Monday, March 14, 2022

Death Merchant #34: Operation Mind-Murder


Death Merchant #34: Operation Mind-Murder, by Joseph Rosenberger
June, 1979  Pinnacle Books

This 34th installment of Death Merchant is another one that promises a helluva lot more than it ultmately delivers. That is, if you’re expecting the plot that’s outlined on the back cover. But if you’re expecting an endless series of action scenes, then that’s exactly what you’ll get. Personally, I was hoping for the story promised on the back cover…that Richard “Death Merchant” Camellion would venture into a desolate Soviet experimental station where people are tortured via mind-control means, some of the prisoners holdovers from WWII. Instead, the entire friggin’ novel is Camellion battling his way to the station, just so he can take photos of it and vamoose. 

It's clear Joseph Rosenberger was interested in mind control and fringe science in general, so it’s surprising he didn’t elaborate more on his own setup here. I guess mostly he just used his interests as a framework for the series-mandatory action setpieces. I’m not sure why Rosenberger did this so often. In the Death Merchant novels where he relaxed a little from the action onslaught, like for example The Burning Blue Death and The Cosmic Reality Kill, he delivered novels that were actually enjoyable to read. But with ones like this or Hell In Hindu Land, it’s like he had these cool setups but just didn’t have the fortitude to commit to them and instead went for a knee-jerk “action” approach. But then maybe there are readers who prefer that. I would’ve preferred an entire novel with Camellion stuck in a mind control facility. 

But at the very least Rosenberger is commited to delivering copious amounts of battle sequences. To the extent that we meet Camellion once he’s already on location, holed up with a few Chinese-American CIA agents on Wrangel Island, eighty miles from Siberia. This white hell is a real place, as Rosenberger informs us via footnote. There are a ton of footnotes throughout Operation Mind-Murder, to the point that it comes off like fastidousness on Rosenberger’s part. But basically Rosenberger read in some publication that here on Wrangel the Soviets installed a facility in which subjects – traitors, criminals, and even WWII prisoners – undergo harsh mind-conditioning torture. 

Camellion is purely in cipher mode this time; there was even more emotional makeup to Philip Magellan in one of Russell Smiths instllaments of The Marksman. The three Chinese agents have no idea who Camellion even is; as usual, our hero has been put in charge of a strike force with no explanation of who he is to the underlings. Rosenberger indulges in his usual penchant for disguises with the off-hand note that Camellion is “fixed up to look like an Oriental,” so as to blend in with his compatriots (one of whom is named Dionysius Woo!). But other than this initial mention, nothing more will be made of Camellion’s disguise; for that matter, Rosenberger seems to forget it, mentioning Camellion’s blue eyes later in the book. (Or whatever color they are, I can’t remember – they just aren’t brown, which they should be if the guy’s truly been “fixed up to look like an Oriental.”) 

One thing I do like is that Rosenberger again brings in that bizarre “Cosmic Lord of Death” stuff. It’s not explicitly mentioned, but there’s a random part where Camellion tells one of his colleagues “you’re a long way from dying;” when the guy asks how Camellion can be sure, the Death Merchant just looks at him. Veteran readers will know that Camellion is seeing the guy’s aura, of course, and apparently it’s not in the color that denotes upcoming death or whatever. Camellion also makes cryptic comments about being on the side of the “Sons of Light” or somesuch. In other words he comes off like a total nutjob once again, and you kind of feel bad for these three agents who have been partnered up with an obvious psychopath in the middle of a snowswept hellhole. 

Camellion’s a lot more verbal about his psychotic hatred of Russians, though. Or “pig farmers,” as he typically refers to them. There are various roving bands of Soviet troops on Wrangel Island, the fodder for the endless action scenes Rosenberger bores us with, almost from the very beginning of the novel to the very end. And as ever they are no match for Camellion, even though they vastly outnumber him. He runs roughshod over them, mocking them as “commie pieces of trash” as he easily blows them away. It was a little interesting reading this, what with the real-world situation in Ukraine at the moment. But given the level of psyops and outright lies about that situation I’ll refrain from saying anything. (Well, maybe just one thing.) 

And Camellion does make it look easy to blow away pig-farmers. Rosenberger tries to inject some suspense into the tale; Camellion and crew are holed up in a cave on the island, the goal to loacate the mind-muder facility and take photos of it. There are various roving bands of Soviet soldiers all over the island, from foot patrols that stay out for a week to helicopter patrols and such. But man it’s basically a cakewalk for the Death Merchant and his newest toy, a .357 Automag made for him by Lee Jurras, an apparently real-life gun manufacturer who has been referenced frequently in this series. This is the weapon Camellion uses most in Operation Mind-Murder, even shooting down one of those Soviet helicopters with it. 

So here’s the plot of Operation Mind-Muder: Richard Camellion gets in a series of endless fights with an endless series of roving Russian army patrols. I mean it just goes on and on for 180+ pages, Rosenberger as ever overwriting to the point of tedium, to the extent that the reader is soon benumbed. And as ever he hops in and out of the perspectives of Camellion’s victims, one-off Russian characters for whom we are given full names, ages, backstories, and the like – moments, that is, before their brains are blasted out by our hero’s Automag. There are also periodic chapters where we get a glimpse of the action from the Russian side of things, with even more one-off Soviets arguing among themselves about the bloody developments on Wrangel Island. At no point anywhere do we get to see the material promised on the back cover. 

The festivities begin when Camellion makes a lone sortie onto the island, getting into a skirmish with a patrol. From there it just escalates with more and more skirmishes, with Camellion at one point even gunning down a bear. There are explosions, avalanches, the expected loss of some of Camellion’s colleagues, and etc. Here is a random example of what is in store for the reader, complete with footnote: 


The absolute slap to the face is that Rosenberger teases us with what could have been a better tale at the very end of the novel. On page 182 we learn that there is something called a “cosmic generator” on the island, but no one can figure out what it does, and they’ll need to grill the captured Soviets for more info. Meanwhile Camellion’s all fired up because he just got a message concerning his next assignment, which no doubt will entail yet more endless action sequences in the next installment. So in other words, he spends the entirety of Operation Mind-Murder fighting to get to this bizarre installation, only gets there at the very end, and then leaves, learning about the strange contraptions within via dialog in the final chapter of the book! 

As ever the most entertaining thing about Death Merchant is how bonkers its creator is. Rosenberger attempts to inject some humor this time, but it just further conveys his own strangeness. For one, Camellion calls people “turtle butts” (as usual he won’t curse), and also there are weird asides like, “Oh, gee whiz and all that sort of worried stuff.” We also get a comedic exchange between Camellion’s Chinese colleagues, during a firefight, about beer making you stupid, to which one of them jokingly responds, “Beer makes you smart…it made Bud Wiser.” Just weird, wild stuff, as Johnny Carson would say…but overall this was not an installment I enjoyed.

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Send Photos/State Preferences


Send Photos/State Preferences, by Marshall Ford
July, 1974  Dell Books

Well friends for once we have one of those sex-themed and photo-covered PBOs from Dell, and it isn’t a goofy comedy! Send Photos/State Preferences (the “/,” by the way, appears on the title page and spine, but not on the cover) is much better than the other novels I’ve read in this unofficial Dell line, like Black Magic and Michelle, My Belle. However this is not to say it isn’t funny; in fact it’s often hilarious, but this comes through the humor of the various situations. It’s just not a lame sex farce like those other books, and comes off like a masterpiece in comparison. 

One reason for this is that author Marshall Ford is a better writer than those other sex PBO authors. He only published one other Dell PBO, 1970’s Memoirs Of A Sensual Youth, which also would be considered one of this unofficial Dell line. Both books are copyright Ford, however the Catalog Of Copyright Entries outs “George Blaire” as the real name of Marshall Ford. There’s actually less known about Blaire under his real name than there is about his “Ford” pseudonym (which isn’t much, to tell the truth). Blaire published only one novel under his own name, a 1971 Lancer PBO titled The Split End, another sleazy yarn with a photo cover, one centered around football, a la Special People. (And which got a cover blurb from Swank magazine!) But that’s it; there are no other novels under either name that I can find, and Blaire would appear to be a total mystery so far as the publishing world goes. 

The reason I went to the trouble of researching him is that he’s a gifted writer, and it’s suprising to find that he only turned out two novels. But then this is similar to how I felt after reading Blue Dreams, a novel that Send Photos/State Preferences has many similarities with; the author of that novel, William Hanley, was another who demonstrated a lot of talent but who didn’t go on to publish much else. Of the two novels, I’d have to prefer Blue Dreams, but they are similar in that they both concern men who attempt to get a first-hand view of the “sexual revolution.” One difference here is that Send Photos/State Preference is written in first-person and is narrated by a younger man than the protagonist of Blue Dreams; he’s also single and thus freer to, uh, indulge without any consequences. 

Another difference is that this novel is played more for laughs than Blue Dreams (even though that novel was very funny). I know, earlier I said Send Photos/State Preferences wasn’t a comedy, but it really is laugh-out-loud funny at times, and for the first half of it I couldn’t believe how much I was enjoying it. But Blaire plays things mostly on the level, unlike the farcical vibe of those other Dell PBOs. However at 251 pages it ultimately comes undone and it’s about fifty pages too long for its own good, with a bit too much padding and go-nowhere digressions. If Blaire had whittled the book down a bit he would’ve had a much stronger novel. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to always complain about books being “too long.” I have absolutely no problem with long novels…so long as the length is warranted. Take Colony, for example; I wouldn’t have minded if that novel went another hundred or so pages, even though it was already damn long. 

The crux of Send Photos/State Preferences has to do with our narrator, Bill, a blond-haired 28 year-old “groovy stud” who puts an ad in The Greater New York Crotch, a weekly newsletter filled with sex articles and personals ads. Bill has a fiance, but he puts the ad in the paper due to a bet he makes with an obnoxious co-worker named Howie. It all starts because our narrator voices his opionion that the so-called “sexual revolution” has been overhyped by the press, and the ads in “the Crotch” are probably all fake. Howie tells him to put his money where his mouth is and put an ad of his own in; if Bill meets five girls through the ad then he’ll owe Howie a hundred bucks. So clearly we have here a bird’s eye view of personals advertising in the era before the internet, but it’s of course overdone for the sake of satire. For, as expected, our narrator will get a lot more than he bargained for. 

Actually, if this novel is anything to go by, all one had to do to get laid in New York circa 1974 was just put an ad in one of these sleazy papers; Bill’s phone rings off the hook night and day. And every single woman he meets through the ad is a hotstuff babe just looking for some no-frills fun. So either something seriously changed in women over the following decades or the novel’s just taken to extreme proportions. I’m guessing it’s a combo of the two…and as a single guy in the early days of the internet I too was pretty certain that most of the female personal ads were fake. As an aside, many years ago I worked in marketing at Match.com and as I recall the male subscribers vastly outweighed the female ones. I’m assuming it was probably the same in the pre-internet era as well. 

But then that wouldn’t make for a fun novel. So Bill, who starts his story one month after he placed the ad, hinting at the misfortune that ensued, takes us back to the beginning as he places the ad. Blaire was certainly familiar with New York as he brings the place to life with one seriously jaundiced view. Most of the humor in Send Photos/State Preferences is from Bill’s sarcastic asides about life in Manhattan. This random part, where he orders lunch at the office, demonstrates what I mean:


This is the humor that carries the novel; that and the wild scenes Bill soon finds himself in. This is first evidenced when he enters the Crotch offices in the East Village, a dingy dump, and is propositioned by the rail-thin hippie girl behind the counter. A curious thing about Send Photos/State Preferences is that Bill will spend a lot of the narrative fending off horny women. This is not to say he doesn’t get lucky, and quite often, but he spends just as much time turning down a sure thing. This will only be his first such instance, but one can’t blame him, as Blaire makes this particular girl sound rather unpleasant. She does not however represent the type of women Bill will soon be meeting. She also messes up his ad, neglecting to state in it that he’s interested in women only, and she puts his real phone number in the ad, even though Bill wanted to use his office number. 

So basically Bill’s ad states he’s a “28 year-old groovy stud” who is looking for a good time, with no particulars around the gender he’s seeking a good time with. He finds this out when his phone rings early the next morning and a gruff male voice asks him, “Do you take it up the ass?” This caller will plague Bill through the rest of the narrative, even though Bill makes it clear from the get-go that he’s only interested in women. It’s through this that Bill learns of the mix-up at the paper. In reality I’d assume that such an ad would be ignored, but what happens is Bill gets called by a variety of horny freaks…and every single woman he meets is a hotstuff nympho. So yeah clearly the book is fantasy, but it wouldn’t be much fun otherwise. 

This also sets up another recurring joke in the narrative. Bill has kindly old neighbors who sometimes watch his cat for him and invite him over to dinner. Bill keeps hanging up on this initial caller, but the guy keeps calling back undeterred. Finally a frustrated Bill answers the ringing phone with “Look here, you filthy cocksucker,” only to discover it’s the kind old lady next door on the other line! She and her husband will often run into Bill’s new friends at the most inopportune moments, most notably when they happen to come out of their apartment just as one of Bill’s callers pulls off her coat in his doorway to reveal she’s wearing nothing beneath. Perhaps the bigger shock to these old immigrants is that the girl happens to be black. This sequence is probably the highlight of Send Photos/State Preferences, but also takes the novel in a different direction than the reader might initially suspect. 

For the girl, whose name is Lee Brooks, ends up becoming something more than just an anonymous hookup. While Bill will have flings with a few other girls, Lee is the one his thoughts will keep returning to over the hectic week in which the novel occurs. It starts with Lee being one of the first to respond to Bill’s ad; she has a “cultivated voice” and says, “I just hope you want to fuck half as bad as I do.” But she hangs up before a meet can be arranged, and Bill spends the next day thinking about her – despite the high volume of calls he’s receiving in the meantime, and even though she hasn’t told him a thing about herself other than that she wants to get laid. When she shows up at his door unannounced, Bill is struck momentarily speechless by her beauty: “You’d elbow a dozen Racquel Welchs out of your way to get a good look at her.” Lee mistakes Bill’s speechlessness for racism: “I guess I should have told you about this terrible skin condition I have.” 

An interesting thing about Send Photos/State Preferences is that it gives an unexpected look into interracial relationships in the mid-1970s. Bill comes off as very forward-thinking in this regard; so far as he is concerned, Lee Brooks is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, regardless of her race. He does however inform us, “The plain truth is that I’d never had sexual contact with a black before.” Later in the novel Bill will even come to Lee’s aid when Bill’s fiance comes in upon them mid-screw and starts referring to Lee as a “thing.” (Another recurring joke is that Bill and Lee keep getting walked in on when naked.) However Lee has experienced her share of racism, and thinks Bill is yet another white guy who will turn her away because she’s black. In a rage she shows off that she’s naked beneath her coat and screeches: “You wouldn’t want your lily-white prick inside me!” This of course is the exact moment Bill’s neighbors come out of their apartment. 

Bill pulls Lee into his own apartment and quickly dispells any notions of racism on his part, but here we come across the curious revelation that Send Photos/State Preferences won’t be as explicit as some of those other Dell PBOs, particularly Making U-Hoo and Sexual Strike Force. In fact, initally the act occurs off-page, but later Bill brings us up to speed that he and Lee engaged in a literal all-night session, with details on some of the more memorable moments. The next morning Lee is gone without a note and Bill suffers from a “purply, puffy, and tender appendage” thanks to the all-night bang-a-thon. There are two repercussions from this: Bill will find himself thinking about Lee even more than previously, and Bill will also find himself so sated from the sexual olympics that he has no real interest in the other sexy women who begin trying to hook up with him. 

This is of course something that elevates Send Photos/State Preferences above the “stroke books” of the day, which had full-bore explicit sequences in each and every chapter. Blaire isn’t so much interested in the sleaze – though there is quite a bit of it – than he is in developing an unexpected love story between his narrator and Lee Brooks. The only problem is the novel gets a little too bloated with digressions as it goes on, and the plot with Lee is often overlooked. But it’s due to his long night with Lee that Bill turns down the next hot woman who shows up at his door, a “cock-crazy nymphomaniac.” This is another funny part, as Bill’s called her over “just to talk,” and the woman agrees to this, but as soon as she gets in the door she tries to have sex with him. 

Bill succeeds in fending her off, but this leads into some of that page-filling I mentioned. The “suicidal nympho” damages some of Bill’s wall as she storms out, and this entails a lot of stuff where Bill hires a contractor. Later on there’s more repairman material when Bill rips his phone off the wall, sick of the incessant calls, and has to get it fixed, with even more page-filling about a guy from “Ma Bell” who comes over to test the line. Meanwhile Bill does at least remember to get laid: the only other woman besides Lee that he ends up having sex with is a married cougar-type who arranges to meet Bill at a hotel (where she regularly takes her men) and engages him in “one of the greatest screwings of all time.” 

There’s another part where Bill starts to have sex with yet another married woman…but this time while her husband is watching. This part reminded me so much of an earlier trash novel I reviewed on here, but I can’t remember the title. Bill initially thinks it’s yet another gay caller, but the affable, wealthy-sounding guy on the other line says that he’s just looking for someone to bang his wife. So Bill heads over to their posh apartment on 2nd Avenue, has a few drinks – of course, the lady is another beauty, but I should mention too that Blaire doesn’t much exploit the ample charms of his female characters – and just as he’s about to start getting busy he realizes that the husband has snuck into the bedroom…and is giving play-by-play directions. I know this same thing happened in another novel I read here, but can’t recall which. Bill doesn’t like this and takes off, with another humorous finale where the husband politely asks if he can take Bill’s place – ie, if he can have sex with his own wife! 

Bill himself comes off as an interesting character, mostly due to his acidic commentary. He’s a wannabe writer of “whodunits,” and is currently working on a novel titled Coffin Full Of Gold. There’s a funny part where, inspired by his new activities, he decides to sex up his manuscript, adding in mentions of “full, ripe breasts” and whatnot. He also finds himself writing a blow-by-blow description of his long night with Lee Brooks, which is another indication to himself of how much he’s thinking of her. But as stated earlier, if Blaire had focused on this alone the novel would have been stronger. As it is, there’s just too much padding in the last quarter, and while some of it’s funny, some of it is just overdone for the sake of a lame punchline – like when the Ma Bell repairman answers Bill’s phone on a lark, only to discover it’s his own wife on the other end, calling for the “groovy stud.” 

What’s worse is that we get no real resolution. After pining over Lee for so long, she shows up just as abruptly at Bill’s door again – this tme while he’s naked – and we get another all-night session. But the racial differences thing seems to be an issue, with neither of them sure how far they can go in an actual relationship. Blaire leaves it a question by novel’s end, and I’m only relating this due to the unfortunate scarcity of the title. Instead the finale is given over to another of those overlong joke setups; long story short, Bill’s loudmouthed office archenemy Howie ends up meeting that gay caller who has been plaguing our hero, with an unexpected outcome. We leave Bill where we met him, some weeks after the ad has both benefited his life (his meeting of Lee) and also ruined it (like when he accidentally called his mother “Whore,” thinking she was that nympho calling him again). 

Overall I enjoyed Send Photos/State Preferences, but I felt it just was a little too padded. It’s a lot better than the other novels I’ve read in this unofficial line, though, so I’d still recommend it to anyone interested in well-written and humorous ‘70s sleaze.

Monday, March 7, 2022

The Lone Wolf #3: Boston Avenger


The Lone Wolf #3: Boston Avenger, by Mike Barry
October, 1973  Berkley Medallion Books

Opening 36 hours after the previous volume, this third installment of The Lone Wolf finds our deranged hero Burt Wulff in Boston, having driven here nonstop after the apocaylptic climax of the previous book. Wulff’s got a suitcase with a “quarter million dollars of junk” in the backseat, and he’s brought it here to Boston because this is where he’s learned the heroin was destined to be shipped before he intercepted it. But promptly the heroin will be intercepted from him, and Wulff will spend a large portion of the narrative trying to get it back. Meanwhile we readers will learn that it’s nearly impossible to sell this particular case of heroin, as it travels like a narcotic version of The Monkey’s Paw from one ill-fated character to another. 

The title phrase is never mentioned in the novel, but we’ll recall that Wulff’s girl in the previous book referred to Wulff as “Avenger,” so I’m assuming Boston Avenger is a play on that. Or it’s a total coincidence. Because the girl isn’t even mentioned and only thought of in passing. Rather, Wulff spends a large portion of Boston Avenger, which occurs over just two days, trying to get his mojo back. While he kicked some serious ass in the previous two books, this time he’s often caught unawares, and basically has to give himself a pep talk to get back into the action. (“He was the Wolf again, and he was in the game to win.”) 

First though a behind-the-scenes note: I’ve since read “Some Notes On The Lone Wolf,” an essay included in Malzberg’s 1990 anthology Breakfast In The Ruins. In this pithy, entertaining piece Malzberg (aka “Mike Barry”) answers a question I’ve had: why Wulff’s name sometimes changes to “Conlan.” This is because Wulff’s original name was “Wulff Conlan,” and this is how Malzberg referred to the character in this first three novels, which he wrote within the span of a few weeks. However with the third volume, ie this one, he got a request from his agent to temporarily halt on the project, even though he’d been hired “to produce 10 books within less than a year.” 

For one, the character’s name would have to change: the last name of the series’s publisher happened to be Conlan, something Malzberg states he was unaware of. Also, Berkley wasn’t thrilled with how Wulff Conlan’s victims “were real people with real viewpoints who seemed to undergo real pain when they were killed, which was quite frequently.” But then Malzberg got the go-ahead to continue and write the fourth volume, only he’d need to start referring to the character as Burt Wulff, not Wulff Conlan. The Berkley copyeditors did a better job of correcting Malzberg’s manuscript this time than last; there’s only one “Conlan” slip, on page 49. Malzberg in his 1990 essay regrets that the temporary halt took a bit of the wind out of his sails, but notes that he was able to push on – and even turn in a few additional volumes outside of the original contract. The short piece, while humorous, is really more concerned with Malzberg’s satisfaction with himself that he was able to turn something out so quickly, despite having no background in the genre; he states that for research he read The Executioner #7, which he found to be “pretty bad, mechanical, and lifeless.” (I actually rank that seventh Bolan novel as one of my favorites yet in the series!) 

But even if Malzberg did rush through the series, he was still a quality writer, and it’s my belief that the talent of a quality writer will be evident even in a rushed work. This to me is most demonstrated through the understated theme that runs through Boston Avenger: the theme of control. Whether intentionally or not, Malzberg in this volume spins a thematic thread that Wulff and the Boston mobsters he is up against are constantly striving for self-control. Malzberg doesn’t bash us over the head with it, either; but it’s there if you look for it. Those who lose control die, of course, this being an action-centered genre. And Wulff must learn to regain control of his “wolf” instincts to “win the game.” 

He doesn’t have it at the start, though. Wulff, after barreling cross-country with the heroin, loses the case mere seconds after arriving in Boston. He pulls into a toll both and it turns out to be a mob trap. Again, Wulff’s enemies always surround and outmaneuver him. But Malzberg does himself a disservice here, because Wulff is caught cold and only saved from death through happenstance: a motorist pulls up behind him, despite it being so early in the morning, and starts honking his horn. So the two thugs just take off with the case, unwilling to kill Wulff in front of witnesses: “That’s not in the contract.”  Wulff will spend the rest of the novel fighting to get it back. 

Malzberg again opens up the narrative by focusing on one-off characters, but whereas this comes off like padding in other series novels, here it’s actually entertaining. No doubt because, per the publisher’s complaints, these characters come off like “real people” who feel “real pain.” Actually you could take Wulff out of the equation and Boston Avenger would be like the average crime novel of the day. The plot focuses on that case of heroin and the various members of the Boston underworld who try to acquire it and sell its contents. But then, The Lone Wolf is like The Liquidator in that it comes off more like a crime series than a men’s adventure series, heavier on vibe than on action setpieces like in The Executioner and such. Also like The Liquidator, it captures the feel of the era, and would be highly recommended for anyone who enjoys ‘70s crime fiction (which in my opinion was the best era for crime novels and movies). 

The two thugs who took Wulff’s case, Paul and Mac, are two of the one-off characters who comrpise a lot of the narrative. They work for Boston mob boss Cicchini, who wants the heroin and wants Wulff dead. Instead, these two decide to make off with the heroin on their own and sell it. This brings us to the one-off character who will take up the most of the narrative: Sands, an assistant professor at Harvard who happens to be “the biggest pusher on the East Coast.” As Marty McKee notes, Malzberg does page-fill a bit with Sands and his wife, but at the same time Malzberg’s writing is so enjoyable that I didn’t mind it. Regardless, we get a lot on how Sands, a college prof in his 30s who married one of his students, has fallen out of love with the girl and how she’s always threatening to leave him. This particular subplot leads to a crazed payoff that packs even more of a punch in our #metoo era, when Sands beats the living shit out of his wife when she makes the latest threat to leave him. 

But then as ever there is a skewed, dark vibe that runs through The Lone Wolf. Actually it’s darkly humorous. This is typically relayed in the motif I’ve noted before: that Wulff is so crazy that he affects the reality of anyone he encounters. Another recurring theme is characters being unable to believe what is happening to them, particularly when they are dying as a result of Wulff. It almost gives the impression that Wulff isn’t just a lone wolf vigilante, but also a sort of cosmic presence. Malzberg also injects his dark comedy into unexpected moments, like when the heroin-snatching thugs Paul and Mac, apropos of nothing, start speeding at 80 miles an hour down some road, even though they’re criminals with loaded guns, and they get in a car wreck when the cops give chase – and the car’s life passes before its eyes: 


Paul and Mac crash because they panic and fire at the cops while speeding along a darkened road. In other words, they lose control. Malzberg plays up this theme later in the book, when Wulff himself gets in a car chase, one even more tension-wracking than Paul and Mac’s…but Wulff never loses control. In fact, he becomes a stone-cold badass, “the Wolf,” and he pulls off one hell of a crazy feat. Basically he heists the heroin case from the cops, who have acquired it via unexpected plot developments. In what would have been considered one of the highlights of ‘70s crime fiction if it had appeared in a mainstream publication instead of under-the-radar series fiction, Wulff heads off an entourage of police cars that’s transporting the junk to headquarters. Taking advantage of the thick downtown Boston traffic, Wulff grabs the heroin and drives on sidewalks and oncoming traffic as he evades his pursuers, all of whom are shooting at him. He does crash a few cars, but doesn’t kill any cops, something he can’t bring himself to do (yet!). It’s a crazy sequence and the definite highlight of Boston Avenger

Meanwhile mob boss Cicchini has his own subplot. He’s run his territory to perfection over the decades…all as a result of his ironclad self-control. Control which, per the novel’s theme, begins to slip now that Wulff is in town. There are periodic bits where Cicchini consciously struggles to regain his control, pushed to the maddened brink by current developments. But Malzberg has a gift for unexpected plot development; Cicchini causes a lot of his own misfortune when he sends his boys to collect Wulff – another moment where our hero is caught completely unawares and could easily be killed, if not for the contrivances of the plot – and makes Wulff an offer. For reasons Malzberg never makes clear, Cicchini doesn’t want to approach Sands himself – the Harvard professor who has gained control of the case – and thus hires Wulff for the job, even giving him a souped-up car. This is the car Wulff uses in his thrilling heist sequence, which also happens to be the moment in the novel where Wulff again becomes “the Wolf” and regains his mojo. 

Malzberg also gives what seems to be a capoff on the mystery which was introduced in the first volume: what happened to Wulff’s fiance, who died of an OD. Wulff’s certain the Mafia killed her, but Cicchini swears up and down that the Mafia had nothing to do with it; he himself has personally researched the case. As ever though, Wulff clams up and won’t hear any talk about his dead woman. Later in the book he reflects to himself that maybe Cicchini was right. Originally I thought we’d have a twist reveal that Wulff killed her, but we’ll see; it’s possible Malzberg will just drop the entire mystery angle and leave it as what it is: Wulff’s a psychotic bastard in a one-man war against the Mafia. 

And once again Wulff does most of his fighting with a .38 revolver, though he’s still carrying around the “machine gun” he picked up in the previous book. Malzberg’s yet to tell us what kind of machine gun it even is, though this time he informs us it’s similar to the BAR Wulff used in ‘Nam. Action isn’t as frequent in Boston Avenger, though. This is not to say the novel is boring. The characterization is gripping, as is the thematic work, and it builds to a thrilling climax as Wulff regains control of the case and squares things up with the Boston mob. Malzberg also delivers a climactic gunfight, one which again dispenses with realism; it features Wulff blasting away at Cicchini and his enforcers in an apartment, and the cops never show up despite what would have to be an incredible din. Even here though Malzberg imbues the scene with the sureal edge that has become customary of the series: 


Per his 1990 essay, Malzberg was aware from the beginning that Wulff was nuts; for that matter, Malzberg saw that Mack Bolan was nuts, too. This psychosis becomes increasingly evident; the finale features Wulff beating to hamburger one of the one-off characters, but realizing that “there is no retaliation” against the underworld. For, once Wulff has dispensed justice, his mobster and drug-dealing prey are reduced to “only victims,” and Wulff realizes here that he can never fully achieve vengeance. Also, he realizes that if you were to kill one Cicchini, at least three more would immediately take his place. This creates a sort of fatalism in Wulff, or perhaps I should say it furthers Wulff’s fatalism, for again he thinks of himself as a “dead man.” And it is with this fatalism that we leave him with; that is, after a climax that’s reminsicent of the last scene in the first Dirty Harry film, only with a case of heroin replacing a police badge. 

Unlike the previous two, this installment doesn’t end with a setup for the next volume. Per Malzberg’s essay, he came to a temporary halt at this point in the series, which he felt caused him to lose a little headway. But given the speed with which he wrote these books, they almost come off like one very long novel. Also in the essay Malzberg states that he hasn’t seen any money from the series since the late ‘70s; the essay was published in 1990, and I haven’t seen any indication that The Lone Wolf has since been reprinted. What would be cool is if some enterprising modern publisher were to acquire the rights and reprint the entire 14-volume series as one massive omnibus, so that it could be read as a single novel. Plus of course a new intro from Malzberg; it would be nice to see what he thinks of the series now, given that even in the 1990 essay he already felt far removed from it.

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Random Movie Reviews, Volume 16

The Eternals & Modern Hollywood (A Rant) 

The Eternals (2021): If a corporate Human Resources department ever made a big-budget superhero movie, this would be the result. It’s as if such minor things as creativity and storytelling took a backseat to checking off diversity and inclusion boxes; there’s so much “representation” in this film as to be ludicrous. And you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that this rampant diversity causes many, many issues with the movie, chief among them that there’s absolutely no unity among the titular Eternals, who seem like what they are: a bunch of actors from various racial backgrounds who have been thrown together by SJW Hollywood producers. There is zero connection between this execrable film and the original Jack Kirby comics…well, Angelina Jolie’s body does conform to a Kirby-esque mold, but we're not supposed to notice things like that. Comics have been entirely de-sexualized by Hollywood, unless of course we’re talking about the male characters, who per the norm get more naked than the women do…I mean we must always subvert the male gaze while appeasing the male gays. That’s pretty much as important to modern Hollywood as the diversity and inclusion. 

The film is a 2 and a half hour slog that does a piss-poor job of introducing an unwieldy cast of characters. I mean there are like 10 or 12 “main characters” in the film, meaning that they are all reduced to ciphers for the most part. However the only name you will remember is Sersi, as her name is repeated about a million times in the film. Surely this is intentional, given that Sersi is played by a Chinese woman (one who is apparently incapable of changing her expression…seriously one of the most wooden performances I’ve witnessed in a modern film), and The Eternals is directed by…you guessed it, a Chinese woman. Sure, Sersi was a statuesque brunette in the Kirby comics, but forget about that. So if literally every character says “Sersi” about twenty times each in the film, then surely that is only a good thing. We need to be reminded of her female empowerment at all times! How else would we know she’s so important? I mean are we to expect the plot to let us know, through organic storytelling elements? No, we don’t have time for a plot – we have an agenda to push! 

Now I harp on the diversity because it is the ultimate undoing of The Eternals, yet of course it is central to the objectives of the ideologues who made the film in the first place. The Eternals, we learn, have been together for untold eons, and one of the many, many half-assed subplots (half-assed because they’re rarely elaborated upon) is that they are a “family.” And yet in a real family – that is, not the leftist modern concept of a family, where your best friends and neighbors and pet dog are your “family,” but a real actual nuclear family – there is of course diversity…yet there is also unity. There is no unity among these Eternals. I mean Sersi and top tough guy Ikaris are supposed to be in love, with the filmmakers striving to create this epic, millennia-spanning love story between the two, yet the actors have zero chemistry, and the romance is forced. That said, I kinda appreciated how Sersi clearly digs white guys; there’s only one white non-Eternal male in the movie, and Sersi’s dating him, too. I’m surprised someone didn’t catch that in the preproduction stage and revise the character to be a person of color. 

There are only two white guys among the Eternals, and of course one of them turns out to be the villain. Because of course; who else would you expect to be the villain in an overly-“diverse” cast? Did you think it would be the deaf black girl? And speaking of which, yes, there is a deaf girl among the Eternals, but if you think about it, even that is stupid. Because another of the Eternals is a genius capable of inventing advanced technology…and of course he’s a heavyset black guy who is gay (and who takes part in “the first gay kiss in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” because that’s what we go to superhero movies to see, right?)…and yet somehow, despite existing for eons and eons and eons, this super-genius never considers creating a gizmo that would allow the deaf girl to hear and speak. I mean just give him another couple million years, folks! These things take time! 

And speaking of, uh, speaking, this brings me to another issue of stupidity: all the accents. So the setup is that the Eternals have existed together as a unit for millions of years, and have been on Earth since the beginnings of history. You’d think, after all that time, that Salma Hayek’s Ajak might’ve, you know, lost her Mexican accent. Same goes for the Asian Eternals, the Indian Eternal, etc. Even the few white Eternals have accents (with Angelina Jolie’s being humorously fake). I mean don’t you think they’d all have acquired accent-neutral speeking styes after, I don’t know, a couple hundred years or so? But then, Ajak already has a Mexcan accent when the Eternals arrive in the prehistoric era, before Mexican accents even existed, same as the others already have their accents, so I realize I’m splitting hairs. Actually I’m thoroughly splitting hairs, as everyone is speaking English, which itself didn't exist yet...but then if you think about it, it’s still ridiculous, because why would the Eternals each have a different accent if they were all created by the same Celestial?  This is another mystery the movie doesn’t bother to solve, let alone acknowledge, because it goes without saying that there is absolutely no ethnicity-derived humor in the film…modern Hollywood couldn’t even conceive of such a thing, anyway. But just imagine the fun someone like Mel Brooks could’ve had with this belabored “diversity” setup in a 1970s film…you know, back when Hollywood wasn’t straightjacketed by woke ideology.   

Man, I haven’t even gotten into the plot, but I don’t want to waste too much time on that. It’s sort of like if Lost had been condensed into a movie, with constant and seemingly arbitrary flashbacks to various events in the past, as we learn how the Eternals came to Earth in the prehistoric era and have stayed here all these centuries to fight the Deviants. All at the behest of their creator, a massive being known as a Celestial. (The Celestials are the only thing in the movie that actually resemble their Jack Kirby origins…and unsuprisingly so, given that they are CGI creations and thus couldn’t be “diversified.”) The Deviants are one of the countless stupid things in The Eternals, literally only showing up when the movie needs an action scene and then disappearing. But they’re just these demonic four-legged creatures, boring CGI monsters that bring to mind the similarly-boring CGI monsters of Justice League and The Avengers. One of them, apropos of nothing, morphs into a human-like appearance and makes random grandiose speeches which ultimately have zilch to do with anything. 

Oh, and the action scenes – they suck, too. They’re just chaotic sprawls of pixels as the various CGI creations face off against one another, with the actors occasionally striking lame “heroic” poses. And for that matter the filmmakers never can figure out the powers of the various Eternals, nor how they rank against one another. We’re told Angelina Jolie’s Thera is “the greatest warrior,” yet Ikaris (I’m too disinterested to look up the actor’s name) is most often described as the most powerful of the group. Huh? But then their powers seem to depend upon the lazy plotting; Ajak fights as good as the others in the flashback scenes before apparently forgetting how to use her powers in a sequence in the modern era. Oh, and that reminds me of another stupid part…so they have all these title cards, like “Mesopotamian Period” or whatnot, to let us know when the various flashbacks occur. Then, late in the movie, we get a title card informing us, “Five days ago.” Five days ago from when? The prehistoric era sequence? The part in 400 AD India? It was just so stupid and poorly thought out that it made me laugh…but then the stupid goofs, of which there were many, were all that did make me laugh. 

Another stupid thing is that, despite being ageless, these Eternals seem to have no appreciation of time. How would it feel to live for millennia, to see humans grow old and die? Hell if I know after watching this movie. You’d think that would be a chief concern for the story to convey, but nope. As hard as it is to believe, The Highlander actually did a better job of this. One of the Eternals even has a human spouse and a child…is this his first human family in the thousands of years he’s been here on Earth? Has he had other families who grew old and died as he remained ageless? How does he connect with his young son, knowing that he will outlive him? You will not find an answer to any of these questions in The Eternals. No, the bigger concern is the ideology – because, you see, the Eternal with a human family is the gay Eternal, who you betcha has a son he’s raising with his husband. What matter such trivialities as character development when you have an agenda to push? The guy even gives an impassioned speech about “never wanting to change a single thing” about himself. Even when the world is about to end, it comes down to identity politics.

There’s so much dumb shit in this movie I could write a book about it. I mean at the end – and there are no spoilers here, but at the same time who gives a shit about this stupid movie – the godlike Celestial who created the Eternals millions of years ago pops up and snatches a few of them off the Earth to give them a good talking to. Meanwhile, a few of the other Eternals have recently left the Earth to find more of their own kind. Yet the ones who left Earth are’t collected here by the Celestial in the climax. What, this godlike, omniscient and omnipotent being couldn’t find them? I mean all you have to do is hop on a spaceship and you can totally evade your omnipotent creator? It’s all just so fucking stupid and half-assed, and clearly has been turned out by people who have “greater” priorities than just delivering a good story. This is indicative of what goes on behind the scenes in modern Hollywood – story, plot, characterization, none of that matters now. It’s all watered-down bullshit by Twitter obsessives who want to ensure they check off all the right D&I boxes in their screenplays. I mean the only thing they missed in The Eternals is a trans character, but I’m sure they’re saving that for the sequel. “I’m no longer Ikaris…I am now Chickaris!” 

Early indications were that The Eternals would be a bomb, but I’m sure it’s gone on to do well in streaming and other stuff. Shame on anyone who paid to see it, though. I saw it for free via a friend who got it on Prime or something. Actually, I know pride’s a sin and all (or at least used to be), but one thing I pride myself on is that I haven’t given Hollywood a dime in at least a decade. I cut my cable, I don’t go to movies, I don’t buy Blu Rays or DVDs of new movies, and I don’t pay to stream anything. If just a million or so more people could do that, we’d bleed Hollywood dry in a year or two…and maybe then everyone making movies now would be fired and replaced by filmmakers who don’t make woke ideology their chief concern. Because folks, don’t expect Citizen Kane or Casablanca from the social media generation. 

But then that’s just my opinion! However I watched The Eternals with my wife, who as I’ve mentioned before happens to be Chinese. Also a literal immigrant, not a liberal immigrant (in the “we’re all immigrants” sense), who grew up speaking Cantonese and Malay and immigrated here when she was a teenager. So she’s a woman of color (she hates that term, btw) and she likes superhero movies, so you’d figure she’d be the prime audience for The Eternals. She thought it was stupid, too. Which pretty much says all there is to say about this dumb movie…it can’t even cater to the audience it’s trying to cater to. But then that’s what happens when you put ideology above creativity. On the other hand, The Eternals is no doubt the direction the Marvel Cinema Universe will continue to head, following its comic-book roots; comics too have been overtaken by SJW types who use the comics as a platform for their woke ideology

Like a certain guy once said, “Everything woke turns to shit,” and friends The Eternals is all the evidence you need.

Monday, February 28, 2022

The Sex Broker


The Sex Broker, by Ginger Craig
September, 1974  Pinnacle Books

This Pinnacle PBO is of a piece with the sleazy paperbacks Dell Books was publishing at the time: a sex-themed comedy with a photo cover, a la Black MagicMichelle, My Belle, and Making U-Hoo. And, sadly, The Sex Broker is just as lame as those similar Dell books…an unfunny “comedy” that quickly grates on the reader’s nerves. It’s also an episodic affair that reminded me so much of the massage parlor novels of “Jennifer Sills,” at least in its episodic structure, that I wondered if the same author was responsible: Stephen Lewis, a very prolific author of sleazy PBOs at the time and who used a variety of pseudonyms. 

The Pinnacle offering The Sex Broker most resembles is The True Confessions & Wild Adventures Of Two Rent-A-Girls, which too was an episodic affair that traded more on laughs than sleazy action. And it follows the same conceit: that the author, Ginger Craig, is a real person. She’s credited in the Catalog Of Copyright Entries, at least. But is/was Ginger Craig a real person, or just a pseudonymous author…perhaps another pseudonym of Stephen Lewis? We’ll probably never know. What makes it annoying though is that “Ginger” tells us absolutely nothing about herself, and the reader must do some heavy lifting to finally deduce that she makes her living as a model. Hell, we don’t even learn until page 145 (of a 180-some page book) that she’s a brunette. The hair color isn’t really a big deal; what is a big deal is that we spend so much of The Sex Broker wondering who the heck our author even is, so a little setup would’ve been beneficial. 

But Ginger isn’t really our protagonist: that would be Uncle Ben, the titular “sex broker,” a nebbish guy with a big nose, awkward social manners, outdated clothes, and unsafe-for-today sexual interests (we learn almost casually that he likes underaged girls – yep, it’s a ‘70s book, folks). The “novel” is made up of Ginger’s stories about various moments in Uncle Ben’s career; moments in which “the sex broker” interfered with and ultimately jacked-up Ginger’s life. Again, the fact that we have zero setup on who Ginger is ultimately detracts from the story, and also despite being marketed as a true story it’s all clearly fiction, as Uncle Ben’s shenanigans nearly spark a world war. 

Now what differentiates a sex broker from a pimp, Ginger tells us, is that Uncle Ben doesn’t have a “stable” of girls that he rules. What he does is find out of work models or actresses or bored housewives and hook them up with his clientele of horny businessmen. This means that Uncle Ben has schmoozing skills, able to talk random women into basically becoming whores, though he doesn’t pay them – we learn the grateful men will often give them presents or whatnot. Uncle Ben also likes to find girls who are eager for adventure, ones who might have a job and even be a happy housewife, but who are looking for some action on the side. This, Ginger vaguely informs us, is the category she fits in: she’s got a job she loves, she travels around the world and sleeps with a variety of men, she’s “pretty” (the absolute maximum description we get of her), and thus Uncle Ben is crazed to make her one of his girls. Actually, here is Ginger’s explanation of Uncle Ben’s services:


Whoever staged the cover photo must’ve gotten specific directions from the publisher, as Uncle Ben looks and dresses much as pictured when Ginger meets him. This is at a party in Los Angeles, where Ginger first spots Uncle Ben, dressed in a safari suit and up to what will prove to be his usual antics of acquiring women for his clientele. But as Ginger soon learns, Uncle Ben has a fondness for giving voice to outrageous propositions; in truth, Ben’s dialog is more filthy than the actual sex scenes in the novel. Shortly after this, Ginger sees Ben again – in London. How or why Ginger’s even in London is something we are not told. We are told though that her affair with a married man is broken off here, and she flies back to New York a crying, drunken wreck. 

What follows is one of the very few scenes where Ginger herself takes part in the action, and is also the most explicit sequence in the novel. Uncle Ben, who again magically appears, barges into Ginger’s hotel room and asks her if she’s “ever hate-fucked anyone.” Ben is planning a little orgy for some clients and needs a third girl for it, and Ginger would be perfect – she could bang out her anger over being dumped. Ginger ends up going to the orgy just to spite Ben, leading to a funny sequence where she keeps taunting the men and Ben. But regardless she gets into the act (“I had never hate-fucked anyone before, but it wasn’t difficult to get the hang of it.”), mostly because one of the two men looks a little like the married guy who just dumped her. The author doesn’t get super explicit here, but we do get enough kinky detail on how Ginger and the other girls take turns with the guys…and then Ginger bites the dick of one of the guys(!). This, we learn, has been her goal all along – to really mess up Uncle Ben’s orgy, so that he’ll never bother her again. 

From here the novel takes on its episodic approach, Ginger relating the various times she would encounter Uncle Ben again. In most all cases Ginger herself has nothing to do with the sexual festivities, but Ben uses her as either a sounding board for his weird ideas or, in one notable sequence, he uses her apartment as a waystation for a couple girls he’s brought in from Texas. But really it’s just a bunch of random stories concerning Uncle Ben up to this or that kinky nefariousness, with Ginger acting as his perennially-aggrieved straight (wo)man. The conceit quickly gets old, as Ginger at this point has nothing to do with Uncle Ben, yet he keeps calling her up with his plans for other people, or involving her in some fashion. I soon wondered why the author didn’t just make Uncle Ben himself the protagonist and dispense with the “Ginger Craig” conceit. 

Ginger meanwhile has her own torrid love life, which she occasionally informs us of…just as vaguely as she informs us about most everything else in her life. There will be parts where she’s out with her latest stud in some city, and of course Uncle Ben will show up to sour the festivities. Sometimes this leads to comedic results, like for example Ginger’s latest guy becoming certain that Ginger herself is just a hooker. But there’s no connecting thread to the various chapters, no overall storyline. It’s just a seemingly random snapshot of various Uncle Ben shenanigans, like a touring exotic play he puts together, or various orgies he throws for clients. And the humor is very “risque ‘70s,” like the related tale of the orgy Ben throws together for a businessman, one who likes real young gals…and right before the gal starts giving him a bj the guy flips on the lights and sees that it’s none other than his own teenaged daughter. 

But clearly it’s all fiction, and the “true story” stuff is just typical of the era’s sex-themed publications. The finale in particular highlights this, with Uncle Ben running afoul of Chinese spies, Russian spies, and the FBI. And appropriately it all takes place at Ginger’s place, complete with her mother walking into the spectacle (certain afterwards that her daughter is some sort of international whore) and Ginger ultimately arrested by the FBI for spying. But this we’re to understand is the final straw, as Ginger relates that after she got her name cleared the first thing she did was buy a trained attack dog, one that will go for Uncle Ben’s throat if he ever comes near her again. 

Well anyway, this was yet another ‘70s sex comedy that wasn’t sexy or funny. The sexual material is pretty scant, not nearly as explicit as you’d expect, and the comedy gets old very quickly. The only interesting thing was the mystery over whether Ginger Craig was a real person or not, and even that wasn’t so interesting.

Thursday, February 24, 2022

The Executioner #17: Jersey Guns


The Executioner #17: Jersey Guns, by Don Pendleton
January, 1974  Pinnacle Books

Don Pendleton returns to The Executioner with a volume that is clearly a sequel to #15: Panic In Philly. It’s as if the previous volume never happened; it’s only mentioned occasionally in the first few pages, and we know from Pendleton’s interview with William H. Young in A Study of Action-Adventure Fiction that the references to Sicilian Slaughter in Jersey Guns were actually written by series editor Andy Ettinger. Pendleton himself never read that “Jim Peterson” installment (actually William Crawford), and thus, per the interview, Ettinger is the one who tied the events of the sixteenth volume into the opening of this seventeeth volume. But really you could take all those references out and not even notice they were missing; Pendleton certainly wrote Jersey Guns shortly after Panic In Philly (not to be confused with David Bowie’s “Panic In Detroit”), but the behind-the-scenes legal wrangling delayed publication. 

Young’s book gives a lot of info on this legal wrangling, so I suggest seeking it out for the full story. (Just get the book via Interlibrary Loan, like I did; it’s really overpriced.) But basically Pendleton and Pinnacle went to court over the rights of the series, and Pendleton won, but part of the settlement was that he allowed Sicilian Slaughter to be published, because Pinnacle had already printed up the book and they would’ve been hit too hard financially to just cancel it. Pinnacle clearly wanted to curry favor with Pendleton at this point, though, as the back cover – for the first time ever in the series, don’tcha know – features a glowing write-up on our author:


In many ways Jersey Guns is a prefigure of Michael Newtons later Prairie Fire, with an injured Mack “The Executioner” Bolan stuck on a farm with some innocent people as the bad guys set in. Newton exploited the concept more than Pendleton does, but my assumption is Newton might’ve been inspired by this very volume. Bolan gets on the farm after shaking a Mafia tail, a brutal sequence in which he tricks them into running into his abandoned car on a darkened road. After which he passes out, weakened from his wounds – wounds which he actually got in the climax of Panic In Philly, but which Ettinger edits to be the wounds Bolan got at the climax of Sicilian Slaughter. Bolan wakes up on a farm a few miles from where he crashed up the Mafia cars. 

He isn’t among strangers, though: the farm is owned by a guy named Bruno, who briefly encountered Bolan back in ‘Nam. Bolan was there as a soldier, and Bruno was there as a medic. Bruno came back from ‘Nam with his head truly messed up, and now runs this farm away from the world. With him is his sister, a brunette beauty named Sara who is one of the prettiest women Bolan has ever seen, apparently, even though initially he’s under the impression she’s under age. But she is in her early 20s and she too has suffered from ‘Nam, as her husband was killed over there. And as noted her brother Bruno has come back a shadow of what he once was; a battered mental wreck. Pendleton develops a sort of family dynamic here, with these three damaged characters finding redemption in one another. 

It’s a powerful theme for sure, but maybe the seventeeth installment of a mob-busting action series isn’t the best place for it. This is something that needs an entire novel’s worth of development, but Pendleton sort of harries through it in the opening quarter. It’s more emotionally meaty than the standard genre offering, that’s for sure, but at least we aren’t beaten over the head with a bunch of maudlin sap. This was still a masculine era, after all, without the cheap showy sentimentality you would encounter in a similar storyline today. And plus Bolan gets laid. Pendleton was very stingy with sex in The Executioner; he stated in his interview with William H. Young that Bolan wouldn’t have “time” for it, given his focus on mob-busting. So it’s notable that Bolan does get busy with Sara, even though he’s injured, mostly unarmed, and sure to be the prey of mobsters who are no doubt congregating on the farm. 

As with the sex scenes in previous installments, it’s not sleazy or very explicit at all…and, as with those previous sexual scenes, the most notable element is the weird, metaphysical dialog that ensues between Bolan and Sara. First of all, Bolan gives her a post-sex pep talk about how women are the “mothers of the cosmos” or whatnot, and it’s all straight out of the mind who also gave us The Godmakers. Bolan sure as hell doesn’t come off like too many of his men’s adventure brethren, that’s for sure, giving voice to a truly singular philosophy that sounds more like that of an acid-dropping college student than it does a mob-busting vigilante. And it does get to be a little much, like for example later in the novel when Sara is hiding somewhere and Bolan picks her up, calling out, “Let’s go, little mother! Time to build a universe!” What makes it even crazier is that you know Pendleton’s tongue is nowhere in the vicinity of his cheek. 

But, Bolan and Sara’s conjugation happens mostly off-page, and is treated more on an emotional spectrum than a sleazy one, in that finding one another they help heal one another. Regardless, it leads to one of the cooler bits in the series yet. Bolan wakes up from the shenaigans to hear Sara yelling for help. He looks out the window and two mobster thug-types are in the act of pushing her into a car. Bolan quickly grabs his Automag and blows ‘em both away – their brains and whatnot exploding mere inches from Sara’s screaming face. From here Bolan’s in war mode, and accordingly Sara has sewn a new blacksuit for him, complete with hidden pockets to carry his ammo and equipment. (Again with his tongue nowhere near his cheek, Pendleton refers to Bolan as a “black-clad doomsday guy.”) Also unlike Prairie Fire, Bolan quickly re-arms himself, having sent Bruno into the city to pick up a veritable arsenal from a dealer Bolan’s done business with before – another ‘Nam vet who has returned to the world a broken man, in what is a theme that runs throughout Jersey Guns

More indication that Pendleton did not write the previous volume comes in the few scenes where Bolan makes his inevitable calls to Leo Turin, his inside man with the mob. Whereas Turin resented Bolan in the Crawford-penned installment, here he has the Pendleton-typical hero worship of “the black-clad doomsday guy.” But then Pendleton’s hero-worshipping is really brought to the fore in Jersey Guns, more so than in any previous volume. As we’ll recall, most every installment of The Executioner follows the same template, with Bolan doing stuff and then ensuing paragraphs where one-off characters recap what we readers just saw Bolan do. Then of course there will be periodic chapters in which Bolan reaffirms his resolve to destroy the mob. This time Pendleton dispenses with the “one-off characters recapping the plot” stuff, but doubles way down on the “mission resolve” stuff. 

In this regard I agree with Marty McKee, who in his review of Jersey Guns noted that “Pendleton often goes off-subject with ramblings about war and humanity.” I see that Stephen Mertz posted a comment to Mary’s review, stating that “those ‘ramblings’ are what the books are about.” Stephen is certainly correct, but I feel that Marty is, too, as in this particular volume the sermonizing is pretty egregious. Damn egregious at that, for it commits the ultimate pulp sin of interfering with the action. It also serves to balloon what is a simple, almost outline-esque installment, to the point that there’s less action here than typical. In the final third especially the narrative often stops so that Pendleton can once again examine what makes Bolan tick. This has been done before, but never so frequently, or to such extent. To the point that I actually missed those arbitrary plot recaps from one-off characters. As an example, this is the sort of thing that constantly bogs down the forward momentum in Jersey Guns:


What makes it frustrating is that otherwise Pendleton has here a lean and mean thriller that shows his Mafia villains at their most depraved. Bolan discovers that the Taliferi brothers, those recurring villains from previous volumes, have gathered together a host of guns and are descending on Jersey to finally get the Executioner. And they’ve brought along a couple “Turkey Doctors,” ie those mob sadists who perform sadistic torture to get their prey to talk. This time, seventeen volumes in(!), we finally get a thorough description of who the turkey doctors are and what they do. Because, of course, one of Bolan’s new friends is captured and put through the turkey-doctoring treatment, leading to a sequence more gruesome and horror-esque than in any previous volume. But at the same time Pendleton undermines the tension he creates, for the mob here is evil enough to hire such sadists…but still dumb enough that Bolan can, once again, bluff his way onto a Mafia “hardsite” and literally escort his captured friend. 

After this, though, Bolan goes on the warpath, breaking out his new weaponry to hit the Taliferi hardsite, and hit it hard. But the helluva it is, Pendleton has spent so much time with the frequent hero-sermonizing that the climax of Jersey Guns isn’t nearly as spectacular as it was shaping up to be. And once again Bolan so outmatches his opponents – even though they greatly outnumber him – that there’s no tension to any of it. The main issue though is that it’s a relatively smallscale sequence, with Bolan hitting the area with explosives and then “mopping up” a few injured thugs. Even the confrontation with the Taliferi brother himself is anticlimactic, though at least believable in that Bolan, a soldier, wouldn’t dwell on revenge. That said, by novel’s end he declares he has a score to settle with the turkey doctor who so maimed Bolan’s new friend, so hopefully this subplot will eventually pan out. 

All of which is to say that Jersey Guns is on the level with the previous Pendleton volumes. The action is a bit too muddied up with the positive reinforcement detours, but again Pendleton’s outlook is so unusual – particularly when compared to other novels in the genre – that it sort of makes you chuckle. Despite what Pendleton claimed in William Young’s book (or actually maybe it was in the interview Pendleton did with Marvel comics for Marvel Preview Presents: The Punisher, in 1975), Mack Bolan is a superhero, and his easy vanquishing of his foes only undermines what could be a more thrilling tale. The “what a man” stuff only makes his superheroism more grating. 

But then, I still agree with Zwolf that “Pendleton’s still a Cadillac in the parking lot of action-series writers,” and this sort of thing is part of Pendleton’s template. I just personally felt it got in the way this time. But, it’s the series schtick, same as Bolan’s easy infiltration of various mob hardsites…he makes the whole “Executioner” business look ridiculously easy. On that same note, Jersey Guns ends with Bolan easily taking control of a Mafia airplane and having the pilot head south; we’ll learn his destination next volume, it appears, as he uses the flight time to take a well-deserved nap(!).

Monday, February 21, 2022

Biofeedback


Biofeedback, by Marvin Karlins and Lewis M. Andrews
September, 1974  Warner Paperback Library

It doesn’t get much more “early ‘70s” than biofeedback; I mean just look at that girl’s frazzled hair on the cover. It practically epitomizes the post-Altamont comedown that followed the Aquarian Age. I’ve been interested in this subject for a long time but have never read much about it. I got this Warner paperback – which followed the original 1972 hardcover edition – some years ago, but have only now got around to reading it. The book definitely made an impact at the time; my edition, shown here, is the fourth paperback printing. So that’s a total of five printings in two years, counting the hardcover. 

The first I ever heard of biofeedback was in an old book, probably sometime in the late ‘90s. I bring this up because Biofeedback states in the opening: “To our children, biofeedback training will be as commonplace as television has become to us.” I guess I could be considered the “children” referenced here, given that I was born the month after this fourth paperback edition was published. And so I can confirm – no, biofeedback training did not become as commonplace as television. At least I’d never heard of it until coming across references in old books. But who knows, maybe others out there grew up listening to their own breathing on bizarre gadgetry and employing other high-tech gadgets to control various parts of their bodies, minds, or whatnot. 

Accordingly the book opens with a vaguely sci-fi intro in which we take a peek into a “voluntarium,” a biofeedback-equipped hospital of the future in which patients use machinery to conquer their own ailments. Biofeedback, we’ll learn, is the process of using “feedback from different parts of our body,” in other words listening to our body to figure out what is wrong with it. There’s quite a bit of Future Shock here, ie Alvin Toffler’s epochal study (which is even referenced in the text). That very ‘70s mentality of an oncoming future in which minds and bodies are united with technology. Again, the cover photo tells you pretty much all you need to know. 

Biofeedback runs to 190 pages, but only 138 pages are composed of narrative; the remaining pages are comrpised of notes and further reading suggestions. Much of the book is given over to the history of biofeedback research, and the training in action. The authors are specialists in this field, and occasionally deliver a personal insight, but for the most part they stick to a formal tone. That said, Biofeedback still manages to capture the groovy vibe of the era, particularly when the authors provide imaginary scenarios of how biofeedback training can be used. However it isn’t until near the end of the book that they give probably the best example of biofeedback training that is commonplace: when athletes or sports teams watch videos of themselves, using this “vision feedback” to improve their game. This is indeed so commonplace that I never realized the practice started as a sort of biofeedback exercise. 

The authors focus on biofeedback as a way around traditional medicine, which is how they envision the practice will ultimately evolve. Instead of a regimen of drugs or surgery for an ailment, a person would hook himself up into b.f. machines to figure out what’s wrong with his body and how to fix it. We get a lot of success stories on test trials of various training, to reduce hypertension or other maladies. There’s also material on how biofeedback training can be used for less severe things, like subvocalizing when reading; a case study shows us how a machine was able to make a noise when hooked up to a test subject who was subvocalizing while reading without any awareness of it. Some of the experiments capture that post-psychelic Spaced Out vibe of the era:


It gets even groovier in the speculative sections, where the authors give a glimpse of their “voluntarium.” The below could be a scene in Rollerball


This sort of material is the highlight of Biofeedback, but for the most part the authors rein in their speculative impulses and just give us somewhat dry rundowns of biofeedback history. But sometimes they are able to incorporate the groovy speculative scenes with history, as with this account of the biofeedback study one of the authors particpated in while a college student in the late ‘60s:



True to the era, there’s a fair bit of America-bashing in the book. Not to the level one would encounter today, but the authors take a few swipes at American culture…how it is business centered, with a focus on quick rewards. This in particular comes under fire when the authors look at how biofeedback could be a shortcut to nirvana. Whereas some people devote lifetimes to meditation to achieve a sort of cosmic awareness, the authors claim that b.f. gadgets could just as easily lead to the same destination. And Americans, we’re informed, love their gadgets, thus this reliance on biofeedback gadgetry to achieve the wisdom of gurus is a very American thing. This gets into the speculative arena again, and I almost wished the authors had just written a near-future novel imbued with this whole biofeedback-fueled Future Shock vibe. It looks like Lawrence Sanders sort of did, though, with his 1975 novel The Tomorrow File (which I’m currently reading and will review eventually…it’s one long book!). 

Speaking of other authors, the final section of Biofeedback could almost come from the mind of Joseph Rosenberger. Here we learn of “underground science,” how biofeedback has been used – especially behind the Iron Curtain – to study ESP and telekinesis. I’m pretty certain Rosenberger dealt with this very topic in at least one Death Merchant installment. But coming away from Biofeedback I wanted to see more of these concepts put into action, even if it was just speculative fiction. Another intriguing speculation the authors put forth is that biofeedback centers would be everywhere in the near future, but obviously that too never happened – unless I’m just completely clueless about them. Which is possible. 
 
Actually, I came away from the book interested in the biofeedback phenomena, and I wondered why it never caught on like the authors predicted it would. If anyone out there could share some history on the topic, I’d appreciate it.