engages in various pissing contests with the Mongol warriors to prove his manly mettle. He even takes another Mongol babe (off-page), not caring this time whether she’s bathed or not – Gallagher also has a strange fondness for often reminding us how dirty and smelly his characters are, particular the ladies. Unlike the previous story, though, Gallagher doesn’t even give us a big finale; instead we have the briefest of sword fights between the Mongols and some Japanese, and then Mulhare is turned safely over to the Nationalist Chinese.

Gallagher also delivers the final tale, “Blow The German Sub Pens at Adriatic Harbor,” from the August 1962 issue of Male. Not only is this the best story in the anthology, it’s also the only story that captures the theme of the book, with a misfit commando squad venturing into Axis territory to blow up the titular submarine pens. It’s my favorite story by Gallagher yet, and brings to mind his tale “Five Greek Girls to Istanbul,” which was collected in Women With Guns. And for once he opens with a storyline and sticks with it for the duration of the tale.

It’s August 1942 and Sgt. Max Jeremy is in charge of a five-man commando squad tasked with destroying the subs that are wreaking havoc on Allied convoys that supply Malta. The sub pens are located in Bari, Italy, on the Adriactic coast, built into the grottoes of a cliff base; “three hundred feet of granite armor plate covered them.” For the mission Jeremy leads Sgt. Running Horse Smith, aka “Pawnee,” who runs the radio; Dino, a demolitions guy; Gino, a mountain man; and finally Biji Salvato, “a dark-haired sweet-meat of a girl” who has somehow gotten assigned to this particular mission, mostly due to having grown up in Bari.

Gallagher puts the focus on action this time; the story opens with a lone fighter plane attack on Jeremy’s squad, in which poor Dino buys it. Even after the customary flashback, to a few months previously, Gallagher keeps the action moving, skipping over the squad’s training in London and sending them posthaste to Italy, where they first take on a German radio-directional truck. Gallagher also remembers the sex factor; however when Biji makes the expected advances on Jeremy he turns her away, fearing that her sleeping with him would cause jealousy in the group. Jeremy does get lucky later, when a nubile 18 year-old girl gives herself to him in the village the squad hides in.

But once again Gallagher dwells on how dirty and grimy our heroes are; Jeremy even encounteres the girl, Sophia, because he’s hoping to take a nighttime swim to get the stink off him. When he asks Sophia for some soap, she laughs that there hasn’t been any soap in the village for three years. But there’s more action on the way, Gallagher again well capturing the plight of a small group of commandos in enemy territory, as our heroes take on a platoon of Italian soldiers near a cemetary. By the time they get to those sub pens, Jeremy’s squad has been whittled down to three people: himself, Biji, and constantly-worrying Pawnee.

Armed with 300 pounds of airdopped nitrostarch and an 88mm artillery shell, which they steal from the Germans in another action sequence, Jeremy and team ply through the foggy harbor on a motor boat, evading the “cornstalk-thick” mines. We don’t get a big climactic shootout, though; when the Germans and Italians spot our heroes, they jump from the boat, which is used as an explosive battering ram. In the chaos of escape Jeremy and Biji are separated, but Gallagher – who arbitrarily drops into first-person narration here and there, the idea being that he is “friends” with Jeremy or something – informs us that the two were married in ’46, and indeed Gallagher even just recently visited them in New York!

Saved by a last story that redeems the anthology, Danger Patrol really doesn’t display the best material the Diamond Line had to offer. I’m certain there were much better stories Sarlat could’ve chosen. The stories here, other than the last one, are too ponderous and lack the rugged heroism expected from vintage men’s mag yarns. However the book’s still recommended for the sole fact that it actually features such yarns – it’s sure as hell a cheaper alternative than hunting down the original magazines.