Thursday, December 23, 2021

The Chinese Paymaster (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #18)


The Chinese Paymaster, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1967  Award Books

The mysterious Nicholas Browne, who per Will Murray in his 1982 article for The Armchair Detective was a merchant seaman, turns in what has to be the most slow-moving installment of Nick Carter: Killmaster I’ve yet read. I mean this one’s sluggish, folks, and gives Amsterdam a run for its money as the most boring volume of the series. This is strange, as the other two Browne novels I’ve read (he only wrote four of them), Operation Starvation and The Bright Blue Death, were pretty good, and featured such far-out stuff as unfrozen viking warriors(!). 

There’s no far-out stuff in The Chinese Paymaster, that’s for sure. And also this one wins the award for “most deceptively slim paperback” ever – this book’s a mere 157 pages, but boy does it have some seriously small, dense print. The thrill-lacking plot doesn’t help much with the forward momentum, either. Personally I’m surprised a merchant seaman had the time to turn out such a long book. Maybe he wrote it while bored at sea, who knows. Looking at my review for The Bright Blue Death, I see that I mentioned that book somewhat had the “realistic” vibe of later Killmaster novels, like Blood Red. Well The Chinese Paymaster is very much in that same realm, very similar to the sub-Robert Ludlum novels Jack Canon would write in the final years of the series…only with even less sex and violence. 

I kind of suspected something was up with The Chinese Paymaster when I noticed that the back cover copy didn’t give a firm understanding of what the plot was even about. We’re told about three separate incidents across the globe (a doctor being killed in China, a Green Beret squad being wiped out in Laos, and a dignitary dropping dead in a New York restaurant) and that Nick “Killmaster” Carter will be put on the case. My assumption is the poor editor at Award couldn’t figure out how to make Browne’s sluggish book sound exciting. Actually what the plot turns out to be about is Nick flies around the world as part of a charter flight, trying to figure out which of his fellow travelers is the titular “chinese paymaster.” 

Oh and misleading title alert – the paymaster isn’t even Chinese. All Hawk, Nick’s boss at AXE, is sure of is that the paymaster is getting around the world and illicitly spreading money to fund Red Chinese nefariousness. In that 1982 article Will Murray mentioned how the earliest Killmasters featured Red China in a villanous capacity, something that was gradually filtered out of the series due to the thawing of relations. Well, things have come full circle, haven’t they! Anyway we open with a long chapter in which we see those back-cover incidents play out, and then Nick’s called into Hawk’s office and apprised of the situation. Per Hawk, “The Chicom paymaster is a greater threat to Western Society than The Beatles.” But he has nothing real for Nick to go on, other than that the Chicoms have come up with the idea of shuttling their paymaster around on a charter flight…and AXE believes they’ve figured out which charter. Now it’s up to Nick to figure out who among the passengers – or crew – is his target. 

We’re in for the long haul as Nick settles into the plane – which is total ‘60s with a cocktail lounge and all the other stuff that’s been removed so they can pack in more passengers like sardines – and begins his flight around the world. We do get the pretense of action early on, as when boarding the plane at Kennedy Nick is accosted by an attacker. Nick chases him, Luger drawn, but the guy ends up getting chopped to pieces by the propellers of a plane that’s about to take off. Nick gets on board, takes his seat by an old blowhard named Pecos, and it’s off to London. Pecos blathers away – as he will for the majority of the novel, Browne almost desperately padding out the pages – and Nick fumes that his cover has already been blown. Per tradition, two of the passengers are hotstuff women, and Nick wonders if either of them could be his target: first there’s blonde bombshell Tracy Vanderlake, a jet-setting heiress, and also there’s Li Valery, a Eurasian model. 

The veteran reader of the series will immediately know that Nick will ultimately have his way with both women, and of course the veteran reader will be proven correct. But whereas Operation Starvation and The Bright Blue Death had at least some hanky-panky in them, the sexual material in The Chinese Paymaster all occurs off-page. Seriously, this is the men’s adventure novel Agatha Christie never wrote; it’s a cozy mystery in which Nick acts more like a detective, trying to figure out who among his fellow passengers is guilty. It has nothing in common with most other volumes in the series, and likely was only published because Award was determined to get several volumes out per year. It really has more in common with a mystery novel, one featuring a plane filled with red herrings. 

Our first stop is London, where Nick follows Tracy to a jam-packed club where a mod band plays. Here too Nick is shot at by an unseen assailant, and this leads to a long sequence in which he’s chased by some “teddy boys” along the docks. Tracy is abducted, but the charter flight continues on(!?), next stop Paris. Here we have another red herring bit where Nick deduces that Eurasian beauty Li is the paymaster, and indeed she is smuggling money for some commies. However as it turns out it’s against her will, and has nothing to do with the plot Nick’s trying to stop. But boy does Browne fill up a lot of pages about it. Unfortunately he doesn’t have nearly as much to say about the inevitable Nick-Li sex scene, which while inexplicit would still upset sensitive readers of today, given that Li’s one of those girls who can’t make up her mind. “Nick took her triumphantly” should tell you all you need to know about who comes out on, er, top of this particular struggle. 

We’re on page 70 and this is Nick’s first “conquest.” His first real action scene follows immediately after, as another would-be assassin slips into the room and tries to kill him. Killmaster of course turns the tables, leading to another curiously overpadded sequence where Nick sneaks the body away, dragging it along the streets as if it were a drunk friend he was helping home. Oh and have I mentioned that blonde beauty Tracy is back at this point, delivering a hard-to-buy story about slipping away from her captors, whom she assumes were just people out to ransom her for her family’s money? She is yet another red herring in a book filled with them. She becomes the sort-of female lead after this, the expected shenanigans between her and Nick also kept off-page, but she does take part in some of the action scenes. 

The flight moves on to Rome, where we have another action sequence as more would-be killers come after Nick, and then on into North Africa. Here follows a safari, in which a character is suprisingly killed off, followed by a random bit where Nick is captured by Arabs in the desert…and then is randomly saved by his plane pal Pecos…who randomly carries the shrunken head of his dead friend in his luggage(!?). With all the globetrotting in The Chinese Paymaster it occurred to me that maybe Browne did write it at sea; maybe these are all his ports of call during a particularly long voyage. We also even learn of off-page visits to Greece, and later on we’re told of another off-page visit to Japan. The narrative picks back up on the return flight to New York, where Browne clumsily stages the climactic action scene in which the paymaster is finally uncovered – an action scene where Nick doesn’t come off very well, having to go borrow a fellow passenger’s gun because he gave his up! 

But Browne’s not even done spinning his wheels; we have a second climax in which Nick deduces that someone else was really the paymaster, the brains behind it all, and this leads to a confrontation on the aiport tarmac which comes off like a retread of the earlier scene where Nick chased his would-be killer directly into the spinning blades of an airplane. About the only clever thing here is that Nick decides on a staycation at novel’s end; not that Browne uses that term, but still Nick and Li decide that it would be more enjoyable to spend a few days in Nick’s penthouse after their nigh-endless trip around the world. 

With that The Chinese Paymaster mercifully comes to a close. I had to force myself to keep reading this one. I know this is the second negative review I’ve posted this week, and I apologize for that. I mean I wanted it to be all sweetness and light on this week before Christmas, but the book was a chore to read. And pulp fiction should never be a chore to read. There’s only one Browne Killmaster left for me to read, Seven Against Greece, so here’s hoping it’s more like his other two and less like The Chinese Paymaster.

Monday, December 20, 2021

The Destroyer #17: Last War Dance


The Destroyer #17: Last War Dance, by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy
October, 1974  Pinnacle Books

The Destroyer continues to grind my gears with another volume that goes heavy on the “comedy” but light on the action. This series so far seems to me like a ‘70s variation of those annoying “spy comedy” paperbacks that populated the book racks in the ‘60s, ie The Man From O.R.G.Y. and whatnot; ostensibly packaged as action, but really more just satires. And unfunny satires at that. 

This is not intended as an insult to authors Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy; they clearly had a formula that worked for them, and they turn in novels that read super fast. It’s just that their formula is not the series I want. As I say in practically every single Destroyer review I’ve written, I want my men’s adventure straight with no chaser. The concept of Remo “The Destroyer” Williams being a “Superman for the ‘70s” (per those Pinnacle house ads) is a very cool one; I want to see him tearing mobsters and etc apart with his bare hands. But damn it all to hell, Sapir and Murphy want to write a satire, or even a spoof; the action is always secondary to the humor. And what action does happen is even usually played for laughs. Even the sex is tame; for once Remo gets lucky, and it happens off-page. 

It’s the tone that most annoys me, though. The authors want their cake and to eat it too. Thus Last War Dance (published the month and year of my birth, btw) veers from spoof to moments in which Remo’s concerned the world is about to be destroyed via a super-secret nuclear weapon. And speaking of Remo, given the “funny” vibe of the series, he and Chiun come off like total assholes. I mean, their recurring schtick is Chiun is a racist and looks down on everyone who isn’t from his tiny village in Korea, and he’s always putting down Remo, and all he wants to do is watch his soap operas. This volume adds the bit that Chiun also wants to sell out his and Remo’s services to the USSR, as the Russians better appreciate professional assassins. As for Remo, he spends the novel tossing around innocent people – his intro even features him tearing the shirt off some random guy in the airport – and he does nothing “heroic” in the course of the book. For that matter, he even plans to hand over the girl he has sex with to some people who want to kill her. 

Well anyway, Last War Dance is very much in the ‘70s mold at least, in so far as the satire goes – this one’s on the same level as The Thirteen Bracelets in its focus on making fun of races. This time it’s American Indians (or Native Americans, if you prefer), and the authors trot out all the usual stereotypes – they’re a bunch of lazy drunks, etc. There’s also a recurring “joke” that a white woman who is devoted to their cause is constantly being told by them to shut up and then getting punched in the face. (Making it worse, this is of course the woman Remo has sex with…and then plans to hand over to her would-be killers.) You all should know I’m not someone who gets worked up over accusations of “misogyny” in old pulp paperbacks, but even I got disgruntled with this shit. Ultimately though it was just another indication of how little I like The Destroyer

The novel opens making you think it will be more on the level than it really is; it’s the early 1960s and a group of military contractors are digging up missile sites in Montana. They uncover the remains of an Indian massacre and go on strike. A military general flies in and explains to them that this is pretty much ancient history: the massacre occurred in 1873, and indeed a monument will be erected commemorating the horrendous act – the Wounded Elk Masssacre. The workers go on with the dig, and then we have some dark stuff where this general has an agency hitman kill off the head contract worker on the site, and then the general kills the hitman. All to keep the location of this particular site as secret as possible. 

We then flash forward to 1973 and this general, Van Riker, is retired, under the assumption his secret is safe. There under the Wounded Elk monument he has stashed the Cassandra, a mega-powerful nuclear bomb of his own creation that could change the tide of the Cold War. It’s so powerful that it could wipe out several states if it were to be set loose. Unfortunately for Van Riker, activist American Indians are now protesting at the monument, which they intend to blow up. This could of course set off the Cassandra. Oh, and they’re not even Indians, we’re informed; many of them are young whites who are just looking for the latest activism to get involved in. The actual American Indians live across town and are too busy getting drunk and laying around and have no interest in the protests. In fact they have a serious grudge against the “fake Indians” who are over protesting at the monument. 

Sapir and Murphy skewer the sentiments of the radicals, with them going on about America being a racist country and founded on cultural genocide and etc for the TV cameras. At the same time it kind of wrankled, as how could the authors know that in a few decades such bullshit would make for the tenets of Critical Race Theory? They’re playing all this for laughs, as the “Indians” are of course a moronic lot who just want to blow stuff up and make a fuss to get on TV. Chief among them (so to speak) is Lynn Cosgrove, aka “Burning Star,” a blonde-haired actress who is known for latching on to the latest activist fads. She’s even written a book about the Wounded Elk massacre, the authors spoofing Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Lynn is the aformentioned recipient of the slaps and punches in that unfunny recurring “joke” the authors continue with throughout the entire book. Even Remo, who ingratiates himself into the temporary trust of the Indian radicals (by promising them free food and booze, naturally), gets in on the act, telling her to shut up and hitting her. Sometimes she’s knocked out, sometimes we’re informed of her “swollen lips.” It’s not funny at all and it makes you wonder how two authors could think it was. But regardless Remo does have the belated realization that he has the hots for Lynn; he notices her nice rack beneath her deerskin tunic, and at one point pulls her aside and tells her he wants to do it. This is the first I’ve ever seen Remo display a libido. He uses his Sinanju training to touch a few sensitive spots and Lynn’s very ready for the act…the entirety of which is relayed as, “And Remo made love to her.” 

The action scenes are just as nondescript. Actually they aren’t even action scenes. Once again the authors relay everything from the perspective of Remo’s victims; suddenly they’ll find thesmselves flying through the air, or getting their necks broken, or whatever. One memorable bit has Remo shoving a guy headfirst into a toilet. But then that’s the thing. Remo is super brutal here, needlessly so. He hopelessly outmatches these befuddled would-be radicals, and thus comes off as more sadistic and evil than they are. Again, this is the problem with playing everything for laughs; the bad guys don’t even seem like bad guys, and the “heroes” seem like cruel bullies. Also, given the jokey vibe of the entire novel, it’s especially hard to buy the periodic parts where Remo will worry that the Cassandra might accidentally be blown up. There’s absolutely no tension in the entire novel, and the authors’ attempt to add some comes off like half-assed catering to the imprint’s desire for an “action” novel. 

To their credit, Sapir and Murphy stick with this piss-poor setup for the entire novel; Remo tries to prevent the radicals from destroying the monument (beating and killing some of them as necessary), then spends more time trying to track down a 155 mm cannon one of the locals intends to use to kill all the radicals. And Remo isn’t trying to find the cannon to save the radicals (indeed as mentioned he even plans at one point to turn them all – including Lynn! – over to the locals), it’s just that Van Riker has informed him a cannon of such power could also set off the Cassandra. There’s also another time-filler subplot about a Russian agent who has been hunting for the Cassandra for decades, and now has deduced it’s here in Montana; he is the one Chiun considers selling the services of Sinanju to. 

Speaking of which, the Sinanju stuff is really the only thing I like about The Destroyer (even the Remo-Chiun bickering is annoying me now). This time we learn that Remo exercises entirely mentally; there’s a part where he stretches out in bed, imagines himself in a wooded area, and “runs” for several minutes, getting his heart pounding. We also get a brief explanation of how Remo was recruited into Sinanju, with Van Riker acting as the new guy being brought into the bizarre fold of CURE…but then that’s another example of the clumsy vibe of this series. Because CURE is top secret of course and anyone who learns about it must die. Once again this makes our “heroes” seem more like villains – nothing like killing off the guy you’ve been working with for the entire novel. But then again it’s a nice payoff, given how Van Riker just as ruthlessly enforced his own secrecy at the beginning of the novel. 

Anyway, Last War Dance is certainly my least favorite volume of The Destroyer yet. But then again I haven’t liked any of them. Readers of the day must’ve felt differently, though, at least judging from the cover blurb – was The Destroyer really “America’s bestselling action series?” Even more so than The Executioner?

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Sea Scrape (Mark Hood #12)


Sea Scrape, by James Dark
April, 1971  Signet Books

The Mark Hood series comes to a close with a final installment that was published two years after the previous one. According to seldom-reliable Wikipedia, Sea Scrape was originally published as The Reluctant Assassin in Australia, but that’s not correct. The cover of The Reluctant Assassin, which depicts a sportscar race, doesn’t reflect any events in Sea Scrape. And also this Worthpoint listing, archiving an old eBay listing, shows a few pages of The Reluctant Assassin, and it’s a completely different book than Sea Scrape. So then The Reluctant Assassin was just a volume of the series that never made it over to the US, same as the earlier installment Spy From The Deep. Meaning that there were 14 volumes of Mark Hood in Australia but only 12 in the US. 

As it turns out, Sea Scrape seems like an attempt at a series finale by J.E. “James Dark” MacDonnell; for the first real time in the series there’s an attempt at continuity, with previous adventures often mentioned, and supporting characters not seen for several volumes appearing again. Also MacDonnell even seems to harken back to the first volume, turning in a deceptively slim paperback that reads a lot more slowly than its brief 128 pages would imply; there’s some seriously small and dense print here. Compare to some of the more recent volumes, which were really just glorified novellas. Also the sci-fi elements of the more recent books have been toned down, again calling back to the early volumes of Mark Hood. However for the most part Sea Scrape is a retread of Operation Ice Cap (which itself was sort of a retread of Operation Octopus), only with the far-out elements downplayed. 

As with Operation Ice Cap, the supervillain of Sea Scrape wants to get his hands on a Polaris sub, but whereas the previous supervillain collected such subs, this supervillain only needs one of them. Eventually we’ll learn that the supervillain believes Western Civilization is finished, and thus he plans to destroy it and start a new civilization in its wake. (So essentially his plan is Build Back Bettter a few decades early.) Intertrust has gotten word that someone’s planning to steal a Polaris, but the only lead they have is that this person will be staying in a certain hotel in a ski lodge not far from Intertrust HQ in Geneva(!). Blair, the American head of Intertrust, sends Hood to the hotel to scope things out and see if he can determine who the mystery villain might be. (Fortescue, the British co-head of the agency, also appears in the book, furthering the “gang’s all here for the final volume” vibe.) 

While Sea Scrape is busily plotted compared to some of the more recent volumes, it certainly relies a bit too much on lazy coincidence. I mean for one the setup of the mystery villain being at this particular hotel is pretty lame. But then Hood goes there, and the first person he sees is a goatteed, mysterious man – whom we readers already know is indeed the supervillain of the yarn! This is Count Alexander Pefner, the “Satanic genius” of the cover copy, a self-proclaimed “International Zionist” who ultimately turns out not to even be Jewish, but a guy who has gotten into power by working for various governments, including at one point even the Nazis. More importantly he’s got a hotstuff daughter at his side, a twenty-something man-eater who is “one of the most beautiful and unusual girls Hood had ever seen.” This is Rachel Pefner, who ultimately will be Hood’s sole conquest this volume. 

But you can already see some lazy plotting at work here; intel just happens to know a person of interest will be at this specific hotel at this specific time, and the first person Hood sees there just happens to be the very same man he’s looking for! To make it worse, Hood basically just zeroes in on Pefner, despite no firm evidence he is indeed the madman planning to steal a submarine…and in fact, the entire novel continues on that level, with Hood uncertain until toward the very end that he has the right man. Actually in this first half Hood’s under the impression that Pefner is nothing more than an art thief, and Hood goes back to Geneva with his tail between his legs, upset that he’s let Intertrust down. This despite the fact that he’s had multiple run-ins with Pefner’s henchman, a former Navy crewman named Maitland. 

On the other hand, Hood has found the time to conjugate with Pefner’s horny daughter Rachel. But MacDonnell is very reserved this time – not that this series ever got very explicit – and everything happens off-page. About the only thing we learn is that Rachel has a quirk in that she gets turned on by violence. Before “doing the deed” she’ll slap Hood around, or try to fight him in some manner. Otherwise she’s imperious and doesn’t make much of an impression on the reader. And that ultimately is what separates Mark Hood from its obvious inspiration, James Bond. While MacDonnell turns in fast-moving yarns with just the right does of spy-fy thrills, he fails to ever really create memorable characters. Absolutely none of the villains in this series have been on the level of even a lesser Bond villain, and the female characters too fail to make much of an impression on the reader. 

But then I don’t mean to sound like I’m judging things too harshly. I mean Ian Fleming had a full year to work on his Bond novels, whereas MacDonnell was turning out several Mark Hood books a year, in addition to whatever else he was working on. But Rachel Fefner is a perfect example of how these Mark Hood characters could be so much more than what we get. She’s an imperious man-eater who doesn’t hide behind any pretenses, but she doesn’t contribute much to the tale. And for that matter, Hood pretty much leaves her in the lurch, figuring he’s wasted his time checking on Pefner and heading back to Geneva…only for Blair to suspect that Hood might’ve been onto something after all. 

Another thing that makes Sea Scrape notable is that the second half occurs in Australia, which of course is where the series was originally published. After a bit of investigation it looks like the Polaris sub that might be captured will soon be in Australia, so Hood heads over there to investigate, playing a hunch that Pefner might be involved after all. Blair insists that Hood take along fellow Intertrust agent Tommy Tremayne, last seen in Throne Of Satan. Speaking of supporting characters we haven’t seen in a long time, we also get a random reference to Hood’s karate sensei “Matsimuro.” Presumably this is Murimoto, last seen in The Sword Of Genghis Khan, and MacDonnell just forgot the character’s name. Speaking of random references, Hood also thinks back to the events of Assignment Tokyo, which is ironic given that it was I think the worst volume of the entire series – just a slow-moving dirge. More importantly Hood and Blair refer to Norsgaard, the villain of Operation Ice Cap; even they note the similarity between this current threat and that previous one! 

Humorously Tremayne doesn’t offer much in the way of support. He and Hood race around looking into clues and get in a few firefights, but at one point they’re both easily captured by Maitland and his men, walking into a trap. As ever MacDonnell isn’t much for bloody violence, either, but an unusual element of Sea Scrape is that this time Hood uses guns more than his customary karate and judo skills. That said, there isn’t much action in this one; again, it’s very similar in that regard to the earliest volumes, only with slight sci-fi trimmings. For example, we learn that Pefner has his own island, one that contains a high-tech underworld lair beneath it. Macdonnell doesn’t do much to bring it to life, nor does he much exploit Pefner’s Blofeld-esque penchant for acquiring loyal staff – and disposing of those who disappoint him. 

Another interesting element of Sea Scrape is that Hood kills a woman in combat; he’s already done this before, in, you guessed it, Operation Ice Cap. As we’ll recall, that earlier volume had a very similar scenario in which the madman genius had a super-hot daughter, and the daughter and Hood became enemies once they’d spent some quality time in bed. Well the same thing happens here; Rachel Pefner bears a serious grudge with Hood, given how he rushed out on her in Geneva and such, and also now she’s certain he’s a spy – she’s devoted to her father, you see, but isn’t aware her father is in fact an international terrorist. She is under the mistaken assumption that Hood is an industrial spy. Her fate is pretty crazed, one of the most crazed scenes in the series, involving as it does Hood using the rotating blades of a helicopter as his weapon. Hood even pukes after the job is done. 

The climax is somewhat unusual; Hood follows another hunch that Pefner will attempt to capture the Polaris at such and such a location in Australia, and Hood is correct, though he himself is also captured. We then flash-forward one month and Tremayne’s back at Intertrust HQ in Geneva, puzzling over the situation with Blair and Fortescue. Meanwhile we learn that Hood’s been on the sub all these weeks, kept as a prisoner, but now almost friends with Pefner, who likes to come into Hood’s quarters and chat and play chess and whatnot. Humorously, the dude has no idea what’s happened to his daughter, but the threat hangs there that he might find out and of course Hood will suffer. 

However MacDonnell delivers one of his typically anticlimactic finales; Hood does manage to escape – and I love it that Pefner’s men wear scarlet-colored wetsuits on the Polaris – and gets off the sub, taking out a series of foes in almost casual fashion. And we have yet another volume that ends with all the main villains suffering their fate off-page; this is a recurring gimmick of Mark Hood that’s always annoyed me. It seems like every volume ends with Hood blowing people up from afar, and that’s that. Well, at least this time it’s over and done with, this being the final volume of the series and all, and Hood heads off for his expected vacation at novel’s end. 

Unless I ever turn up Spy From The Deep or The Reluctant Assassin, this will be the last volume of Mark Hood I read, and it was a good enough finale. Overall I enjoyed this series a lot, particularly how MacDonnell kept the plots moving and also doled out just enough of that ‘60s spy-fi vibe I enjoy so much. He also always had a lot of scuba action, which I always enjoy. But as mentioned the villains – despite how wild some of them were – never achieved the level of any Fleming creations, nor did the female characters. However on the other hand Mark Hood is exactly what it should have been: a fast-moving pulp-spy series that focuses on entertainment, never striving to be a “serious” piece of espionage fiction.

Monday, December 13, 2021

The Penetrator #40: Assassination Factor


The Penetrator #40: Assassination Factor, by Lionel Derrick
January, 1981  Pinnacle Books

Well folks this volume of The Penetrator is something else entirely…this is, I’m fairly sure, the only volume of the series yet in which hero Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin doesn’t get in a single fight. And he doesn’t even get laid! Poor Chet Cunningham must’ve been supremely weary of writing the series at this point; I mean, even his previous half-assed contributions, like #30: Computer Kill or #36: Deadly Silence, actually featured a little action, not to mention the death of the main villains…even if the villains did Mark the favor of killing themselves. Not so here; for once again Assassination Factor comes off like the novelization of a bland TV movie. 

In fact, Cunningham is so bored that he spends most of the novel writing about other characters. As far as I’m concerned, with these series novels the series protagonist should always be the primary character. But Cunningham here spends much more time with one-off characters, in particular a professional assassin named Butler (not to be confused with the other Butler) who is killing off famous people who use their platform to speak ill of the United States. (Boy would this guy have his work cut out for him today!) We see him in action at novel’s start, taking out by methodical (not to mention pages-consuming) means a variety of targets. He’s pretty diverse in that he hits anyone who bad-mouths the US, whether they be Liberal, Conservative, or even Independent, as demonstrated in his first kill, which really threw me for a loop. Check this out and see if a certain phrase jumps out at you:


“Make America Great Again” was a slogan originally used by Reagan in his 1980 campaign for president; Trump bought the rights to it in 2016 and obviously branded it more than Reagan ever did. But at the time Assassination Factor was published, this phrase would’ve resonated as Reagan’s, and initially I thought Cunningham was “taking the piss” (as the British say) out of series co-writer Mark Roberts, who as we all know was a pretty conservative guy. But as it turns out, Butler kills liberals as well as conservatives; as the novel progresses we see him take out a civil rights activist (where Cunningham doles out the dreaded n-word), a wealthy Iranian, and finally a Jane Fonda analogue, who presumably is the busty babe on George Bush’s cover…and yes, the “No nukes” stuff works into the plot. Anyone who denounces America on a public stage becomes Butler’s target. 

But as mentioned Cunningham is bored with it all. For example, Mark Hardin is fishing when we meet him, and then he hears about this assassination early in the book. He heads back to the Stronghold and, playing a hunch, starts making a list of all the recent deaths of notables, and gradually comes to the conclusion that it’s the work of a hitman who is making the kills seem like freak accidents or whatever. And folks, Mark spends the first 76 pages investigating at the Stronghold! Literally sitting at a desk and looking at computer printouts and making lists! It all gave me bad flashbacks to when the similarly-“badass” hero spent nearly the entire novel pecking away at a computer keyboard in Stand Your Ground

On the plus side, this is by far the most the Stronghold has ever featured in a Penetrator novel. While it isn’t much brought to life, it was interesting to see Mark Hardin there so long, as generally we get but a page or two at his “home base” before he heads off on his latest mission. Curiously though the Stronghold is explained to us again, how it’s built on an old Borax mine and how the Professor built it and all this other setup stuff that you think wouldn’t be necessary in the 40th volume of the series. But again, poor Chet Cunningham is bored with The Penetrator and he’s doing his damndest to fill up the pages and meet his word count. He’s even got Mark calling up various contacts – including even Dan Griggs, the Justice Dept dude who is supposed to be finding and arresting the Penetrator – to ask if they have any info on these mysterious murders. 

Cunningham only proceeds to pile lameness on top of lameness. Intermittently in Assassination Factor we will encounter one Marshall Songer, a guy in his early 20s in Los Angeles who likes to go around…pretending to be the Penetrator. He’s got plastic blue arrowheads, a .45 he managed to acquire, and he blusters his way into shopping areas and whatnot to give people lessons on the danger of crime and etc. The cops nearly bust him at times and Marshall always gets away – there’s also a weird gimmick that he does magic tricks on the side – and Mark eventually finds out about it. We already know there are “Penetrator fan clubs” out there, and while Mark is okay with those, he’s concerned this imposter Penetrator, whoever he is, will get killed by the real Penetrator’s many enemies. 

Of course as it plays out, Mark eventually heads to LA, finally leaving the Stronghold (on page 76!) to scope out an Iranian whom he thinks will be the assassin’s next target. Mark will be proven correct, though he’s unable to catch or prevent the killer. Instead, more focus is placed on Mark coming across Marshall Songer during one of his “Penetrator” routines, and then tracking him back to his home and doing like a “scared straight” sort of thing, where he convinces the punk that he is in over his head. This sequence ends with Songer pretty certain that his mysterious visitor, who claims to be a reporter, is likely the real Penetrator. But luckily that’s all there is to this particular time-waster of a subplot. 

But man, that’s what The Penetrator has been reduced to by this 40th volume of the series: a guy who sits around and “investigates,” occasionally giving pep talks to wayward youth. And believe it or not, after meeting Songer he goes back to the Stronghold to investigate some more! Finally he figures that famous movie star-slash political activist Jane Marvel will likely be the assassin’s next target. Clearly a spoof of Jane Fonda, Marvel is a hotstuff brunette with “full breasts” (“thirty-nine inches,” we are specifically informed) who, when not making films, is known to get involved in the latest activist stuff. Currently she’s been denouncing various nuclear plants and silos, and folks you better believe that Cunningham wastes pages and pages on Jane protesting at not one but two events, her activist husband Larry Tollison (ie Tom Hayden) in tow. Her third husband, we’re informed, Cunningham slyly setting it up so we won’t be too shocked when Jane makes her inevitable pass at Mark. 

Curiously, Jane Fonda herself was mentioned in a previous Cunningham volume: #28: The Skyhigh Betrayers. This means that there is both a real Jane Fonda and a fake Jane Fonda in the world of The Penetrator. Jane Marvel, we’re informed, even watches movies on “the China Syndrome,” an unsubtle reference from Cunningham to Fonda’s real-life film of the same name. Furthering the similarities, Jane Marvel even went to ‘Nam during the war to protest, which ran her afoul of the servicemen there; later in the book, when Mark and Jane meet, the actress asks Mark why he’s trying to help her, given that he served in ‘Nam and thus should hate her guts as a traitor. Mark’s response is that, while he doesn’t agree with most of what Jane preaches, for this one instance they are aligned. Plus he’s a big fan of her movies! Even if she’s “an all-around extremist,” so far as Mark is concerned.

Mark gets into her confidence via goofy means. He scopes out Jane’s mansion, up in the richer area of Beverly Hills, and slips past her elaborate security system. There he rings the house phone and speaks to Jane on it, informing her that he’s waiting for her in the den! Mark manages to convince Jane and her husband that he’s certain an assassin is coming for her, and that he’s here to help. Soon enough he’s shadowing Jane on the studio lot, and prevents her “accidentally” being crushed by a sandbag that falls from the rafters or somesuch. But it’s clear at this point that there will be no action finale for Assassination Factor. Instead, the only time Mark fires his gun in the entire novel is while guarding Jane’s home that night, shooting at Butler’s shadow out in the woods. We get a retread of the very same thing the following night, but this time Mark manages to lure Butler into a trap and knocks him out, ties him up…and then tells Jane to call the cops! 

I mean he doesn’t kill the bastard or anything! Nor do we have a big confrontation between Mark and Butler…for that matter, Butler himself at this point is lost in the narrative, just a mysterious figure Mark’s trying to stop. You might imagine him as this buzzcutted humorless super-patriot, but Cunningham does absolutely nothing to bring him to life, nor to let us know what makes him tick. No, Mark just knocks him out, ties him up, and takes off – another assingment complete. And as mentioned he doesn’t even have the expected sleazy shenanigans with busty Jane Marvel; she plants a big kiss on him twice in the book, and at one point bluntly propositions him, but Mark Hardin can’t be bothered with such things. I mean, the lady’s married! The Penetrator has morals, folks! 

It’s all just so lame and stupid…you almost wonder if you’re reading a TJ Hooker novelization. Actually that’s an insult to TJ Hooker, plus I don’t think the show was even on the air yet. But you get my drift. Overall this one was very lame, as bad as Cunningham’s previous “worst installment ever,” #22: High Disaster.

Thursday, December 9, 2021

The Spider #27: Emperor Of The Yellow Death


The Spider #27: Emperor Of The Yellow Death, by Grant Stockbridge
December, 1935  Popular Publications

The Spider delves into a “ Yellow Peril” storyline once again, but this one’s not as wild as a previous entry in this subgenre: The Red Death Rain. Otherwise we have the same trimmings: a dastardly plot that sees thousands of New Yorkers die, a nefarious “Oriental” villain whose mental powers seem to dwarf those of our hero, and also most importantly a sexy Oriental henchwoman. But none of these elements are as exploited as they were in The Red Death Rain (which unforgettably climaxed with the sexy henchwoman being raped to death by an orangutan), and also the villain’s kind of lame…I mean his name is “The Turtle.” 

One thing I’ve noticed about these Yellow Peril storylines in The Spider is that no narrative space is wasted on the usual red herring-chasing that you find in the volumes that don’t feature Asian villains. You know what I mean…practically every volume will have a cast of one-off characters and Richard “The Spider” Wentworth will suspect several of them of being that volume’s villain, only for it to turn out to be some random guy, revealed on the very last page, the revelation making no impact on the reader because we have no idea who the hell this guy is. But this doesn’t happen in Emperor Of The Yellow DeathDragon Lord Of The Underworld, or The Red Death Rain. The villains in these tales are Chinese…and folks, elite rich guy Richard Wentworth doesn’t know any Asians, except for hired staff. I found this an interesting insight into the culture of the ‘30s, where Asians were still seen as remote and mysterious. 

And as to be expected Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page doesn’t write with the cultural sensitivity you’d expect from today’s authors: the Turtle, for example, is introduced as “yellow-skinned Wang-ba.” His name, which we’re informed translates as “Turtle,” is sort of a joke, as he’s given himself a lowly name despite being the usual Spider supervillain…would you believe, the worst threat the Spider has yet faced? Of course we’re told that every single volume, but regardless Wang-ba has an army at his disposal, he can control various animals and reptiles, and he has his own personal submarine which he travels around the New York area in. Also his mental powers are so grand that he even manages to put none other than Wentworth under his control, however to do so he has to cheat a little. 

It’s clear though that Page was recycling ideas at this point to meet his ungodly monthly word count. There’s a long sequence in Emperor Of The Yellow Death where Wentworth is a mind-controlled vassal of Wang-ba’s, plotting to kill his best friend/enemy Stanley Kirkpatrick…who himself was mind-controlled by the villain in Overlord Of The Damned. And Wang-ba’s mastery of animals is a retread of Ssu His Tze’s mastery of vermin in Dragon Lord Of The Underworld. In addition to that we also have the usual events that occur each volume: Wentworth’s own vassals get waylaid early on and removed from the narrative until the end, lovely Nita van Sloan is captured by the villain, and thousands of innocent New Yorkers die in freak attacks. But Emperor Of The Yellow Death is faster-moving than some of the preceding volumes, mostly because as mentioned Page has removed the lame “mystery” angle that has slowed them down. It’s clear from the get-go that Wang-ba is the villain and there’s no fooling around trying to find out his secret identity. 

Another recurring schtick is that the novel opens with Wentworth arlready on the job, as it were. He’s walking along Fifth Avenue at 2:30 in the AM, hoping to lure an attacker – we’re told earlier that evening he prevented a “Chinese houseboy” from poisoning a judge aquaintance of Wentworth’s, and now our hero is sure he’ll be attacked himself for foiling the plot. This happens, but randomly enough it’s courtesy a Bengal tiger. This is our first indication of the control Wang-ba has over the animal kingdom. After stopping the tiger Wentworth returns to his penthouse, where he’s visited by a pretty young Chinese woman; Page twice uses “langurous” to describe her, and we’re told she has a “cruel smile.” 

It won’t be until later in the novel that we learn her name is White Flower. She’s not as depraved as the Chinese henchwoman in The Red Death Rain, and Page ultimately develops a subplot in which White Flower is drawn to Wentworth due to his charisma. But at the start the relationship, such as it is, is more centered around White Flower trying to test Wentworth as being worthy to join Wang-ba’s army. Because yet again, the villain knows of course that Richard Wentworth and the Spider are one and the same, and wants to offer him the chance to rule at his side. However he goes about his invitation rather strangely, kidnapping Nita and luring Wentworth to his submerged submarine – even trapping Wentworth inside at one point to see if our hero will kill himself or wait patiently for Wang-ba to visit him. 

Page is very fond of taking his hero through the wringer, and that’s brought to the fore here. Wentworth is trapped in a chamber that’s submerging with water. He’s here to save Nita, but he knows that Wang-ba must also be on the submarine. Here we learn that Wentworth always carries on his person two vials of an experimental liquid explosive which, were the two liquids to be combined, would be able to destroy the entire sub. Wentworth struggles with himself whether he should combine the liquids and destroy the sub, thus stopping Wang-ba’s plot – but also killing himself and Nita in the bargain. Of course our hero cares nothing for the loss of his own life, but it is Nita’s fate he worries about. No surprises then that Wentworth decides it’s more important to stop Wang-ba…and of course the villain finally appears at that moment. This too had been one of Wang-ba’s tests. 

“We are two mighty killers, thou and I,” Wang-ba announces. The Turtle doesn’t have a fancy costume or mask, going around in the expected “Oriental” style robes, but he does have the unusual gimmick of a mysterious green light always shining in his face. His murdering of innocents almost comes off as perfunctory; there’s a hellish part where his minions kill everyone in a tenement building, and later in the novel his attacks become more frequent, culminating in his ultimate plan to ransom New York City for one hundred million dollars. The green light gimmick extends to the “guns of devil flame” he’s armed his soldiers with; they spout green flames. In a curious subplot we learn that Wang-ba’s soldiers, Chinese all, are under his mental sway, and there are parts in the end where Wentworth is trying to save them. 

As mentioned Wang-ba challenges Wentworth to a mental duel; if he wins, Wentworth too will become his vassal. But our hero has more than enough mental power to defeat Wang-ba, so the villain pricks Wentworth with a dart, thus distracting our hero and conquering him in the challenge. The Oriental fiend! Now follows a long stretch where Wentworth becomes the willing proxy of Wang-ba. This sequence climaxes in a cool bit that comes off like a prefigure of the scene in John Milius’s Conan where Conan is brought back to life by his friends. Here Ram Singh and Nita reclaim Wentworth’s soul, Nita the key to the affair as she shares the “same karma” as Wentworth. Cool stuff, and one of the best scenes yet in the series. 

Wentworth only dresses up in his Spider digs once in the book; this is another typical element of Page’s novels. But it’s another sterling sequence where Wentworth, with the hunchback and fangs Spider getup, runs a train filled with food into New York, braving Wang-ba’s soldiers, who throw grenades at the train. This sequence reveals that Wentworth also carries special cigarettes in his case – four “narcoticized” ones. Unfortunately he never lights one of them up; we’re informed they are there solely for emergencies. I was hoping we’d get a coke-fueled Spider moment. We do get the usual Page craziness, though, in particular a bit where Wang-ba, ever the host, shows Wentworth how he punishes soldiers who fail him: Wentworth watches in disgust as the poor men are torn apart by turtles. Of course Wentworth himself will need to get past these same bloodthirsty animals later on. 

Page also does a good job of tying together all the subplots in a typically-harried finale, which sees Wentworth prove to White Flower that her master is a bit of a fake in the mental powers department. As I say, these Yellow Peril storylines really inspired Page to cut back on the fluff. The fate of the various characters is not unexpected, but touching in some ways. With a cooler villain and a more depraved villainness, Emperor Of The Yellow Death could’ve given The Red Death Rain a run for its money, but it comes down as relatively meek in comparison. Still, yet another entertaining Spider yarn, and it’s a testament to Page’s skill that he could turn out memorable tales month after month, in addition to the plethora of stories he was writing for other pulp mags.

Monday, December 6, 2021

The Weapon Of Night (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #19)


The Weapon Of Night, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1967  Award Books

The final Nick Carter: Killmaster by Valerie Moolman, The Weapon Of Night taps into the Northeast blackout of November 1965, with UFOs and LSD also somehow figuring into the plot. Sounds like a bonkers installment, but Moolman doesn’t really exploit any of this stuff, and for the most part the novel features Nick Carter running around various nuclear plants. Even the novel’s villain, the series regular Mr. Judas, is given short-shrift, and comes off as pretty boring. This I’ve found is typical of Moolman’s work on the series in general, and given that she was the sole writer of Nick Carter: Killmaster for its first few years, I’m surprised the series lasted long enough for other ghostwriters to come aboard. Maybe readers were just desperate for any spy fiction at the time. 

I suspect Moolman knew this would be her final venture, as she brings back characters from her previous installments; we’re even informed which volumes they appeared in on the first-page preview. She also does something unique in that the novel opens with Nick finishing up an assignment in progress; chasing an old Nazi across the rooftop of a Chicago skyscraper. A blackout occurs during the melee and the Nazi plummets to his death. Nick hops aboard a plane and heads back to his New York penthouse, figuring that he’s wrapped up the case…not realizing of course that the blackout presages a case he’ll be working on posthaste. 

We have a lot of sequences with one-off characters experiencing weird stuff across the US: UFO sightings, blood-red water coming out of faucets, “grubby” atmospheres, and another blackout – this one hitting the airport as Nick’s plane comes in to land. There’s this strange, almost casual vibe to Moolman’s Killmaster books; Nick finds a letter waiting in his mailbox from Hakim Sadek, a “cross-eyed criminologist” in Cairo Nick worked with in Safari For Spies. Something about a plot Hakim has uncovered, in which people are having their faces changed and somesuch. Shortly thereafter another previous Moolman character returns: Nick’s boss Hawk tells Nick that his next assignment is to escort a Russian VIP on a tour of a US nuclear plant, and that Russian VIP is Valentina Sichikova, who appeared in The 13th Spy

“Now there is one dame I really love!” Nick says when informed that Valentina will be his guest. But as it turns out, she is “one of Russia’s biggest women,” and is morbidly obese and whatnot. Ostensibly here to tour a plant for vague reasons, Valentina’s real purpose is to discuss the blackouts that are also occuring in Russia; she tells Nick and Hawk that the USSR suspects some Chinese are behind the plot. Ultimately this will tie in with the letter Hakim sent. Valentina, Nick, and Hawk sit around in AXE HQ in DC and talk – there’s a lot of talking in the The Weapon Of Night – and it all has more the vibe of a mystery than an action novel. Once again Moolman gives the impression that AXE is a massive organization like U.N.C.L.E., with tons of employees going around, each of them with different numbers and security clearances. 

Another character returns: Julia Baron (sometimes referred to as “Julie,” though Moolman doesn’t here), hotstuff AXE agent with “slightly slanting, catlike eyes” and black hair. She appeared in the first volume (as did Mr. Judas) and then in several others, before being removed from the series in Time Clock Of Death. In each instance she was presented as the perfect match for Nick Carter, the love of his life and whatnot. But here the two have more of a contentious relationship, with Julia snipping at Nick and constantly questioning him. This was annoying and brought to mind the vibe of modern thrillers, in which the heroic male characters are constantly mocked and second-guessed by the lead female characters. Ironically this doesn’t prevent Nick and Julia from getting in bed – she’s his only conquest in the novel – for some vaguely-described shenanigans (ie “She accepted him again and he plunged into warmth and softness.”). 

But the problem is, Moolman clearly likes these characters she’s created, and spends too much time with them instead of on action or suspense. In particular she spends way too much narrative on Valentina and her earthy proclamations and sentiments, and Hakim too gets too much print. What makes this an issue is that it’s all written in this highfalutin style, ie “American officialdom gave [Hakim] a pain in the traditional place.” Lame stuff, and very similar to the lifeless style “Bill Rohde” brought to Nick Carter: Killmaster in his (their?) installments, a la The Judas Spy and Amsterdam. In fact, I wonder if the Rohde style was influenced by Moolman; in Rohde too AXE is a vast organization akin to U.N.C.L.E., with an army of technicians and planners and etc, and an overall “safe” approach to the proceedings where hardly anyone ever gets hurt, let alone killed. In this regard the volumes of Manning Lee Stokes, when he came onto the scene with The Eyes Of The Tiger, must’ve been like a bucket of cold water to those who had grown familiar with the vibe of the preceding Moolman novels. 

Even the action scenes are lifeless, not to mention bloodless. And Nick doesn’t come off nearly as badass as he would in later books, particularly the ones by Stokes. I mean Nick is knocked out three times by page 114. He also uses more gadgets than in the Stokes novels (just as he does in the Rohde books – another similarity), including a “pocket-sized laser gun” which he uses at one point to get himself and Julia out of danger. A curious thing is that there’s no tension in Moolman’s action scenes; there’s such a safe, casual air that you know even the supporting characters will be safe. There’s a part, for example, where Valentina is abducted, and never once is her fate in doubt. Instead, more entertainment comes from the strange bitterness between Julia and Nick in these action scenes; Julia second-guesses and mocks Nick at every turn, a la “Why aren’t you out there doing something?” It’s strange and makes me wonder if Moolman had built up this resentment in her earlier volumes. 

But as mentioned the bickering nature doesn’t prevent the bedroom action, and the novel’s climax features Nick and Julia…watching TV. I mean nothing says “action novel” like your hero sacked out in front of the television in the final pages. Judas you see has orchestrated various blackouts, but AXE – using various high-tech tracking methods – has been unable to locate him. The blackouts have gotten worse, to the point that the President addresses the nation on television, and Nick and Julia watch this from their hotel room. The President’s name is never given, but he’s clearly LBJ (not to be confused with FJB). A blackout occurs at that moment, knocking out the TV screen, and Nick deduces where Judas is. This leads to a climax where he faces off against Judas overtop Niagra falls, trying to cut the supervillain’s line so he will plummet to his doom – a nice callback to the plummeting Nazi of the beginning. 

The novel mercifully ends here, but there was a pseudo-sequel many years later: Vatican Vendetta. The climactic events of The Weapon Of Night are referred to throughout that later installment, which also happened to be the last one “produced” by Lyle Kenyon Engel. And per my review, it’s my assumption that Vatican Vendetta was written shortly after The Weapon Of Night and just went unpublished for a few years. Overall I didn’t much enjoy The Weapon Of Night, and I haven’t really enjoyed Moolman’s work on the series. Not that she’s a bad author, I just feel that she doesn’t bring much bite to her novels, which come off more like cozy mysteries.

Thursday, December 2, 2021

I Am Legend (aka The Omega Man)


I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
August, 1971  Berkley Medallion Books
(Original publication 1954)

The cover of this paperback is confusing: “The Omega Man” gets predominance, with “I Am Legend” secondary. This would give the impression that the book is titled “The Omega Man,” tying in with the film, however “I Am Legend” is on the spine and inside the book itself. I thought this was interesting because usually it seems that the orginal title is given priority. At the very least this must confuse online booksellers when they’re listing the book.

I’d never read Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, though as a horror-loving teen I often heard of it. I’ve seen The Omega Man a few times over the years; I think I somehow knew, even then, that the movie was different from the source novel. As it turns out, the movie is almost an entirely separate story, only similar in the name of the protagonist, Robert Neville. And honestly The Omega Man is one wonderfully whacked-out movie, with a typically-unflappable Charlton Heston driving around town and blasting away with a subgun, and Anthony Zerbe as the freaked-out leader of a group of albino mutants or somesuch. And let’s not forget the albino black guy in the group – an image that’s still scarier than any CGI I’ve ever seen. Or the bit where Heston watches Woodstock in an empty theater, that wonderfully smug look on his face; awesome commentary on the fall of “the new society” in the post-virus world of The Omega Man

Well, absolutely none of that is in I Am Legend (which by the way is written in third-person; given the title I was under the impression it would be narrated in first-person). And to be perfectly honest – I’m always honest with you all – I much preferred the film to the book. In fact I sort of wished someone had novelized the script and just made this tie-its own thing, sort of like with the Total Recall novelization of years later. Instead Berkley went the more traditional route and republished Matheson’s original novel, which has nothing much in common with the film. The book is more “low budget” than the film, operating with just a few characters, relatively few “action” scenes, and more focus on the mental state of the hero, with a good bit of “investigative” stuff when he tries to figure out what’s caused everyone in the world but him to turn into a vampire. 

That’s another big difference between novel and film: the freak mutants of The Omega Man are normal people who have been mutated by a runaway experimental virus, whereas in the novel they are clearly vampires. Much of I Am Legend is given over to a rumination of how the various vampire legends were born, how much truth there is to them, and why vampires have the strengths and weaknesses attributed to them by legend. For as it turns out Robert Neville doesn’t have much else to do. Whereas Heston’s version of the character lives in a fortress and drives around the empty city in various swank cars, generally just loving the hell out of life, the Neville of the novel is more introspective, content to live in his old house in the Los Angeles area and only going out on runs for supplies. As the novel opens it’s 1976 and Neville has been in his “last man” capacity for some five months, still living in the house he once shared with his wife and daughter and now going about the horrific daily chores of his new life with a matter-of-factness: clearing out the vampire corpses from his yard each morning, dumping them in the city’s fire pit, then going around town to find some sleeping vampires to stake. Then to return to his home before nightfall, when the vampires come out, and lock the doors and blast classical music on the turntable while the vampires outside scream for him to come out. 

And yes, that’s 1976, 22 years after the novel’s original publication date, but only a few years away from the release of The Omega Man. Matheson keeps the novel so barebones that this “future” angle never comes into play, and to the author’s credit it could really take place at any time in the later 20th century. The only sci-fi element is vague mentions of an atomic war, possibly with Russia, which America won – even though the “bombings” released radioactive dust storms which ultimately led to the vampiric plague that destroyed hummanity. Neville himself seems to be a vet of some action; there’s mention of “Panama,” where he incurred a wound some years before – later we’ll learn he was bitten by a bat…indeed, a bat Neville now theorizes had bitten a vampire before bitting Neville, hence Neville’s immunity to the vampire plague(!). All this is skillfully strung into the narrative at random intervals, so that Matheson doesn’t spend the majority of the tale world-building. True to the era it was published, I Am Legend barely has any fat, running to a mere 170+ pages. 

But then, it operates on a smaller scale than you might think, given that the plot concerns possibly the last human in a world filled with vampires. The best flashback material concerns how the plague affected Neville on a personal level; forcing himself to remember how it all began, Neville recalls how people just started coming down with a strange bug, one that confined them to bed and left them weak. Meanwhile the country struggled on; the flashback concerns Neville and his bedridden wife Virginia discussing what could be causing her to feel so bad, and whether they should send their little girl to school. I got a postmodern chuckle out of all this – what, no mask mandates? No executive orders? No government overreach?? They actually left such decisions to the individual?! But it’s all moot, as this apparently is toward the end – Matheson’s narrative gets a bit skewed in the ensuing apocalyptic events, but we’re to understand these bedridden people die, only to be reborn as vampires – and those who later come down with the disease, like Neville’s poor little girl, are unceremoniously tossed in the fire to prevent transmission. 

It takes us readers a while to learn all this, though. In fact the first quarter of I Am Legend is fairly monotonous, Matheson demonstrating how, per Neville later in the book, humans can become used to just about anything. Each day is the same – breakfast, then corpse cleanup, followed by stake sharpening and on into Sears or wherever in town for supplies. Then back home before nightfall to eat dinner, blast classical music on the stereo, make a list of needed supplies, and get drunk on a seemingly endless supply of whiskey. But we see how Neville is losing his grips, some nights so tormented that he almost opens the door to the bloodthirsty vampires out there. We also learn that the females like to strip down and strike provocative poses for him, something that drives Neville insane. 

This opening section comes to a head in a suspenseful bit where Neville spends more time out than he reckoned, only to discover too late that his watch has stopped. It’s dark by the time he gets home, and the vampires are out there waiting for him. This is a crazed sequence, but not as believable because Neville manages to get inside despite the masses of vampires chasing him. Also it’s never explained why Neville can’t just hole up someplace else. As I say, I Am Legend operates on a very low-budget level;Neville just sticks to his own house and a few regular stops, with little of the city-roving of The Omega Man

From here the narrative begins skipping forward at irregular intervals; next it’s later in 1976, then later in the book we’ll move to 1978, before coming to a close in 1979. Just in time for disco! Throughout Neville stays in his house, which is fortified with locks and garlic and run by a generator he has in the garage. He spends this time trying to research vampirism, driving to the science floor of the nearest college and getting the gear he needs. He researches in books and goes around town collecting test experiments; the vampires go into a coma during the day, and Neville uses some of them as guinea pigs. Ultimately he determines that the vampire plague was caused by a germ, and that there are various versions of vampires, like ones who seem to have been dead for a long time and instantly turn into ash when staked. 

Neville carries the entire novel, and we stay in his perspective throughout. The book is made up of dense blocks of narrative description, with hardly any dialog; Neville can only talk to himself. His first glimpse of non-vampire life occurs midway through when he encounters a wild dog, and he desperately goes about trying to gain its trust. This bit goes on quite some time, and will likely be more entertaining for dog-lovers than it was for me. Neville setting out meat for the dog each morning, watching from the windows as it sneaks by to eat it, then trying to call for it, only for the terrified dog to run away. This goes on seemingly for a few months. However this is a pretty bleak book so the outcome is somewhat expected, though I felt anticlimactically delivered. But then I do appreciate how Matheson doesn’t sap anything up; while Neville goes through harrowing experiences he never descends to maudlin theatrics. But then he also doesn’t dress up a bust of Caesar and play chess with it, a la Heston in The Omega Man

Things really pick up in 1978 when Neville, now bigger and sporting a beard in true hermit fashion, comes across a woman one day, walking along the field outside his house in broad daylight. She’s a slim redhead, and Neville chases her down and caveman style forces her back to his house. Again, Matheson doesn’t sap things up: Neville has become so paranoid from his years of being alone that he distrusts the girl, who says her name is Ruth. Neville doesn’t believe her story of hiding from the vampires and losing her kids and husband, and further he even realizes to his surprise that he feels no passion for her. We’re told she’s thin, with the waifish build of a girl, and Nevile, celibate for years now, forces himself to even appreciate her. The bigger story though is that Neville suspects that Ruth really does have the vampire plague, and trying to catch her out on what he believes are her lies, before talking her into letting him take a slide of her blood to inspect for the vampire germ. 

I’ll go into spoilers over the next three paragraphs, but given the fame of this novel I’m going to assume many of you have already read it. Well, it turns out Neville’s suspicions were correct; he checks Ruth’s blood and finds the germ in it, and moments later Ruth knocks him out and takes off. She leaves a note which explains that she is a vampire, but a sort of new bread – living vampires, as it were, and not the same as the truly dead ones (ie the ones who turn immediately to dust when staked). Over the years, while Neville’s been living like a hermit and staking every vampire he could find during the day, the “new breed” of vampires have started up their own society, and what’s more have developed a pill which allows them to become more normal, like going out in the day and whatnot. Ruth ends the note imploring Neville to leave, to go hide in the mountains, as he will soon be a target of Ruth’s people. 

We flash forward again, this time to 1979, and Neville’s still home, having decided not to leave. One of the biggest problems I had with I Am Legend is the harried conclusion that follows. Neville literally stands in his living room and watches through a peephole as Ruth’s new breed of vampires show up one night and kill all the “dead” vampires, even the one Neville’s spent the entire novel hoping to kill himself. Then they come in after Neville, who refuses to fight back(!), and he gets shot and next thing you know we have a proto-Braveheart finale where Ruth visits a dying Neville, who is about to be publicly executed by her new breed of vampires. She tells Neville that her people are terrified of him and hate him, but she cares for him, and gives him a suicide pill or somesuch that will prevent him from experiencing the execution. The novel ends with Neville coming to the titular conclusion – that he, the odd man out in this new world, is now legend. 

It’s easy of course to see I Am Legend from a COVID perspective, with all the talk of viruses, transmission, and vaccines. But I’d take it a step further; it occurred to me after I read the book that Ruth and her “new breed” of vampires, who need to regularly take a pill to prevent the virus, are the vaccinated, creating a new society in which frequent boosters are required for inclusion. And Neville, with his natural immunity, is the unvaccinated (or “pureblood,” per the recent term), eking out a hermit-like existence apart from them. The cleaving of society at the end of the novel could also be viewed as a wild prefigure of where we are headed; pureblood Neville cannot exist in this world of the new breed. I mean, imagine if an endless cycle of booster shots were to ultimately lead to crippling side effects, mass deaths, and weakened immune systems that needed the boosters to even function (a la the “pills” Ruth’s people need): a society of people more dead than alive, which is exactly how Ruth’s fellow post-vampires are depicted. Just imagine the hatred and jealousy such sufferers would feel for the few purebloods who remained unscathed. Like Ruth’s post-vampire society, they’d no doubt eagerly gather to watch the few purebloods be exterminated. 

In closing, I’m glad I finally read I Am Legend, but I still confess without any shame that I much prefer The Omega Man. It just felt like there was more of a story here than we actually got, but to Matheson’s credit he takes a huge story and relates it on a personal level. Also I appreciated how fast-moving it was. Another thing I got a kick out of was how people in Matheson’s era were just so much more cultured and learned than today; Neville not only listens to classical throughout, but constantly refers to poems or myths. For example, when trying to catch that dog he thinks to himself, “Shades of Androcles,” which honestly is on the level of Jefferson Boone.