Black Samurai #01 - Black Samurai

When African-American author Marc Olden began his fiction writing career in the early 1970s, he juggled two different action-adventure series characters. As Robert Hawke, the nine books in his 'Narc' series spanned from 1973 to 1975. Meanwhile, his 'Black Samurai' series lasted eight installments - all released in 1974 and 1975, a heavy production schedule for a relatively new author. 

“Black Samurai #1” is a terrific introductory novel from an author who clearly understood the genre. The story opens in 1973 with an action-packed massacre at a Samurai training camp outside Tokyo. After being banished from the U.S. Army for Vietnam war crimes, Colonel Leo Tolstoy (an odd literary reference never fully explained), along with a group of rogue commandos and a pack of attack dogs launch a bloody raid on the Samurai encampment. 

The slaughtered Samurai students and master in the camp were all Japanese with the exception of the one survivor, our hero, Robert Sand. The reader is quickly presented with a few flashbacks that explain how an American Black Guy became a Black Samurai with a paperback series of his own. 

As a character, Sand is not exactly brimming with personality, but he sure knows how to kick ass. The action sequences featuring Sand’s quest for vengeance are really well-written. They are the perfect blend of bloody martial arts fighting and gory gun-play. Sand is an earnest man of honor who is intelligent, gallant, courageous and highly-skilled in every martial arts discipline. 

However, this inaugural 'Black Samurai' novel really succeeds because of the addition of two key characters: an outstandingly diabolical villain and a powerful billionaire benefactor. 

First the villain: Colonel Tolstoy is one of the best bad guys ever appearing in 1970s numbered paperbacks. His suicide squad of lethal toadies includes an Arab terrorist, an IRA gunman, a Vietnamese torture specialist and an American black militant - all lead by a U.S. Army officer bent on revenge. He is a growling, loathsome, genocidal maniac and the reader really becomes invested in his eventual downfall. 

Early in the novel, the reader is also introduced to its most interesting character, former two-term U.S. President William Baron Clarke. He was responsible for discharging Colonel Tolstoy from the Army following atrocities in Vietnam, and now uses his money and influence to save the world behind the scenes. He’s a brash Texan running an off-the-books intelligence apparatus and sponsoring capable action heroes to prevent global tragedies. His working relationship with the Black Samurai is the richest relationship in the short novel. 

The plot is extremely well-executed and structured similarly to an early Mack Bolan novel. Good guy scenes and bad guy scenes alternate leading to a satisfying and violent conclusion. Blood is shed. Women are laid. Ethnic stereotypes abound. But it’s a formula that works because Olden is such a good writer who can spin a tale filled with interesting characters, vivid action and creative bloodshed.  Book one of this series will definitely make the reader want to tap into future Black Samurai adventures. 

After Olden’s death in 2003 and the subsequent digital fiction revolution, the author’s heirs did something very smart: they kept his work alive by making his books available on eBook and audio platforms at affordable prices. It’s astounding that more rights-holders haven’t gone this route to monetize and preserve genre fiction stories from this era. Modern readers who want to explore his fiction don’t need to scour used bookstores for scarce and decaying paperbacks. For 'Black Samurai', some great action is only a click away. 

The Trailsman #205 - Mountain Mankillers

'The Trailsman' was a very long-running series (398 novels!), employing multiple authors writing under the house name Jon Sharpe. Almost inevitably, the level of quality varies from book to book, sometimes markedly. 

David Robbins was one of the better writers in the Trailsman stable, so I selected one of his books to read, since I’m already a big fan of his 'Wilderness' series. (He actually wrote more Trailsmans than Wilderness novels.) 

“Mountain Mankillers” is set in the Rockies, where a minor gold rush is underway and a bustling tent city has been established. Skye Fargo stops by, and is very soon caught up in violence and mystery. A number of miners have disappeared, including the father of two sexy sisters, and Fargo helps them out by investigating. It’s pretty clear that the town’s corrupt establishment has something to do with it all, but pulling the strings is an unknown Mr. Big. Who could it be?

Well, a modestly attentive reader won’t be kept in suspense very long, because Robbins telegraphs the identity of Mr. Big on page 130, leaving the remaining thirty-two pages of text a bit anti-climactic. That’s not to say the book is ruined. It’s still a notch or two above average, thanks partly to a couple of vividly violent sequences. One is a brutal beating on a very muddy street, and the other is a savage lashing by a bullwhip-wielding bad guy. Unfortunately for Fargo, he’s on the receiving end of both of these assaults, each of which is nearly fatal. But don’t feel too sorry for him, as he’s rewarded by the author with some mighty steamy interludes with the sexy sisters.

There’s actually a third sister too, a likable ten-year-old who befriends Fargo and is in turn watched over by him. Their scenes together are very charming, and help differentiate this character from the usual two-fisted, fast-on-the-draw western stereotype we’ve seen so many times before. (My inner casting director put Rory Calhoun in the role of Fargo, and that seemed to help bring the character to life too.) The author showed a welcome light touch in another way: Fargo keeps running into strangers who embarrass him with gushing praise for the exploits recounted in earlier novels!   

Anyway, there may be better Trailsman books out there (and there are), but you could do a lot worse than “Mountain Mankillers”.   

Deathlands #03 - Neutron Solstice

Gold Eagle released “Neutron Solstice” in March of 1987. The novel is the third installment in the long running post-apocalyptic series 'Deathlands' and is penned by Laurence James (as James Axler). The last book, “Red Holocaust”, had our magnificent seven entering a redoubt in Alaska, with the last page promising that the exit would be hot. Thus the stage is set for this book, “Neutron Solstice”, which has it's location in the balmy swamps of Louisiana.

At 254-pages, this book could have shaved 50+ pages off. Aside from a few firefights, it's lacking any forward pacing or substantial plot development. Instead, it methodically sets up exploration, locations and the familiar “kidnap and torture” premise that's overly utilized. Voodoo themes, telekinesis and even the walking dead are par for the course for any destructive fantasy set on the bayou, yet even those factors don't elevate the book to an enjoyable pace. The end result finds this one average at best.

The story has Ryan and his crew facing a squad of bullies led by the tall, crippled Baron Tourment (get it?). He has a physic mutation and fears that his kingdom will fall to a man with one eye – Ryan. The Baron is camped in a Best Western hotel with troops and a lieutenant named Mephisto. Across the village at Holiday Inn lies our heroes, now six after losing a member. There's endless scouting and planning, that ultimately leads to Krysty and Lori being captured and used as rape bait. Ryan's team aligns with a ragtag group of survivors led by Jak Lauren, an albino teenager that has a knack for killing. The finale is entertaining but highly predictable. 

Embedded in the narrative is some backstory on Ryan. His home is in Front Royal, VA and he escaped death at the hands of his evil brother Harvey. This sinister sibling killed Ryan's older brother Morgan and is also the culprit behind Ryan's missing eye. Harvey also sired a child with his father's wife. It's messy and will eventually be expanded in the fifth novel “Homeward Bound”. In between is the fourth title, "Crater Lake". I'm on it.

The Shadow #24 - Six Men of Evil

There’s a real paradox about 'The Shadow', especially in the first few years of his pulp adventures. Even in these early novels - which, as any fan will tell you, are the better ones - the stories tend to be clunky and old-fashioned, with lots of cardboard characters and stiff, unrealistic dialogue. Walter B. Gibson, who wrote the 1931 debut novel and most of the rest, can really pad things out and his editors seem not to have tightened up his manuscripts very much.

And yet… the Shadow books are tremendous, because the Shadow himself is possibly the single most compelling character in the entire 125-year history of pulp fiction. Part-detective, part-vigilante, he’s an incredibly secretive figure obsessed with bringing down the most ambitious criminals in the country.

Gibson’s limitations vanish whenever he’s describing the Shadow, or anything he’s doing. These passages are beautifully written, and richly evocative of mystery and eeriness. Except when in disguise, the Shadow operates at night or in dim, gloomy places. He doesn’t walk, he glides silently. He doesn’t shout, he speaks in a commanding husky whisper. He doesn’t hide, he simply melts into the shadows. He comes and goes like a ghost, and if he’s after you, you’d better believe he’ll find you…and you won’t know it until you hear the low chuckle of the dark figure standing behind you. 

All of this begins to unravel about 1937, after the overworked Gibson had pounded out upwards of twenty novels a year for several years, and a lot of the Shadow’s mystery and menace starts slipping away. But it’s hard to overstate how captivating the Shadow is in his prime. Take “Six Men of Evil” for instance. It’s the 24th novel in the series, published in 1933, and while he’s hardly more than a spooky supporting character in the very earliest stories, by now he’s taken center stage. The plot is kind of quirky, kind of silly. The action sequences are quite good this time around, and upwards of a dozen crooks will get blasted by the Shadow’s twin automatics before it’s all over. As usual, there’s something very unique about the gang that he’s stalking, and he’ll have to travel all the way to a remote corner of Mexico to uncover its secret. The hunt ultimately leads him to San Francisco, where we’ll get a showdown in Chinatown and a memorable finale. The book’s greatest appeal, though, are in all the passages that show how the Shadow operates, and how he confronts the bad guys. There’s also a great interlude in which he appears in the guise of “Lamont Cranston”, one of the personas he adopts when he needs to work openly in broad daylight. 

As Shadow novels go, “Six Men of Evil” has its shortcomings but is more than strong enough to hold the reader’s interest. Forget the narrative, though. The main attraction here is the Shadow himself, the most fascinating, most dynamic character to ever haunt the pages of pulp fiction.

Perfect Victim

Author James McKimmey’s debut novel, Perfect Victim, was released by Dell Books in 1957. The novel has been reprinted by Stark House as a two-in-one featuring his second novel, Winner Take All, and a 2004 interview conducted by Scottish author and editor Allan Guthrie. McKimmey would later go on to write numerous genre entries, including westerns and science-fiction until his passing in 2011.

Perfect Victim is set in the tiny mid-western town of Willow Creek and introduces us to several characters, including the stereotypical cast of journalist, sheriff, banker, bully and waitress. At the heart of the matter is the mysterious murder of the town beauty, young waitress Grace. While the reader isn’t asking who done it (we were voyeurs on the scene), the rest of Willow Creek is. Like many books and shorts of this style, the real essence of Perfect Victim is exposing the good-hearted with the worst intentions. Hardly anyone is particularly wholesome, including the fingered guy – a traveling salesman who’s innocent but immoral. The only protagonist is the media (by design?), represented by the admirable George Cary.

At 135-pages of physical media, this isn’t a hard-boiled or detective piece. It’s labeled as “crime” but it’s loosely a human exam on small town’s dark crevices. There’s a murder, a body and a small dose of procedure. The book’s closing pages has a dark and violent orchestration amidst a fiery, noose-hungry town. McKimmey brings us full circle from retribution to salvation in this quality, albeit simple, effort. 

Quarry #10 - Quarry's Ex

Quarry's Ex is an excellent entry in the Quarry series by Max Allan Collins. The series is about an anti-hero murder-for-hire hit man. As with all the novels in the series, the first-person narration is conversational, humorous, and compelling.

There are two kinds of Quarry novels: The first type is where Quarry is hired to kill someone, the second is where Quarry is hired to stop another hitman from killing someone. Both types are equally great. In Quarry's Ex, our hero follows a hitman to the on-location filming of a movie to determine who is about to be killed and prevent the murder from happening. Along the way, he gets entangled with a woman from his past, several Hollywood bozos, and a mobster B-movie financier. There’s plenty of sex and violence along with an actual mystery to be solved.

The books were written in both the 1970s and the 2000s with a large publication gap in the middle of the series. The publication order is not the series order. The series begins and ends respectively, with The First Quarry and The Last Quarry. Beyond that, reading order doesn’t really matter. There is no discernible difference in quality between the 1970s installments and the 2000s. All of them take place in the post-Vietnam 1970s and early 1980’s.

I’ve never read a bad Quarry novel, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Highly recommended for hard-boiled genre fans.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Quarry #11 - The Wrong Quarry

There are two types of Quarry novels: The first is when hitman Quarry is hired to kill someone and the second are the ones where Quarry tries to kill another hitman to protect a client. The Wrong Quarry, the series' 11th entry, is one of the second variety and perhaps the best of that bunch. It was published as a Hard Case Crime novel in 2014, and is written by Max Allan Collins. Aside from the first novel, readers can enjoy the series in any order. 

Quarry finds himself in Missouri stalking a hitman who, in turn, is stalking a gay dance instructor who is suspected of causing the disappearance of a teenage girl. All the humor and sex from other Quarry novels is present in this one, but there is also a compelling mystery involving the identity of the person wanting to kill the dance teacher and the whereabouts of the missing girl.

The characters in this one are vivid and realistic. The female leads are sexy as hell. The plot twists are unexpected and realistic. The scenes of violence are brutal and bloody. This is one of the best of the series and not to be missed.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Wilderness #04 - Blood Fury

The first three books in the 'Wilderness' (David Robbins as David Thompson) series were consistently very good, and it became my favorite western series. I’d begun to wonder, though, if things would soon fall into a rut once our hero ran out of new Indian tribes to deal with and new species of wild animals to confront. 

Those concerns were misplaced - or maybe just premature (we’ll see) - because the fourth book in the series, “Blood Fury”, is the best one yet. Apart from a scary encounter with a wolverine, the material here isn’t necessarily brand new, but what the author does with it is extraordinary. 

As usual, there isn’t really a plot, just a situation which naturally develops into a string of crises. Each crisis will be more dangerous than the last, culminating in a very wrenching climax. 

I can’t describe much of what happens without giving too much away. All you really need to know is that if you’re a mountain man and you run afoul of Ute warriors, it’s not enough to just run from them. They will follow you and follow you on a mission of death, tracking you night and day over any sort of terrain, and there’s no escape until one party or the other has been exterminated. Given that much information, you might think you know how this novel will end. But never underestimate David Robbins’ ability to hit you with the unexpected!

You won’t find many westerns that can beat “Blood Fury” for suspense. There’s no shortage of action or violence either.

Eagle Force #05 - Ring of Fire

Bantam released the fifth 'Eagle Force' novel, “Ring of Fire”, in June, 1990. Author Dan Schmidt excavates some of the series mythology with this installment. The backstory on Eagle Force leader/founder Vic Gabriel is revealed, including that of the team's chief opponent, terrorist Michael Saunders. While these details are relevant to the overall series, I think it consumes most of the book. The subplot, terrorists occupying a French farming town, is more interesting, yet this is lost in the revelation of past events. 

Saunders and his thirty-man kill squad hit a French whorehouse to capture half of Eagle Force with their pants down – Dillinger and Simms. They rape and slaughter the whores (obviously), and in one grizzly scene, shatter both Dillinger and Simms' hands with a leaded baseball bat. Saunders records the audio screams, and then leads his squad to a French farming village. They occupy the town, attempting rape of the youngest first while the villages are imprisoned at a church.

Saunders and a small team fly to Gabriel's outpost in the French mountains and present the audio tape in person. The challenge – Vic and Boolewarke have until midnight to rescue Dillinger and Simms. Saunders' 30 hardened mercenaries against two. At midnight, execution will begin. Of course, Vic accepts the challenge and we start piecing together Schmidt's backstory on the two combatants (in annoying italics print).

In the series debut we discovered that Vic and his father served as CIA assassins in Vietnam. Along the way, Saunders, a CIA operative, killed Vic's father. This book elaborates on that scenario, explaining how Saunders switched to the darker side, the Russian meddling and Vic's first fight with Saunders in a Libyan stronghold. That sets the stage for the inevitable showdown for “Ring of Fire”.

Before author Dan Schmidt's fatal stroke, he contributed heavily to the 'Executioner' line as well as creating a similar 'Eagle Force' series called 'Killsquad'. He had a tremendous talent in shaping battle scenarios and bringing it all to fruition with close quarters combat. It's something he excelled at with this series and the “two against thirty” plight of Vic and Boolewarke is especially impressive. Unfortunately, the location changes with the last 40 pages and that left something to be desired. The end result is an average book that had the potential for greatness. Next up is “Berserker”.

The Men From The Boys

Crime and intrigue in American hotels was evidently such an issue during the mid-20th century that the “hotel detective” became a mainstay of crime and noir fiction and a sub-genre unto itself. Sadly, the security guards of today’s chain hotels don’t warrant a literary movement of their own, but the 1950s hotel detectives sure did. 

Ed Lacy was the pen name of New York writer Leonard Zinberg, who authored many crime and mystery paperback originals - mostly in the 1950s and 1960s. He never reached the popularity of many of his contemporaries probably because his output was comprised mostly of modest stand-alone novels. Lacy’s contribution to the “house dick” sub-genre was his 1956 paperback, “The Men From The Boys” that has recently been reprinted by Black Gat Books, a Stark House imprint.  

The novel stars retired hard-ass New York City cop Marty Bond, now serving as the in-house detective at the Grover Hotel. His job mostly consists of cracking the heads of drunk guests who won’t keep the noise down, and regulating the hooker traffic in and out of the fleabag inn.  

Marty isn’t an immediately likable hero. He’s cynical about the law. He’s racist and misogynist (even by 1956 standards). He’s lazy and gruff. At 54, his health is declining prematurely. The novel’s central mystery begins when a rookie auxiliary police officer from his past visits Marty asking for help regarding a suspicious robbery. Could it have anything to do with the mafia unrest in the news? Marty’s reluctant assistance in the case competes for his attention with his own anxiety and depression over his deteriorating personal life. 

This is one of those novels where the reader slowly sees the true humanity of a heel with a heart of gold buried under a gruff exterior. Lacy pulls it off quite well mostly because he was a damn good writer. Marty’s narration gives the reader glimpses into his worldview, and his cynical wise cracks are often laugh-out-loud funny. 

The cast of characters in Marty’s life - pimps, whores, cops, and strippers - are all colorful and interesting, and the novel’s snappy dialogue keeps the pages flying by. The big problem with this short novel is that the central mystery is a bit of a muddled snooze and way less interesting than the sub-plots concerning Marty’s personal life and relations. You want to spend more time in Marty’s world, but the ex-cop and the reader just deserve a better crime to solve. Nevertheless, there’s plenty to enjoy in this one. It’s not a masterpiece of the genre, but we should all be happy to see Ed Lacy’s work being preserved for modern audiences.

You can obtain a copy of the book through Stark House or directly at Amazon.

The Sergeant #02 - Hell Harbor: The Battle for Cherbourg

It’s a little odd that there were so few series dealing with World War II. What could be a more natural setting for stories with action, heroism, bloodshed and explosions? And WWII-themed stories had been in seemingly every issue of the men’s adventure magazines, the predecessors of the paperbacks. Even in comic books, there were more than a dozen long-running series set during the war.

I can only think of two standout paperback series centered on WWII, and both of them were written in their entirety by Len Levinson: 'The Sergeant' (under the name Gordon Davis) and 'The Rat Bastards' (as John Mackie). Just two! But you know, maybe it’s really not so surprising that these series had so little competition. Levinson set the bar so high that few writers could hope to match them. 

The Sergeant’s debut novel, “Death Train”, recounts a couple of episodes in the combat career of Sgt. C.J. Mahoney. Gruff, pugnacious and snarky, he’s not your traditional lantern-jawed hero, but he sure gets the job done. The title refers to the first of these episodes, in which Mahoney is tasked with disrupting German supply lines by sabotaging the rail network of occupied France. The second episode finds him with some resistance fighters, holed up in a French village suddenly overrun by German tanks. I thought the first story was a little more effective than the second, but they were both superb.

The next novel is even better, presenting a handful of wartime episodes of varying lengths. In “Hell Harbor: The Battle for Cherbourg”, Mahoney is a much more fully-developed character. He’s still a grizzled war dog, chomping his cigar and addressing friend and foe alike as “Asshole,” but in one remarkable extended episode, we discover there’s far more to him than that. The context of how that happens is the last thing you’d expect. Mahoney’s recovering in a London hospital but manages to steal an officer’s uniform one night, and sneak out of the building in hopes of visiting a popular brothel. I can’t say anything more without giving away too much, but trust me--- this is the episode that will linger with you the longest. And there’s not a shot fired in it!

There’s certainly plenty of combat action in the other episodes, and the book’s title refers to the last of them. Based in an impregnable fortress, the Germans are going to blow up the harbor at Cherbourg by remote control, just to keep it out of the hands of the Americans, who need it to land critical supplies and reinforcements. Mahoney and a squad are assigned the seemingly impossible task of preventing the harbor’s destruction. A lesser author would turn Mahoney into a combat Superman, storming the fortress and drilling every German in sight, emerging triumphant. What happens instead is unexpected, harrowing and even a little disgusting, but it’s also pulp action at its best. 

It’s also believable, and that’s important. Of course it’s fiction, but everything in the novel happens in the real world, not in the Mack Bolan fantasyland of invulnerable action heroes with unlimited heavy ammunition. Sometimes I’m in the mood for that stuff, and it’s fine as far as it goes. But what’s more compelling, more memorable and more rewarding is what Len Levinson serves up in “Hell Harbor”. Put this one on your shopping list.      

Fargo #01 - Fargo

Author Ben Haas used over a dozen pseudonyms throughout his career, including John Benteen. It's this name behind the long-running 'Fargo' series. There were 23 books total, three of which written by the fictional name of John W. Hardin, who most likely was Haas colleague Norman Rubington. Sky-level, the series can easily identify with the western genre. However, the weeds-level view showcases non-traditional elements that skirt the rigid boundaries of western fiction. It's pulpy at times, often placing the action in South American locales with more modern components – soldier for hire, paid man-killing and machine guns. There's a devout fan following for 'Fargo', and after reading the first installment, I can certainly see why.

The debut, “Fargo”, was released in 1969 and introduces us to the character. Fargo is an ex-Cavalry fighting man that served in Roosevelt's Rough Riders regiment. The author details that he took a bullet in the shoulder on the charge up Kettle Hill, has scar tissue from both a career in boxing and a mining scuffle. We learn that by 1910, Fargo has lived a dogged existence fighting for money. He's now a “specialist in sudden death” and arrives in El Paso looking for work. 

The novel really runs the gambit of one adventure to another, setting the locale in old Mexico. I'd suspect that the pacing is one of the book's most cherished aspects, contributing to it's collector's fellowship and fandom. Here, Fargo is Hell-bent for leather, escorting a rugged, shady businessman back to a Mexican mine through bandits and Mexican guerrillas. Benteen puts us inside a fort fighting off waves of horse-soldiers before scooting us into rough riding through gangs and mountain passes (the atmosphere is dusty and sun-baked). The fighting is intense, made more identifiable with Fargo's trademark weapons – Colt Army .38, Winchester 30-30, Batangas knife and the overly utilized Fox ten-gauge shotgun.

Conclusively, this is an action-packed novel written by a genre fan for genre fans. It's simple, entertaining and introduces a lovable character. While influenced by the pulps, as Fargo is amazing at everything, it's more gritty and convincing. Benteen's smooth delivery is never bogged down with details. It's Fargo – in it for the money, adventure and tits. Who can't be a fan of that? For more background on this character and series, read author Paul Bishop's insightful write-up here.

Blackoaks #01 - Master of Blackoaks

After the commercially successful 1966 “Man From Uncle” novel generated practically no money in his pocket, Harry Whittington went to work as an editor in the US Department of Agriculture, working for the Rural Electrification Administration. "I'd reached the low place where writing lost its delight.” (quote from author Ben Bridges blog).

In 1974, at age 59, Whittington quit his government job and went back to writing full-time. From his small but elegant house overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, he wrote his comeback novel, “Master of Blackoaks” (1976), a Deep-South 'slave gothic' written as Ashley Carter (Whittington's own name appears on the copyright page).

“Master of Blackoaks” was a hit. It's also an awesome book. Family drama, intrigue, violence, mucho sex and social commentary abound as the drama unfolds among members of the Baynard Family and their slaves on the struggling Alabama plantation known as Blackoaks.

The book reminded me of Ken Follett's “Pillars of the Earth” with all the characters jockeying for position to achieve divergent goals. The plantation violence is raw and in-your-face. The sex scenes are well executed. The slaves, masters and interlopers are vivid characters.

The book tackles difficult questions about race and culture without ever being racist or showing a lack of compassion for those swept up in the morally repugnant culture of slavery. The economic realities of the plantation life were explained well in the story as the masters of Blackoaks struggled to survive.

The book spawned three sequels that I can't wait to read.

Whittington learned propulsive plotting from his Gold Medal crime and western novels. Although this isn't an action novel, he brings the same discipline to this lost masterpiece. Despite the cover, it's not a romance novel. It's a literary novel with crazy family drama swirling for nearly 500 hard-to-put-down pages.

Hat tip to Ben Bridges on the background regarding the creation of this book and Pete Brandvold for alerting me to its existence.

Blackoaks #02 - Secret of Blackoaks

First off, don't even think about reading this 500+ page plantation “slavery gothic” drama unless you've read and recall the first book of the series, “Master of Blackoaks” (1976). You'll be lost.

In the second 'Blackoaks', “Secret of Blackoaks”, crime and western author Harry Whittington (writing here as Ashley Carter) tells another compelling story of love, lust and violence among slaves and masters on the Alabama plantation of Blackoaks. This book begins about a year after the previous installment's conclusion. The novel is broken off into six sections with each focusing on a handful of characters from the first book.

There's a lot of travel happening in this volume - with action occurring in Tallahassee and New Orleans. Much of the drama concerns the Fulani slave brothers Blade and Moab with the central antagonist being plantation master Styles Kendric - in full, unhinged villain mode.

The story-lines were generally strong with the exception of one character's side adventure to New Orleans that felt a bit like page filler. But even that section pays dividends with a dramatic twisty conclusion.

There's also more action (think “Django Unchained”), graphic sex and violence than we saw in the first novel and the introduction of some fantastic new characters - including an abolitionist veteran in a decaying nearby plantation who may or may not be helping slaves find escape and freedom. A feisty new slave also enters the mix providing a reality check on the horrors of the institution to complacent counterparts.

Overall, this was another great outing from the King of the Paperbacks. If you read and enjoyed Blackoaks #1, you're sure to enjoy this installment. And with the strong and violent ending of this second book, you'll be dying to tackle the follow-up novel.

Fox #02 - Prize Money

The 'Fox' books are an anomaly in the world of classic action/adventure series. While some of our favorite series have their roots in the tawdry paperbacks of the 1950s, and others reach back to the blood-and-thunder pulps of the 1930s - all very American - this series is completely different. It’s a British series by a British author about British history, written in the dry, formal style of British literature.

Specifically, it’s an Age of Sail series very much like the venerable works of C. S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian. The author is Kenneth Bulmer, using the pen-name Adam Hardy. Our protagonist, George Abercrombie Fox, joins the Royal Navy as an impoverished boy, and has various adventures (mainly at sea) in the very early years of the 19th Century. 

The debut paperback, “The Press Gang”, has some interesting things in it. There are memorable battle scenes between Fox’s ship and French adversaries, but the best stuff takes place on land as Fox is assigned to head up a press gang. Essentially, the press gang sneaks around the waterfront, “impressing” unwary men into the Navy by spiking their drinks or clubbing them over the head and hustling them aboard ship. This practice was unpopular but legal at the time. Anyway, after a job well done, Fox enjoys some shore leave which ends when he falls victim to another ship’s press gang! Brutality and bad luck are recurring themes of this series.

The second book, “Prize Money”, is less interesting. There are a few highlights, including a battle sequence at sea in which a very heavy cannon is torn loose from its foundation and Fox narrowly prevents it from plunging through the lower decks and the hull of the ship. There’s also a demented ship’s captain with an imaginary flock of pet pigeons. Otherwise, most of the action consists of the British Navy wandering across the Mediterranean in search of Napoleon’s navy.

Well, it’s not much of a page-turner, but I do want to give the author some credit. His prose is very elegantly written and he can describe scenes aboard ship so expressively and vividly that you can see, hear and smell every last detail. Best of all, Fox himself is a fascinating character. He’s gruff, mean and selfish, but he’s also very compelling, and sometimes you have to remind yourself that you’re reading fiction rather than history.

The series does have one formidable drawback, at least for most of us: you’re at a real disadvantage if you aren’t already pretty familiar with the architecture of these old sailing ships. The author uses a great deal of technical jargon without ever explaining any of it. Here’s an example: “He called for Mr. Lassiter and supervised the setting up of a pair of sheerlegs. As they did not have a launch they could not use her masts; but Fox decided to use the spare topmasts housed amidships.” If you’ve read a lot of Horatio Hornblower, you probably know exactly what’s happening in that passage. But personally, I never quite got my sea legs while reading “Prize Money”.

Callaghen

Louis L'Amour took a break from range wars and rustlers in 1972. “Callaghen” is a departure from his patented shtick, setting the action within the ranks of the Army. It features 34-year old Callaghen, an Irish soldier who has fought internationally, and at one point served as a Sergeant. His abrasive views of command have tarnished his career, demoting him repeatedly to lowly private and an assignment to a remote fort in the Mojave desert – in the heart of Indian country. This fort is essentially a security detail protecting the road to Las Vegas and Vegas Springs. Callaghen is 20-years in and discharge papers are arriving late, so this security detail and the inability to retire leaves the character disgruntled. While Callaghen isn't exactly the most interesting guy, the action intensifies just enough to keep me flipping the page...while checking the number at the bottom.

The plot is silky thin when our protagonist discovers a treasure map on a dead lieutenant. Apparently this leads to a river of gold and astonishingly a slew of outlaws convinced that Callaghen knows where this treasure is. Whether the map actually leads to anything remains to be seen, but L'Amour works with what he has – Indians, outlaws, speculative treasure, desert and the mandatory female characters that Callaghen is protecting. There's also some back story between the female lead, a despicable commander and the main character...but really no one cares. The most interesting aspect to the story is the lack of water in the desert. I found this struggle the most fascinating. Eventually, guns do catch fire and there's some action in the desert and cliffs. 

I can't say anything overly negative or positive about this one. It was a western, it kept me company and L'Amour is a skilled writer (albeit one that elongates senseless scenes). Often I wonder if I really like L'Amour's writing or if all those years watching my father read him has planted some sort of nostalgic childhood reasoning that if Dad liked it...I do too. Maybe that's enough for anyone to like anything.

Wilderness #02 - Lure of the Wild

The second installment of the 'Wilderness' series (David Robbins as David Thompson) is another road show in which our hero, former NYC accountant Nate King, continues his lessons in frontier life while traveling on a horseback journey with a different mountain man mentor. 

In this installment, Nate’s teacher is a bard-quoting experienced frontiersman nicknamed Shakespeare. They are on their way to an annual rendezvous of trappers and mountain men when they encounter several varieties of Indian - both hostile and friendly. In fact, the whole novel is a series of violent, gory battles with Indians separated by a masterclass in 1800's Native American culture and norms taught by Shakespeare. Not knowing much about American Indian ways, I can only assume that the author did his homework and got it mostly right. In any case, there were plenty of interesting Indian factoids shoehorned in between the scalpings and the gun-play. 

Along the way, Nate also meets an Indian girl named Winona who has her eyes on Nate as possible husband material despite a vast cultural chasm. The possibility of feelings and romance between the two seemed unbelievable by modern standards, but I guess that was the whole point of the story-line.

“Lure of the Wild” is a great action novel, and the battle scenes are sufficiently violent and bloody to keep the reader hooked. The interpersonal drama between Nate and the Indians he encounters is never dull and the newly-introduced characters are compelling and nuanced. The only criticism is that the author seems to be taking his time in telling the overarching story of Nate’s evolution from dandy urban bookkeeper to master of the wilderness. I was excited to see what happens at the mountain man rendezvous, but it seems I’ll have to wait until book three to enjoy that story.

Wilderness #03 - Savage Rendezvous

This third novel in the long-running 'Wilderness' series (David Robbins as David Thompson) is very good, and as always it’s especially strong in its realism and historical detail. Dramatically, it’s also pretty solid, but it’s not quite up to the standard of the first two books in the series.

The 'Wilderness' novels are about a young mountain man in the 1820s (at this point he’s more of an apprentice mountain man) and his adventures in the Rocky Mountains. In “Savage Rendezvous”, our hero is looking forward to the annual gathering of trappers in the area to make some friends and buy supplies. The event is known informally as the Rendezvous, and this will be his first visit to one.

That foundation is promising and based on historical fact, but I didn’t feel it was really explored very well. Instead, our hero and his mentor arrive and are immediately beset by bullies for no real reason, leading to a succession of confrontations, fistfights and gun-play. All that testosterone keeps things from ever getting dull, but for some reason I couldn’t really engage with this part of the story. It isn’t bad, but the bullies are more annoying than dramatically compelling, and we’re stuck with them for the rest of the novel.

Far more involving are interludes with hostile Indians (always a hallmark of this series) and these tense cat-and-mouse encounters are very suspenseful. There’s also a pretty good twist at the end. Overall, “Savage Rendezvous” isn’t the best that this series can offer, but even a second-tier 'Wilderness' book is mighty good reading.

The Vigilante #02 - Los Angeles: Detour to a Funeral

Robert Lory's 'Vigilante' series continues with 1975's “Los Angeles: Detour to a Funeral”. This book is set just one week after the events that transpired in the series debut, “New York: An Eye for an Eye”. In that story, protagonist Joe Madden watches helplessly as his wife is assaulted and killed on a late night subway ride. Madden, an ordinary guy, takes to the streets with a kitchen knife to kill low-grade street thugs. That book's end had his employer, a mid-level engineering firm, sending him to the West Coast for another project. Now, Madden takes to L.A.'s night-life in this entertaining follow-up.

The beginning of the book has Madden just finishing up some odds and ends in New York's East Village. He comes to the aid of an older man, disposing of two thugs with the business end of his .38 revolver. In one of the series' many philosophical moments, the rescued man challenges Madden's technique by declaring the thugs were young men that didn't deserve killing. This mirrors some of Madden's own self-doubts in the prior book, magnifying his dismissal of morality in pursuit of instant gratification.

Madden's exploits in Los Angeles are nonsensical, but an unnecessary requirement to introduce a plot. With no logistical planning, Madden simply strolls the back streets looking for any wrongdoers. It's literally the bully-buffet, running the gambit from thieves to pimps. Soon, Madden runs across an abused prostitute and attempts to connect with her. After instigating a reunion between the girl and her parents, Madden targets the brothel and the establishment's madam – an overly obese woman with the obligatory name of Big Mama. The book is ultimately just Madden targeting Big Mama, rescuing whores and stopping an acid rock artist from spreading heroin. 

While certainly elementary and far removed from the more gritty, well-established titles like 'The Executioner', 'Death Merchant' and 'The Butcher', Lory's 'Vigilante' is a likable hero that connects well with the average reader. Fans of the genre can see the rough edges of genre specific boundaries, but it's narrative, as tragic and as flawed as it is, makes for a really enjoyable read. I can't say enough good things about this series thus far. 

Next stop, San Francisco.

The Hitman #01 - Chicago Deathwinds

Norman Winski's 'The Hitman' was a three book series released in 1984 through the Pinnacle publishing house. It's not to be confused with the 1970s series of the same name by Kirby Carr. The series debuted with “Chicago Deathwinds” and introduces us to Dirk Spencer, described as “a hard, mean, cool and sophisticated” vigilante that doesn't embody the traditional definition of hitman - someone paid to kill someone. In this series, Spencer isn't paid anything. He already has more money than Tony Stark and kills the bad guys as a hobby.

For validity, Winski tells us that Spencer is the son of a wealthy entrepreneur and a West Point graduate. He served in Vietnam as a fighting officer and single-handily took out an entire North Vietnamese patrol. Since service, he's personified the rich playboy – yacht, plane, helicopter, penthouse, Lamborghini and the sexual prowess of a bucking stallion. It's only when he learns that his African-American friend has been murdered that he assumes the moniker of “The Hitman”.

In an ode to pulp fiction, Spencer plays the vengeful nighttime warrior while maintaining his daytime activities as spoiled rich kid. He can't let anyone into the inner circle, including the women he loves and his own father. Winski does a great job building in that inner turmoil, brimming over in an emotional argument between Spencer and a best friend. It's this part of the story-line that's honestly the most engaging. The rest is totally bonkers.

Winski writes Spencer as a pulp hero. He's the “Doc Savage” of vigilantes with the absolute best ability to fight, fly, drive and screw. In 184 pages we learn that Spencer is at peak performance and skill-level for everything. He flies his helicopter and planes with Blue Angels talent, races like Mario Andretti and handles guns and missiles like Ironman. He's always able to overcome impossible odds while maintaining a spoiled kid's mentality. In one humorous scene he can't get the bad guy (a racist ultra right-wing nominee for President) so he takes out all of his frustration by ravaging two high-dollar hookers for three hours. So, what's the problem?

Winski could have slimmed this to 140 pages but pads the story with a dull narrative. It takes a strenuous amount of effort to fully digest 7-10 pages of gun descriptions or setting up the time, location, scenery and what Spencer is clothed in. There's a sloth-like pace in the West Virginia portion of the story and I had to take constant breaks...for days. It's permeated with bad dialogue, a cookie-cutter villain and a ridiculous hero that can't be this perfect. There's much better books out there. “The Hitman” is not the shit man.