Angel's Flight

Before his 2010 death, Lou Cameron was the author of over 300 genre novels. He was a post-war pulpster who specialized in tawdry action stories with tightly-wound plots. Think 'Longarm'. Think 'Renegade'. Lou Cameron knew his way around a standard story arc. This fact is what makes Cameron’s 1960 debut novel, “Angel’s Flight”, such a delightful curiosity. Although it was released as a Gold Medal crime novel - and was recently re-released by Black Gat Books - the story captures the tone and scope of literary fiction. Yes, it seems Lou Cameron started out aspiring to be serious author writing a serious book. And it worked.

Although “Angel’s Flight” is a lean 233 pages, the story spans about 17 years time between 1939 and 1956 - from the jazzy Great Depression to the dawn of rock-n-roll. Our guide through this era is our narrator, an honest and earnest journeyman jazzman named Ben Parker. Ben’s narration is written in a be-bop jazz lingo that was later adopted by James Ellroy in “American Tabloid” and “The Cold Six Thousand”. The prose sings throughout the readable novel.

Parker’s foil is the vapid and conniving fellow jazzman, Johnny Angel, whose ambition for success well outpaces his musical talent. Like many of the colorful characters in Parker’s life, Angel comes and goes. He starts out as an irritant and evolves into an existential threat.

Angel’s Flight is a real masterpiece of storytelling that holds your attention even though there isn’t much of a standard story arc. It feels like the literary equivalent of a Martin Scorsese movie - like “Goodfellas” or “Wolf of Wall Street” - that tracks a single character through the ups and downs of a remarkable life. This storytelling approach is surprising coming from Lou Cameron, whose body of work relied on an economical approach to plotting. Cameron’s knack for creating colorful characters is on high-display, and readers will come to adore Ben Parker and the women and friends who float in and out of his life.

Although the novel has murders, mafia, payola and betrayals, it’s doesn’t feel like a normal Gold Medal crime novel. It feels more weighty and significant - like a story of the jazz age that needed to be preserved because it captured an important era in America’s cultural history. To that end, Black Gat Books has done America a real favor by preserving this piece of important art.

Highly recommended.

The Good Guy

During his productive career as an author, Lou Cameron (1924-2010) transcended genres from crime fiction to westerns to war adventures. In 1968, Cameron tried his hand at a mainstream political thriller called The Good Guy that promises “an exciting shocker with a double-twist finish,” so I buckled in for what was sure to be a wild ride.

The paperback’s conversational narrator is a doctor of behavioral psychology working as an advertising consultant named Woody Legion. He’s the guy you hire to manipulate the minds of the public if you’re trying to get them to change their favorite soda pop. His field of expertise is called “Motivation Research,” but it really amounts to political dirty tricks - picking out the perfect unassailable lie about the opposition that will alienate the candidate from the electorate.

Enter presidential candidate and freshman congressman Rex Vane. Before Vane became a politician, he was an actor in the westerns who parlayed his fame as a “good guy” into the the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s worth noting that real-life movie cowboy Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California in 1967, so I’m guessing that this was fresh on Cameron’s mind while creating the fictional version in the paperback.

In any case, Woody gets hired to work his psychological black magic as a part of Vane’s campaign. He leaks carefully-chosen false information about Vane’s primary opponent and watches his poll numbers deteriorate. He performs his analysis with giant IBM computers while his staff wears white lab coats. It’s pretty much what people in 1968 thought the future would look like today when algorithms would be making our judgement calls.

There are many problems with The Good Guy as a novel. As a narrator and main character, Woody is not a likable guy with a good personality. Even discounting his dishonorable profession, he’s not the kind of person you want to accompany for 224 big-font pages. For a political thriller, The Good Guy is almost completely devoid of thrills. It’s a boring book because Cameron never took the time to get the reader invested in the characters or the high-stakes of the election. It’s like he wanted to write a fictional expose regarding the dirty tricks that accompany modern politics. 52 years later, these revelations are all rather ho-hum.

The author makes an attempt to emulate an actual breakneck thriller in the paperback’s last 30 pages, but the whole thing was rather contrived and didn’t follow the novel’s own internal logic. This book was just awful. I’m normally a fan of Lou Cameron, but don’t bother with this stinker. The Good Guy was just A Bad Book.

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Code Seven

During his life, Lou Cameron (1924-2010) was one of the most reliably solid authors in the men’s adventure, crime, war, and western genres. His 1977 police fiction paperback “Code Seven” has a cover blurb that promises the book to be “All the crunching excitement of Walking Tall” while the back cover guarantees “a nerve-sizzling suspense novel.” As a fan of Cameron’s writing, crunching excitement, and sizzling nerves, I was excited to dive into this one.

Sean Costello is the new chief of police in the fictional city of Flamingo Beach, Florida, a town of about three square miles. His new job is a chance at redemption for the chief who was recently fired from his police gig in New Jersey - ostensibly due to budget cuts. He’s an honest cop singularly dedicated to keeping his little town safe despite a lack of resources or much staff.

In police parlance, “Code Seven” is a meal break, which is an odd choice for a title. In the paperback, Cameron’s character claims it means “off duty” which, I suppose, is close enough for government work. The relevance of title has something to do with the romance that develops between Costello and a wealthy widow in his new hometown. This story-line seemed rushed and not entirely credible, but that wasn’t the centerpiece of the paperback, anyway. The point is that Costello is so busy putting out small fires that he’s never truly off duty.

For the majority of the book, Costello deals with the normal, everyday headaches, threats, and small mysteries of the job: drunks, a floater, a mouthy runaway, a suicide attempt, a stalker case, etc. The police procedural aspects of the novel seemed realistic enough to me, so either Cameron did some homework or he’s good at faking it. However, I kept hoping that the many disjointed plot threads would eventually form a linear story for the reader to enjoy or a mystery for Costello to solve.

Unfortunately, a main plot never really comes together. Some of the smaller mysteries presented as subplots are solved, and some tie into each other. However, it was an odd novel filled with nothing but subplots - almost as if Cameron wanted to write several different short stories about this interesting cop in a small, coastal town. The author apparently shuffled these stories into one disjointed book rather than selling them individually to the mystery digest magazines? Just a theory.

Cameron’s writing is predictably good, but an odd editorial decision left the book without chapter breaks. There are white-spaces representing scene changes throughout the paperback, but all 219 pages are basically one long chapter. As a reader, this was more irritating than I anticipated it would be.

Despite the myriad of problems with the book, it never failed to hold my attention since many of the subplots were rather interesting. I just wish Cameron’s editors sent him back to the typewriter for a few more rounds of drafts and forced him to develop a compelling main plot. “Code Seven” could have been a great cop novel instead of the mess he left behind.

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File on a Missing Redhead

During his career, Lou Cameron wrote all sorts of men’s adventure fiction, but his 1968 paperback, “File on a Missing Redhead” was a pretty straightforward - and excellent - whodunnit police procedural mystery. Because it’s a Cameron paperback, you know in advance it’s going to be well-written, tightly-plotted, and entertaining as hell.

Our narrator is Lt. Frank Talbot, a Detective with the Nevada Highway Patrol. Talbot is called to a Las Vegas auto wrecking yard where the corpse of a young woman is found stuffed into the forward trunk of an abandoned Volkswagen Beetle. The first order of business is identifying the victim - no small task because of her decomposition and the fact that her fingers and teeth had been removed and her face smashed to bits. The best lead is that her beautiful head of red hair was still in tact.

Things quickly get personal for Talbot when his ex-girlfriend surfaces claiming that a female skip-tracer she knows with fiery red hair has recently come up missing. This investigative path brings Talbot inside the world of professional skip-tracers and the insider’s view into that industry was fascinating to the uninitiated reader. But is this missing skip-tracer the same person as the redhead in the trunk?

The reader never really gets to know Talbot much as a person. He’s a reliable narrator and a fantastic police detective, but he is not given much of a personality outside of his ultra-competent investigative skills. As Talbot follows clues in a pretty straightforward homicide investigation, it becomes clear that he’s on the trail of an honest-to-goodness psychopath working in the seamy underbelly of Las Vegas casino life. The plot twists and turns making for a wild ride, and Cameron’s take on hardboiled detective narration is top-notch throughout the paperback.

I suspect that Cameron may have wanted to bring Lt. Talbot back more for additional novels, but “File on a Missing Redhead” likely wasn’t a gangbusters hit, relegating it to just another late-period Fawcett Gold Medal stand-alone paperback original. That’s a shame because it’s a fantastic police procedural packed with many interesting factoids - a rare mystery where you’ll walk away having learned a thing or two - right up to the mystery’s twisty resolution.

More unfortunately, this superb novel has not been reprinted or digitized since it’s 1968 release, so you’ll have to play detective yourself to track down a used copy. It’s worth the hunt as this one’s a total winner. Highly recommended.

Murder Me for Nickels

Peter Rabe was the pseudonym of Peter Rabinowtitch (1921-1990), a staple of the Fawcett Gold Medal line of yellow-spine crime fiction paperbacks during the 1950s and 1960s. In recent years, many of his classic novels have been reprinted by Stark House Books, including 1960’s “Murder Me for Nickels,” currently packaged as a double along with “Benny Muscles In” from 1955.

“Murder Me for Nickels” is narrated by Jack St. Louis, the right-hand man of Walter Lippit, the owner of every jukebox in every tavern for a 35-mile radius. Back in 1960, a musical artist getting a disc in the local jukebox was a big deal and fame often followed closely behind. This, of course, opened the door to payola, free sex with torch singers, supply-chain issues, and the kind of drama that could feed a crime novel like this one.

The paperback doesn’t waste any time getting into the plot. Walter’s regional jukebox monopoly is challenged by an electrician named Benotti, whose strong-arm tactics force bar owners into placing Benotti’s jukeboxes in their establishments. Jack and Walter aren’t racketeers, but Jack is perfectly willing to kick ass to protect Walter’s turf. But who is this Benotti? Is he just an opportunistic poacher or is the mob moving into the song-for-a-nickel business?

Like a lot of Rabe’s novels (such as “The Box”), “Murder Me for Nickels” is really about a power struggle in an insular community. The combatants - in this case jukebox vendors - jockey for position and the the upper hand with the tactics escalating over the course of the paperback.

Rabe is a very good, dialogue-heavy writer, and his characters are vivid and interesting. However, I’ve always found his plotting to be slow and “Murder Me for Nickels” is no exception. A paperback with this interesting set-up and clever characters shouldn’t have been this dull. I couldn’t help wishing it was Richard Deming, Lou Cameron - or even Milton Ozaki - painting on the canvass of a jukebox turf war. It would have been a much better novel.

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Paperback Warrior Primer - Jon Messmann

Whether you enjoy men's action-adventure, adult westerns, comics, mysteries, vigilante sagas, or gothic romance, there's something for everyone when it comes to author Jon Messmann (1920-2004). We have covered so many of his books and titles thanks to publishers like Cutting Edge Books reprinting his work for modern readers. Hopefully, today's primer will shine a light on his life and literary work.

Jon Messmann was born in 1920. His parents forced him to play violin and some sources stated he really disliked playing music and preferred writing. In 1940, he began writing for the up-and-coming comic industry, a period known as the Golden Age of Comic Books. His first gig was for Fawcett Comics, an early, successful comic book publisher of that era. His co-workers were a dream-team of comic book icons such as Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and Chic Stone. Messmann wrote for a decade on titles like Captain Marvel Jr., Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Gabby Hayes, Don Winslow of the Navy, Tex Ritter, and Nyoka: The Jungle Girl.

In 1950, Messmann, co-created Carousel, an 8-page tabloid comics section in the Pittsburg Courier. This featured many of Messmann's comic ideas like secret agents, historical romance, sea adventure, private-eyes, jungle girls and even fairy tales. Carousel lasted five years and was distributed by New York's Smith-Mann Syndicate. But, Messmann wanted to get into writing full-length, paperback originals.

Beginning in the 1960s, Messmann’s transition into paperback full-length novels began with Lyle KenyonEngel’s star franchise, Nick Carter: Killmaster. Messmann’s first contribution to that series was it's 37th installment, 14 Seconds to Hell, published in 1968. The series, authored by a selection of ghost writers under the name Nick Carter, was a firm stepping stone for Messmann. The series paralleled the pulp industry in terms of campy, over-the-top secret-agent action. Messmann’s experience writing comics and comic strips made him a viable workhorse for Engel to rely on. The author contributed 14 more installments through 1970 before departing the series. Most Nick Carter fans will list Messmann in the highest tier of series contributors.

Engel, pleased with Messmann’s production, paired him with another Killmaster author named George Snyder for a series called Hot Line in 1970. The series lasted only three installments with Messmann only contributing to the debut, Our Spacecraft is Missing!. Again, this allowed Messmann to develop a modern secret-agent, in this case a President’s Man type of hero named Fowler.

Also in 1970, while writing Killmaster novels Messman wrote two books starring a vagabond hero named Logan. They were inspired by John D. MacDonald’s successful character Travis McGee. The books are Logan and Killers at Sea and were authored under the pseudonym Alan Joseph. Both books have been reprinted as new editions under Messmann's name. You can obtain them HERE.

Just like Gil Brewer, Dean R. Koontz, Hillary Waugh, and Gardner F. Fox, Jon Messmann also authored gothic romance paperbacks. The pseudonyms he used for these novels was Claudette Nicole and Claud Nicole.

After Mack Bolan's saga was unveiled in the hit series The Executioner in the late 1960s and early 70s, publishers began searching for vigilante fiction. In 1973, Signet began publishing a vigilante series called The Revenger, written by Jon Messmann. He crafted these novels through 1975 while also creating and writing another character, Jefferson Boone: Handyman. The sexual escapades of The Revenger's Ben Martin, Jefferson Boone: Handyman, and the Nick Carter series before that, led Messmann to what would ultimately become his meal ticket – Skye Fargo.

By 1978, adult western fiction rose to prominence and was led by a series heavyweight in Lou Cameron's Longarm. The concept was simply to incorporate two to three graphic sex scenes into a traditional western. The main character fights the bad guys and pleases the bad girls. Messmann, following the trend, created The Trailsman series in 1980 for Signet. Like Don Pendleton's The Executioner, Messmann had created an iconic hero in Skye Fargo – lake blue eyes/bed mattress Olympian – and placed him in nearly 400 total installments. Of those, Messmann wrote nearly half up until his retirement using the pseudonym Jon Sharpe. The publisher then handed the series over to a rotation of ghost writers using the Sharpe house name.

Messmann also created the short-lived Canyon 'O Grady western series in 1989 and authored three installments. It was rumored that Messmann had never been to the western regions of the U.S., instead writing every Trailsman and Canyon 'O Grady novel from the comfort of his Manhattan apartment.

Messmann even dipped his typewriter in the romance waters. Using the pseudonym Pamela Windsor, he wrote three romance novels for Jove from 1977 through 1980. He also authored a horror novel called The Deadly Deep in 1976 for New American Library, and thrillers like Phone Call for Signet in 1979, Jogger's Moon in 1980 for Penguin, and the western The Last Snow in 1989 for Random House. He also authored the stand-alone crime-fiction mystery novel A Bullet for the Bride in 1972 for Pyramid.

Jon Messmann died in 2004 at the age of 84 in a New York nursing home. His books are widely circulated and can often be found in just about any used bookstore across America. The fact that fans like myself are still discussing his literature is a true testament of his storytelling talent. Get many of his books and titles right HERE.

Generation of Blood

After the book “Mandingo” became a sensation in 1958, there was a slew of commercially-successful historical slavery exploitation novels. These books of varying literary merit illustrated the loathsome aspects of the American slave trade while horrifying and titillating readers with stories of brutality and sex in the treatment of the slaves. In the 1960s, interracial sex was a taboo topic, and these paperbacks made lust, desire, and rape among masters and slaves the centerpiece of both the cover art and plots. Many of the novels culminate in violent slave rebellions where the brutality tables are turned on the white masters.

I can’t attest to the historical accuracy of these books, and their quality varies widely. I do know that some respected men’s adventure authors wrote in the genre under pseudonyms including Harry Whittington, Lou Cameron and Norman Daniels. The slavery exploitation books I’ve read have been page-turners that were better written than the lusty covers would ever have you expect.

All of this brings me to the stand-alone plantation novel, “Generation of Blood” by I.A. Grenville published in 1969 by unremarkable New York paperback house Leisure Books with pretty amateurish cover art. Unlike many of the expansive slavery gothics, this one is a tight 188 pages. The real identity of I.A. Grenville remains a mystery to me. It is almost certainly a pseudonym, but none of my normal sources for unmasking pen-names provides any meaningful leads. I found references indicating that the book was also released under the names “Stud Slave” and “Karindu” and I know it was also translated into foreign languages for overseas markets. It’s a well-written novel that suffers from poor plotting.

The story begins at a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina. Young plantation owner William Holloman and his overseer of operations James Curtis are looking to buy a handful of slaves to bring back to their cotton farm. The awkward Holloman also wants to buy some female slaves to periodically have sex with at home. Among the handful of slaves purchased include the giant Karindu, a fresh-off-the-boat African of strength and intelligence far superior to the other offerings. It becomes clear early on that Karindu will be the hero of the story with Curtis as the cruel villain and Holloman as the pathetic villain.

You need to re-calibrate your modern sensibilities to read and tolerate this paperback as the n-word appears on nearly every page without fanfare or shock value. And because sex is front and center in the story, you get to enjoy detailed descriptions of the anatomy of Karindu and the other slaves. The cruelty and humiliation that the slaves endure at the hands of Curtis is also described in graphic detail with no whipping left to the imagination.

So, this cheap-o paperback touches all the same bases as it’s superior genre offerings (for my money, Harry Whittington writing as Ashley Carter is the high-water mark here), but the plot and pacing are an absolute mess. It takes half the book for the daisy chain of slaves and masters to even get back to the plantation where the action and drama begins. At times, it aspires to be a porno novel, but the sex scenes are neither hot or compelling. The power dynamics at the plantation are all mostly ridiculous as well.

It’s difficult enough to endorse this genre with any enthusiasm, but this disposable paperback was clearly a low-end cash grab seeking to capitalize on a brief literary fad. I never figured out who wrote it, but I can’t blame him for wanting to remain anonymous. Don’t bother with this one.

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 08

In this episode, we discuss Frank Gruber's 1964 crime-mystery "Swing Low, Swing Dead" and Lou Cameron's police fiction novel "Code Seven" from 1977. Tom talks about his book shopping in San Antonio, Texas and offers listeners a tutorial on how to affordably acquire paperbacks. Stream it below or through any popular streaming service. Direct downloads: Link 

Listen to "Episode 08: Buying Affordable Paperbacks" on Spreaker.

Drop Into Hell

Lou Cameron (1924-2010) mastered so many genres of written entertainment from comic books to westerns to mysteries and so on. Drop Into Hell was a 1976 WW2 combat adventure “in the breathtaking tradition of Allistair MacLean” released by Fawcett Gold Medal.

The year is 1944 and Paratrooper Captain David Evans has been given a secret mission. Hitler has developed a new super-tank and fighter jet that could cause some real problems for the Allied Forces. The plan? Hit Germany’s fuel refinery capabilities, leaving the Kraut’s new war machines with their gas tanks on empty.

The specific target is a refinery that shares space with a Red Cross Hospital housing injured American and British POWs. Conveniently for the novel, the hospital/refinery is right next door to a Concentration Camp filled with Jews and Gypsies working as slave labor in the refinery. Bottom line: Bombing the refinery into the stone ages isn’t an option.

Enter Paratrooper Dave and his crew of commandos, which includes the mandatory American Indian soldier. Their mission is to parachute into Nazi turf, sabotage the refinery, and get back across the lines safely into the warm embrace of the Allied forces. The problem? No one really has any idea how to get the saboteurs out of Germany once the damage is done.

The entire paperback is a very smooth and easy read as the cast of characters tackle problems and obstacles along the way. However, the novel‘s action lagged a bit in the middle. For my money, I think Len Levinson’s The Sergeant series is a stronger choice, but if you’re looking for Allistair MacLean Lite, this paperback will more than suffice. 

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The Man All America Hated

At the dawn of paperback original novels in the early 1950s, Gordon Landsborough (1913-1985) was top of the heap in Great Britain. He was a prolific writer and publisher who capitalized on the hot new storytelling medium using a variety of pseudonyms and genres - like a British Norman Daniels or Lou Cameron. New Ebook Library has just released a “lost” 1952 contemporary adventure novel originally published under Landsborough’s “Mike M’Cracken” pseudonym usually reserved for his Western novels.

I couldn’t find any listing of “The Man All America Hated” in any bibliography of Landsborough’s body of work, so I reached out to the British literary agent of his estate, Philip Harbottle, who pointed me to the February 2019 issue of “Paperback Parade” where Harbottle details the story of this historical literary oddity. Harbottle, an avid book collector himself, recently found a copy of the 1952 paperback by his client and was previously unaware it existed. A records search in the British equivalent of the copyright office produced no indication that the book was ever registered - a common oversight in postwar England during the rebuilding years. The paperback also likely suffered from a small print run leaving few surviving copies for modern readers and collectors to enjoy. Harbottle went to work finding the right imprint to republish the fast-moving story and found the New Ebook Library, who has been doing a great job bringing old and new pulp fiction to market at the 99 cent price point.

The premise of the novel is pretty damn cool. Alec McCrae is “The Man All America Hated” and with good reason. In World War 2, he acted as an intelligence officer for the Japanese and tortured American prisoners of war. McCrae disappeared after Japan’s surrender and has become a folk hero fugitive in the same manner that Osama Bin Ladin became half a century later. As such, the international passengers on a plane crossing the Pacific to Australia are surprised to find that McCrae is a fellow passenger flying under an assumed name along with three companions.

Once discovered, McCrae hijacks the plane and forces a crash landing on a desolate island in the Pacific between Hawaii and Australia. It seems that McCrae’s plan is to murder the survivors and escape from the island while he is presumed dead to the world. The survivors aren’t excited by this plan and mount a defense against the traitorous American villain. A leader quickly emerges among the survivors, and a battle plan is formed.

“The Man All America Hated” is a wilderness survival tale and a man-hunting-man story. At about 111 modern pages, there’s not a lot of character development, but the suspense and action are front and center the whole time. There are things that could have made the book way better. For example, McCrae’s traitorous time in WW2 is glossed over in a single paragraph or two to establish the character as a villain. More backstory would have been interesting.

Despite these quibbles, stories of adversaries trapped together on a deserted jungle island trying to kill each other with rudimentary weapons are tales as old as time, but this one really worked for me. It’s certainly not a masterpiece of the genre, but it’s a lot of violent fun to read, and I’m thrilled that it’s now widely available for less than a buck. Recommended.

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Pieces of the Game

Tracing the history of an aged paperback can sometimes prove to be problematic. Fawcett Gold Medal, creator of the paperback original novels we know today, published hundreds of titles in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Of those literary classics, a sizable number were written under pseudonyms or clever variations on the authors' real names. With 1960's adventure novel, “Pieces of the Game”, there's no clear indication of who author Lee Gifford really is. A pseudonym? A writing duo? Unfortunately, as of the publishing of this review, I can't provide any answers on the author's identity. However, what I will advise is that you stop what you are doing and locate a copy.

This novel kicks total ass.

The book begins in the then present day of 1960. World War 2 veteran and main character Jim Sheridan is working for the Great Western Importing Company specializing in lacquer and lumber. It comes as a great surprise when Sheridan is requested by his employer to originate a pearl importing business in Manilla. As a former lieutenant in and around the Battle of Bataan 13-years ago, Sheridan is unnerved by the request to re-visit old wounds but accepts the new proposal.

Nearing Caballo Bay, Sheridan meets the gorgeous Ellen, an aspiring singer who has accepted evening gigs at the Casa Grande Hotel. As an old stomping ground for Sheridan and his unit, Sheridan escorts Ellen to the hotel and meets his old ally and friend, Jacques Costeau, the hotel's owner. It's this memorable scene that offers a reflective moment from Sheridan. With just a small recollection, the reader receives a glimpse into Sheridan's past tragedies, the dismal fate of his unit and his lost lover Tulana. The book's synopsis and cover art conveys to the reader that this is a WW2 adventure novel, so these small looks at Sheridan's past serves as a teaser or pre-cursor to the action that we know will unfold. I call it literary foreplay from this skillful author.

The night of Sheridan's reunion with Costeau he finds an unexpected visitor in his room. The secretive intruder has a message disguised as a riddle inviting Sheridan to a seaside yacht to discuss pearls. Arriving at the yacht, Sheridan comes face to face with his former captor, retired Japanese Colonel Yamata. The two have a heated conversation that's a bit of a mystery to the reader at this early stage. As if on cue, Sheridan is knocked unconscious and the next 100-pages is a flashback to his life during the war.

As a young man, Sheridan was educated at Oxford and speaks a dozen languages. While on holiday in the Philippines, he falls in love with a night club singer named Tulana, but ends up joining the Allied forces and fighting with the Royal Air Force in the sweltering jungles of Bataan. As the Japanese forces surround the island, the US and Filipino forces dump all of Manilla's silver pesos into Caballo Bay along with guns, ammo and vehicle parts before surrendering. A watery, 100-foot grave for $8-million in assets (note this really happened according to US Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1958).

The Japanese transfer their enemy personnel to various prison camps in Asia, some as laborers, others just as starving prisoners awaiting death within dirty huts. Sheridan is saved from this fate due to speaking multiple languages – the Japanese insist on utilizing his skills as a translator. Knowing that Manilla's riches were thrown into the bay, Sheridan is given to Colonel Yamata to work with six US Navy divers in securing the silver. With bad equipment, grueling work loads and the threats of torture and death for failure, Sheridan's fate rests on his team's ability to locate and recover the treasure.

Lee Gifford's strength lies in his ability to tell an epic story. “Pieces of the Game” was like this grand cinematic experience. The opening events that eventually spills into a high-adventure military tale felt as if they were backed by a rich symphonic score. But the book's middle narrative is built on the slower, more emotive prison formula. The torture, confinement and survival elements are all equally important in providing a strong catalyst for the prison-break.

“Pieces of the Game” is like a deep-water, Clive Cussler treasure hunt crossed with the “The Great Escape” with enough intrigue and action to rival both. If it wasn't for Paperback Warrior's bustling publishing schedule I would have finished this and immediately turned to page one to relive the enjoyment all over again. This is one of the best books I've read in a very long time...and that's saying something.

Note:  After the publishing of this review, a blog reader and paperback enthusiast reached out to Paperback Warrior with an interesting theory on Lee Gifford. In his experience, he feels that there is a 90% chance that Gifford was actually Lou Cameron. He cites the style, punctuation and male hubris of the storytelling as a match to Cameron's first-person adventure and thrillers from this era.

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