Robert Lory R.I.P.

Some weeks back I was contacted by a person at a talent agency looking for contact information for Robert Lory – apparently someone was interested in purchasing the rights to one of Lory’s books. (Which book in particular I did not find out). The agency rep saw that I had interviewed Lory back in 2014 and could not find any contact info for him. I sent over the email address I had for Lory, noting that I had not heard from him since 2014. 

A few days later I received a response from the agency rep, stating that she had learned from “another blogger who interviewed him” that Robert Lory had passed away in February 2020. 

I have not found this information anywhere online, so whoever this other blogger was who learned of Lory’s death, he or she has not put the info on their blog…leading to the unintentional irony that this blog will be the one to break the unfortunate news. 

But man, Lory passed away over four years ago and no one even knew…that should be an indication of how under-the-radar men’s adventure and genre writers really are. It’s a shame, as I have enjoyed all of the novels I’ve read by Robert Lory, and think he was a fine writer deserving of a wider audience…and in fact this all has made me realize I need to get back to his Vigilante series.

The Vigilante #5: Detroit: Dead End Delivery

The Vigilante #5: Detroit: Dead End Delivery, by V.J. Santiago
December, 1976  Pinnacle Books

I suspect Robert Lory was getting a little fatigued with The Vigilante; Detroit: Dead End Delivery lacks the fire and brimstone of the previous volumes, and shows evidence of a series increasingly losing its way. Whereas the first volume established nutcase “hero” Joe Madden as a merciless dispenser of justice, cleaning the streets of scum, this fifth volume comes off like a ‘70s take on hardboiled pulp, with Madden acting more like a private eye.

It’s about a week after the previous volume, and this installment marks five weeks since the events of the first volume. As Madden reflects to himself, he’s done some serious work in those few weeks, killing 42 scumballs. Lory at least sticks to the template he’s devised, with a sort of introductory action scene of Madden blowing someone away on the streets of the latest city he’s visiting, but here we already get indication that Dead End Delivery is going to be a bit more sluggish. Lory spends much too long introducing the one-off character Madden saves from a hooker-mugger team who intends to knife the guy in an alley, until Madden appears in trench coat and wide brim hat and blows them away.

All this is well and good, but the thing is, Lory spends so much time on this one-off character’s plight that the actual justice-dispensing is basically skirted over. That being said, Madden again shows his viciousness in blowing away the woman who has lured the would-be victim out onto the street; this is the fourth woman Madden’s killed, not that it causes him to lose much sleep. And really that’s it for the “vigilante” stuff of the book. I really do think Lory had gotten bored with the series concept at this point, as he comes up with a storyline that has nothing to do with the previous four volumes – even the subplot about the New York cop who might’ve figured out Madden’s game is dropped this time.

Madden’s come to Detroit to accept an award for his firm; none of the previous volumes have dwelt too much on Madden’s day job (wisely), but this one’s humorous in how quickly it’s passed off. Madden’s there to accept the award and leaves the luncheon as soon as he’s given his speech! Meanwhile he’s decided to stay in Detroit a few days, as the night before, after killing the would-be muggers, he bumped into an old friend at a bar: Stan Hart. Hart’s in trouble and wants Madden’s help – the implication is that Hart must detect some innate quality in Madden’s steel-eyed, scar-faced visage which screams: “I can help you.”

Hart’s story goes that he’s working on a top-secret auto engine plan, and someone keeps stealing his plans. He suspects Tander, his boss at the firm, of being behind the thefts. He’s gotten so nervous that he’s hired a grungy P.I. named Voll and he’s also told his wife and kid to leave town. He doesn’t elaborate what exactly he hopes Madden can do to help him; for all he knows, Madden’s just an engineer. But again, the intimation is that the scarred face Madden now sports lets people know he can handle dirty jobs.

And it is a dirty job, as next morning Madden finds out Stan Hart took a head-dive out of his corporate office. It was clearly murder, but staged to look like suicide…and if it’s deemed so, Hart’s family won’t get a dime of insurance money. This Madden learns when he visits Hart’s widow, and finds Hart’s boss Tander also there. Madden realizes that Hart was right in his suspicion; Tander is indeed behind the blueprint thefts and he probably also killed Hart. Of course Madden will be proven correct, and we get more indication of the somewhat padded nature of the novel with too many sequences from Tander’s point of view, how he’s stealing the plans to make it big, selling them to some Mafia thugs.

But then it’s kind of padded throughout; I mean there’s a part where Madden goes to the downtrodden building in which P.I. Voll offices out of, and we get copious description of the place’s façade and bedgraggled appearance. It’s all nicely written, sure, but isn’t what this genre demands. I mean, I know it had to be a drag to turn in men’s adventure novels several times a year, toiling under a house name with no critical attention, but still…to me, it would be a simple matter to fill the pages, despite the author’s boredom. Your character is a vigilante? Then put him on the street and have him gun down some criminals!! I mean it isn’t rocket science, is it? And personally I would’ve rather read random snatches of Madden gunning down street-dwelling punks instead of the half-baked, low-simmer yarn Lory’s given us.

Action is minimal because it turns out this is all Madden’s up against…sniveling coporate ladder-climber Tander. We aren’t exactly talking about a supervillain here. The only person he’s got at his disposal is a hitman he hired; Madden has a brief firefight with the guy in Hart’s office, but doesn’t exact revenge until later in the novel. Lory has to come up with arbitrary action scenes to meet his quota, like three young punks who accost Madden on the street one night as he waits to ambush Tander. This sequence, even if arbitrary, reminds us of the cold brutality of our hero; he guns the three down almost as an afterthought, despite their pleadings.

Even the lurid stuff is minimized; Tander has a hotstuff wife, and the implication seems clear that Madden will have sex with her, per the ‘70s men’s adventure template. When the expected scene happens, Lory initially appears to be catering to the template; Madden goes to Tander’s house during business hours, while Tander is in the office, and storms inside wearing a ski mask. And naturally sexy Irene Tander is only wearing a nightie at the time. But even here Lory gussies it up with overdone plotting; Madden bullshits the girl into thinking he has the “real” documents Tander’s been looking for and will let her share in the profit, at her husband’s expense. To prove her trustworthiness, Irene treats Madden to a dual blowjob-handjob…no doubt the only moment in literary history in which oral sex is compared to a symphonic movement.

But that’s it…Madden doesn’t do anything else with her. At leat here we get a laugh-out-loud reminder of Madden’s increasing psychosis; after Irene has finished her oral ministrations, Madden momentarily considers blowing her head off right then and there! Instead he strings her along, and ultimately sends her to Voll’s office, framing her for the private eye’s murder. This part’s hard to buy, given that the guy’s been dead for a day or two at this point, but Madden gives the cops an anonymous tip and siccs them on her just as she’s entered the office, and last we hear Irene’s under arrest.

It’s clear though that we are far removed from the series concept at this point. Instead of cleaning up the scummy streets of Detroit, Madden dicks around with Tander, determined to prove Stan Hart was murdered and didn’t commit suicide. More interesting is the subplot: Dead End Delivery opens with a Mafia underling named Vincent Bell getting the word out to the various families to be on the lookout for a guy named “Joe” with a scarred face, sending out the police sketch made of Madden in the previous volume. This promises some thrills, but when Madden runs into the chief Mafia thug here in Detroit the guy swears he won’t tell anyone that “Joe” is in Motor City.

There’s only one more volume to go, and if this one’s any indication I suspect Lory won’t be wrapping anything up. But I would’ve preferred more about this than the “A” plot, with all the Maguffin stuff about the auto engine plans and whatnot. Lory sees it through, though, with brief action scenes as Madden takes out the occasional hitman or Mafia thug. There’s nowhere near the action level of previous books, though – not that this series was ever action-packed – and the finale follows suit, with Madden luring Tander into a fitting end: falling to his death, just as Hart did.

Well, next time Madden heads to D.C., and hopefully the last volume will be better than this one. In the meantime, here’s a contemporary interview I found with Lory, from 1973, which also features a few words from his mother!

The Vigilante #4: Chicago: Knock, Knock, You're Dead

The Vigilante #4: Chicago: Knock, Knock, You're Dead, by V.J. Santiago
May, 1976  Pinnacle Books

Three short weeks after the first volume and two days after the previous one, antihero Joe “The Vigilante” Madden heads to Chicago, where he can kill more criminal scum. At this point Robert Lory wants it to be clear that Madden is nuts; whereas before Madden at least made gestures toward protecting society and the like, now he’s practically a thrill-killer. This time his stated goal is to kill FALN terrorists who are targeting banks, but the somewhat messy plot has him ultimately taking on the merciless crime boss who finances them.

Madden’s back in New York for the first time in a few volumes, and we get to see how his coworkers at the engineering firm are just as casual about that whole “sorry your wife was brutally murdered” thing as ever. Instead it’s all about the job – Madden’s to be sent off to Chicago to help another client, a bank that’s looking for tips on video surveillance. Also, shortly after this Madden will be sent to Detroit, so we’re given a hint of where the fifth volume will take place. I’d imagine then that at this point Lory felt comfortable enough that the series would continue, thus was planting seeds for future installments. Unfortunately, the next volume would be the last!

This is most apparent in a subplot featuring Sgt. Leo Delancy of the NYPD, returning from the first volume. Delancy is the cop investigating the murder of Madden’s wife, the trio of punks who did it thus far having eluded capture. Delancy calls Madden into the station because his credit card, stolen that night, turned up, and Madden checks out a lineup to see if any of the men on display are the ones who killed his wife and stole his wallet. None are, however Lory here appears to develop a thread that Delancy might be coming after Madden himself.

Humorously enough, Delancy casually discusses the pile of cases he’s working on – one of which happens to be the stuff that went down in the second volume. This is because Madden has been doing his vigilante work with the same revolver he appropriated in the first volume, not realizing the bullets he left behind would eventually be matched up. Delancy tells Madden that whoever did all the killing in New York and Los Angeles surely wasn’t a professional, as a pro wouldn’t be stupid enough to use the same gun across the country. It’s not hinted that Delancy suspects Madden, but it’s definitely a setup for future developments.

Madden finally dumps the .32 in the Hudson and bullies an underworld fence to rassle him up some new guns. He still has the Mauser from the second volume, but this is a ‘70s crime novel, so a revolver is demanded; the fence gets him a .38 Colt, which Madden doesn’t like as much as he did the .32. We get more of those flashbacks to simpler times when Madden simply hides the guns in his check-in luggage for the flight to Chicago. Lory proves again he’s a savvy men’s adventure writer, not wasting much of our time with the whole “engineering” schtick; Madden appraises the situation, learns about recent FALN terrorist bombings in the Chicago area, and helps out with video surveillance setup.

Instead the focus is on Madden hunting down the terrorists on his own, but here Knock, Knock, You’re Dead sort of loses its way. That being said, this one’s pretty sleazy at times, so it has that going for it. This is demonstrated posthaste, as Madden follows a teenaged FALN bomber back to his place, makes him call his superior to arrange a meeting, and then blows the kid away. Later Madden stakes the meeting place out, watching from a dive bar where the blonde bombshell waitress, a former hooker named Jean, gives him free booze and makes interested remarks. Apparently that horrific scar Madden has across his face is quite the turn-on for certain women.

This unexpectedly leads to the novel’s first sex scene, and the most explicit one yet in the series – but not with Jean. Madden sees a sexy hispanic gal wandering around the meet place, then abducts her, takes her to a sleazy hotel, and starts slapping and punching her around for info. You guessed it, folks, this turns her on good and proper. Before you know it, she’s naked and begging Madden to do her. This he does, for a few pages of graphically-depicted sexual a-happenings, Lory actually detailing back-to-back bangings, like this was The Baroness or something. He also works in the “man’s conquest” theme he explored in the John Eagle Expeditor entry The Glyphs Of Gold, which also featured a sexy Hispanic babe “challenging” the hero’s masculinity by seeing how long he could last in the sack – or, as Lory puts it, “to see who drains who.” Of course, just like John Eagle, Joe Madden proves his worth, and then some.

Madden is increasingly becoming the most obnoxious “hero” in men’s adventure fiction; after boffing the girl, Juana, into wilting submission, he gets more info out of her about her FALN comrades – and when she relays that her kid brother was recently murdered, Madden happily informs her that he was the one who pulled the trigger! Also throughout the novel he bullies and bosses people around, even beating Jean’s boss at the restaurant to a pulp when he goes back there later on and insists she drop everything, walk out of her job, and go to a nearby hotel for some quick sex(!). Also, I wondered why Lory named his sole two female characters so similarly (Jean and Juana), but figured it must’ve been like a theme or some other sort of literary trick that escaped me. But the two characters never meet so it doesn’t get too confusing.

Part of Madden’s assholishness is just a play; for some reason he decides to bluff it that he’s a Mafia rep, and he’s cornering these FALN bombers because they’re hitting property that belongs to his “family.” It’s kind of goofy, but the terrorists, just kids, go for it. It gets even goofier when Madden meets the chief bomber in a park and bullshits the kid that he, Madden, has a sniper hidden in the distance with a bead on the kid’s head, and one wave of Madden’s hand and it’s bye-bye commie terrorist! But here’s where things get sloppy. The terrorist is really looking to branch out of the whole commie thing, and to auction off his bomb skills to the highest bidder, his most recent employer being a shady entrepreneur named Jake Pontis.

So we’ve bounced all over the place at this point – including even arbitrary bits where Madden goes out into the nighttime city to randomly kill creeps and crooks – but Lory has now settled on Jake Pontis, not the FALN, as being the main threat Madden’s up against here in Chicago. But here his bullshitting technique doesn’t work out. In the novel’s most tense sequence, Madden tries to bluff Pontis with the usual syndicate stuff, when Pontis immediately calls him out on it and declares that Madden’s just a phony, one whose time it has come to die. Then Madden finds himself in a desperate fight against a couple thugs and crooked cops, but it’s all in a pitch-black park and relayed more via the tension and fear than slam-bang action.

A recurring idea in The Vigilante is that Madden gets by on luck, but at this point it has worn a little thin. He of course manages to escape the park ambush but it’s really because the villains decide to turn on each other. At any rate it leads to another tense sequence, where Madden corners the FALN bombers, including Juana, while they’re on a job. Here Madden displays his cold roots, in particular so far as Juana is concerned. But still, something is lacking here, and I’m pretty sure it’s because Madden just doesn’t seem as driven. He’s out there killing crooks with the best of them, but there’s just no impetus for him to even be here – I mean this guy’s gone up against muggers and rapists and white slavers; why’s he suddenly taking on a big-time crook who plans to bomb his own factories for insurance payoffs?

But at least there’s a nice sleazy vibe throughout (even down to off-hand weird stuff like Pontis being described as looking “like a girl-type bitch”). Madden also finds the time to shack up with Jean, and here Lory builds up a growing relationship between the two, with Madden even wondering if he’s falling in love. It’s to Lory’s credit that, while he goes the expected route of Jean being abducted in the final pages, he doesn’t deliver the expected Death Wish-esque payoff. Instead, Madden gets to play the hero, and while it’s just him up against two thugs, it still packs more tension and entertainment than the typical “one man army” action scenes of the men’s adventure genre.

Overall I enjoyed Knock, Knock, You’re Dead, same as I have the other entries in the series, but this one seemed a bit muddled when compared to the previous books. Hopefully Madden will get back to his safe space next time. And finally, this is the first installment to feature a painted cover. Not the greatest ever, with Madden’s bizarre grimace and that massive tie he apparently borrowed from a clown. Bring back the bored-looking cover model!

The Vigilante #3: San Francisco: Kill Or Be Killed

The Vigilante #3: San Francisco: Kill Or Be Killed, by V.J. Santiago
February, 1976  Pinnacle Books

The harried life of Joe The Vigilante Madden now takes him to San Francisco, not even a whole day after the awesome previous volume. For that matter, his wife’s murder, which set Madden on his vigilante path, wasn’t even two weeks ago. I didn’t have big expectations for this series, but I’m really enjoying it; while this volume doesn’t hit the sleazy highs of the previous one, it is still pretty fun, and certainly fast-moving.

As we’ll recall, Madden was sent from Los Angeles over to San Francisco at the end of the previous volume to do an interview for his engineering firm. Madden’s day job has never really gotten in the way of the vigilante stuff, much to the credit of Robert Lory (aka “V.J. Santiago”), and this time it factors barely at all. Madden is a full-blown dispenser of brutal justice now; there’s an almost postmodern bit where he does his own killcount, totaling the number of slimebags he’s wasted at 23 (he’ll add 8 more to the total by novel’s end).

There are some nice callbacks to the previous book, mostly due to the public shock over the news in the morning paper – famous singer Johnny O. has been shot dead in LA by an unknown killer. Madden chuckles to himself over this; Johnny was the guy who was running a sex-slave business, of course. And while Madden opens up the novel – and his trip to San Francisco – by taking out a random murderer (a memorable opening which sees Madden posing as a Mafia rep, “interviewing” the dude, and then blowing him away), the basic drive of the series is gradually lost.

Instead, I had bad flashbacks to Jason Striker; Lory takes his hero to Chinatown, and fills up too many pages of Madden “playing” judo and karate and learning tai chi. It just sort of goes on and on, and you wonder when Madden’s going to start randomly gunning down muggers and drug dealers and whatnot. In fact, the very drive of the series is for the most part gone until the final quarter of the novel. But at least Madden gets laid this time – this is the first volume yet to have any sex.

Lory is one of those men’s adventure authors who knows exactly what the genre expects of him. While he doesn’t go for full-blown gore he’s sure to include lots of lurid stuff, some sleaze, and a general exploitation vibe. This latter is mainly accomplished via lots of racial and derogatory slurs, proven immediately with Madden’s interview of the potential hire for his company, who turns out to be a young Chinese man. In a hilariously pre-PC “job interview,” Madden outright questions the young man’s lack of a wife or girlfriend: “Maybe we want to be sure we don’t get a fag on the payroll.”

The two go to dinner in Chinatown that night, and toward the end of the meal the old owner of the place rushes out into the kitchen with a broken neck and dies in front of everyone. In the melee Madden runs into an old pal from the Korean War: Harry Chan, a tall Chinese-American who provides most of the invective this time, referring to his fellow Asians as “slant-eyes” and whantot. Gradually we’ll learn he hates himself for being Asian.

The potential employee takes off, flying to New York the next morning for an appointment at the corp office, while Madden and Harry hit Chinatown. Harry tells Madden that the old restaurant owner was likely murdered by the Scarlet Fist, a sort-of Tong made up of “punks” whom Harry says are nothing more than “common muggers” that wouldn’t even draw any attention back in Madden’s hometown of New York. They’ve been shaking down the various business-owners in Chinatown, threatening them to pay up protection money or else. The neck-broken old restaurant owner is the first representative of the “or else.”

Harry himself owns various businesses, from a restaurant of his own to a karate school – and yes, karate, not kung-fu! – with a “massage parlor” next door. Here’s where Lory doles out the first outright sleaze yet in the series, as it’s one of those massage parlors, filled with ultra-sexy Asian babes in clinging silk robes; the patron picks out which one(s) he wants and heads on up to a private room for a “massage.” After a bit of judo practice in Harry’s dojo with the sexy secretary, Mary Loo(!), Madden heads on over to the massage parlor, where Mary Loo herself picks out two sexy Asian babes to give Madden his rubdown.

Lory’s sex scene is similar in style to the ones he wrote in his John Eagle Expeditor installments, though this one is for the most part of an oral nature. It goes on for a few pages, with the gals bathing Madden, oiling him up, then taking turns on him (“a playful game to determine who was to have custody of Madden’s love equipment,” aka his “throbbing rod”). Then Mary Loo shows up with some Johnny Walker Black and introduces herself as the main course. Curiously, Lory keeps this scene off-page, but Madden and Mary become something of an item, with Mary growing to love Madden (even though the book only occurs over two days). Madden, despite his growing feelings for her, gives her a sort of brush off, because being a vigilante who might get blown away at any moment, he can’t get involved with anyone.

Speaking of the vigilante stuff, it disappears for a large portion of the book. Instead we get many parts where Mary teaches Madden new judo moves or some basic tai chi, and Lory isn’t shy with the exposition on the various forms. Only late in the game does Madden get more involved in this whole Scarlet Fist business, especially after Harry calls a meeting of his fellow Chinatown businessmen and discuss what to do about the threats, insisting everyone speak English so Madden, who watches from a secret window, can follow the conversation.

When the spineless businessmen refuse to do anything but pay the thousand bucks demanded each of them, Madden decides to handle affairs himself. Dressed in his customary trench coat, armed with his .38 (for which he only has nine bullets left), and now wearing a Spider-esque “slouch hat,” Madden flits across the shadows of Chinatown, trailing various Scarlet Fist thugs as they go to collect their payoffs. The gang members wear long coats themselves, faces masked, and Madden blows a couple of them away – here though we get the first indication of an annoying trick Lory pulls in the final quarter; he’ll have a sequence from the perspective of one of the businessmen, who will be shocked when Madden shows up to dispense bloody justice, and then the next chapter he’ll cut over to Madden so we can see how it all came to pass. So basically you read each sequence twice.

Madden next shadows a guy on the Fists’s collection list who happens to be a “whore-master” who runs his own cathouse. Our hero ends up killing this dude himself, blowing him away and then taking his weapon, an automatic pistol of unspecified make or caliber. But at least Madden’s “personal armory” is now up to two guns. Lory pulls a fast one on readers when Madden, who really hasn’t done much about the Scarlet Fist until the final pages, suddenly deduces who their leader really is – spoiler alert, though everyone will see it coming: it’s Harry himself.

Our hero scores another kill, this one sleazy as can be, as he brains a dude with a dumbbell as he’s sitting on the toilet! He takes out two more Scarlet Fist hatchetmen before he engages Harry in the final confrontation. It’s a bit contrived as Harry is by turns evil and contrite, even begging Madden to recall how they were once best buds. But Lory at least doesn’t go out on a maudlin vibe, with it all just a ploy on Harry’s part – one that fails as he finds himself staring into the barrel of Madden’s .38. 

Lory doesn’t wrap up the Mary Loo subplot, ending the quick tale here, but here’s betting she’s just a memory by next volume’s beginning. But “quick” does sum up Kill Or Be Killed, and Lory’s writing is so assured that you’re finished the book in no time. It might not reach the sleazy highs of the previous one, but it’s still an enjoyable read.

Oh, and this was the last volume to sport a photo cover – I’m gonna miss the “pissed-off Greg Brady” who served as the cover model.

The Vigilante #2: Los Angeles: Detour To A Funeral

The Vigilante #2: Los Angeles: Detour To A Funeral, by V.J. Santiago
November, 1975  Pinnacle Books

Picking up immediately after the first volume (and published the same month, too!), Los Angeles: Detour To A Funeral continues the story of Joe “The Vigilante” Madden, whose wife Sara was murdered not even a week before the events of this novel. But as we learned in that first book Madden has “found his own way” of dealing with his grief.

As I recall, New York: An Eye For An Eye ended with Madden heading out onto the streets of New York for one last go-round before leaving on a business trip for Los Angeles; as we meet him, he’s out on those streets, blowing away a pair of would-be “thrill killers.” Madden has gone total “Charles Bronson in Death Wish,” outfitted in a trench coat with upturned collar, his only weapon a .38 revolver. And let’s not forget his horrible facial scar, which still hasn’t fully healed – he just got it a few days ago, after all.

Returning from the first volume are the Grossman brothers, obese bastards who live up to their surnames and who are clients of Madden’s engineering firm, demanding clients at that. They run a printing firm out of LA and start blaming and threatening Madden as soon as he arrives the next day. Author Robert Lory wisely doesn’t waste much time with details of Madden on the job. Instead our hero just puts the prickish brothers in place, forming a sort of bond with their assistant, a guy named Prell.

Rather, Lory puts the focus on Madden’s vigilante pursuits. On his first night in LA he has a cabdriver drop him off in Watts; soon enough Madden encounters another would-be mugger/murderer, whom he dispatches with his .38. Madden’s brought the gun with him by stowing it in his package on the plane; there’s a very eerie 9/11 prescience here as Madden asks an airline rep how weapons can be transported, and she says that as long as any sort of weapon is stowed with the check-in bags, the airline could care less what you bring on a plane. This she says is so as to divert bombers. But what, Madden asks, could an airline do to prevent terrorists who are suicidal? 

Madden, not even a week into it, is fully committed to his vigilante life. Lory builds this theme where our hero occasionally asks himself if what he is doing is right, particularly when he becomes involved with a group of young women he saves. He wants things to be “neat” and “orderly,” per his engineering background, and getting involved with people could undermine that. But then he realizes that, had someone gotten involved the night his wife was killed on the subway, then perhaps he wouldn’t be here in LA, hunting criminals on the streets. Thus Madden gradually comes to see himself as a savior.

And he’s still merciless, too, even blowing away unarmed hoods who plead for mercy. Madden’s origin story dispensed with in the first volume, Lory is free here to get to the good stuff, with our scar-faced hero eager to put on his trench coat and plastic gloves and head out onto the streets of LA to blow away criminals. Worth noting is that Madden’s racist bent from that first volume is gone; true, he makes his first LA foray on the streets of Watts, where he kills black muggers, but otherwise there’s none of the talk of “animals” or other stuff from that first book. Instead, Madden just wants to murder anyone he deems a criminal, no matter their race – or their gender, either.

The meat of the story begins when Madden goes out on his second night, this time onto Sunset Strip. Here he comes upon a dude beating up a young woman. Madden surprisingly doesn’t kill him, but instead pistol-whips him to burger, despite the dude’s declarations of his karate skills. The girl Madden has saved is a 19 year-old heroin-addicted hooker named Koren Stuart. The story she tells Madden riles him up but good. Once a groupie for pop star Johnny O., Koren was eventually hooked on drugs and forced into prostitution. Madden swears vengeance.

In my review of New York: An Eye For An Eye, I wrote that the book came off like “a less sadistic take on Bronson: Blind Rage.” The same cannot be said of this second volume, which is just as over the top as Blind Rage, and just as good. In a subplot that reminded me of the obscure but awesome 1973 Lee Marvin movie Prime Cut, Koren and her fellow whore-captives are kept in a townhouse overseen by “Big Mama,” an obese lady who goes around in a black-and-white jumpsuit. As Lory describes her: “Big Mama, in addition to being a hefty pig in zebra clothing, was also a dyke.” 

Johnny O., a paunchy 25 year-old superstar whose music is described as “a combination of acid rock and country rock, with a little folk thrown in,” becomes Madden’s personal punching bag, as do Johnny’s O.’s two henchmen, Scotty and Bruce. Madden vows to take down the man’s white slavery ring; the singer uses up his groupies and then hooks them on heroin once he’s sick of them, making profits off of their ensuing prostitution. Lory adds some action here with Johnny O. at one point sending his two men after Madden – more quick work for our hero’s .38.

There’s a bit of dramatic stuff with Madden briefly connecting with four young women he saves from the Johnny O./Big Mama sex ring: Lisa, a lithe redhead, Marie, a plump brunette, and Joane, a “fine-looking blonde.” There’s also Koren Stuart, with Madden even going to the length of calling her parents in the Midwest and having them fly over to Los Angeles to collect her. The other girls he gives some money (stolen from Johnny O.’s wallet) and sends on their various ways; when Lisa tells him she has a bad heroin habit, thanks to Big Mama, Madden bluntly tells her she’ll just need to kick it!

Lory excels though with the Big Mama stuff. In her jumpsuit she looks “like a pregnant zebra,” and the most memorable part in the book occurs when Madden goes back to her cathouse for a little payback – a scene which features Big Mama pleasuring herself with a “smooth shank of ivory,” a Playboy centerfold propped open before her! And the lady’s past the stopping point, so to speak, unable to stop working that “shank of ivory” even though Madden has a pistol aimed at her head. Lory caps off this outrageous scene in the only way possible: Madden blowing away Big Mama in mid-orgasm!

Before her memorable departure Big Mama informs Madden that her heroin supplier is a dude in Torrance named Cord. This takes us into the homestretch as Madden plots the destruction of the man’s drug supply. While entertaining, this sequence again displays how Madden is just a normal guy, prone to stupid mistakes (like taking Johnny O.’s yellow Mercedes, which could easily be tracked). He’s also not capable of mass acts of carnage, like a regular men’s adventure protagonist. He’s only got five bullets left in his .38 and thus has to plan accordingly.

Oh, and you’ll be relieved to know that Madden, in his day job, is also able to turn around the profits of the Grossman brothers and take them out of the red. The dude sleeps like maybe ten hours in the entire week over which Los Angeles: Detour To A Funeral occurs. And he’s already rushing off to the next installment by novel’s end, having received another assignment from Mr. Chilton, his boss back in New York. There’s an engineer Chilton wants to hire in San Francisco, so why doesn’t Madden head on over there and interview him? Madden looks forward to killing more scum there.

With good action, dialog, and scene-setting, Los Angeles: Detour To A Funeral is even more enjoyable than the first volume, and hopefully is a sign of where the series will go. I loved it! Plus I never knew Lory was capable of such sleaze, and obviously I mean that as a compliment. The stuff with Big Mama and her heroin-hooked whores is just the most outrageous aspect – the novel is redolent with a lurid vibe, even with the tidbit that Johnny O. turns out to be a switch-hitter; cue lots of putdowns courtesy Madden.  There's no sex in the novel, to be sure, and the violence isn't overly graphic, but it's all very luridly handled nonetheless.

Lory’s writing is as strong as ever, and he’s able to pack a lot of action, introspection, banter, and sleaze into 183 pages of fairly big print. There’s no chaff at all, and somehow Lory succeeds in turning in a lurid tale that also has a bit of emotional content. Long story short, I was thoroughly entertained by this novel and look forward to reading the next volume.

The Vigilante #1: New York: An Eye For An Eye

The Vigilante #1: New York: An Eye For An Eye, by V.J. Santiago
November, 1975  Pinnacle Books

How could you not want to read something that’s “More vengeful than Death Wish!?” Starting off a six-volume series copyright book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel, An Eye For An Eye serves as the origin story for Joe “The Vigilante” Madden, and for the most part comes off like a less sadistic take on Bronson: Blind Rage. “V.J. Santiago” is our good friend Robert Lory.

This is not an action-packed tale, and Lory goes for the same sort of introspective tone as Jon Messman in the Revenger series, documenting in detail how a 44 year-old New Yorker goes from a happily-married professional engineer to a gun-toting vigilante in just a few short days. To do so Lory first takes us through an average day for Madden, who we learn is a regular kind of guy, a veteran of the Korean War who now works for a well-respected engineering corporation based in New York.

After dealing with the Grossman brothers, a pair of clients flown in from Los Angeles who make the obnoxious and demanding clients in Bewitched seem kind, Madden goes out with his wife, Sara. Lory pulls an unusual move here, by having the couple only have been married for three months. This is Madden’s second marriage, his first ending in divorce, and Sara, a fashion designer, is still in her 20s. Anyway I say it’s unusual because you know something’s about to happen to Sara, but at the same time you wonder why Lory didn’t give them more of a history together – I mean, three months? I’ve got underwear older than that. (Wait, wrong joke.)

After visiting Sara’s sister and brother-in-law at their home well into the night, Madden and Sara hop a train back to Manhattan. But it’s nighttime, the time of “the animals,” as Madden soon thinks of them; the novel is redolent with the crime-ridden vibe of the era, with the city practically a ghost town as soon as the sun sets, with armed criminals crawling out of the sewers like veritable C.H.U.D.s. And they are all minorities, with An Eye For An Eye coming off like Army Of Devils and Hijacking Manhattan.

Four black youths accost the couple on the subway, and as Madden tries to fight one of them off, another comes in and starts knifing Sara. Lory never lets us know precisely what the poor lady endures, but when Madden comes to, having been knocked out, she’s dead and her face has been mutilated. Lory very well captures the ensuing numbed shock and disbelief that grips Madden as he tries to understand what his life will be like now that his wife is no longer there to share it with him.

No doubt it’s this part of the story that made Lory only have the two married for a few months, as it seems just enough time for it to be believable that Madden undergoes his transformation into a vigilante; had they been married longer, like a decade or so, it would be easy to imagine Madden becoming a catatonic wreck, too engulfed in grief to do much of anything – and also, importantly, there’d likely be kids by that point. Madden and Sara had no children, so again Madden has no concerns on that front when, as his grief slowly lessens, he finds himself more enraged at “the animals.”

After forging a sort of bond with Sergeant Joe Delancy of the NYPD, a cop whose own fiance was murdered years before, Madden also deals with Sara’s sister, who rightly questions where Madden gets off on making important decisions about Sara’s funeral and etc, given how short of a time Madden even knew her. Meanwhile Madden gets drunker and drunker, culminating in a night, just two days after Sara’s murder, where he stumbles out into the city again. This time he’s mugged and slashed by a knife, which leaves a jagged scar running across his face. And they steal his wedding ring! Clearly the guy’s not having a good week.

Madden lays off the drinks and prepares himself for a night of payback. He looks for weapons in his apartment, deciding at great length on a butcher knife. He even devises a Travis Bickle-style holster for it, which he hides in his jacket arm. Lory again keeps it all realistic, with Madden playing it up as a simpering drunk to attract his prey. And he finds them; first he knifes one would-be mugger to death, then the next night, while hunting in the subways, he kills a black mugger who pulls a .38 revolver on him. Only after killing the guy does Madden realize he’s just been handed a gift, and rushes back to retrieve the gun, which he almost threw away.

Now armed with a .38, which he supplies with ammo through various underworld contacts (finding out how to do such things via sly questions to Sgt. Delancy), Madden is truly prepared to dish out some payback. Only here in the homestretch does the action really ramp up, with a trenchcoated Joe Madden lurking about the most dangerous areas of nighttime New York, blowing away would-be rapists and muggers. He lives up to the cover slogans, too, just outright killing anyone he comes up against, no mercy given.

As mentioned above the novel really plays on the class and race divide; when Madden refers to “the animals,” nine times out of ten he’s referring to blacks. He also relishes the fact that the New Yorkers of the daylight are “smarter than the animals,” and it seems pretty clear that here too he has race in mind. His hate becomes all-encompassing; when Sara’s sister implores Madden to consider giving Sara’s clothes to goodwill instead of incinerating them, Madden refuses, adamant that “they” will never get anything of Sara’s. In his hate he now lumps all underprivileged into the same category, “the animals,” and it’s a very unsettling moment.

The highlight of the novel comes at the very end, with Madden stalking Central Park. Lory opens the section from the perspective of a young black girl who rushes, despite the danger, through the Park to get to a college lecture. She is attacked by four black youths who openly discuss raping and killing her; the fourth youth, a girl, announces that she too will take part in the rape! Madden arrives on the scene just in time, .38 blasting, and again shows no mercy. In fact, Lory makes it clear that he starts to enjoy his work, and one could easily read the novel and come away with the impression that Madden himself is one of “the animals.”

The key to enjoying An Eye For An Eye is not to approach it as a pulp crime novel like The Sharpshooter or The Marksman, but moreso as a “regular” sort of novel, one that was just packaged as a Pinnacle paperback with a photo cover of some dude with a gun. Lory never once descends into pulp and treats everything seriously, and my guess is the novel must be close to Brian Garfield’s original Death Wish in this regard – I’m not sure, because I’ve never read the novel, and the first Death Wish film is the only one of the series I’ve never seen, though it’s probably the best.

The novel, despite the introspective tone, moves at a fast pace, at least so far as events in Madden’s world go. An Eye For An Eye occurs over a single week, with Madden prepared to fly to Los Angeles (to handle the Grossman brothers account) in the end – the owner of his company insists that Madden will “feel better” if he gets back to work, and Madden agrees. Personally I think that’s one callous company, but at any rate it serves to move us on to the next installment, where Madden continues his vigilante war in LA.

In his 2007 interview with Justin Marriott in The Paperback Fanatic #4, Lory related the very funny story of how he became “V.J. Santiago:”

About the pen name: Pinnacle wanted one because the Robert Lory name was associated with vampires and such. I was still thinking about one after I’d sent the manuscript to Lyle. One afternoon my office telephone rings and it’s someone asking for V.J. Santiago. Wrong number, I say. “No, right number, Bob,” Lyle says, taking his handkerchief from his phone. Why V.J. Santiago, I ask. Answer: “The publisher figured that because you’re knocking off so many ethnics, you’d better be one.”