The Avenger #4: Manhattan Massacre

The Avenger #4: Manhattan Massacre, by Chet Cunningham
October, 1988  Warner Books

The fourth and final volume of The Avenger finds unhinged hero Matt Hawkee slightly less unhinged as he ventures to Los Angeles to wipe out “a new Oriental syndicate.” The “all druggers must die” vitriol of the previous volume is a bit whittled down this time, Chet Cunningham for the most part leaving the sadism to the villains. This is the New Connection, a conglomerated triad which takes heroin-hooked whores off the street, gussies them up, and has them play Russian roulette in front of a betting audience!

Some unspecified time after volume 3, Hawke is in Los Angeles, looking into the recent rash of hookers who have committed “suicide.” All of them were teenaged runaways, heroin addicts despite their youth, and Hawke’s drugger senses are alerted. There’s no attempt at making Hawke an empathetic character this time; he baldly exposists his sad-story background to one dude early in the book, and then on page 114 we get an arbitrary flashback. But otherwise he’s just your typical men’s adventure protagonist, out to use his endless arsenal against the drug-dealers in a variety of firefights.

As mentioned we get a good glimpse of how evil Hawke’s latest target is. In a long opening sequence, we meet a 15 year-old street hooker/heroin addict from Chinatown who is taken into an opulent “palace” in Chinatown and pampered. She is to be the latest roulette victim, offered a hundred thousand dollars for the bet – if she survives, the money is hers. Cunningham makes us feel for the poor girl as she is taken into the betting room on a grand throne, dressed up to the nines by a staff of makeup and wardrobe artists. The sequence ends as expected, with the girl blowing her brains out.

Hawke tracks down David Wong, older brother of the dead girl; a successful businessman in Chinatown, Wong tried to keep his sister from taking to the streets but failed. He becomes Hawke’s first accomplice in the novel, eager to get vengeance on whoever was behind the girl’s death; he too disbelieves the newspaper stories that these have all been unconnected suicides. However he is very fearful of the New Connection. He also has another sister, this one a hottie named Jasmine who dances for a living and who surprisingly does not become one of Hawke’s conquests.

Hawke also reconnects with an old ‘Nam pal while in LA. This is Buzz Yuan, former ‘Nam chopper pilot, current Wall Street type. An interesting note throughout Manhattan Massacre is that Vietnam is given a lot more focus. Whereas most men’s adventure heroes in the ‘70s were also ‘Nam vets, very seldom did we actually read anything about the war – the focus instead was on their current, lone wolf activities of the characters. But in the ‘80s the memories of Vietnam were brought to the fore – no doubt catering to the rash of action flicks which featured Vietnam vets – so we have many arbitrary reminsices from Hawke or Buzz about “that time in Huey” or whatnot.

Together these two get in a bunch of firefights throughout the novel, traveling around the New York area and taking out various New Connection operations. Buzz gradually drops his businessman makeover and becomes more at home in the chaotic bloodshed he once experienced daily in the bush; it’s all entertaining but increasingly unbelievable, like when Buzz even rents out a chopper so he can more completely recreate his ‘Nam days, above the streets of Manhattan.

Cunningham gets a little pulpy with New Connection’s leader, the mysterious Mr. Chu of Hong Kong who uses three gorgeous, miniskirted Chinese ladies as his personal bodyguard. However Cunningham doesn’t exploit this; the bodyguard gals are hardly featured, and arbitrarily sent to take out Hawke at one point, who almost perfunctorily wastes them without the proper exploitation factor the scene requires. But Hawke does score with another gorgeous Chinese lady: Lin Liu, herself a former heroin addict who was roped into the Russian roulette scheme and actually survived. Now she’s a high-ranking New Connection member, but, as Hawke discovers, she’s eager to leave.

Posing as a heroin dealer himself, Hawke does business with Lin Liu, who for no reason at all abruptly tells Hawke she can tell there’s something different about him; she blabs her entire lifestory to this veritable stranger, desperate that he might help her escape Mr. Chu and his people. Cunningham leaves the sex scene off-page, but afterwards Hawke has feelings for the girl – and posthaste she’s abruptly removed from the narrative, captured by a suspicious Mr. Chu. She’s basically in the book long enough to exposit to Hawke about the syndicate, have sex with him, and then get caught!

Most of Manhattan Massacre is comrpised of Hawke and Buzz raiding various places and killing all the druggers within. Cunnigham doesn’t get too crazy with the violence. He also adds arbitrary stuff like the sudden presence of a DEA agent whose partner – a Chinese guy – turns out to be a traitor. Meanwhile Buzz is the one who falls in love with Broadway dancer Jasmine Wong, thus it’s Buzz we’re to empathize with when Jasmine is also caught by Mr. Chu in the climax – Lin Liu has been gone so long we’ve already forgotten about her. However Cunningham brings her back just long enough to gut us with her sad fate.

The finale sees Hawke and Buzz raiding the opulent palace in which the Russian roulette takes place – humorously, Hawke arrives just seconds after the latest victim inadvertently blows her own brains out – and while by this point the constant action scenes have lost a bit of their novelty value, or at least their excitement, Mr. Chu is delivered a very Hollywood-esque sendoff: Hawke jams a primed grenade in his mouth.

Speaking of Hollywood, Hawke announces his intention to head there and root out the rampant drug-dealing at the end of the book, thus the unpublished fifth volume likely occurred there. I think I read somewhere – was it Brad Mengel who wrote about it? – that this fifth volume was eventually epublished, but I’ve never bothered looking it up. At any rate, here ended the Avenger series, at least so far as the paperback run went.

The Avenger #3: Colombia Crackdown

The Avenger #3: Columbia Crackdown, by Chet Cunningham
July, 1988  Warner Books

After The Penetrator came to an end in 1983 (a very definite end, by the way) Chet Cunningham continued performing contract writing duties, but in the late ‘80s he authored under his own name the four-volume Avenger series. Judging from this third volume, it’s like a Drug War-era overhaul of Cunningham’s Penetrator work, only lacking the pulpy spark of that earlier series.

Hero Matt Hawke is notable because he’s a psychopath. Bringing to mind the protagonist of Barry Malzberg’s 1970s series Lone Wolf, Hawke is practically deranged and will murder with impunity. We’re informed that Hawke, who served as a Marine in ‘Nam, was once a highly-decorated DEA agent who lost it all when his wife Connie was captured by drug dealers who had been burned by Hawke; they tortured her over the course of three days, Hawke only arriving to save her as she died. He of course killed the torturers and then declared war on the drug dealers of the world.

Hawke soon became known as “The Avenger” in the San Diego papers as he ran roughshod over the men who had killed his wife. After this he headed on down to Houston to bust up some druggers there. Now he’s in Miami, following more cocaine-world leads, and we learn that all of this is occuring two short months after the death of Hawke’s wife. So in other words, “The Avenger” is relatively new to the world of lone wolf crimefighting, but he’s already racked up a hefty number of kills and has destroyed several important coke pipelines into the US.

Cunningham appears to have been attempting to create his own Executioner, as this book has the same feel as the early Don Pendleton volumes of that series. This goes beyond Hawke’s single-minded pursuit of bloody payback to little things like the term “turkey meat,” which is used throughout, Hawke often stating that this is what his wife was turned into by the sadists who killed her. Also Hawke like Bolan is rooted for by the government agencies of the US, despite being a wanted felon. He just lacks that likability of Mack Bolan, or for that matter of Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin.

Hawke when we meet him is busy killing off some dude who owns a surf board company but makes his real millions importing coke. Here we get the first taste of Hawke’s insanity as he trains a gun on the unarmed surfer, screams about how his wife Connie was hacked to pieces, and then condemns the surfer to death, shooting him in the forehead. Mind you, this surfer guy had nothing whatsoever to do with Connie Hawke’s death. But before killing any drug world bigwig Hawke will relive Connie’s last moments and start ranting and raving before pulling the trigger.

Hawke’s come to Miami to crack down on the drug-smuggling effors of Tony Labruzzo, whose uncle Vito is one of the top Mafioso from the old days. Cunningham juggles perspectives with what turns out to be the go-nowhere storyline of Sue Beth, a redneck virgin who is unwittingly used by Tony’s goons as a coke mule. When she finds out she’s being used, the goon in charge rapes her…and after like two hours of it Sue Beth shoots him! But the guy lives and has her gang-banged by several of his henchmen, then dropped off nude on the streets – ironically, right outside of the kosher deli which Hawke uses as his Miami intel headquarters.

Sue Beth’s shipped off back home and meanwhile Hawke investigates Labruzzo territory. Trying to meet Vito in the family’s main Miami building (they have several respectable businesses, naturally), he instead is introduced to an attractive young woman named Gina. Cunningham builds up a long-simmer relationship between the two, with Hawke becoming interested in Gina and vice versa, but he’s not sure how involved with the Labruzzo business she really is. He goes on offing various mobsters in Miami, planning to head on down to Latin America to cut off the supply at its source.

One thing Cunningham brings back from the Penetrator years is a female villain – Gina we learn is in fact Gina Labruzzo, one of Vito’s nieces and the ostensible ruler of the family’s American faction. In an arbitrary, unexplored tidbit we learn that Gina’s real fucked up – she enjoys slicing up her thighs and hips with straight razors! This is her way of getting mellow after a hard day. We also learn that she was repeatedly raped as a young virgin by one of her uncles, and now has a distrust of all men, or something. Cunningham doesn’t really elaborate on it too much, other than her constant dismissals of Hawke’s advances.

Hawke meanwhile takes on another female villain, an attractive assassin Gina sends after him. After the gal accidentally tumbles off a building frame Hawke flies down to Honduras and the book becomes a bit of a travelogue. Hawke meets up with a British expat named Preston Smith-Jones who claims to sell refurbished turbine props in Dallas; the man shows Hawke around, including yet another arbitrary part where he hooks him up with an American named “The Shooter” who handles security for a coffee plant. This guy and Hawke get involved in a brief skirmish with drug runners in a scene clearly placed there to add a bit of action.

Attention expats who have any knowledge of the drug world: stay away from Matt Hawke, as he will likely murder you. This happens twice in the novel, Preston being the first of two guys who shows Hawke around, being chummy with him, only to be summarily executed once Hawke learns that Preston is selling coke back in the States. And once again our psychotic hero starts screaming about his dead wife before he pulls the trigger. Afterwards Hawke continues his Latin America tour and goes to Bogota, Colombia, where he learns that all cocaine in the area is sold by The Grasshopper, an old drug baron who lives in opulence.

Gina is here too, and the whole “will they or won’t they” subplot makes no sense as we readers know Gina is a Labruzzo and has already tried to have Hawke killed a few times. Meanwhile Hawke just suspects something’s up about the girl but apparently he’s lost his faculties due to her awesome boobs. Hawke goes on more travelogue-esque tours of coke-processing plants, posing as a writer of “men’s action books.” He murders another expat, this one an American who shows Hawke one of the Grasshopper’s facilities and even offers him a job.

Hawke has a thing for fighting with unusual weapons: in Colombia Crackdown he kills one guy with an ink pen, he tears up another dude with a key padlock tied to the end of a belt, and in the novel’s most outrageous kill he blows up a guy with C4 plastic explosive on a flying model airplane. Otherwise he fights with a Colt .45 or any other gun he can get his hands on; unlike Mark Hardin, he doesn’t have a trademark weapon, like the Penetrator’s Ava dart gun.

Another callback to the Penetrator occurs in the finale, in which Hawke is captured and isn’t just shot in the head but is instead put in the sort of deathtrap Hardin might have encountered: a room with an electrified floor. In a too-long sequence Hawke is able to escape, which leads to a final confrontation between him and Gina. Here the lady’s fondness for blades comes into play, as she goes after Hawke with a poisoned dagger. Cunningham doesn’t deliver a single sex scene in the novel, but he does continue to play out this “it could be love” storyline between these two which never does come off as believable.

Otherwise Cunningham’s writing is of the same piece as his earlier work, with the action always moving and the resourceful protagonist always getting by on his luck or his wits. But as mentioned it just lacks the charm of his Penetrator material, and has too much of a “this is the ‘80s so this needs to be treated seriously” vibe inherent in men’s adventure fiction of the era. It’s also a little too heavy on the anti-drug rhetoric of the day (the back of the book even proclaims: “He says no to the drug merchants of death!”), but that’s to be expected given Hawke’s history.

Stupid but true bonus note: I was driving to work the day after I finished reading Colombia Crackdown and a white Honda CR-V got in front of me on the tollway. It had vanity license plates that said “AVENGER!”