New title from Tocsin Press

Just wanted to let you all know that there’s a new book out from Tocsin Press: Super Cop Joe Blitz: The Maimer, by Nelson T. Novak. Here’s the cover: 

Sgt. Joe Blitz, that tough 1970s New York cop who featured in The Psycho Killers, is back in another sordid tale which sees him up against a Satanic snuff-flick cult. 

You can check out the back cover copy and read the first few pages of the book here. 

And let’s not forget the other books currently available at Tocsin Press… 

The Undertaker: Death Transition, one of the best books I read last year. 

The Undertaker #2: Black Lives Murder, which was another of the best books I read last year – I mean if you get the first one you should get this one, too! 

If you like thigh-boot wearing Nazi she-devil vixens, and you like John Eagle Expeditor, then you’ll certainly enjoy John Falcon Infiltrator: The Hollow Earth! 

The Triggerman: Brains For Brunch, in which Johnny Larock, the Triggerman (who is of course not to be confused with The Sharpshooter or The Marksman), satiates his hunger for Mafia blood!

Mentioned above, Super Cop Joe Blitz: The Psycho Killers is the previously-published adventure with Joe Blitz...one involving a rather grisly rape case.

And like the old Pinnacle house ads said, there’s more to come…

New Book Available At Tocsin Press

Just wanted to let you all know that a new book is listed at Tocsin Press – Super Cop Joe Blitz: The Psycho Killers, by Nelson T. Novak. Here’s the cover: 

Joe Blitz is a tough cop in 1970s New York who totally shouldn’t be confused with Joe Ryker, Joe Keller, or Joe Blaze! In The Psycho Killers Blitz deals with a rather grisly rape case. 

This one’s uber-sleazy and should come with a warning on the back cover, a la Gannon or Death List. As an Amazon reviewer aptly put it: “This was so disgusting…it almost made me vomit!” I couldn’t think of a better blurb than that…  

Please head over to Tocsin Press for more details!

Death Squad (Keller #4)

Death Squad, by Nelson DeMille
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

I lucked out and finally found a reasonably-priced copy of this fourth and final Keller novel, which in the late ‘80s was revised and updated to become the sixth and final volume of the “Jack Cannon” Ryker series. I’ve wanted to read Death Squad since I read Marty McKee’s review a few years ago, and I’m really glad I finally got to, as this was my favorite Keller/Ryker novel by far.

As Marty notes, Death Squad is clearly influenced by the second Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force, as it’s about a secret police squad that acts as judge, jury, and executioner. Nelson DeMille wasn’t alone in taking off on this concept, as there was the similar Death Squad and Kill Squad series, not to mention a 1974 TV-movie titled The Death Squad. For that matter, Herbert Kastle even published a novel titled The Death Squad in 1977. So “cops gone vigilante” was a hot topic at the time, and many of the elements DeMille deals with in this novel are still relevant today.

Kastle is a good reference point, as even though both the Keller and the Ryker books were packaged as men’s adventure action novels, they have more in common with the crime thrillers Kastle was turning out at the time, like Cross-Country. They’re also very similar to the work William Crawford was doing under his own name and various pseudonyms, as they’re obviously based on extensive research and they’re grounded in a realistic-seeming cop world. But whereas Crawford had lots of police world details but lackluster storytelling skills (incidentally, I’ve recently learned that Crawford was indeed a cop himself), DeMille has a firm handle on both. (Except for when he has Keller screw a silencer onto a revolver….)

I’ve enjoyed every Keller and Ryker novel I’ve yet read, even though none of them (the DeMille ones, at least) have had much in the way of action. They are instead rather slow-paced, grim and gritty police procedurals, but the characters and the situations are so well defined and depicted that I’ve found them very entertaining despite the lack of thrills. Death Squad however turns out to be a little different – while it’s just as entertaining and well-written as the previous volumes, it actually has its share of violent thrills and action scenes.

DeMille proves this early on, with an opening clearly influenced by a scene in Magnum Force, as Keller sits in with a pair of stakeout cops who are hiding in an oft-robbed liquor store. Keller happens to leave just as a pair of black dudes walk in; Keller stumbles across their spotter outside, cuffs him, and then almost walks right in on the execution of the two would-be robbers. They’re shot point-blank by the stakeout cops, and Keller has gotten first-hand confirmation of what he’s suspected for a while: that there’s a “Death Squad” operating within the NYPD.

This leads into an entertaining and very ‘70s paranoia tale as Keller doesn’t know who on the force he can trust. It gets even worse when a rapist, jailed in the detectives’ squad room in Keller’s precinct house, “commits suicide” by hanging. When Keller later finds a needle beneath the dude’s fingernail, he gets yet more confirmation of foul play. The back cover hypes it that Keller doesn’t really mind the dirty deeds of the Death Squad, but in the book itself he’s on the fence, and can’t decide if he likes their actions or not. What most bugs him is why they haven’t asked him to join!

The only men on his squad Keller believes he can trust are series regulars Lt. Piscati (aka Fischetti in the Ryker books) and Sgt. Bo Liddy (aka Bo Lindy). He’s not sure about his new partner, a young ‘Nam vet with a leg wound named Paul Reuter. Meanwhile we readers get to see the Death Squad in action, and their efforts aren’t limited to crooks: they have grander designs, like for example taking out a notoriously-liberal circuit court judge. The Squad meets in an abandoned subway on the outskirts of town, their “Chief” sitting in the shadows and wearing a hood as his men surround him. More ‘70s paranoia continues with the details that an FBI agent and a CIA agent are part of the ruling board, as well as a retired Army general.

DeMille as ever excels in setpieces, from an arbitrary but disturbingly fascinating part where Keller watches as a corpse is embalmed to a long dialog exchange between the leaders of the Death Squad, who state that their prime targets will be liberal politicians. Grungy ‘70s New York City is again captured in all its tawdry glory, if not to the extent of the other Ryker/Keller novels. Most surprising of all is that DeMille actually bothers to write action material here, with a handful of gunfights occuring in the narrative. In previous volumes our “hero” rarely if ever pulled his gun, and never fired it once. (At least in the ones I’ve read – the only two I still need are The Sniper and The Cannibal.)

Finally the Death Squad goes too far, at least so far as Keller is concerned; when they kill off a friend (or at least what passes for a friend for Keller) our hero swears vengeance. “If they’re the Nazis,” he blusters, “I’m Attila the Hun.” Keller isn’t much for planning; instead he just loads up his Ruger .357 Magnum and his Police Special .38 (which he’s constanty screwing a silencer on, by the way) and charges in. This almost gets him killed in an ambush, but he’s saved by Reuter – a fact the two keep bickering and bantering about like a regular Razoni & Jackson, with Keller insisting that he could’ve saved himself.

The two are now on the run, hiding from cops, trying to interrogate men they have identified as members of the Death Squad. Here Keller proves himself as merciless as his enemies, killing in cold blood. But nowhere is safe for Keller and Reuter – they even have to sleep in the patrolmen’s quarters in the precinct house – and the final quarter of the novel is very tense as they’re in open conflict with the Death Squad and don’t know who they can trust. Finally Keller learns where the Squad meets, and with the aid of a surprise ally our two heroes (now a trio) make a midnight raid on the place.

The climactic action scene isn’t along the lines of The Executioner or anything, and indeed brings more to mind a ‘70s crime flick, with Keller and Reuter only having to deal with a few Squad cops in the dark subway. DeMille doesn’t go much for the gore, either, with people just getting shot and falling down. He does though deliver a very abrupt ending, with Keller and Reuter taking out the ruling elite of the Squad, at least most of them, only to realize on the final sentence of the final page that they’ve just let the leader of the Squad escape. But here the book ends, which is unfortunate, as the Death Squad has been set up as so far-reaching and widespread that the story almost begs to keep going on.

Instead, that’s that; I guess we’re to believe that Keller has chopped off the head of the organization and now it will fall apart. But at least DeMille gave us some action in the first place, and again his characters pop to life, as does grimy Manhattan. Keller here has developed a penchant for one-liners and snappy comebacks, and DeMille even employs movie-style setup and payoff dialog, like a recurring joke about “a five-letter word meaning meddlesome.” One thing missing for those keeping track on your trash scorecard is there’s no sex at all – in fact, there isn’t a single female character in the entire novel.

Death Squad confirms that this series was published (and maybe even written) out of order. In my review of The Smack Man, I mentioned that a certain character was stated as being dead, even though he was alive in later volumes. I won’t give this character’s name away in this review, as it would be a spoiler to anyone reading Death Squad, but that character is in fact killed in this novel, which means that The Smack Man takes place after Death Squad, even though it was the first volume of the Keller series! (And DeMille didn’t change the series order when he revised these books in the late ‘80s, so I guess this out-of-order sequence was intentional.)

But then on page 140 Keller’s new partner Reuter says that “rumor has it” that Keller killed a bad cop named Schwartz. My friends, this is a direct reference to the climactic events of…The Smack Man! So what the hell?? Did DeMille just figure to hell with it, no one would notice the continuity misfires anyway, or did he himself get goofed up? As mentioned, it would appear these mix-ups were present in the ’89 revisions as well, so either DeMille didn’t catch them again or he just figured “to hell with it” again. But as it stands, Death Squad takes place before and after The Smack Man. I thought maybe the novels might occur at the same time, but each takes place over the span of just a few weeks – and in different seasons, to boot.

Sadly, this was it for Joe Keller; meanwhile, his alternate-reality version, Joe Ryker, continued on to have a few more adventures over at Leisure Books, courtesy the group of writers who served as “Edson T. Hamill.”

The Smack Man (Keller #1)

The Smack Man, by Jack Cannon
July, 1989  Pocket Books
(Original publication March, 1975  Manor Books)

Originally published as the first volume of the Keller series, The Smack Man was later revised and reprinted as a Ryker novel, author Nelson DeMille crediting himself as “Jack Cannon.” Ironically, these 1989 Pocket Books reprints are sometimes more scarce and expensive than the orginal editions, and I only got my copy because some unaware employee at a used bookstore put it on the Mystery shelves, for half off the cover price, at that.

I previously read Night Of The Phoenix, which was also one of those ’89 revisions, but I don’t recall it being as revised as The Smack Man clearly is. I’ve never seen the original Manor Books edition, but vast portions of this ’89 edition have obviously been rewritten, with Detective Sergeant Joe Ryker fully brought into late ‘80s New York. I’d love to read that original edition, but I don’t see it happening – I’m not about to spend that much on a copy.

As mentioned in my The Hammer Of God review, Joe Ryker and Joe Keller are one and the same, and when DeMille left Leisure Books and went to Manor he just renamed the series Keller and kept on writing. I think these books were definitely not printed in order, or maybe even weren’t written in order, because The Smack Man clearly takes place after The Cannibal (one I’d love to read) and The Death Squad (another one I want to read) – but both of those books were published after The Smack Man.

And like DeMille’s other Ryker books that I’ve read, The Smack Man is by no means an action-centric men’s adventure novel, even though it was packaged as such (in both editions). It is rather a slow-paced police procedural that operates more so on character and nitty-gritty detail, with the sleazy pit of the Lower East Side fully brought to life (in the ’89 reprints, Ryker was a Sixth Precinct cop, working the Lower East Side, whereas he was a Midtown Manhattan cop in the original ‘70s editions).

But despite the lack of action or sex, I have to say I enjoyed this one just as much as I enjoyed the others. DeMille I think has a great style, very readable, with compelling characters and great dialog. And, as usual, Ryker is a complete obnoxious prick, though it seems here DeMille actually tries to make him the hero, or at least attempts to make us sympathize with him. In previous books it’s seemed to me that Ryker was an antihero in the truest sense of the word, a guy who intentionally pissed off everyone, including the reader.

When a pimp named Rodney calls Ryker to tell him there’s a dead “hoor” in his apartment, Ryker is brought into his current case. The hooker lies sprawled in the pimp’s living room, her spine arched in a horrendous position; Ryker immediately identifies it as the result of strychnine poisoning. There’s a syringe on her thigh, so, as Ryker puts it, “Someone put bad shit in the good shit.” The M.E. claims it’s murder, but it appears the hooker willingly dosed herself. In other words, someone’s out there selling deadly dope to hookers.

As in previous DeMille Ryker novels, we really learn a lot about the criminal underworld and life on the streets. So we learn that no one sells to street hookers – they get their dope from their pimps. Someone though has circumvented this hierarchy and is selling directly to them. We know from the start of the book that it’s a half-dead bum who bought his heroin from a member of a Jamaican posse (another definite revision to this ’89 reprint, I’m sure), but the police have no idea who is behind it and spend the majority of the novel in a fruitless search for whoever’s selling the deadly junk.

Meanwhile Ryker’s more concerned with his broken air conditioner – like practically every other crime novel I’ve read that’s set in New York, The Smack Man takes place during a merciless summer – as well as the constant phone calls he’s getting from his ex-wife, Eleanor. DeMille adds genuine pathos and hummanity to Ryker here, with him still in love with her, and her feeling the same, but calling to taunt him that she’s about to get married, in a desperate gambit for Ryker to drop his work and fly to Chicago to proclaim his love for her. (We also learn that Ryker has a “girlfriend” named Beverly Kim, a “high-price call girl” he apparently met in The Cannibal, but she doesn’t actually appear in this novel.)

Of course, Ryker isn’t about to do what his ex-wife asks of him. And besides, he soon sets his sights on Detective Pamela York, an attractive blonde Narcotics officer who practices “total immersion” in her undercover roles. The most compelling character in the book, Pamela is similar to Abigail Robbins in The Hammer of God, only tougher – and not in that cliched modern “female cop” style, but in a way that seems more cut from reality. She is pretty much Ryker’s perfect match, though they start off with a frosty relationship that gradually warms due to their respect for one another’s experience.

But as for the other cops, Ryker fights with them per usual, in particular his boss, Lt. Fischetti, who is the butt of most of Ryker’s putdowns and insults. The strange lack of continuity is apparent here, for we are informed that Ryker’s partner Bo Lindly is dead, killed on duty. But when? He was alive in Night Of The Phoenix, which was published after this. And also we’re informed that another partner, Sawyer, retired after he and Ryker “had uncovered a pervasive rottenness in the department,” which surely must be a reference to The Death Squad – which I believe was the last volume published in both these “Jack Cannon” reprints and the original Manor series. So what the hell?

Ryker comes up with a plan that’s identical to the one he devised in The Hammer of God: he gets another male cop and a female cop to do the dirty work while he just sits around and bitches about how tough the case is. Williston is the male cop, and since he’s black Ryker gets him to pose as a pimp. A funny joke develops with Williston becoming one of the more successful new pimps in New York, with his stable growing daily. And Pamela York poses as a streetwalker, hoping to run into the mysterious “smack man” who will proposition her.

DeMille builds up a believable growing relationship between Ryker and Pamela, with them bonding as they walk the dangerous night streets of the Lower East Side. They also find the time to badger a bunch of pimps in a local hangout, but when Pamela finally decides to go home with Ryker, the night’s fun is ruined by his broken air conditioner. Throughout the rest of the novel Ryker constantly reminds himself that he doesn’t give a shit about Pamela York – or his wife, who basically pleads with him to come get her in Chicago. But you kind of wonder what the hell these women even see in Ryker.

Once again there isn’t a single action scene, though in this novel Ryker does, for once, actually pull his .357 Magnum in the finale – though it is immediately kicked out of his hand! Ryker doesn’t even get in any fistfights. While it might be realistic so far as all that goes – and DeMille’s Ryker books definitely have a ring of authenticity about them – it does leave the reader feeling a little jilted. Ryker comes off as a loudmouthed jerk who never once backs up his words with his fists, so he loses some of his clout in the reader’s eyes.

Skip this paragraph if you don’t want it to be spoiled, but The Smack Man features the mandatory downbeat ending of ‘70s fiction. Each of DeMille’s Ryker novels have had downbeat endings, but in this one he really sticks the blade in and twists it, with Ryker and Pamela finally having sex, and then Pamela rushing out to meet a contact who might know about the bad dope. Williston has recently been killed by someone, and of course it turns out to be the guy Pamela’s meeting. She too becomes his victim, suffering a horrible fate at that, forcibly injected with the strychnine-laced heroin. Only much too late does Ryker put it all together, showing up in the park to find Pamela’s “broken doll” corpse, splayed half-nude in the bushes.

It’s when going for revenge that Ryker actually pulls his gun, but DeMille can’t even give us that much, and continues to aim for realism. Instead the killer gets away – the hastily-rendered story has it that he’s killing hookers in vengeance for his sister, who became a hooker junkie herself – and Ryker gets a month’s suspension. And even though we’re informed Ryker does eventually get revenge, it’s all rendered via summary, and is none too sastifactory. By the end of The Smack Man, Ryker has come full circle, back to the self-centered asshole he started the book as, though he goes through a few changes in the course of the narrative.

I’m curious if this was in fact the last volume DeMille actually wrote, not just due to the references to other books, but also because The Smack Man comes off as a fitting finale for the “adventures” of Joe Ryker – more than any other volume I’ve yet read, Ryker himself becomes personally affected by the events in The Smack Man, but we learn that, despite it all, in the end he is still Joe Ryker, asshole supreme.

Night Of The Phoenix (Keller #3)

Night Of The Phoenix, by Jack Cannon
September, 1989  Pocket Books
(Original publication June, 1975  Manor Books)

In 1989 Nelson DeMille decided to bring his Ryker series back into print, crediting himself as “Jack Cannon” with a note to the reader explaining that these editions were “revised and updated” by the author himself. The note to the reader also provides a little backstory on these books, briefly stating that the series started as Ryker with Leisure books before moving over to Manor and becoming Keller.

As part of the revisions New York “hero” cop Joe Ryker is here only referred to as such, and never as “Joe Keller.” It’s my theory that DeMille left Leisure because he got pissed off that editor Peter McCurtin published Ryker #3 under DeMille’s name, even though it was written by Len Levinson. Len explained this to me that McCurtin’s thinking was that Leisure owned not only the series but the rights to the author’s name. Doesn’t sound legally accurate to me, I mean DeMille was a real name, not a house name, but what do I know, it was the ‘70s.

But anyway shortly after this DeMille split from Leisure and went over to Manor, changed “Joe Ryker” to “Joe Keller,” and continued writing the series, which ran for a total of four volumes. Counting the two Ryker volumes DeMille published with Leisure (actually they published three by DeMille, but more on that below), that means the Joe Ryker/Keller books ran a total of six volumes, all of which were reprinted by Pocket in these “revised and updated” editions. Night Of The Phoenix originally appeared in 1975 as the third volume of Manor’s Keller series, but was the fifth (and thus penultimate) volume of the ’89 Ryker reprints.

Even this is screwy, though; as Marty McKee notes, Leisure actually published Night Of The Phoenix as the fourth volume of Ryker, titling it The Agent Of Death. Marty mentions that this Leisure edition features different character names than the Manor edition and also lacks a prologue which features so memorably in the Keller version of the tale (fortunately, the prologue is also in this Pocket reprint). So as Marty states, sly DeMille must’ve gotten paid twice for the same book…though if Len Levinson’s comments to me are any indication, DeMille probably didn’t get paid for either book, Manor and Leisure being notoriously reluctant to pay their authors.

Now that all that is out of the way, on to the novel itself. Night Of The Phoenix is along the same lines as the other DeMille Ryker I’ve read, The Hammer Of God. (A problem with all of these Ryker and Keller books is they're so goddamn expensive on the used book marketplace – hell, even the Pocket reprints are expensive, in some cases moreso than the original editions!) Rather than focusing on the action this genre is known for, DeMille instead delivers a police procedural that’s heavier on dialog and character.

And speaking of character, Joe Ryker is once again an arrogant, obnoxious prick, belittling coworkers and degrading superiors. Whereas Len Levinson made Ryker a whole lot more likable, DeMille’s (original) interpretation of the character is a hateful bastard, as repulsive as can be. Like Narc #4, this is another cop novel that takes place in the sweltering heat of a New York summer, and DeMille relishes in letting us know how sweaty and stinky his protagonist is – and talking about obnoxious, there are a few scenes where Ryker notes his own stink and will spread his arms so that others can smell him! So like I said, he’s a pretty repulsive guy.

As mentioned this Pocket reprint retains the prologue which was in the original Manor edition but removed from the Leisure edition. And truth be told, this prologue is the highlight of the novel; I could’ve read an entire novel about CIA assassin Morgan as he sits in ambush in some swamp deep in ‘Nam, targetting any unfortunate NVA or VC who might come his way. There’s a dark comedy afoot as we learn that Morgan is paid per kill, and, like Death Race 2000 or something, he’s paid in accordance to how important the person is he’s killed.

It’s late in the war and a CIA rep drops into the swamp to tell Morgan he’s no longer employed; the CIA rep further informs Morgan that he’s made the personal decision to kill Morgan and take the few hundred thousand dollars he’s amassed over the years in his Swiss Bank account. But Morgan ends up killing the rep and, stranded in the swamp (his sole companion a Vietnamese girl he wounded earlier due to a misfire and spent the rest of the night raping), begins walking his way out of the jungle.

This brings us to the “present,” clearly 1989 in this updated Pocket edition; I’m curious how much exactly DeMille revised, but the original Manor edition being so pricey I’m unable to compare the two printings. Anyway Ryker is called onto the case when a gruesome corpse is discovered; a former CIA agent is found sitting in his bathtub, killed by leeches. DeMille brings to life the nightmarish scene, with Ryker and his fellow cop “friend” Lindly looking in horror at the fat leeches as they float around in the bloody water – a scene which finishes on a bizarrely humorous cop movie-style joke when Ryker pulls one of the leeches out of the water and reads it its rights.

When the guy’s wife is later blown away by a sniper, Ryker is convinced something’s going on…his first clue being how his “stupid chief” superiors at the precinct sort of brush over how the Feds immediately swooped onto the crime scene and took away all of the evidence. Then CIA rep Jorgenson shows up and informs the cops that a rogue CIA assassin from the ‘Nam era is back and is hunting down the men who set him up. The assassin is of course Morgan, and Jorgenson delivers Ryker et al a background story that’s a little different from the “facts” as presented in the prologue. But then, Jorgenson makes it clear that he’s in the business of lying, thus making Ryker even more distrustful of the man and the entire situation.

But as mentioned Night Of The Phoenix is narratively identical to Hammer of God in that the novel is basically a dialog-heavy police procedural with none of the action or suspense a reader might want. There isn’t even much of a lurid element, other than the grisly crime scenes Ryker investigates, for example a later sequence where another former CIA agent who betrayed Morgan is found hanging above a building, the skin flayed from his corpse. As for sex, there isn’t any of that either, even considering a nonsensical bit where Ryker and his new partner Lentini hire a hooker for the night, even bringing her onto one of the crime scenes the next morning!

For the most part Night Of The Phoenix is comprised of Ryker snapping at his colleagues and superiors that there’s more to the Morgan case than meets the eye; he of course runs afoul of Jorgenson, who makes veiled threats that Ryker “knows too much.” Ryker’s certain that a member of Jorgenson’s CIA team is a turncoat, someone who is feeding Morgan intel, but Jorgenson continues to backpedal and spread mistruths. After a while Ryker’s also certain he and his partners will come under fire, so in one of the more unusual “plot twists” I’ve ever read in one of these novels, he decides to hell with it and goes on vacation!

For vacation Ryker settles on a rural farmland owned by his ex in-laws in Chicago. Both of them “old unconverted Nazis,” they live on a compound guarded by dogs and the old man has an arsenal in his basement, complete with machine guns, subguns, and even gatling guns. There’s a part where Ryker, Lindly, and Lentini look over the weaponry, suspecting they might need it when the inevitable CIA squad comes after them – Ryker has gone on vacation so as to escape any death squads that might be sent after him, but when Lindly follows after him Ryker knows the cat’s out of the bag and his hiding place has been uncovered.

But man, DeMille can’t be bothered to write an action scene. Forget about Chekov’s dictum; DeMille shows us a whole lot more than just a rifle above the mantle, but doesn’t use them in the third act or any other act. When the squad does show up that night, all we get is a somewhat tense scene where Ryker et al hear the dogs barking outside; they see some headlights; and then the car drives away! The next morning, despite finding all of the dogs dead, Ryker just decides to leave, telling Lentini to go start up the car…and Lentini’s killed in the ensuing blast, the CIA of course having wired the car to blow. You see, Ryker’s an idiot in addition to being an asshole.

Please skip this paragraph if you want to avoid the novel’s surprise. As the murders continue, Jorgenson doles out more info, like the fact that Morgan is a leper. Ryker starts to wonder how a guy with such a supposedly-ruined face could get around the city without anyone noticing him. And like Ryker you soon begin to suspect Jorgenson himself. This turns out to be the reveal – Jorgenson is actually the murderer, and he doles out the tale for Ryker at the very end of the novel. Long story short, Jorgenson himself was part of the CIA team that screwed Morgan over, and also as coincidence would have it Jorgenson happened to be on the base a jungle-ravaged Morgan stumbled into after surviving his betrayal in the prologue sequence. So Jorgenson finished off Morgan himself (throwing him out of a helicopter!) and now, these years later, has decided to cash in on the Swiss Bank account, after getting the various serial numbers from his old turncoat pals. So in other words the promised tale of a leper-faced CIA assassin running amok in NYC is denied us, DeMille once again going for more of a “realistic” approach. Dammit!

While it skimps on the action and the sleaze, Night Of The Phoenix is still rather well-written, with DeMille bringing his characters to life, in particular his slimy protagonist. There’s good dialog and funny stuff too, though nothing on the un-PC level of Hammer of God. Speaking of which I don’t think DeMille removed too much of such material from this revised edition, as evidenced in an early scene where Ryker goes on about how black people hate cold weather. It’s just that in this installment Ryker’s moreso just a regular asshole instead of a racist and sexist asshole.

I’d like to read more of DeMille’s Ryker and Keller novels, whether in the original editions or these “Jack Cannon” reprints, but the prices for them are too prohibitive. However the post-DeMille Ryker novels from Leisure, credited to Edson T. Hamill, are fortunately much more affordable, so I’ll be reading them next.

Oh, and as for these Jack Cannon/Pocket reprints, each of them have similar covers, of this shades-wearing "cool" cop who in no way shape or form resembes Ryker or anyone else in these books.  In fact, the covers look like stills from the sequel to Cobra that Sylvester Stallone never gave us.