The Times Square Connection (The Marksman #22)

The Times Square Connection, by Frank Scarpetta

May, 1976  Belmont-Tower 

In a way this is sort of the end of The Marksman, even though there were two more volumes left. But The Times Square Connection was the last volume of the 1970s and also the last volume to carry the house name “Frank Scarpetta.” It was also the last volume to be written by series creator/editor Peter McCurtin. 

Published in 1976, The Times Square Connection is stated as taking place in July 1974…at least early in the book. Later in the book we come across the off-hand mention that a character is driving a “1976 model” car, which leads me to conclude that the manuscript got lost in the shuffle, perhaps due to the flurry of Marksman novels that were published in such a short span of time, and then rediscovered by McCurtin and given a final polish by him or someone else. 

To me, the entire book reads like McCurtin, with its hardboiled vibe and its frequent mentions of movies and old movie stars. There’s also a great part where Philip “The Marskman” Magellan goes to Forty-Second Street and notes how most of the “third-run theaters ha[ve] gone to straight porn,” a very cool bit of period flair for us 42nd Street Forever junkies. 

Speaking of “straight porn,” The Times Square Connection is yet another Belmot-Tower publication where the back cover copy doesn’t much relate to the actual book. The back cover promises a lurid tale of the mob moving in to the porno business in Times Square, and the reader can expect a bunch of sleazy shenanigans. Instead, McCurtin uses the “porno” angle as the framework; the mob could just as easily be moving in on the stamp-collecting or baseball card-collecting markets, and the story would not be impacted. 

Only the opening hints at what the back cover promises, when an old porno shop owner in Times Square is accosted outside of a bar and whacked by a couple mobsters. Then Magellan shows up, giving us a brief glimpse of how sleazy and depraved Forty-second Street has become as he walks through it, along Eighth Avenue, but after that McCurtin spends more time with Magellan sitting in the cramped office of an old carny acquaintance and getting info on who was behind the killing of the porno shop owner – who turns out to have been another of Magellan’s old carny acquaintances. 

This “carny” stuff is another indication of McCurtin being behind the typewriter; as we will recall, his original version of Magellan was a trickshot artist who worked the carny circuit, and McCurtin used this background in the prototype Assassin series and also his volumes of The Marskman, even if the other “Frank Scarpettas” seldom mentioned it. McCurtin also reminds us that Magellan got into the mob-busting game because of the murder of his wife and son, something documented in The Assassin #1, but interestingly we are told here that Magellan is “no longer in a hurry” to kill his prey, and now he is more methodical in his war of vengeance. We’re also told that his war has been going on for three years, perhaps more indication that McCurtin handled the final manuscript, as this book was published three years after that first Assassin. 

There seems to have been a story McCurtin was working on, but humorously The Times Square Connection soon loses the plot, gets involved in a lot of digressive banter between one-off mobster characters, and then in the final stretch focuses on a newly-introduced plot where a dirty New York cop who works for the mob comes up with the plan to kill a “retarded kid” and frame Magellan for the murder! (More on which anon.) The porno angle is completely lost – and McCurtin fails to exploit other material, as well. Early in the book we are told of Salerno, a ‘Nam Green Beret who has brought a group of fellow vets to the city to act as a mob army…a storyline lifted directly from The Executioner…but McCurtin forgets all about this setup and Salerno doesn’t even appear in the text until the final few pages. 

Even more humorously, there’s an entire chapter devoted to Magellan taking a newly-purchased submachine gun from his artillery case, a prototype made by British outfit Sterling around the end of WWII but never officially rolled out, and Magellan has gotten one at great expense. We’re given a lot of details about the gun and told that Magellan has never used it…and folks, by the end of the novel he still hasn’t used it! The gun literally only appears in this one chapter, with Magellan taking it out of the case, looking at it, and then putting it back in the case; in the hasty climax, Magellan uses an Uzi, and the Sterling isn’t even mentioned! 

Perhaps this is why The Times Square Connection is so choppy, and seems to occur in both July 1974 and sometime in 1976; maybe McCurtin started the book, set it aside, and then hastily went back to it when he needed to get out yet another Marksman installment. Or, as Lynn Munroe speculates, maybe another author did this later polish; if so, the style is very similar to McCurtin’s. I did not detect any wild stylistic changes as I read the book, and it all seemed to be courtesy a single writer. 

McCurtin is also one of the few “Scarpettas” who focuses on Magellan’s emotional makeup. We’re told he is “a big, wide-shouldered man with [a] hard, tired face,” and periodically in the book we are reminded that Magellan is “big.” This kind of goes against how I’ve always pictured the guy – thin, wearing a suit with hat, per many of the cover illustrations…well, sort of like the cover illustration of this volume (apparently courtesy an artist named “Hankins,” if I’m reading the signature hidden on the ledge correctly), with the important note that no scene like this occurs in the actual novel. And also, maybe the guy hanging from the ledge is intended to be Magellan. But also again, maybe the artwork wasn’t even commissioned for The Marksman in the first place and just got put on here by an indifferent editor with a publishing schedule to meet. 

McCurtin lived in the city and grungy mid-‘70s New York is very much brought to life, with Magellan ranging from Times Square to Brooklyn. There’s a lot of topical detailing and “directions around the city” stuff here, likely a page-filling gambit, but cool because it gives the book that period vibe. It’s just a shame that the plot promised on the back cover never materializes in the actual narrative. 

So anyway, the opening bit of the porno shop owner being killed sets up Magellan’s return to New York; there’s a bit of detail here that he has not been in the city for a while. An old carny friend tells Magellan who was supposedly behind the killing, and this leads to a hard-edged sequence in a slummy bar. McCurtin has a very clipped, hardboiled style, and Magellan takes no shit; there is no softness about him, either, as evidenced when he pays a street hooker to walk into the bar with him to act as cover. He shoves her out of the place before the shooting starts – humorously, McCurtin notes that a drunk sailor on leave chases her out of the bar, presumably to rent her services – and she’s never mentioned again. She is also the only female character in the book, other than the mother of the murdered child, who appears at the end to drunkenly argue with Magellan. 

Now here is a fascinating little rabbit hole: the “framing Magellan for the murder of a retarded child” scenario appeared in an installment of The Sharpshooter: A Dirty Way To Die, and not only that, but it was the exact same plot: a dirty New York cop worked with a Mafia don to kill a kid and frame Magellan. That volume was also written by Peter McCurtin…or at least, the first chapter was. The rest of the book was written by Russell Smith, and in that one the stylistic difference between the two authors was very evident. It seems then that Peter McCurtin, who edited both The Marksman and The Sharpshooter, wanted to get double bang for his “Magellan gets framed for a child’s murder” buck. McCurtin’s first attempt featured a male victim and was finished by Russell Smith, and there “Magellan” was turned into “Johnny Rock” and the manuscript was published as a Sharpshooter. McCurtin’s second attempt featured a female victim and must have been stuck in limbo for a while, then McCurtin himself went in and finished it up, and it was published as a Marksman. 

What’s humourous is that if I’m correct, in the first attempt the “child murder” setup was clunkily added to the beginning of a completely-unrelated plot (namely, Russell Smith’s wacky tale about the scientist in California), and in the second attempt it was added to the end of the book…meaning, The Times Square Connection starts off being about the mob moving into the New York porno racket, but ends up being about the mob running a child-killing frame on Magellan. One almost expects to see a trenchoated Robert Stack emerging from the mist to introduce this very special segment of Unsolved Mysteries. 

This is very much a man’s world, and McCurtin proceeds to waste a lot of pages on the bullshit digressions of a bunch of New York mobsters, arguing about the problem that is Magellan – yes, exactly like in Chapter 1 of A Dirty Way To Die, but the names are different. It’s just longer here, going on for a few chapters instead of just one, and there’s a lot of stuff featuring the dirty Irish cop who comes up with the entire frame. 

As with A Dirty Way To Die, the actual killing is left off-page, but here we are told it will be “vicious sex stuff,” and the victim will be the “retarded kid” of a dead mafioso…one whose last name, curiously, was Rossi. As in “Bruno Rossi,” the housename for the Sharpshooter? I want to believe McCurtin did this intentionally. 

Even when the mob dispenses with the child-killer, a sicko who exists on the bottom rungs of the mob world, this too is ignored and McCurtin spends more time focusing on Magellan harassing the guy who whacked the killer for the mob – a ridiculously overdone scene where Magellan blows away the other guys in the guy’s car, takes the guy captive and drives him to Brooklyn, to a cemetery where Magellan finds a fresh grave and threatens to throw the guy in it. It just goes on and on and on, and at this point the “Times Square” setup is completely gone…but then it barely existed in the first place. 

McCurtin spins his wheels to such an extent that the “climax” is the most harried three pages you’ll ever read. It all literally is relayed in summary in the epilogue; Magellan manages to get all of his enemies conveniently rounded up in one spot – a staple of this series – and then he casually blows ‘em all away with his Uzi in a page or two. Salerno, the big bad ‘Nam Green Beret who is set up at much page expense early in the book and then disappears, only shows up here, for a page or two, to be quickly blown away. To say the entire thing is unsatisfying would be an understatement. 

The book ends with Magellan about to fly to Miami to get revenge on the don who planned it all. That clearly never happened, but then The Marksman was filled with one-off volumes by one-off authors that never got followed up on; personally I’m still waiting to read about Magellan getting revenge on The Professor. 

After The Times Square Connection, The Marksman disappeared for four years, not returning until 1980’s The Card Game, which was credited to Aaron Fletcher (whether or not he actually wrote it). At that point McCurtin was gone – per Len Levinson, McCurtin got out of being an editor in the later ‘70s so he could focus more on writing – and also the “Frank Scarpetta” house name was dropped. This is why I say The Times Square Connection almost comes off like a finale for the series. It’s just a shame that the book doesn’t deliver what the back cover promises.

Bloody Sunday (The Marksman #21)

Bloody Sunday, by Frank Scarpetta

No month stated, 1976  Belmont-Tower

I would say that Lynn Munroe is once again correct with the theory that this volume of The Marksman was written by George Harmon Smith.* As Lynn notes, the style is identical to the series titles that have been identified (by Lynn) as ones by George Harmon Smith, like This Animal Must Die and Savage Slaughter. For once again we have a book that is wholly at odds with the typical Marksman yarn: 192 dense pages that are heavy with introspection and detail, with a literary flourish well outside the series norm. In past I’ve noted that George Harmon Smith was basically the John Gardner of the men’s adventure genre, and that is very apparent in Bloody Sunday; like Gardner (the American author who was briefly famous in the ‘70s, not the British author of the same name), Smith overwrites with abandon, making what is supposed to be a fast-moving novel instead come off like a laborious slog. 

Also, Bloody Sunday clarifies something I have long assumed: that George Harmon Smith was the author of Bronson: Blind Rage. In past reviews of Smith’s novels I was 99% sure of this; after reading Bloody Sunday, I’m 100% sure. I’ve only read a few books by Smith, including one non-series title (Bad Guy), but his style is unmistakeable, and all of his action stories feature a cold-blooded “hero” who tortures and kills without a thought and who is coupled with a headstrong, independent young woman who comes off as more human than the hero does. All these things are present in Bloody Sunday, just as they are in Bronson: Blind Rage, with the additional confirmation this time that here in Bloody Sunday George Harmon Smith uses the word “re-focussed,” instead of the more-typical spelling “focused.” Which is exactly how the word was (miss)spelled in Bronson: Blind Rage. I noted the unusual spelling of “focussed” in my review of Blind Rage back in 2012, hoping it would be a clue to the author’s identity…and Bloody Sunday was the payoff. When I saw the word “re-focussed” in this book it was the final confirmation of what I’d long assumed. 

But then, checking my review of Bad Guy from the other year, I see that I noted that “focussed” also appeared in that book, so it looks like even a few years ago I was 100% sure that George Harmon Smith was the mystery author of Bronson: Blind Rage. 

Also, I have a strong suspicion that Bloody Sunday started life as an installment of Bronson. That series ran three volumes, and George Harmon Smith only wrote the first volume. But I’m betting this Marksman book was originally going to be another Bronson offering from Smith. It has more in common with the Bronson series than the Marksman series, and just like Blind Rage was a lift of Death Wish, Bloody Sunday is a sort of proto-lift of the Death Wish sequels, in which Charles Bronson’s character Paul Kersey would dispense thugs in vengeance for wrongs done to others, not for wrongs done to himself. 

In other words, Philip “The Marksman” Magellan does not waste Mafia creeps in Bloody Sunday in his never-ending vendetta against the mob for the killing of his family. Rather, he spends the novel hunting down four wealthy men who, years ago, killed a young woman and got away with it, and Magellan, having met the young woman’s grandmother, has vowed to dispense bloody justice in the murdered girl’s name – even though he never even knew her. This storyline is much more at home in the Bronson series which, especially in George Harmon Smith’s Blind Rage, was concerned with “hero” Bronson taking out some wealthy “untouchables” who committed violent crimes with no reprisals. Bloody Sunday features the same storyline, only here the protagonist has not been affected by the crimes he is avenging. 

So my guess is, George Harmon Smtih wrote Blind Rage, then Len Levinson wrote the second volume and Joseph Chadwick wrote the third volume, but Bronson was cancelled while Smith was working on what would have been the fourth volume…and so he just turned it into a Marksman novel. It’s not even that preposterous of a theory; it’s not like this series is grounded in continuity or a theme that links all the titles. Just take a look at The Torture Contract, for example, which also comes off like an installment of an entirely different series, with Magellan reduced to secondary status, going about on the whims of a sadistic genius. The timing also works, with Bronson ending in 1975 and Bloody Sunday coming out in 1976, so George Harmon Smith clearly wrote Bloody Sunday shortly after he wrote Bronson: Blind Rage. 

Anyway, I rest my case. 

Only the opening of Bloody Sunday seems to come from your typical Marksman novel…sort of. Actually, it also serves as an indication of how George Harmon Smith just wasn’t suited to this genre…it’s an overwritten slog that, again, has more in common with something like John Gardner’s The Sunlight Dialogs than it does with an action series. We meet Magellan – only referred to as “he” for the first chapter – after he’s hit some Mafia creeps, but he’s been shot in the shoulder in the shootout, and he’s bleeding to death as he sits on a bus when the novel opens. Smith well captures Magellan’s plight here, but it’s way overwritten; even more overwritten than one of my reviews!! 

Here we’re informed of Magellan’s endless war on the Mafia, and how he just killed some of them in payback, though we didn’t get to see any of it…again, it’s like stuff grafted on to what was originally a Bronson plot. Magellan passes out in a dark alley (eventually we learn the city is Cleveland), and he’s found by an old woman named Zennie, a country-type who has a lot of Smith’s patented “headstrong woman” dialog. She nurses Magellan back to health if for no other reason than her country-born politeness, but more importantly there’s Zennie’s hotstuff young granddaughter, Janie (barely out of her teens, Magellan suspects), with her “small, jutting breasts.” 

Janie is from the same template as George Harmon Smith’s other female characters: very young, very independent, very outspoken. She goes on and on with a lot of dialog, but she’s got a lot of spunk because she’s just gotten out of juvie. She takes an instant “ownership” of the convalescing Magellan, and in fact soon learns who he is (“the badass of the badasses”). They start having sex, but as usual Smith keeps it off-page. Meanwhile Magellan has already decided to help out old Zennie, who has related in seemingly-endless exposition that almost all of her 11 sons (!) have died (and we get background detail on almost all of them!), but most importantly another granddaughter of hers, Wendy, died two years ago – and Zennie believes the girl was murdered by a quartet of wealthy businessmen who came into town and hired Wendy for her typing skills. 

On such shaky ground does Bloody Sunday stand: Magellan swears to avenge Wendy, if only because Zennie took care of Magellan and nursed him to health. Meanwhile he displays his bad-assery by taking out a black pimp-type who keeps scoping out Janie, pulling his silencered gun on him and later firebombing the pimp’s place with homemade napalm. It’s all crazy but this stuff too is written in Harmon Smith’s overwritten style, with the action less hard-hitting than it is overbearing. I mean it’s great writing, yes, but it’s not great for the genre. It’s inflated and ornate when it should be terse and fast. 

On page 64 the plot changes and here’s where I argue it is essentially the Bronson novel George Harmon Smith originally wrote. Magellan takes off in pursuit of these four men he’s never met, who never wronged him personally, to kill them one by one for Zennie. The first guy’s in New Mexico and Magellan scopes him out – he’s a laywer in a fancy building – and then goes in there on the pretext of a meeting and beats the guy around, causing him to have a fatal heart attack. But in the interrogation Magellan learns that Wendy was indeed killed by the four men, and from this lawyer Magellan gets the addresses of the other three he must kill. 

The next target takes up the majority of the narrative, if for no other reason than the motor-mouthed “chick” Magellan picks up: Cindy, a spaced-out Californian surfer girl who is turning tricks here in Topeka to get enough money to go back to California. She sashays up to Magellan while he’s scoping out target #2 and starts talking…and nearly a hundred pages later she’s still talking. George Harmon Smith does the same thing here that he did in Icepick In The Spine: namely, he replaces one “strong young woman” (Janie) with another “strong young woman,” and the issue is they both sort of run together for the reader. About the only difference I could tell was that Cindy was a little older, had bigger boobs, and talked a whole bunch more. 

In previous books I’ve really admired Smith’s penchant for bringing to life independent, fully-realized female characters in his men’s adventure novels, but I felt he really stumbled with Cindy here in Bloody Sunday, as she was more annoying than anything. And she has a lot of dialog and scenes here; there are endless scenes of her bumming a cigarette from Magellan or drinking beer – she informs Magellan she’d “only weigh seventy-five pounds” if she didn’t drink beer, and there are copious scenes of her buying a six-pack and downing it and “burping” afterward. Meanwhile the action stops dead as Magellan, a guy who in previous volumes could wipe out an entire Mafia squad in a handful of paragraphs, spends several densely-written chapters trying to figure out how to safely kill some rich businessman in Topeka!! 

Have I mentioned yet that I suspect Bloody Sunday started life as a Bronson novel? 

Because really, it’s fairly believable that a fromer architect, or whatever the hell Bronson was before he became a vigilante, might need endless chapters to figure out how to kill some random rich guy. But Magellan? Even in the previous volumes by Smith, the guy was essentially unstoppable. But man it’s kind of repetitive here in Bloody Sunday, with Magellan even getting Cindy in on the act, using her as bait for his target’s lesbian daughter(!?). Oh and meanwhile, the veteran men’s adventure reader will know where all this is going when Magellan goes from calling Cindy “chick” (among other names when she gets on his nerves)…to “darling.” Yes, Magellan and Cindy as expected become an item, with Smith as is his wont keeping all the dirty stuff completely off-page…usually just relayed, again as is his wont, via the female character’s never-ending exposition. 

Violence is also minimal for the most part. Magellan only makes a few kills in the book, usually dispensing someone with his pistol in bloodless fashion. And also when he takes out his targets it’s anticlimactic, especially given the inordinate narrative time given over to the setup for each execution. Indeed, Smith overwrites to such an extent that Magellan’s third and fourth targets are essentially rushed through, with the third target having the greatest ramifications for Magellan – what happens to Cindy is what happens to every other “strong, independent woman” in a George Harmon Smith novel, and won’t be surprising to any reader. Especially after Magellan starts calling her “honey” and whatnot. 

But this does bring Magellan personally into the vendetta at least – and here we get a very extended sequence of George Harmon Smith’s other hallmark: the “hero” torturing someone. This one really goes to town and might be the most over-the-top instance yet, as if Smith were intentionally trying to outdo his previous torture scenes. Magellan gets target number three and first puts a hook in his back, then drags him along behind his car in a field. Then he ties him up and whips him with a barbed wire whip. Then he throws “brine” on the guy’s bloody, lashed body. Then he burns the guy’s testicles off. Then he whips him again! By the end, we’re informed that the guy’s intestines are hanging out and etc. 

As Magellan warned Cindy earlier in the novel, “It’s going to get gross.” This I believe is the first knowing instance I’ve encountered in one of George Harmon Smith’s installments; Cindy nearly pukes when she sees Magellan stomp on some guy’s skull, and Magellan tells her things will only get more “gross” as he goes along. But man, after this extended torture scene, victim number four is hastily dispatched, as Smith has nearly reached his word count. Actually, I’d say he’s well exceeded his word count, as Bloody Sunday is a lot longer (and more laborious) than the typical Marksman installment. 

The book is curiously constructed, again harkening back to Icepick In The Spine, in that Janie is introduced as the first girl, then disappears from the text for like a hundred pages, replaced by Cindy…and then Janie returns at the end, when Magellan goes back to Cleveland. What’s interesting is that Smith does not mention that Magellan will soon leave her, or whatever…in fact, earlier in the book, before leaving on his vendetta, Magellan promises Janie that he will come back to her. And he keeps his promise at book’s end, George Harmon Smith ending the novel with the two walking off together. It almost comes off like the end of Magellan’s saga, which is curious. 

And as hard as it is to believe, we are coming near the end of The Marksman. There are only three more volumes in the series, and Lynn Munroe seems to indicate that George Harmon Smith wrote at least one more of them. So I’ll be curious to see if that one too comes off like a lost installment of Bronson. 

*As Lynn further notes, Bloody Sunday was reprinted a few years later, this time by sister imprint Leisure Books and credited to Aaron Fletcher. I agree with Lynn that this does not mean that Aaron Fletcher actually wrote the book. For one, the style here in Bloody Sunday is identical to the style in the Marksman novels we know for certain were written by George Harmon Smith…because Lynn Munroe was actually in contact with Smith’s relatives. I too was in touch with them for a while, and in fact received several nice emails from Smith’s granddaughter (which is interesting in hindsight, given this novel’s focus on two granddaughters, Wendy and Janie). So we know that George Harmon Smith indeed wrote many of these novels, especially Icepick In The Spine, as it’s one he would apparently mention facetiously to friends and family. And also, Icepick In The Spine was later reprinted by Leisure (as Icepick), where it too was credited to Aaron Fletcher. 

Aaron Fletcher was a real person, apparently, and thus one might guess that he really was the author of Bloody Sunday and Icepick In the Spine, and Belmont-Tower/Leisure merely reprinted those books under his real name once Fletcher gained success with his novel Outback. 

But remember…Belmont-Tower/Leisure was the same publisher that also published The Terrorists as by “Nelson DeMille,” even though it was really written by Len Levinson! So then, this grungy little publishing house had absolutely no problem with mis-crediting a novel to a more-famous name, even if the more-famous name didn’t actually write the novel! So the fact that “Aaron Fletcher” was credited as the author of these Marksman novels in the Leisure Books reprints probably doesn’t mean a damn thing, other than Leisure/Belmont-Tower’s typical lack of giving a shit. 

So finally, at long last, I rest my case again.

New Book Listed At Tocsin Press

 

FYI a new book’s been listed at Tocsin Press – The Triggerman: Brains For Brunch, by one Bruno Scarpetta. Fans of The Sharpshooter will revel in this action and sex-packed tale in which The Triggerman, Johnny LaRock, blasts his way through 1970s New York in his never-ending quest to shed Mafia blood. 

Curiously, “The Triggerman” was the name of the pseudo-Sharpshooter in Len Levinson’s The Last Buffoon. Even more curiously, Len’s Triggerman character was named Johnny Ripelli, and we’re informed in Brains For Brunch that Johnny LaRock’s real name is…Johnny Ripelli. Very curious indeed! 

(Just to clarify, Brains For Brunch was not written by Len Levinson!!) 

So if you like The Sharpshooter, The Marksman, or even Bronson: Blind Rage, I think you’ll really dig The Triggerman: Brains For Brunch! 

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

The Undertaker #1: Death Transition, one of the best books I read this year – and with its funeral parlor shenanigans, the perfect post-Halloween reading. 

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

The most sleazy and grimy book at Tocsin (so far!), Super Cop Joe Blitz: The Psycho Killers is also great Halloween-time reading, what with its rapist-freak zombies… 

And hey, 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! 

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

Murder Machine (The Marksman #20)

Murder Machine, by Frank Scarpetta

No month stated, 1975  Belmont Tower 

Russell Smith turns in another volume of The Marksman that’s just as crazed as his others, with the added bonus that Murder Machine features what I’m sure is some intentional in-jokery, as well as a self-awareness that’s very unique for the series. My assumption is by this point the manuscripts Smith had written the year before were coming out in paperback, and he saw how editor Peter McCurtin was butchering them, changing them wily-nily into Sharpshooter novels, and for this book Smith decided to hell with it – he was just going to have some fun. 

Lynn Munroe apty summarizes Murder Machine as a “a schizoid read,” but he also detects the hand of fellow series ghostwriter George Harmon Smith in the work. I personally didn’t detect Harmon Smith’s style at all – to me his style is very noticeable, a sort of sub-John Gardner, with very literate prose but a tendency to overdescribe the most mundane of actions. See for example #18: Icepick In The Spine, which was certainly the work of George Harmon Smith. Murder Machine on the other hand has the stamp of the other Smith on the series: Russell, with the same loosey-goosey approach to plot, a bunch of lowlife loudmouth Mafioso who talk like rejected Jerky Boys characters, and a “hero” who comes off like a monster. I mean Russell Smith’s unique style is evident throughout the book, like for example: 

This excerpt, while displaying Russell Smith’s distinctive style, also demonstrates another new element with this volume: a constant reminder that Philip “The Marksman” Magellan will keep killing Mafia until he himself is dead. Again, I get the impression that, given that we’re already on the twentieth volume of the series, someone at Belmont Tower must’ve felt a reinforcement of Magellan’s motive was in order. There are frequent parts in Murder Machine where Magellan will resolve himself to the destruction of the Mafia, given their murder of his wife and son – an event which happened, of course, in the first volume of a different series: The Assassin. 

But speaking of how Philip Magellan started life as Robert Briganti in another series, and then turned into “Johnny Rock” for the Marksman manuscripts McCurtin arbitrarily turned into Sharpshooter installments, this brings us to the intentional in-jokery I mentioned above. I strongly suspect that, by the time he was writing Murder Machine, Russell Smith saw that McCurtin was publishing his Marksman manuscripts as a completely different series – see for example The Sharpshooter #2 and The Sharpshooter #3. I say this due to nothing more than an otherwise random comment early in the book. When the mobsters in New York start freaking out that Magellan’s in town, one of them says, “You remember that Sharpshooter guy from last year? Magellan’s his name?” 

Now, never in a Marksman novel has Philip Magellan ever been incorrectly identified as “Johnny Rock.” It’s only in The Sharpshooter where the “Magellan” goofs appear, or where Rock, the Sharpshooter, is incorrectly referred to as “The Marksman.” Because, of course, those novels started life as Marksman manuscripts, and poor copyediting resulted in a mish-mash of protagonist names. But after this early “Sharpshooter” mention, Magellan is consistently referred to as “The Marksman,” even in the narrative. Magellan also frequently thinks of himself as “The Marksman,” ie “the luck of The Marksman was with him” and etc, as if Smith were doubling down on the fact that he was writing a Marksman novel, but with that sole “Sharpshooter guy” bit he was acknowledging his awareness of the situation. 

There’s even more subtle in-jokery in Murder Machine: there are characters named Frank and Peter, ie “Frank Scarpetta” and “Peter McCurtin.” But I think the biggest indication here that Russell Smith was in on the whole twisted joke is that Murder Machine shows the first signs of self-awareness in the series. Another minor Mafia stooge later in the book goes over Magellan’s modus operandi, noting how the Marksman generally just shows up in a city, with no particular purpose, but somehow gets involved with the Mafia – usually due to their own stupidity – and then Magellan doesn’t leave town until he’s killed everyone. In other words, the “plot” of every single Russell Smith installment. The stooge basically implies that Magellan is a supernatural force who gets by on luck, something Magellan himself realizes. Bonus note – the stooge apparently tangled with Magellan “a year ago” (and lost an eye in the fight), in “New Brunswick,” a reference to the earlier Russell Smith entry #14: Kill!. 

Another new element in Murder Machine is the sudden focus on sleazy sex. Russell Smith has turned in some sleaze in prior installments, but this time it’s really over the top. Lynn Munroe speculates that this material is “grafted in from some porn novel,” but again it is similar to the sleaze material in previous Smith installments. Personally I just thought it was a quick (and dirty) way Smith figured he could meet his word count. Because of all the Smith books I’ve read, Murder Machine most comes off like a first draft that was cranked out over a single weekend, the author fueled by a steady stream of booze and amphetimines. Again this could be more indication of a “who gives a shit?” sentiment, given Smith’s recent awareness that his manuscripts were being butchered during publication. 

And just to clarify, this is all my impression – Lynn Munroe could be entirely correct that Murder Machine is a collaboration between the two Smiths, and the sleaze stuff is indeed grafted in from a different novel. Lynn performed a herculean task of figuring out the development of this series, and who wrote what volumes. To me though it just seemed like every other volume of Russell Smith’s I’ve read, with none of the literary flourishes of GH Smith. 

Well anyway, there’s of course no pickup from the previous volume, which was written by a different author. Curiously there seems to be a pickup from an earlier Smith installment, possibly #15: Die Killer Die!, as when we meet Magellan he’s flying back to the US, returning from a trip to France. That was the most recent volume of the series Russell Smith wrote, so it seems likely that Murder Machine picks up after it. As I’ve written before, Russell Smith’s books – from both series – could be excised into their own separate series, with even a bit of continuity linking them. Otherwise though there’s no plot per se, and Murder Machine is a lift of every other Russell Smith installment, following that same setup mentioned above: Magellan goes to New York, literally bumps into a Mafia thug on the street, and then starts killing them all off, ultimately wiping out a heroin pipeline. 

But Magellan’s practically a supporting character. As with most Russell Smith installments, there’s a big focus on one-off characters, all of them mobsters. There’s also a convoluted subplot about a triple-cross involving a bank robbery, heroin, and bombs. It’s hard to keep up with all this because these characters all talk the same and there’s a lot of flashbacks that jumble up the forward momentum. Also it soon becomes clear that the author himself is not paying attention to his own plot. As usual though Magellan has nothing to do with any of this, but he acts almost like a divine force in how he just screws up all the carefully-laid plans…without even expressly planning to. 

The central characters here would be Frank Savago, Manny Weintraub, and Leah Castellano – who per Lynn’s note is abruptly referred to as "Lily” for several pages later in the book, demonstrating how sloppily it was written and edited. There are a ton of run-on sentences and typos throughout, but there’s also an undeniable energy; I mean just look at the excerpt above. Oh and we learn this time that Magellan has spent “years” searching for a mysterious figure in the Mafia – indeed, a figure whose legend almost matches that of the Marskman’s: a shadowy figure called “Mister Lee.” But Smith doesn’t even bother to play out the mystery because it’s quickly clear who “Mister” Lee really is. 

Now let’s take a look at the sleaze. It runs rampant in the novel, and again could be evidence of some in-jokery. For one, there’s Manny Weintraub, aka “Manny Wein,” an apparently older and heavyset Jewish mobster who has a young hotstuff wife…who, in every scene, is giving Manny a blowjob. Even in the parts where Manny is with other characters, he’ll be thinking about his wife’s blowjobs. Oh and meanwhile we’re informed that while she is performing her oral duties, the wife herself is being orally pleased by some naked woman. All of them sitting on a big round motorized leather couch Manny has specifically purchased for sex. Actually oral sex is the most frequently mentioned topic here, particularly on the female end of the spectrum; there’s a several-page sequence where Leah has hot lesbian sex with her live-in “winsome Negress” maid (who in true ‘70s fashion smokes a joint before the festivities). 

Russell Smith takes us into a whole different world of sleaze when Leah indulges in a bit of necrophilia. Per that triple-cross mentioned above, Leah finds herself in possession of a ton of money and heroin, and she buries it all in the cellar of a desolate mansion upstate. Then she murders the brawny stooge she’s used to do all the labor…ahd has sex with his corpse: 

Magellan himself even gets laid this time, a rare event to be sure, but it happens off-page. It’s courtesy an Asian hooker Magellan gets in his hotel (as with every other Russell Smith installment, the majority of the tale features Magellan checking into and out of various hotels)…who, apropos of nothing, tries to lift Magellan’s wallet the next morning. But Magellan is only pretending to sleep, and catches her in the act. He drugs her with his usual assortment of syringes, shaves her head and “pubic mound,” and then even more randomly tapes her “from ankles to thighs” with adhesive tape, “like a mummy,” and tosses her uncoscious form in the elevator and sends it to the lobby! Just another ultra-bizarre scene of random sadism, but that’s what we expect from Russell Smith. Oh and Magellan secretly watches the lez action with Leah later in the book, getting super turned on: “It was an incredible orgy scene Magellan would not soon forget. He’d not seen anything like it in his life!” 

As ever Magellan totes around his “artilery case.” For the first time ever (I believe), we’re given a list of its contents: 

In addition to this we’re informed that a photo of Magellan’s wife and son are on the inside lid of the case, as if “guarding” his weapons. As stated there is a big focus in Murder Machine on the loss that made Philip Magellan become The Marksman in the first place. This I assume is there to explain away his sadism, but as the drugging and shaving of the hooker would indicate, the guy’s just nuts – I mean the hooker has absolutely nothing to do with the Mafia. 

As expected, everything “climaxes” exactly how every previous Russell Smith installment has: all the villains do Magellan the courtesy of conveniently gathering in one location so he can blitz them from afar. Smith shows no mercy in his rushed finale – no mercy for the reader, either, telling us almost in passing of the bloody deaths of his various one-off characters. The most notable bit here is the “eerie calm” Magellan always feels after one of his massacres, which fills him with a sort of profundity. 

Man, what a crazy one this was – almost like a “greatest hits” of Russell Smith’s work on the series. It went through absolutely zero editing and you get the sense that they just printed everything straight off of his typewritten manuscript. But for that reason alone it was pretty entertaining. Oh and finally, Ken Barr’s cover illustration actually (sort of) illustrates a moment in the book; during an action bit where Magellan finds out that a private eye force is closing in on him, he goes up on a rooftop and knocks out a would-be sniper. Russell Smith pointedly mentions the “door” on the roof, which makes me figure we have here another instance of editor Peter McCurtin directing his author to include a specific scene, so there would be a part in the book to match the already-commissioned cover art – a la McCurtin giving Len Levinson a similar direction for Night Of The Assassins, in a bit Len later spoofed in The Last Buffoon.

The Torture Contract (The Marksman #19)

The Torture Contract, by Frank Scarpetta

No month stated, 1975  Belmont Tower

There’s no volume number on the cover, but this was the 19th installment of The Marksman. The first page of the book mistakenly states that it’s “volume #18,” but no doubt editor Peter McCurtin realized the 18th volume was the previous one, so at least he kept the goof off of the cover. From here on McCurtin or whoever else at Belmont Tower just decided to play it safe and put no further volume numbers on the books. They must’ve been really confused, because there weren’t just 19 volumes of The Marksman, there were actually more – let’s not forget all those earlier installments by Russell Smith that got turned into Sharpshooter novels. But all of these books were published in the span of like two years, so no doubt the hectic pace – and arbitrary transitioning of manuscripts into a different series – caused a lot of behind-the-scenes confusion. 

According to the Catalog Of Copyright Entries, The Torture Contract was written by series newcomer Steve Sherman. This would be his only contribution to the series. I can’t find much info about him; I can only find one novel he published under his own name, a 1977 Western PBO titled The Hangtree that was published by low-rent Major Books. I’ll say one thing about Sherman: he wasn’t afraid to experiment. In fact I’m tempted to say that The Torture Contract is the Sicilian Slaughter of the Marksman series, in that it’s such an anomaly. But then it’s not like there’s much continuity in this series to begin with, so in a sense every volume of The Marksman is an anomaly. But still, The Torture Contract is just plain weird. As Lynn Munroe aptly put it, “This is a bizarre entry, not much like any other Marksman book.” How bizarre is it? Well, Philip “The Marksman” Magellan kills someone with a laser rifle in it. And also Magellan’s female companion is put into a sex research clinic straight out of The Sex Surrogates, complete with the scientists attempting to make a sex “machine” out of her. 

How Sherman came onto the series and how editor McCurtin allowed him such freedom will have to be a mystery. My assumption is that it was that aforementioned hectic publishing schedule. When you’ve published 19 volumes of a series in less than two years, thoroughness and exactitude probably aren’t your top concerns. McCurtin was probably just happy he received Sherman’s manuscript on time. And Sherman isn’t a bad writer at all; his style is very humdrum, very meat and potatoes a la Ralph Hayes…but man he scuzzes things up. There’s just a grimy vibe to the book, like one of the grindhouse/drive-in flicks of the era. To be sure, it’s not overly explicit; Magellan only makes a few kills, and they aren’t nearly as gory as in the other books, and the majority of the sex occurs off-page, with the one sex scene toward the end over and done with in a few sentences. But Sherman pulls no punches with some of his dialog and narrative, as I’ll demonstrate in the excerpts below. Sherman also knows a lot about different subjects, baldly expositing about various arcane research subjects via this volume’s villain, the Professor – who himself seems as if he’s stepped out of some other series. He’s a brainiac megavillian with his own fortress, one that’s secured by deadly traps, and not much like any previous character in the series. 

As Lynn Munroe also notes, Magellan here “has suddenly turned into a different kind of character, a private detective.” I totally agree with Lynn on the first half of that statement, but I don’t think it’s so much that Magellan acts like a private eye in The Torture Contract…it’s more so that he becomes totally under the thrall of the Professor. As in, reporting to him as if Magellan were just another of the Professor’s lackeys. Hell, there are parts where Magellan is straight-up afraid of the Professor. This so goes against the grain of the character that I’m surprised editor McCurtin let it slip. What’s weird though is that in the first quarter of the novel, before the Professor appears, Magellan is his usual bad-ass self, not giving a shit about anyone and eager to taste Mafia blood. This is certainly McCurtin’s influence; Len Levinson has told me that Peter McCurtin’s editorial insight on The Sharpshooter (which McCurtin also edited) was that protagonist Johnny Rock “killed in cold hate.” I would imagine this same editorial direction extended to Philip Magellan in The Marksman. 

We meet Magellan just as he’s arrived in New York, beckoned by “society page female” Angela Peabody. We’re informed that “two years ago” Magellan helped Angela’s father, wealthy businessman Johnathon Peabody, with a Mafia problem. Now Angela has called on Magellan to help her, and even though Magellan has “never liked” the attractive young woman he meets with her in her art store in Manhattan. In an opening sequence we’ve read as two hoods, one named Johnny Sin and the other named Logosa, heisted a Renoir from a museum. Now Angela has bought a sketch of this Renoir, but has learned it’s a fake. She bought it from Johnny Sin for $5,000 and she wants her money back. So this setup is already unlike any other in the series. However the novel itself will only proceed to become more unusual. 

As mentioned Magellan is very much in typical form here, busting heads and checking leads in the dingy areas of the city. He gets a tip from a guy who runs a whorehouse that Johnny Sin might be in Los Angeles. So Magellan gets an American Airlines flight (Sherman mentions the airline so many times you wonder if he was getting a kickback) and heads over to California – with Angela in disguise following. When Magellan learns that Johnny Sin, a former Mafioso, is now working for the Professor, the book begins to really get outside the series template. Magellan and Angela head to Palos Verdes, where the mysterious Professor lives in his fortress in the woods. Magellan and Angela watch as a guard dog rips a man to shreds on the grounds. All of this is a game for the Professor, who comes out to jovially greet his guests. He’s an older man with silver hair, and he’s a “billionaire,” operating an underground “laboratory of forgerers.” 

The fake Renoir Angela got was produced in these underground labs, and she and Magellan are given a grand tour of the place, with the Professor expositing on the various projects – people recreating Stradivarius violins, finishing an incomplete Elizabeth Browning poem, even working on mummification in the exact style of the ancient Egyptians. A vast enterprise of specialists in their various glass-walled chambers, working on counterfeits so exact that even experts would be fooled. Angela, who is almost more of the protagonist than Magellan is, really takes to it all. Except for the sex research part: the Professor also has three scientists working on “simultaneous orgasms” with a lifelike female sex doll, all of course with the help of some local whores. I mean it’s all really like a James Bond film, only with that grimy grindhouse vibe; the Professor is totally in the Bond villain mold, an evil supervillain with arrogance to spare. 

Which begs the question why Magellan decides to work for him. The Professor propositions our supposed hero; the Professor says that the Mafia is trying to horn in on his operation, and he needs help killing them off. He knows with his omniscience who Magellan is, and offers him several times the amount Angela is paying him: all Magellan has to do is kill Mafia for the Professor. Magellan eagerly accepts, but from this point on he’s working for the Professor. It leaves a bad taste in the reader’s mouth. Magellan is a lone wolf mob-buster…he works for no one! And what’s worse is he’ll never push back against the Professor; indeed, Angela Peabody acts more like the hero in this regard, as she begins to resent – and fear – the clearly insane Professor. As Lynn Munroe notes, a lot of the novel takes place in the Professor’s fortress, with a lot of exposition on the various counterfeit schemes. Through it all Magellan is a silent bystander as the Professor blabs away; Magellan’s almost a supporting character in his own book. 

What’s worse is that Sherman tries to work an action scene into the novel midway through, and it just demonstrates how weak his version of Magellan actually is. The Professor orders Angela to head back to New York and steal a valuable coin from her socialite friend. And Magellan, Johnny Sin, and Logosa are to go along. They pull the heist easily, but afterwards they find themselves tailed by four mobsters. In any other Marksman novel, Magellan would waste these guys with no problem. Here, though, he’s barely able to take on just one of them. That’s one lesson Sherman failed to take from McCurtin. Another thing Len told me was that in his first two Sharpshooter novels, The Worst Way To Die and Night Of The Assassins, he inadvertently made his Johnny Rock “too neurotic” and too concerned. This is when McCurtin stepped in and told him the “kill with cold hate concept,” that Johnny Rock wouldn’t survive long if he was worried all the time. But Philip Magellan comes off as too concerned here…which is strange, given how he came off like a badass in the first quarter of the book. 

Things get even weirder when the Mafia stages an attack on the Professor’s fortress later on. But still, one wonders why the Professor even needs Magellan; he takes Magellan and Angela up to a room at the top of the fortress and gleefully goes about cornering and killing the Mafia team that has infiltrated the grounds, employing a host of remote-controlled hidden weapons. One of the weapons you can control up here is a laser gun, and as mentioned Magellan gets to fire it: 

Meanwhile the Professor kills off other Mafioso with an electric fence, and even more crazily he has a trapdoor that drops a few of them into acid. And he laughs and laughs like a madman throughout, Sherman doling out the lurid weirdness in that bland style of his, just blunt declrarative statements, which only makes things even weirder. But anyone can plainly see the Professor is nuts. I mean he literally rolls on the floor in laughter when mobsters are killed, and later on he forces one of his lackeys into becoming a live subject of vivisection – the corpse to be mummified by resident expert Penword Suite. But the novel proceeds to get even weirder. Angela has taken it upon herself to propose to the Professor that she, Magellan, and Johnny Sin should become “partners” with the madman. Angela was very excited during the Park Avenue heist (indeed, we’re even bluntly informed that she, uh, got wet during it – again, the grimy vibe predominates), and now she wants to work permanently with the Professor…only as an equal. This has unexpected repercussions, and Angela finds herself forced into those sex experiments in the Professor’s lab. As she later relates to Magellan: 

Yeah, crazy shit for sure. “They’re making a machine out of me,” Angela tells Magellan, and the reader can’t help but wonder if Angela means this in the figurative sense, ie the three scientists are, per the dialog above, screwing her constantly like a veritable sex machine, or if she means it literally – that the artificial female the Professor hopes to create and sell is actually being based on Angela. Unfortunately we will get no resolution on this. Instead, Angela is desperate to escape…and Magellan, who has somehow become emasculated in the Professor’s employ, cagily seems to want to help her escape, though he too as mentioned is now scared of the Professor, so Magellan doesn’t want to rock the boat. The guy who in previous volumes would cut off Mafioso heads and carry them around is now afraid of a ranting old psychotic! But our lame hero does manage to propose to the Professor – over dinner! – that Angela be sent out of the fortress on some errand, and the Professor agrees.  

This takes us into the climax, though we don’t even realize it’s the climax: the Professor has it that a Hollywood-based Mafia don named Fiori was behind the attack on his fortress, and he wants Magellan to kill him. But Angela will be used as bait, and apparently if she does well she can go free. So Magellan and Angela leave the fortress, and only here does Magellan notice what a sexy broad Angela is, now that she’s dressed all slutty to catch the sleazy Fiori’s eye. But Angela herself has realized how hot she is…and take a gander at this bit of ‘70s-style female empowerment: 

I’ll refrain from spoilers here, but even in this sequence Magellan is emasculated. Angela is to lure Don Fiori off to some secluded spot for sex, and Magellan is to swoop in for the kill. And yet Magellan, for reasons never explained, just disappears while Angela rides off with the don, still not even showing up while Angela’s having sex with Fiori on the beach – the sole sex scene in the novel, and not even that explicit. When Magellan finally shows up, even here it takes him forever to take out of Fiori and his men, and the Mexican Standoff with Don Fiori at the climax is insulting to anyone who claims the title “The Marksman;” Magellan literally just holds his Beretta on Don Fiori and keeps telling the mobster to drop his gun, “The Marksman” apparently unable to get a clear shot. This whole bit seems to go on forever. 

Now we’re going to get into some spoilers, so skip this paragraph and the next if you don’t want to know. Sherman again shows how fearless he is in his approach to the series. When Magellan learns via a panicked Angela that she offered Don Fiori a deal (ie for Don Fiori to give Angela protection if she gave him information on the Professor in exchange), Magellan solves the problem of not being able to get a clear shot at the don: he shoots Angela, I mean shoots her dead, and then blows away Fiori. So this is acceptable because we readers already know Philip Magellan himself is insane, and Sherman has worked up the angle that our sadistic hero hates anyone who has anything to do with the Mafia…even for something as relatively minor as offering to make a deal with the Mafia. Okay, whatever. But we readers are still waiting to see the Professor get his own comeuppance, or at least to see what happens next in the Magellan-Professor relationship. Instead, the novel just ends! 

Now this has happened before, both in The Marksman and The Sharpshooter. Abrupt, “what the hell just happened?” finales are pretty much standard for this series, so I shouldn’t have been too put out this time. But dammit! I mean I wanted to see Magellan finally confront the Professor…maybe even brave his torture-trap fortress to show the old madman who the real top dog was. But it doesn’t happen, and the book literally ends right as Magellan blows Don Fiori away. And since this was the sole volume written by Steve Sherman, I’ll hazard a guess that the Professor will never be mentioned again. This is what I meant by the Sicilian Slaughter comparison; that Executioner novel too featured a main villain who was never seen or mentioned again, leaving readers to forever wonder what was supposed to happen next. And I mean so much is not explained, like for example the Professor’s omniscience – not only does he already know who Magellan is, but there’s also a bit where he’s managed to swipe a Beretta Magellan keeps hidden in the Los Angeles airport. How did the Professor even know it was there? 

Well, I went into all this detail because I have to say one thing about The Torture Contract: it kept me wondering what would happen next. Sherman certainly puts the reader as on edge as Angela Peabody, sticking his characters in a remote fortress with an insane madman. The setup was so outside the series template that I actually enjoyed it all – to the extent that I wish there had been more of it. But as mentioned this was, for whatever reason, Steve Sherman’s only novel for the series. Who knows, though…maybe someday someone might write a pastiche sequel that finally tells the rest of the story.

A Dirty Way To Die (The Sharpshooter #15)

A Dirty Way To Die, by Bruno Rossi

No month stated, 1975

How in the world have I gone over two years without reading a Sharpshooter? Maybe I’ve been putting it off because, as hard as it is to believe, there’s only one more volume after this one. It’s taken me over ten years to get this far, which only again reinforces how quickly this series was written and published – all these books came out within the span of two years. 

Once again a big thanks to Lynn Munroe, who revealed that A Dirty Way To Die is a sort of collaboration between series editor Peter McCurtin and series mainstay Russell Smith. As Lynn notes, “McCurtin only wrote the first chapter. The rest of the book has different characters and is actually a different story, changed ever so slightly to tie it to Chapter One.” We might be in a similar situation to another McCurtin venture, The Camp, for which McCurtin wrote the first chapter and Len Levinson wrote the rest. But whereas Len at least hewed a little closely to McCurtin’s opening chapter, Smith seems to turn in an entirely unrelated book, so I guess another possibility is that McCurtin welded a chapter of his own to Smith’s manuscript, so as to set up the storyline. Because as ever Russell Smith turns in a “plot” that requires the reader to do some very heavy lifting in order to make sense of anything. 

So in chapter one, which clearly seems to be by McCurtin, a New York Don talks to a dirty New York cop about that perennial problem, Johnny Rock. The cop’s novel suggestion is to kill a kid and pin it on Rock; there’s mention here, finally, that Rock has gunned down women and hookers and whatnot in his past exploits, but the public at large, we’re told, has sort of brushed off these kills given that the women were involved with the Mafia anyway. Thus Rock’s folkloric heroism is strong as ever. But if a kid were to be killed – especially a “problem” kid – and Rock was blamed for that, the situation would change. The cop even has a kid in mind – the retarded eleven year-old son of a Mafia floozy whose husband was killed years before by Rock; she beats the kid anyway, so they’d be doing him a favor. The Don likes the idea and gives the go ahead. The cop says he didn’t come up with the idea alone, that he hired a “one man think tank” psychologist “in California” named Dr. Dorelli to come up with a way to finally bring down Rock – and thus the idea was Dorelli’s. 

So there’s the setup. Next chapter opens, and we’re thrust without preamble into the typical surrealism of a Russell Smith novel. We meet Rock as he’s in Palo Alto, California, scoping out VAPA, the Veteran’s Association of Palo Alto. This hospital for vets is where Dr. Mario Dorelli serves as chief psychologist, and Rock’s here to settle a score. So then, the killing of the kid has already happened…but what’s curious is that we learn so little about it that one gets the impression Smith himself doesn’t even know what happened. All we’re told is that Rock is furious because “every cop in New York” is out to get him, and he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to get the heat off. But even more curiously this concern is never brought up again, nor is whatever brought Rock out to Palo Alto…for the most part, he just seems to be stalking Dr. Dorelli, whom Rock only suspects of being involved with the mob. 

Whereas McCurtin’s chapter vaguely set Dorelli up as a “one man think tank,” in Smith’s narrative Dorelli is a Mafia bigwig who was previously known as Joseph Reitano, and who worked with the CIA in ‘Nam and ran a dirty black ops squad that was known for sadism. For reasons never really disclosed, Rock is the only person in the entire world to figure out that Reitano and Dorelli are one and the same, and Rock decides to jolt the doctor by leaving a message in his office at VAPA under the name of “Joseph Reitano.” Rock gives the message to Dorelli’s lovely assistant, Eleanor Wood, a Jamaican woman “as black as a moonless Jamaican night and equally as romantic.” This sets off a strange cat and mouse game between Rock and Dorelli, with Rock at one point disguised as a doctor and spying on Dorelli inside VAPA, then later asking the always-horny Eleanor on a date to get info out of her on his prey. Meanwhile Dorelli – who as typical for a Smith novel gets way too much narrative space of his own – frets over who could know that he was once Joseph Reitano, or if it’s just some cosmic fluke that this guy has the exact same name that he once did. 

Smith serves up what have become staples of any of his Sharpshooter or Marksman manuscripts; Rock gets a room in an old hotel, murders a few thugs in cold blood, captures and interrogates a few people, and ultimately ends up on a boat. Smith also refers back to many of his previous manuscripts, in particular Vendetta, given that Rock ventures over to Sausalito, “well remember[ing] his last trip there.” Of course Smith’s narratives have been published as both Sharpshooters and Marksmans, even though they all clearly feature the same protagonist (Vendetta for example being a Marksman installment), which yields an extra metafictional layer to it all. There’s also curious mention here of a supposedly-recurring minor character named “Frank,” a short-statured Mafia flunky who has run into “Rock” three times in the past and has just managed to escape death each time. I have no recollection of this character, but presumably he must’ve appeared in previous Smith novels (in either series). 

One interesting “new” element in this one is that Rock actually gets in a firefight; in most other Smith yarns, Rock (or Magellan) just shoots down his prey in cold blood, usually while their backs are turned. He does that here, of course, gunning down some thugs who have shown up to ambush him in a bar, but later on he gets in a protracted gunfight with more thugs in yet another bar. This is in another of those surreal Smith sequences where Rock just goes into this dive with zero explanation or setup, talks to one of the Asian hookers who work the joint, then figures out the place is a Mafia front. Some thugs come in to get him and Rock blasts away with a pistol in each fist: the customary Beretta 9MM (which has appeared in every Smith manuscript, despite the series) in his right and a Colt .38 revolver in his left. The gore factor is very pronounced in this one, with characters puking at the sight of the shattered, brain-spewing skulls left in the wake of Rock’s bullets. 

But as mentioned, regardless of the series, Smith has always and ever been writing about the same protagonist, and since Philip Magellan came first then that ultimately means that A Dirty Way To Die is just another Smith installment of The Marksman. As the novel proceeds it only becomes more apparent. “Rock” wears a “nylon cord” around his waist, lugs an artillery case, wields the same 9mm Beretta, has a penchant for disguises, and drugs up a few random women before interrogating them in sadistic fashion. These are all hallmarks of Philip Magellan. Anyway I’ve beaten this dead horse enough in past reviews so it’s safe to say that by this point we all understand that, for the most part, Johnny Rock and Philip Magellan are one and the same, at least when the book is written by Russell Smith. 

I would say that all the Smith novels from both series could be gathered together and a running narrative might be found within them, but that sure as hell isn’t the case. Smith’s “plotting” is just as nuts as his protagonist. Things happen for absolutely no reason throughout A Dirty Way To Die, with no setup or explanation for most of it. This is why I suspect that McCurtin’s introductory chapter might’ve been added after Smith submitted his manuscript. Otherwise Rock just arrives in Palo Alto, stalks Dorelli, kills a few thugs, captures, drugs and interrogates two women, blows away a few more thugs in a rushed finale, and only at the very end are we even given a hazy explanation of why Rock’s here: In ‘Nam, when Dorelli was a CIA spook named Reitano, he would murder servicemen about to return home and then sell their IDs to other soldiers who were desperate to get out of the war. But Smith still forgets to inform us how Rock figured out that Reitano became Dorelli, or even how Rock became personally involved in the situation, save for a vague but compelling mention that one of Dorelli/Reitano’s affairs in ‘Nam “involved Rock.” 

So there’s no mention throughout of the “special kid” whose fate was determined in the first chapter, and it’s possible that the line early in chapter two that “every cop in New York” is out to get Rock could’ve been a McCurtin amendment to Smith’s manuscript. But without McCurtin’s opening chapter the novel takes on an even more surreal vibe, as Rock stalks and strikes Dorelli even though he’s not certain until the very end that Dorelli is really in the mob and is trafficking cocaine. Smith really drags this out past the breaking point, clearly trying to fill pages – we know from the get-go that Dorelli’s in the mob, given the parts of the narrative devoted to him, and we also know that Rock is in town trying to figure out how dirty Dorelli is. Yet the characters themselves don’t learn the truth about one another until toward the end of the novel. Dorelli’s realization that the young doctor calling himself “Dr. Joseph Reitano,” who just arrived in town is indeed Johnny Rock is especially ridiculous, given all the thug-killings that follow in the wake of “Dr. Reitano’s” presence…not to mention the little fact that “Reitano” has the same exact name as Dorelli’s original one! 

As Lynn Munroe notes, Smith also worked in the sleaze market, and if what he serves up late in A Dirty Way To Die is any indication of the kind of books he wrote for that market, then you’re well advised to steer clear, as it’s grimy and gross to the max. So out of nowhere, really absolutely nowhere, we suddenly learn that Dorelli has a sadistic self-punishment streak. For one, kind young Eleanor Wood, that “moonless Jamaican night” babe, turns out to be his private “slave owner,” torturing Dorelli in the office between patient visits. There’s some real sleazeball stuff here, like how Eleanor enjoys using her panties to give Dorelli a “rubdown,” and how Dorelli later must do something rather unseemly with the “soiled panties.” This part alone might have the less hardy reader racing for the restroom to spew his guts. 

Even more outrageous is the later off-the-cuff revelation that Dorelli has a live-in Filipino maid named Alicia who is hooked on coke and thus will do any sort of depraved sex act for him; we don’t see one happen, but witness the disgusting aftermath of a particularly depraved orgy, in which the stench of “shit” and “vomit” fills the room in which Dorelli and others “gang-banged” Alicia, who by the way spends the entire novel in a drugged stupor. Rock later comes upon her comatose form in the aftermath of the orgy, Rock having broken into Dorelli’s house, and wakes her up, sickened at the sight of her “chewed-up vagina” (!!). He is taken aback how casual the girl is about everything; she says she’s in no pain and instead just wants to take a bath; Rock figures she must be “used to being gang-banged!” 

Here there’s also promise that Rock himself might get in on the dirty festivities; a Mafia stooge shows up at Dorelli’s house with a hotstuff floozy in tow, assumes Rock is Dorelli, and tells him that the hotstuff babe is the latest scheme to rope in the Sharpshooter. Rock, pretending to be Dorelli, listens patiently and then excuses himself; he rushes outside, blows off the head of the Mafia stooge’s driver, and leaves! And not much else is made of the proposed floozy entrapment. But this is just how Smith rolls; it’s one wild sequence after another, usually followed by lots of page-filling where characters sit around and reflect over recent bizarre circumstances. It’s like they’ve all been plunged into a surreal nightmare in which nothing makes sense, which pretty much sums up ever Smith novel I’ve yet read. 

The helluva it is, Smith shows that he can deliver memorable characters: Eleanor Wood, despite the eleventh hour revelation of her sadomasochistic impulses, is a likeable character with a gift for sarcastic comments. Rock takes her on a “date” in which he first mows down several Mafia thugs and then threatens to kill Eleanor if she doesn’t get on a Chris-Craft boat he steals in Sausalito (the same boat he – as Magellan – stole in Vendetta), and throughout Eleanor keeps joking about when they’re going to get around to eating dinner. Of course Rock ultimately drugs her up (this after copious description of her vomitting due to sea sickness) and, when she won’t talk, terrorizes her with water snakes in what is clearly a shoutout to when Rock terrorized his captives with rats back in #3: Blood Bath (another Russell Smith joint, and another that clearly started life as a Marksman manuscript). 

Oh and Rock also captures another woman, just out of the blue; after the gunfight at the dive, Rock jumps in a car and beats the woman behind the wheel silly. He appropriates the car, taking the comatose woman along with him, and then tosses her, naked, into the hold with Eleanor. Absolutely no explanation is given of who this woman is…Smith seems to imply she’s a “driver” for the Mafia, but she’s presented as yet another innocent caught up in the sadistic sway of “Rock.” She too will be drugged, but Rock doesn’t even interrogate her, thus her entire presence is as baffling as anything else that happens in the novel. And another thing – after all this cruelty, Eleanor’s interrogation is mostly off-page! We are informed she’s privy to all of Dorelli’s mob dealings, but after Rock spends “ten minutes” explaining to her the dangers of narcotics and how they damage the “society he still believes in,” Eleanor’s suddenly on Rock’s side…despite all the torture with the snakes, some of which tried to crawl between her legs, we’re informed. 

Meanwhile Dorelli gets a lot of his own text, as does a Mafia executioner named Zanicchi who is fond of “hanging a man on a meat hook, drenching him in urine and shit and watching him die slowly.” Zanicchi we’re informed will get a $90K bonus for killing the Sharpshooter, but what the actual bounty is we’re not informed. Regardless this particular plot, which promises so much, goes nowhere – as is typical for any Smith venture. Zanicchi’s goons are the ones mowed down by Rock while on his “date” with Eleanor, after which Smith seems to forget about Zanicchi…until the final three pages, in which Rock dispenses justice in customarily rushed fashion, wiping out sundry villains who as ever have all gotten together in one spot so he can conviently kill them all at once with his Uzi. 

Sometimes these books give a peek into the disturbed mentality of their authors, and A Dirty Way To Die is a definite case in point. Lazy plotting, go-nowhere digressions, random acts of depraved sex, and torture with water snakes. Smith is so focused on all this that he, as typical, races through the last pages with such abandon that you can almost feel his joy at finally meeting his word count. In fact the finale makes as little sense as anything else in the book. So we’re informed, again in the very final pages, that Dorelli would kill ‘Nam soldiers about to return home and sell their IDs, with the compelling hint that one of his “atrocities” over there “involved Rock.” So Rock gets Dorelli, blows apart his guts with the Uzi so he’s near death, and then straps him onto a gurney in the Chris-Craft…and apparently sets the controls for Vietnam, over the horizon? After this he calls Eleanor, who asks him to “hurry” over to her place because she “wants” him! The end! WTF?! 

By all accounts the next volume, Mafia Death Watch, is just as depraved, if not more so. That one was written by series newcomer Dan Reardon, and I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. While this was it for Smith on The Sharpshooter, he was still churning them out over on The Marksman, so we’ll be seeing more of him in future reviews. Oh and Bob Larkin’s (uncredited) cover for A Dirty Way To Die is one of the best in the entire series, and not just because of the cleavage! Okay, so maybe the cleavage has something to do with it, but still!