Soldato #2: Death Grip!

Soldato #2: Death Grip!, by Al Conroy
No month stated, 1972  Lancer Books

The second volume of Soldato is further evidence that this series is more Parker than The Executioner, and Marvin Albert (aka “Al Conroy”) is more intent on writing a crime thriller than an action yarn. That being said, there’s actually more action here than in the first volume, as Johny Morini, former Mafia soldato (aka “soldier”), is fully set on the path of a full-time mob buster.

It’s a couple months after the previous volume, and Johnny (as Albert refers to him, likely cause it’s easier to type all the time than “Morini”) has become a hardscrabble drunk, whereas he was a driven family man in the previous volume. This is because Johnny’s wife has divorced him after losing the child she was carrying – Johnny figures the miscarriage was caused by all the turmoil she endured. So all that messy business taken care of, Albert has given us a Johnny Morini who is free to become the protagonist of a running series, with nothing to tie him down in his all-consuming quest to destroy the Mafia.

I like the setup Albert has concocted: Johnny is contacted by Riley, returning from the previous volume, where he was Johnny’s handler at the State Dept. But now Riley has gone into the private sector, and his legal services have been retained by wealthy Sicilian immigrant Pannunzio, whose brother was killed decades ago by the Mafia. Now old and enfeebled, dying from leukemia, Pannunzio wants to start dishing the Mafia bastards some payback in the short time he has left. He wants Johnny to be his one-man army and will set up a trust fund, managed by Riley, that will fund Johnny’s efforts for years to come.

Johnny debates the offer for a hot second and takes them up on it (otherwise the series would’ve been even shorter!). His first assignment sends him to Pennsylvania, where the story goes down in more rural environs than one might expect. As with the first volume, this appears to be so Albert can work in the extended “man hunted in the wilderness” setpiece he doled out in the previous book, only whereas it was Johnny hunted by two guys in the desert last time, this time it’s Johnny hunted by two guys in the woods.

But anyway Johnny when we meet up with him again has gone through the trouble of setting up his cover identity with the local yokels, posing as a career criminal looking for a big score – the novel seems to occur over a long stretch of time, at least a couple months, but Albert doesn’t much elaborate. Johnny’s target is Don Vigilante, who operates out of Philadelphia. A big failing with Death Grip is that neither Don Vigilante nor his co-ruler/enemy Don Aldo are presented as being overly evil. In fact I don’t think we ever even get a proper understanding of their criminal enterprises. But regardless, they’re Mafia scum and they must be destroyed.

Johnny becomes friendly with a hot but bitter blonde waitress named Laura who soon engages Johnny in some off-page sexual shenanigans; Albert as ever is not one to get sleazy. He does though bring in just a touch of emotional content (to quote my man Bruce Lee); Johnny drinks to forget about his ex-wife and lost child, the path his life didn’t take. To his credit Albert doesn’t schlock this up with the treacle that would be mandatory in today’s fiction; I mean, it’s not like Johnny’s sadness keeps him from banging hot truckstop tramps. Albert certainly doesn’t dwell on any treacle; Johnny sort of develops feelings for hardbitten Laura, whose ex-husband is part of the local mob, but when Johnny finds out she’s being used against her will to spy on him, he hits the road without looking back.

Instead, the crux of the novel is Johnny being hired by Don Vigilante’s men to get himself a job with Don Aldo’s men, so as to foster discord within their ranks! So basically Albert just writes a variation on the main plot of the novel itself; even Johnny must contain his laughter at this development. So Johnny poses again as a career conman looking to get a little family backup, the same bait that worked for him with Don Vigilante’s hoods. He ends up playing the two sides against each other, starting fights when the opportunity arises. A late subplot has Johnny being requested to take part in a heist run by the sadistic Doyle, known for killing cops and innocents in his jobs, not to mention losing most of his own men.

This part seems to be a fake-out – Johnny learns of the job, which involves a hit on a gem run, then says to hell with it and leaves – but comes back pages later when Johnny rips off Doyle and his sole surviving accomplice. This leads to the mandatory “men hunt Johnny” sequence, as Doyle, bearing an M-3 Grease Gun, and his equally-sadistic comrade, bearing a Garand rifle, hunt Johnny through the woods. Unlike last time, Johnny’s better armed here – he has an M1 carbine and a .38. This is a taut, gripping scene, and I’d say better than the similar one in the previous book, most likely because this one’s much shorter and thus more intense.

One thing that makes this sequence stand out is that Johnny’s a central part of it. There are too many sections of Death Grip where our hero steps aside and lets the criminals do one another away. True, it’s due to situations Johnny’s set up, but at the same time I prefer to see my ‘70s lone wolf vigilante blowing out his own mobster brains, not getting someone else to do it for him. For example there’s a climactic shootout between the two families in which Johnny doesn’t even appear. Instead, it’s back to the “tense” tip for the climax, as Johnny’s ambushed by a couple hoods who have figured out his game and have tracked him down.

This is another effective, taut sequence, playing out in a junkyard of battered and smashed cars. It’s a bit ruined by the deus ex machina appearance of a timed explosive Johnny apparently set up beforehand. But after this justice is again dealt from afar, and Albert stays true to the “Johnny Morini the shadow” vibe, with our hero “fading into a limousine” at the close of this assignment and heading off to the next one. He’s become a man without any real identity except as a mob-buster. Pannunzio, we learn in a brief epilogue, has several more missions planned for Johnny, however Albert would sit out the next two volumes (which would be courtesy Gil Brewer), not returning until the fifth (and final) volume.

And is that a tiny Al Jolson on the surreal cover being squeezed to death by the giant disembodied hand? “Mammy!!”

The Ginger Star (The Book Of Skaith #1)

The Book Of Skaith, by Leigh Brackett
May, 1974  Ballantine Books

Two decades after her last published story featuring Eric John Stark, Leigh Brackett returned to the character with this paperback original sporting an awesome Steranko cover.* It would be the first in a trilogy dubbed The Book Of Skaith, and unlike those pulp tales of the ‘40s and ‘50s, here Stark would be flung into the far cosmos, Brackett’s “Old Solar System” with its ancient Martians and whatnot now thoroughly discredited by those buzzkilling scientists.

Yet I wonder why Brackett didn’t persist, as Skaith, the outpost-esque planet which orbits the titular “Ginger Star,” is basically a stand-in for Brackett’s Mars, with a little of her Venus thrown in. More pointedly, the year before Lin Carter had begun publishing his own “sequence” of novels inspired by Brackett’s pulp novellas, Mysteries Of Mars, so if he could get away with setting tales on a now-discredited “Old Mars,” then why couldn’t Brackett? My assumption is she must’ve felt the only way for her work to be taken seriously was to cater to the style of the time, thus it was goodbye to her decadent Mars and psychedelic Venus, and more’s the pity.

But other than that…all I can say is, I’m very glad I read Brackett’s early work before reading The Ginger Star. Because the author who wrote this is a pale reflection of the author who delivered such standout novellas as “Enchantress Of Venus,” “The Moon That Vanished,” and “Sea-Kings Of Mars.” Whereas those earlier stories burned with a special kind of fire, filled with inventive ideas, fully-fleshed characters, and memorable dialog, this one is a tired, turgid trawl that endlessly repeats the same sequence of events. And shockingly enough, the characters here are practically ciphers; there was more character depth in Brackett’s pulps, all of which were half the size of this novel.

Without any exaggeration, here’s the plot of The Ginger Star: Eric John Stark will go somewhere on Skaith, meet a few cipher-like characters, exchange some exposition with them, then they’ll all get ambushed and someone will knock Stark out and abduct him. Stark will be taken along by this new group of cipher-thin characters, trading exposition with them, and then another group will spring from the woodwork, ambush them, and take Stark captive. This goes on for the entire novel. There’s even a part a hundred pages in where Stark vows to never be abducted again…which is a laugh, because he’s captured yet again not too long after!!

Or to put it another way…when I read Brackett’s pulp novellas, I was so enthralled that sometimes I found myself re-reading sections. But with The Ginger Star I found myself skimming sections.

I’m not sure how this could’ve happened to a writer of Brackett’s caliber. And certainly she returned to Stark because it was her main character – her Tarzan or Conan – so she must’ve felt some drive to go back to him after so long. In fact I’m sure she wrote the unpublished-for-decades “Stark And The Star Kings” shortly before this one, so it would appear she was planning to return to Stark for a while. And yet even that novella, cowritten with her husband, was subpar, especially when compared to her ‘40s and ’50s material, so had she just lost her mojo?

Regardless, I can’t really recommend this novel, as I found it a trying, tiring read, with little of the spark Brackett once so easily displayed. But for posterity, it goes like this – Eric John Stark when we meet up with him is headed for the distant world of Skaith, newly introduced to the galactic union, something which I believe wasn’t mentioned in those early novellas. But then, not much of those stories are mentioned at all, other than a bit more fleshing out of Stark’s background, in particular how he was raised by a sort of space bureaucrat named Simon Ashton, a character often mentioned but who only appeared in the first Stark novella, “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs.”

Ashton is central to this because he was last seen on Skaith, trying to bring the desolate, decadent, and dying world into the union, and after a couple months boning up on the planet’s culture and languages, Stark is on an interstellar voyage to find him. Not much detail on the space trip, by the way, but it doesn’t appear to last very long – another difference from those earlier yarns, where hyperspace travel didn’t appear to exist. Bracett is more concerned with the Robert E. Howard-esque setting of Skaith, which is fine by me – I’ve never much been into “hard” sci-fi that goes to elaborate lengths of explaining how things work.

When Stark arrives on Skaith it bodes well for the novel ahead; it seems like vintage Brackett, with this dessicated, ancient world and its mysterious people and Stark the mysterious newcomer everyone’s after. There’s a vintage pulp vibe when he takes on these sea creature things, almost holy monsters that the natives of course avoid due to superstition. Stark takes care of one of them with his blade. But sadly that’s about it so far as Stark’s bad-assery goes; he’s been whittled down a bit, same as he was in those mid-‘60s rewrites The Secret Of Sinharat and People Of The Talisman. Because from here on out it’s the endless cycle of Stark meeting some new people, traveling a bit, getting knocked out and captured, traveling some more, then getting knocked out and captured again.

There are interesting touches at the outset, though. Brackett initially seems to be doing a parable of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, with an indolent group of hippies called the Farers who range around Skaith and get high off illegal plants. They’re like the children or something of the never-seen Lord High Protectors, who control the planet from their hidden fortress, the Citadel; a sadistic lot called the Wandsmen are in charge of law and order, apparently serving the whims of the Protectors. Stark runs into the Wandsmen posthaste, as well as their loyal Farers: in particular there’s a fully-nude, bodypainted Farer named Bayas who has an instant lust-hate thing for Stark, trying her damnest to get him killed. But ultimately she’s one of the main characters who is introduced, given lots of narrative space, and then abruptly dropped from the text.

I almost forgot – there’s a prophecy, of course. Some native witchwoman named Gerrith has prophecized that a “dark man” from space will come and lead the people of Irnan to freedom, and he’ll destroy the Citadel, mystical home of the Protectors…it does go on. And apparenty every single person on Skaith has heard of this recent prophecy, so now everyone wants Stark, who is of course clearly this figure from the prophecy. First Stark hooks up with Yarrod, a guru who commands a “pod,” basically real hippies as opposed to the plastic fantastic Farers in that they’re more into hivemind mentality and Oneness and such and not just laying around and getting high.

But this is just another of the many unexplored elements Brackett doles out; we get an offhand statement that these pods only live a few years, implying that the members all die, but instead we get in-fighting between resident tough guy Halk and Stark. Yarrod meanwhile has of course heard of the prophecy and saves Stark from some attacking Wandsmen and Farers; he and his people are from Irnan and have come here to try to find out how to escape the planet. They eventually meet up with prophecy-spouter Gerrith, however it’s the daughter of the woman who made the actual prophecy(!); the original Gerrith has been killed by the Wandsmen due to her “false” Dark Man prophecy.

Anyway this Gerrith is a smokin’ hot blonde and she ends up being Stark’s sole bedmate in the tale…not that Brackett really gets into too much. Gerrith tags along with Stark as he makes his seemingly-neverending journey across Skaith, as does Halk and a few others who don’t do much to make themselves memorable for the reader. And Brackett’s similar names don’t help much – we’ve got Gerrith, Gelnar, and Gerd, all in the same book (one of them’s a dog, by the way). She also rarely describes anything – gone, friends, is the evocative word-painting that was so central to Brackett’s pulp masterpieces. Gone! Action scenes, when they happen, also lack the blood and thunder of vintage Brackett, though Stark does make a few kills in the book.

Stark and company make their laborious way across Skaith, moving from the coastal area into a forest area and finally into a frozen area. The Lords live remote from the people, so remotely that they are considered supernatural beings by the rank and file. Their Citadel is guarded by the large mutant telepath Northhounds, canine beasts that apparently will be featured more in the second volume. Brackett ties in Stark’s oft-mentioned but seldom-displayed “wildman” history in that, thanks to his own “animal” cunning, he’s able to break through the telepathic hold of the Hounds and challenge their leader, thus becoming the alpha of the group. He uses the beasts to run roughshod over the Lords, who of course turn out to be spindly, weak old men.

Folks it was a plumb beating getting through this book. I’m sorry to say it. I love Leigh Brackett, you all should know that. I’m new to her work but by damn I rank her as one of my favorite writers of all time, ever. But The Ginger Star makes it clear that there was a huge difference between 1950s Brackett and 1970s Brackett. The author of this book comes off like someone desperately trying to mimic that earlier, superior author’s style, and failing miserably. Here’s hoping that the next two books are better.

*Steranko’s cover painting is actually of a barbarian character of his own creation, but the story goes that when Leigh Brackett saw his artwork – probably on the cover of Comixscene #5 (July – August, 1973) – she declared it the greatest representation of Eric John Stark ever, and was able to use it for The Ginger Star. Steranko went on to do the covers for the next two volumes, but as you’ll note Stark looks a bit different on them. Also it’s worth noting that on none of the three covers does Stark have the “sun-blackened skin” Brackett always made a point of mentioning.

Donovan’s Devils #1: The Assassination Is Set For July 4...

Donovan’s Devils #1: The Assassination Is Set For July 4..., by Lee Parker
No month stated, 1974  Award Books

The cover blurb of this first volume of Donovan’s Devils proclaims it an “action-packed fighting series,” but folks don’t you believe it. Action is sparse, and the novel, a deceptively slim, slow-moving 160 pages, is more concerned with plot and character development, introducing too many characters – and detailing their backgrounds – for such a short book.

According to Hawk’s Author’s Pseudonyms, Donovan’s Devil’s was the work of Robert H. Turner. However Brad Mengel in his Serial Vigilantes credits an author named Larry Powell, who also wrote The Liquidator for Award. I suspect Brad is correct; I’ve never read Powell, and I’m no expert on Turner, but The Assassination Is Set For July 4 doesn’t read like anything I’ve read by him. There’s no spark to this one, and the novel seems to have been written by someone who wasn’t certain what exactly was expected of him. I mean folks I’m not kidding, the “action” doesn’t even start until page 119, when the unwieldy seven-man team choppers into Paraguay to prevent the titular assassination…and even then it’s a while until the fireworks get going.

Judging from this first book, one can see why Donovan’s Devils only lasted three volumes. Hopefully the next two volumes will be quicker-moving, because this first one does the heavy lifting of introducing the members of the team and putting them all together into a unit. But clearly I think there was some confusion about this whole project – the Devils, we gradually learn, all worked together a few years ago in ‘Nam, snatching a Chinese officer from VC forces…and this is the event depicted on the cover! Indeed Powell focuses so much on that ‘Nam mission in copious flashbacks that you wonder why he didn’t just make it the plot of the novel; as it is, the reader feels as if he’s missing some earlier installment.

The action opens in Paraguay, as local terrorist leader El Tigre captures the US ambassador, his expectedly-hot young daughter, and a doctor who unbeknownst to Tigre is actually up for the Nobel, and thus a valuable captive in his own right. El Tigre, accompanied by his former madam-turned terrorist sidekick Maria (who provides the novel’s few sex scenes), sends his demands to America. The President calls in old asskicker Brigadier General Brick Blaine, who oversaw that “impossible mission” in ‘Nam a few years ago in which he put together a group of Army misfits, some of whom were even in jail, and ran the aforementioned Chinese officer mission. So for whatever reason, the President wants this whole El Tigre thing to be handled the same way.

Blaine then calls in his personal asskicker – Captain Jim Donovan, who when we meet him is conjugating (rather non-explicitly) with his fiance. He’s about to get out of the service, but when Blaine’s call comes in Donovan can’t deny his purpose and tells his fiance so long. He and Blaine reconvene in Virginia and begin the laborious, page-consuming task of putting together their team of misfits, which is in no way, shape, or form to be confused with the Dirty Dozen, because there are only eight of them. They are, straight from the back cover:

Humorously, there’s actually another member, one who didn’t make the “back cover cut:” PFC Nathan Carey, cowardly but arrogant, hated by the other men. In particular he and Irwin have a heated rivalry. But this dude has zero skills, other than being able to mimic other voices(!). Why he was included is anyone’s guess, but so far as the plot goes he volunteers for the mission, as he figures whoever saves the captives will become famous. But as you can see, there’s nothing special that unites these guys, and none of their specialties actually factor into the plot, which I’d say is more evidence that Powell really had no idea how to write this book. My assumption is the publisher came up with the series title and perhaps even the character names and specialities, and then hired the wrong ghostwriter to tackle it.

There’s no training involved, as all members are on active duty, so at least that’s one part of the cliché Powell doesn’t dole out; instead, it’s almost casual – the team is introduced one by one, we get somewhat-egregious rundowns on their histories, they’re put together at a base in Virginia, and Blaine and Donovan brief them. The final quarter is where all the action occurs; they chopper into Paraguay and hump it through the thick jungle to the old plantation El Tigre uses for his base. Three of the Devils get injured right off the bat, ambushed at the landing zone by El Tigre’s men. There’s also a crocodile attack as they make their laborious way through the jungle.

The climactic firefight is a bit tepid, unfortunately; Powell isn’t much for violence. This is very much a “get shot and fall down” kind of book, with none of the outrageous gore I demand in my violent pulp fiction. Donovan becomes so concerned with rescuing an undercover agent (a hastily-introduced eleventh hour subplot) that the rescue of the three “main” captives is almost perfunctory, as is the sendoff for El Tigre. But the mission is a success, and the President deems that “Donovan’s Devils” will be needed for more missions – little does he realize that there will only be two more.

And here’s Zwolf’s review.

The Cop-Killers

The Cop-Killers, by Steve Scott
No month stated, 1972  Manor Books

“We got a new manuscript from that book packager guy, Lyle Kenyon Engel. Somethin’ about commie terrorists killin’ cops. Waddaya think we should do for the cover?” 

“Lemme think a minute…okay, how about a closeup photo of a hand on the ground, with a broken bottle beside it, so you get the idea this poor bastard just got his clock cleaned…and we’ll have a cop hat lying there with the badge showing, so you know it was a cop. And a bunch of blood everywhere, so you know he’s dead…maybe some bloody gobs of brain matter, too.” 

“I love it!...Hey, you wanna do Chinese for lunch?”

              -- Possible conversation in the offices of Manor Books, 1972

One of the earliest novels published by William Crawford, here posing under yet another pseudonym, The Cop-Killers was part of an obscure “series” book producer Lyle Kenyon Engel created in the early ‘70s titled “The Now Books For Today’s Readers.” I’ve only been able to discover four books in this series, and three of them were written by Crawford under various pseudonyms: The Wasters as by Bill Williams (Macfadden Books, 1972), The Dynamite Freaks as by Donald Ryan (Manor, 1972), and this one. (The fourth, High Heaven by Peter Harmon, is also from Manor in ’72 but it’s so scarce I have no details on it…but Justin Marriott has a copy! Per the Catalog of Copyright Entries “Peter Harmon” is also a pseudonym, so it might be Crawford again.) Like other Engel productions, this series started life at Macfadden-Bartell but went over to Manor when Macfadden folded.

The so-called “Now Books For Today’s Readers” were basically the same as the standalone crime paperbacks Engel would later “produce” in the ‘70s, so I’ve tagged them thusly for convenience. They’re really the same thing: for the most part, lurid crime thrillers featuring older, right-wing cop protagonists. Actually The Wasters is about the My Lai massacre, but in that regard it’s similar to another standalone Crawford later wrote for Engel, this time under his own name: Gunship Commander (Pinnacle, 1973). It appears, judging from the blurb in The Wasters, that the “Now Books” were intended to capitalize on the affairs of the day, to seem so timely that they were hot off the presses, as it were.

This is clearly indicated by the plots of The Cop-Killers and The Dynamite Freaks, both of which concern left-wing hippie terrorists sticking it to the Man. But given that Crawford was the ghostwriter chosen for the job, it’s a safe bet we won’t get a peek into the minds of these terrorists, to see what makes them tick. As ever, Crawford’s “hero” is a hardcore cop who is such a bastard even his fellow cops despise him. He’s also part of an older mindset, and doesn’t cotton much to all this progressive liberal bullshit that’s soiling society as we know it. As for the hippie terrorists, they’re heroin-addicted bloodthirsty freaks who make Antifa look like the Hare Krishnas.

We already know our protagonist, Lt. Warren “Web” Burnell, is in for a hellish time when we meet him; the novel opens with Burnell nude, shackled, maimed and beaten, the punching bag of a muscle-bound sadist named Clacker. All we know is Burnell’s gotten into this predicament because he was taking things “personally.” At length we’ll learn that Burnell, a Korean War vet, is the chief (and sole officer) of his city’s Intelligence Unit, and he alone suspected that this rash of cop-killings around the country was part of a plot. His bullheaded research has led him here, captured by the very people he has been seeking.

Curiously, Crawford never tells us where all this takes place – he just keeps referring to it as “the city.” It’s clear it’s near the Mexico border, so one can assume it’s in New Mexico, familiar Crawford stomping grounds, as demonstrated by Stryker. But we know the city is large enough that it requires it’s own police intelligence unit, and Burnell, we learn via the usual Crawford arbitrary-backstorying, has been placed in charge of it because his fellow cops hate his guts and they want him out of their hair. Why? Because Burnell bucks authority and resents the spineless twits who run the police department, all of whom are more concerned with politics than protecting the people. 

And speaking of which, Crawford displays all his strengths and weaknesses throughout the text; any character, no matter how minor, is given inordinate setup and background material, and the background stuff is almost brazenly shoehorned in with absolutely no regard for narrative flow. Different characters are given similar names: Bennie, Berny, Burnell. We’re “treated” to abritrary “cop world” details, usually relayed via overlong flashbacks to cases Burnell worked on in the past. But then flashes of ultra-sadistic violence will come out of nowhere, with at one point even a character’s eyeball getting knocked out by a chain and dangling there by threads of muscle. Not to mention Crawford’s strange focus on characters shitting themselves – at least a few of them, including Burnell himself, soil their drawers before the book ends.

But as I’ve mentioned before, what makes all this sadistic shit so strange is that Crawford is unwilling to use the word “fuck.” To me this is actually creepier than anything, and perhaps an indication of this guy’s strange personality…I mean, he’ll use racial slurs (brace yourself for the dreaded N-word), feature scenes of rape and torture, and have characters shit themselves, but he writes “F –” instead of “fuck” every single time. It’s just bizarre. I mean why draw the line there? And for that matter, there’s no sex, also as usual for Crawford, other than that rape bit, which is part of another of those overlong, arbitrary backstories; it’s his model girlfriend Robi who was the victim, one guy “in her” and the other burning her with a lit cigarette, and Burnell stomped the two to pieces, killing one in the process, and thus met Robi, who later became his on-again, off-again girlfriend. 

Other than the flashback stuff, which ranges back over the years, the main plot of The Cop-Killers occurs over a few days. Cops are being massacred around the country, but “Jesus Edgar Hoover” of the FBI insists it is not a conspiracy. So too does the lily-livered chief of police in Burnell’s city, even after a couple of his own cops are shotgunned to gory pieces in an ambush. Burnell bucks authority and tracks down leads…but humorously, it’s all practically handed to him by Robi in some of the laziest plot-developing ever; basically, Burnell visits Robi and mocks her reading habits, and this ultimately leads him to the cop-killing terrorists!

Robi, hotstuff member of the jet-set, is a big fan of the “spy thrillers” of Millard McKinna, which sound awful but regardless are huge sellers – left-wing diatribes narrated by a spy for hire, with simple plots, capitalist villains, and “America is rotten” themes. McKinna is the pseudonym of Keith Ross, a liberal college professor (redundant term, I know) who lives, wouldn’t you believe it, right here in the city, and is so famous students fight to be in his classes. He lives in a secluded, gated and guarded community called Picana, and Robi was recently at one of his parties, hence the latest signed book on her shelves which sets Burnell off.

But Robi says maybe McKinna’s gone too far, as at this party a group of people were talking about the cop killings and they were all laughing and excited, and Robi’s certain McKinna and his crew, including a big guy named Clacker and a nuts-looking gal named Margo, are somehow involved with the murders. Burnell decides to investigate the whole lot of them. We get another Crawford staple: the interrogation-torture, as Burnell captures and beats around a hapless punk named Berny who has taken up with the terrorists. But Burnell kind of pities the kid so this part doesn’t have the merciless brutality of similar scenes in Crawford’s oeuvre.

Unfortunately, McKinna doesn’t get much text time – he is as expected small and wimpy, and spreads his left-wing, anti-cop, “power to the people” invective from the safety of his heavily-guarded mansion. (Crawford understands that hpocrisy is always lost on these types – the book is certainly timely in that regard!) Rather, big brawler Clacker comes off as the main villain, though late in the game Crawford changes his mind and brings in psycho-babe Margo, who turns out to’ve pulled the shotgun trigger at a few of the massacres, so eager to kill cops that she’s willing to take out her own comrades if it means she’ll get a chance at killing Burnell.

The novel, which runs 160 pages, quickly builds toward the incident it opened on: a captured Burnell, naked and in chains, captive of Clacker and Margo, his “insides busted” from merciless beatdowns. His left ear in particular is cauliflowered beyond repair, and Clacker continues to beat on it, sending Burnell into shamelss crying, puking, and shitting fits. As Zwolf said, Crawford’s work is almost “scat-porn” in that someone’s always “evacuating” at some point in his novels. Then Margo comes in, shotgun at the ready and crazy eyes fixed on Burnell, and our hero tries to use their insane, drug-addled impulses against them.

There isn’t much action per se in The Cop-Killers; indeed, all of it’s in the final pages, which features as mentioned a chain to the eyeball, someone getting shotgunned in the arm, another person being forcibly OD’d, and another shotgun blast to the chest at point-blank range. But Crawford leaves too many threads dangling. McKinna never returns to the narrative, and we only learn via dialog that he and his comrades will eventually be killed by their own kind, thanks to the disinformation Burnell managed to plant in their terrorist network – and Burnell’s not going to do a damned thing to save any of them. In fact he displays his hardcore makeup in a memorable finale in which he basically gives the kiss of death to someone he trusted, someone he’s only just learned was part of the terrorist group.

Overall The Cop-Killers was a quick, mostly satisfactory read, but it just wasn’t any fun…and it only now occurs to me that this is true of all the Crawford books I’ve read. None of them have the fun, escapist nature I demand in my lurid pulp yarns. They’re brutal and sleazy, sure, but there’s just something too nasty about them. Or maybe it’s just the arbitrary backstory page-filling and sloppy plotting that sets me off. (Or maybe it’s just the disgusting cover?) But at least this time such stuff is toned down a bit, likely because this one’s a good 20-30 pages shorter than the others of his I’ve read – the lower Crawford’s word count, the better the novel.

The Vigilante #4: Chicago: Knock, Knock, You're Dead

The Vigilante #4: Chicago: Knock, Knock, You're Dead, by V.J. Santiago
May, 1976  Pinnacle Books

Three short weeks after the first volume and two days after the previous one, antihero Joe “The Vigilante” Madden heads to Chicago, where he can kill more criminal scum. At this point Robert Lory wants it to be clear that Madden is nuts; whereas before Madden at least made gestures toward protecting society and the like, now he’s practically a thrill-killer. This time his stated goal is to kill FALN terrorists who are targeting banks, but the somewhat messy plot has him ultimately taking on the merciless crime boss who finances them.

Madden’s back in New York for the first time in a few volumes, and we get to see how his coworkers at the engineering firm are just as casual about that whole “sorry your wife was brutally murdered” thing as ever. Instead it’s all about the job – Madden’s to be sent off to Chicago to help another client, a bank that’s looking for tips on video surveillance. Also, shortly after this Madden will be sent to Detroit, so we’re given a hint of where the fifth volume will take place. I’d imagine then that at this point Lory felt comfortable enough that the series would continue, thus was planting seeds for future installments. Unfortunately, the next volume would be the last!

This is most apparent in a subplot featuring Sgt. Leo Delancy of the NYPD, returning from the first volume. Delancy is the cop investigating the murder of Madden’s wife, the trio of punks who did it thus far having eluded capture. Delancy calls Madden into the station because his credit card, stolen that night, turned up, and Madden checks out a lineup to see if any of the men on display are the ones who killed his wife and stole his wallet. None are, however Lory here appears to develop a thread that Delancy might be coming after Madden himself.

Humorously enough, Delancy casually discusses the pile of cases he’s working on – one of which happens to be the stuff that went down in the second volume. This is because Madden has been doing his vigilante work with the same revolver he appropriated in the first volume, not realizing the bullets he left behind would eventually be matched up. Delancy tells Madden that whoever did all the killing in New York and Los Angeles surely wasn’t a professional, as a pro wouldn’t be stupid enough to use the same gun across the country. It’s not hinted that Delancy suspects Madden, but it’s definitely a setup for future developments.

Madden finally dumps the .32 in the Hudson and bullies an underworld fence to rassle him up some new guns. He still has the Mauser from the second volume, but this is a ‘70s crime novel, so a revolver is demanded; the fence gets him a .38 Colt, which Madden doesn’t like as much as he did the .32. We get more of those flashbacks to simpler times when Madden simply hides the guns in his check-in luggage for the flight to Chicago. Lory proves again he’s a savvy men’s adventure writer, not wasting much of our time with the whole “engineering” schtick; Madden appraises the situation, learns about recent FALN terrorist bombings in the Chicago area, and helps out with video surveillance setup.

Instead the focus is on Madden hunting down the terrorists on his own, but here Knock, Knock, You’re Dead sort of loses its way. That being said, this one’s pretty sleazy at times, so it has that going for it. This is demonstrated posthaste, as Madden follows a teenaged FALN bomber back to his place, makes him call his superior to arrange a meeting, and then blows the kid away. Later Madden stakes the meeting place out, watching from a dive bar where the blonde bombshell waitress, a former hooker named Jean, gives him free booze and makes interested remarks. Apparently that horrific scar Madden has across his face is quite the turn-on for certain women.

This unexpectedly leads to the novel’s first sex scene, and the most explicit one yet in the series – but not with Jean. Madden sees a sexy hispanic gal wandering around the meet place, then abducts her, takes her to a sleazy hotel, and starts slapping and punching her around for info. You guessed it, folks, this turns her on good and proper. Before you know it, she’s naked and begging Madden to do her. This he does, for a few pages of graphically-depicted sexual a-happenings, Lory actually detailing back-to-back bangings, like this was The Baroness or something. He also works in the “man’s conquest” theme he explored in the John Eagle Expeditor entry The Glyphs Of Gold, which also featured a sexy Hispanic babe “challenging” the hero’s masculinity by seeing how long he could last in the sack – or, as Lory puts it, “to see who drains who.” Of course, just like John Eagle, Joe Madden proves his worth, and then some.

Madden is increasingly becoming the most obnoxious “hero” in men’s adventure fiction; after boffing the girl, Juana, into wilting submission, he gets more info out of her about her FALN comrades – and when she relays that her kid brother was recently murdered, Madden happily informs her that he was the one who pulled the trigger! Also throughout the novel he bullies and bosses people around, even beating Jean’s boss at the restaurant to a pulp when he goes back there later on and insists she drop everything, walk out of her job, and go to a nearby hotel for some quick sex(!). Also, I wondered why Lory named his sole two female characters so similarly (Jean and Juana), but figured it must’ve been like a theme or some other sort of literary trick that escaped me. But the two characters never meet so it doesn’t get too confusing.

Part of Madden’s assholishness is just a play; for some reason he decides to bluff it that he’s a Mafia rep, and he’s cornering these FALN bombers because they’re hitting property that belongs to his “family.” It’s kind of goofy, but the terrorists, just kids, go for it. It gets even goofier when Madden meets the chief bomber in a park and bullshits the kid that he, Madden, has a sniper hidden in the distance with a bead on the kid’s head, and one wave of Madden’s hand and it’s bye-bye commie terrorist! But here’s where things get sloppy. The terrorist is really looking to branch out of the whole commie thing, and to auction off his bomb skills to the highest bidder, his most recent employer being a shady entrepreneur named Jake Pontis.

So we’ve bounced all over the place at this point – including even arbitrary bits where Madden goes out into the nighttime city to randomly kill creeps and crooks – but Lory has now settled on Jake Pontis, not the FALN, as being the main threat Madden’s up against here in Chicago. But here his bullshitting technique doesn’t work out. In the novel’s most tense sequence, Madden tries to bluff Pontis with the usual syndicate stuff, when Pontis immediately calls him out on it and declares that Madden’s just a phony, one whose time it has come to die. Then Madden finds himself in a desperate fight against a couple thugs and crooked cops, but it’s all in a pitch-black park and relayed more via the tension and fear than slam-bang action.

A recurring idea in The Vigilante is that Madden gets by on luck, but at this point it has worn a little thin. He of course manages to escape the park ambush but it’s really because the villains decide to turn on each other. At any rate it leads to another tense sequence, where Madden corners the FALN bombers, including Juana, while they’re on a job. Here Madden displays his cold roots, in particular so far as Juana is concerned. But still, something is lacking here, and I’m pretty sure it’s because Madden just doesn’t seem as driven. He’s out there killing crooks with the best of them, but there’s just no impetus for him to even be here – I mean this guy’s gone up against muggers and rapists and white slavers; why’s he suddenly taking on a big-time crook who plans to bomb his own factories for insurance payoffs?

But at least there’s a nice sleazy vibe throughout (even down to off-hand weird stuff like Pontis being described as looking “like a girl-type bitch”). Madden also finds the time to shack up with Jean, and here Lory builds up a growing relationship between the two, with Madden even wondering if he’s falling in love. It’s to Lory’s credit that, while he goes the expected route of Jean being abducted in the final pages, he doesn’t deliver the expected Death Wish-esque payoff. Instead, Madden gets to play the hero, and while it’s just him up against two thugs, it still packs more tension and entertainment than the typical “one man army” action scenes of the men’s adventure genre.

Overall I enjoyed Knock, Knock, You’re Dead, same as I have the other entries in the series, but this one seemed a bit muddled when compared to the previous books. Hopefully Madden will get back to his safe space next time. And finally, this is the first installment to feature a painted cover. Not the greatest ever, with Madden’s bizarre grimace and that massive tie he apparently borrowed from a clown. Bring back the bored-looking cover model!

Dakota Days

Dakota Days, by John Green
No month stated, 1983  St. Martin’s Press

Wrapping up my impromptu “Lennon trilogy,” Dakota Days is an overlong, too-chatty book by John and Yoko’s tarot card reader. Seriously! And it gets even goofier – the book is published under his real name, John Green, but John and Yoko knew him as “Charles Swan” due to convoluted reasons provided here. But I’ve read elsewhere it was really because John Lennon was superstitious about having another “John” in the Dakota. 

Whatever – this book is sunk from the get-go. In a brief Introduction Green states that he’s chosen “several literary devices” in his telling of the six years he served the Lennons; what he means is that he’s chosen, for some inexplicable reason, to relay at least 80% of the narrative in dialog. This means each page is filled with huge chunks of expository dialog, and the helluva it is – none of the dialog by John actually “sounds” like John Lennon. Anyone who has ever listened to an interview with John will instantly detect something off in the way Green presents his dialog…he tries to catch the turns of phrase and play on words John Lennon was known for, but it’s such a huge miss you could be reading about some other person.

And Yoko, who takes up more of the narrative, comes off even worse. Gone is the “mysterious” persona of interviews; here she’s like some chatty housewife who spends all day worrying over everything. And I mean everything. Frederic Seaman’s The Last Days Of John Lennon stated that Yoko spent the majority of each day on the phone; Dakota Days implies that none other than John Green was on the other end, fielding Yoko’s incessant stream of “disasters,” ie the innumerable mundane things she worried over. And Green’s job was to read the cards for her and provide advice.

Here’s the other huge failing of Dakota Days, perhaps an even greater one – John Green provides zero background on who he is, how he got into the occut, or even how he reads the tarot. This was such a monumental blunder I could barely believe it. Honestly, when I discovered this book existed I couldn’t read it soon enough. I imagined a book detailing John and Yoko’s vast occult interests, perhaps written in its own sort of occult style, using the tarot as a theme – Yoko the High Priestess, John the Magus, whatever. But good golly. Green not only gives no information on what the tarot is, he’s even apologetic about it; “a fistful of cardboard” being his dismissive description of it to John early in the book.

He doesn’t tell us what tarot deck he uses (Rider-Waite? Crowley’s Thoth? Or my favorite, the psychedelicized Albano-Waite?). He doesn’t tell us what kind of spreads he reads from. In fact, he doesn’t tell us much about the tarot at all. Instead, the book is mostly filled with chatty dialog with Yoko or John worrying over something, and then Green will briefly state something like “I checked the cards. Everything looked good.” And that’s it. Actual “occult” content is an out-of-nowhere supercool part where Green accompanies Yoko to Colombia where they spend a week in “Dan G’s” villa (aka Yoko’s BFF Sam Green, one of the two “Sams” Fred Seaman claimed Yoko was having an affair with). There they visit with a native witch. This whole part is like a minor grade Carlos Castaneda and I thought it was cool. (Robert Rosen briefly mentions this in Nowhere Man, but somehow as shown in my review I was under the impression John spent time with a native witch!) 

Midway through we at least learn that Green came into Yoko’s orbit late in ’74, when she was seeking counsel on how to win back John from May Pang. Otherwise Green just tells us he’s tall and obese; that’s about it for background or setup. The book starts with Green first meeting a just-returned John, in early 1975; John just back from his famous “lost weekend” with May. There’s goofy stuff here, like Yoko afraid that John’s been poisoned by May, in revenge for having left her, but Green instantly detects that this is a bullshit story John’s come up with so as to get some sympathy from Yoko. There’s also a “magic wedding” John and Yoko demand Green officiate for them, after which they begin sleeping together again.

When Yoko gets pregnant there are even more incessant worries for Green to read the cards over – more goofy stuff, like Yoko being certain that the unborn child is, despite what the doctors say, sick in some fashion. But she wants the baby to be sick or retarded, and she also wants it to be a girl, so as to be the perfect messiah for the new age or somesuch. The baby of course turned out to be a boy, Sean, and Green does relay some stuff that makes John come off worse than he did in either Seman or Rosen’s books – like the part where Yoko relays a story to Green that, during a “meditation circle” in which a nude John, Yoko, and baby Sean sat and meditated in silence, John got pissed when Sean started crying and got up and kicked him.

Instead of calling the cops, Yoko locked herself in a room with Sean…then the next day let John take the baby with him to their lakeside mansion in Long Island. You can tell this book was written in a different era, because Green, instead of being outraged, wonders if Yoko’s even telling the truth! Hell, today a woman could get a Congressional hearing on even shakier ground than Yoko’s story – I mean Yoko not only knows where and when it happened, she even has witnesses. Imagine that! But Green basically brushes it all off, instead wondering over how wise it was to let John take the baby with him. Yoko says no problem – Sean’s nanny Masako is there to protect him. I don’t believe Masako is mentioned in Seaman’s book; when he started as John’s assistant in ’79, Seaman’s aunt Helen was Sean’s nanny.

But then, John comes off as annoyingly self-involved in Dakota Days, as does Yoko. They’re both more like temper-tantruming children than millionaire rockstars, so I wouldn’t put it past John to kick a baby. Sean Lennon himself has told a story of how his dad once taught him how to eat steak with a fork, and when Sean acted “cheeky,” John started screaming in Sean’s ear so loudly that Sean had to go to the doctor. Dude, if your kid has to go to the doctor due to your screaming at him, you might just have anger control issues. Just maybe. Otherwise it’s a shame that this is one of the few memories Sean has of his dad.

Really though, John and Yoko are more annoying than offensive. For example a trip to Japan is akin to a space shuttle launch, with Yoko badgering Green for endless readings on what to expect, how to prepare, even down to what clothes to pack. Somehow Green ends up staying in the Dakota apartments while the family is gone, something he doesn’t elaborate much on; the impression is he’s there to answer Yoko’s constant phone calls. Here we also get more wrong-sounding “dialog” from John complaining about Japan, even expositing on how he does indeed like Asian women, but it’s just not the same when you’re in a country filled with them(!).

But there are interesting differences here, and I wonder if it’s a reflection of the truth or Green trying to protect his old clients. Most notably in John’s feelings toward Paul McCartney. In Seaman and Rosen’s books there’s no mistake – John hates Paul, a hatred that’s really just a mask for jealousy. Both books have John chortling over Paul’s infamous arrest in Japan, even claiming Yoko’s “magic” had something to do with it. None of that’s reflected here. Rather, John in Dakota Days feels sorry for Paul and worries over him – with a constant refrain of “Not that I care, you understand.” There’s no mention of Yoko having anything to do with the arrest. I have a suspicion this book’s the false one and Rosen and Seaman’s are more accurate, in particular Rosen’s comments in interviews of a few particular words John marked in his journal in regards to Paul’s arrest. But who knows – maybe John acted one way to Green, but felt another way in his thoughts, and the latter obviously is what his journals would reflect.

John becomes increasingly insular as the ‘70s come to a close, spending per Green the majority of 1978 in his room, rarely coming out or talking to anyone. Green must come to him to give readings. John’s interest in everything has waned, even in Sean; whereas he was deadset against Sean ever going to school, by now he basically says to hell with it, that it would be good for Sean, now 3, to get out of this crazy house. Yoko for her part is becoming more self-involved; Green finds himself more and more frustrated with her constant “what does so and so think of me” questions for the cards. This book, of all the ones I’ve read, gives I think the best indication of what John and Yoko’s relationship was really like: both were infinitely self-involved, with only infrequent periods of care for others, and thus were really only happy when they were apart.

As for John’s creative rebirth after a 1980 trip to Bermuda, it’s almost hastily recounted, as Green wasn’t there – he was with Yoko, answering her self-involved questions. Both Rosen and Seaman recount how an excited John called Yoko with his latest compositions, only to get a sort of disinterested reaction; Green relays that he was actually with Yoko on the other end, and she was more focused on her latest reading than hearing John’s music over the phone. There’s also a lot of exposition from Yoko on how she was initially attracted to Paul and how she’s sure he has always found her sexy – she asks Green to do a reading to see if this is still the case, but Green hides the fact that the cards say Paul feels the exact opposite about her!

Indeed, John’s final months are quickly passed over, and this is because Green admits he wasn’t really part of the fold anymore. With John and Yoko busy recording and then promoting their album, Green takes advantage of the down time. He does engage in a rather questionable bit where he has John paying him an unexpected visit one “chilly October evening in 1980” – the first time John’s ever visited Green, and of course just two months before he would be murdered. As the Church Lady would say, “How conveeenient.” I reckon this part is pure fiction as John exposits on how Green came into his life and helped him do various things, and how John’s been creatively reborn and now he and Yoko are happy again, and Sean’s happy, and he’s working on his relationship with estranged older son Julian, and etc, etc. It’s basically a goodbye speech, and it’s hard to believe it really happened.

Green ends the tale with a brief recounting of how John bumps into a former fan at the studio who is now an assistant engineer, then abruptly cuts to the chase with the jarring final line: “A half-hour later, John Lennon was dead.” He doesn’t detail the murder at all – in fact, the ending is so unexpected that it catches you off guard. Green doesn’t tell us what Yoko was like afterwards, or what further readings he did for her, etc. A bit of research proves why – Yoko apparently fired John Green for not having “predicted” John’s murder, thus the cushy room and board Yoko was giving him were taken away. Green doesn’t mention any of this, so it’s to his credit he doesn’t come off like he has an axe to grind, as Seaman did in his book. But it would’ve been nice for at least a postscript. After some research I’ve learned that Green wrote some tarot stuff for a magazine, but other than that all I know is he passed away some time ago.

All told, Dakota Days was the least engaging of the Lennon books I’ve read. It could’ve been much better if Green had stuck with the same sort of memoir format as Seaman. But his choice to render everything via dialog automatically results in a book of questionable veracity. Also, the book really should’ve been titled “Dakota Daze.”

The Penetrator #33: Satellite Slaughter

The Penetrator #33: Satellite Slaughter, by Lionel Derrick
September, 1979  Pinnacle Books (incorrectly states “1976”)

Despite the author’s note which proclaims that this installment of The Penetrator is based on fact, it’s clear that Mark Roberts either read about or saw the James Bond film Moonraker, which came out the same year – though given time between writing and publishing I’m wondering if it wasn’t just a coincidence after all. Regardless, this volume is very similar to the Roger Moore Bond film of that year – Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin goes into space, folks. I don’t think the Death Merchant even made it there!

As expected, there’s no pickup from the previous volume. (And another thing missing is the much-vaunted “Combat Catalog,” which appears to have already been scuttled just a few volumes after debuting.) When we reconnect with Mr. Hardin he’s sitting, bizarrely enough, in the press pen, listening to a commercial airline pilot talk about a recent UFO sighting(!). The pilot goes on to joke that perhaps this UFO is connected to the “freak weather” that’s been hammering the country, and this off-hand chance comment is the real reason why Mark is here in San Francisco.

The Penetrator is certain this freak, nonseasonal weather is the result of some chicanery on the part of some evildoers somewhere, and posthaste his wild hunch is justified – when he pays the airline pilot a visit, posing as a researcher, he finds the man murdered in his home. The killers are a pair of “Third World” types, and they’re still in the house when Mark arrives. Cue one of the novel’s few action scenes, as Mark makes quick work of one of them, but the other escapes. These hitmen are members of TWIS, a multi-ethnic spy ring made up of Communist Third World nationalities, and of course this group proves to be the main villain this time around. In other words, non-white Commies, the worst of the worst in the world of men’s adventure fiction.

Mark shuttles back and forth to DC quite a bit this time. He’s back in contact with Fed Dan Griggs, who basically hires the Penetrator to handle this threat, free to work outside the usual agency restraints. Griggs is also certain the Third World bastards have something to do with the weather, and he’s been working with some NASA folks who agree. Because it’s expected of the genre, Griggs hooks Mark up with a sexy female babe of a partner: Samantha Chase, a “rusty-haired” NASA security officer who ultimately proves to be useless to the plot, other than the expected hookup late in the game (which occurs entirely off-page!). Otherwise she just exposits on space research.

And folks, Satellite Terror is friggin’ mired in space research. Similar to the earlier installment Computer Kill in which Chet Cunningham wasted our time with endless programming code, Roberts here goes on and on about space travel and surviving in space and the like, even down to mathematical equations and calculations. This proves to take up the majority of the novel. Before that we have incredibly brief action flourishes, like Mark’s visit to a Third World agency in DC, which of course is the front for a hidden area in which leftist brochures and banners are printed for distribution to the revolutionary masses. Later Mark goes back and blows the place up. Take that, George Soros!

Early on there’s a bizarre “action scene” that’s unlike any other in the series. When tracking down leads on how these hardscrabble Third World people could even get funding for something as expensive as a space station, Mark discovers that wealthy westerners are secretly funding them. One of them is a left-wing banker, and Mark breaks into his home to grill him. Well, the guy’s entire family is there, two boys and a little girl, and Mark ends up shooting all of them with Ava, his dart gun – pretty strange indeed to see “The Penetrator” shooting an unarmed little girl with a sleeping dart. He even darts the dog! The boys put up a valiant fight to protect their dad, and Mark handcuffs them. At least he doesn’t kill their dad.

There’s also an ultimately arbitrary bit where Mark and Sam Chase go to Mozambique, again following leads. This part is developed to the point where you expect a good chunk of the book will occur here in Africa, but all told Mark is there and back within a few pages. What makes this part more interesting is it comes off like a prototype of Roberts’s later work on Soldier For Hire. Mark, under a fake name, has hired two mercenaries – each of whom are given inordinate, page-filling backgrounds – and hopes to filter out the secret TWIS base deep in the jungle. He’s begrundgingly brought along Sam. This part is kind of a waste, but it does show the merciless side of the Penetrator we don’t see very often anymore, when Mark kills two unarmed captives.

But from there it’s to deep in Texas where Mark is embroiled in some heavy-duty space training. Confirmation’s been gained that the Third World terrorists do in fact have a space station, and from there they are messing with the weather in the hopes of decimating the west. But that damn red tape still prevents any official action be taken, so it’s up to “Space Cadet Hardin” to go into space and wipe them out! Roberts tries to spice things up with the occasional action scene, like a would-be saboteur, but it comes off as bland, and the incessant exposition about space stuff doesn’t help. Roberts has done his research and by god, he wants you to know about it.

It's all cutting edge for the era, though; the space shuttle is so new it’s mostly referred to as the “Orbitter.” Mark is also trained in the newly-developed unit which will allow him to fly around on his own in space. Also here is where Mark and Sam become better acquainted; as part of a convoluted undercover scheme, Sam is posing as his wife, and Mark doesn’t waste time consumating the marriage. But as mentioned, for some inexplicable reason Roberts keeps it off page. I still feel some editorial mandate was behind the lack of sex and violence which befell The Penetrator in these later years, but hell, maybe Roberts and Cunningham just mellowed out.

Finally on page 134 Mark launches into space on the Enterprise shuttle; surprisingly, Sam doesn’t go with him. He exits on his own once they’re in orbit and pilots himself out into the depths of space, fixing his bearings on where they’ve determined the secret Third World space station to be. Roberts does not even attempt to capture the beauty of the heavens; no part where Mark looks off into the cosmos and ponders man’s inhummanity to man or other such bullshit. Nope, he just works his way through space via some calculations and figures, and that’s it. Even more incredible, Mark’s attack on the space station – that event the entire novel has been building toward – is as anticlimactic as you can get.

It’s over and done with in just a few pages as Mark uses a specially-designed “Gladiator sword” to break into the station, where he hacks up a few unarmed technicians. The villain is delivered a Moonraker sendoff, exploding as he attempts to escape. We get more space calculations and equations as Mark decides to orchestrate his own weather chicanery on the Third World itself before setting the place to blow. And honestly folks, that’s it – a quick wrapup with Mark and Sam spending some time in a Florida beachhouse.