Serpent's Eye (The Year Of The Ninja Master #3)

Serpent's Eye, by Wade Barker

September, 1986  Warner Books

Man, this Year Of The Ninja Master series is perhaps the strangest in all men’s adventuredom, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Ric Meyers takes the simple, pulp concept of original series Ninja Master and turns it into a metaphysical head-scratcher that makes the bloated ninja epics of Eric Van Lustbader seem like fast-moving action extravaganzas. 

What I find humorous is that Meyers came onto Ninja Master because the original series author (Stephen Smoke?) turned in a second volume deemed subpar by Warner Books…well, why wasn’t another “Wade Barker” brought in to replace Meyers? Surely no Warner editor could’ve read this third volume of Year Of The Ninja Master (not to mention the first two!) and deemed it worthy of publication. My only theory is that the demand for anything ninja was so great in the 1980s that publishers were desperate for product. Even crazier is that there was another volume of this series, and four more volumes of another series, War Of The Ninja Master, all written by Meyers! 

Told in three “books,” Serpent’s Eye is notable because it’s the first book in this series to solely focus on Daremo, formerly known as Brett Wallace, the hero of the original Ninja Master series…and before that, we’re told, his name was Brian Anderson, which always makes me laugh because that’s the name of a guy I know from work, and he sure as hell is no ninja. The previous two books featured Jeff Archer, Brett Wallace’s former sidekick; Archer, who was taken through hell by his sadistic creator in the previous two books, does not appear in Serpent’s Eye. 

Rather it’s Daremo alone, and he is a far cry from Brett Wallace: confused, adrift, following instincts that he himself does not understand. Meyers gives us a protagonist who is more so a puppet, being pulled around on the strings of fate. There is a dreamlike, metaphysical texture to the novel that is more stupid than profound, because it is so at odds with what this genre requires. Often Daremo will “find himself” somewhere, like say Hong Kong, and have no idea how he got here – granted, Meyers explains this at the end of the novel, but at that point the damage is done. Even Pinnochio had more free will. 

What makes it crazier is that I had flashbacks to Traveler in that I now have no idea when exactly this series takes place. Okay, so the opening features Daremo drifting around in his “fate leads me” state, finding himself on the east coast, and sort of invisibly shadowing a ‘Nam vet named Scott Harmon who has the most bizarre character intro I’ve ever read: beating up some neighborhood prick who was putting razors in candy bars on Halloween night. WTF? Well, Daremo slips into the guy’s home and tells him all about himself and “recruits” him. 

Then Daremo puts together and entire team, and they all fly over to the Middle East(!?), and then they rob a bank in Iran, and then they fly out on the C-130 one of the guys in the team owns…and I mean they’re also armed with machine guns and rocket launchers here…and then we’re told that all this happens in 1979, right before Iran fell to the mullahs. (Talk about a timely read, folks!) 

Okay…so the series is set in the late 1970s?? Did anyone else know this?? 

But then Book Two opens and Daremo is suddenly in Hong Kong, again on the trail of the mystical Chinese ninjas who have been fighting him since Dragon Rising. I almost got the impression the Iran stuff was a dream, but I’m not sure. In fact, Serpent’s Eye opens with a vague bit of Daremo, gutshot and dying, sitting on top of the world and reflecting on his end, which lends the impression that everything that follows in the narrative is a death delirium. 

This section in Hong Kong is so tonally at odds with the rest of the series that I laughed. Meyers, perhaps flashing back himself – namely, to his days writing The Destroyer – retcons Daremo into a Remo Williams stand-in, and has his superhman martial arts warriror blitzing through the Hong Kong underworld as he chases down a high-level gangster who is sending assassins after Daremo. 

The action scenes are written in such a lazy, first-draft way that I came to the conclusion that the entire novel was a first draft. But otherwise this sequence is so similar to The Destroyer: lots of witty dialog, Daremo so superhumanly skilled that his safety is never in doubt. In pure Remo form, Daremo even manages to hook up with a beautiful American babe who happens to be here, serving as a hooker for the gangster Daremo’s searching for, and just like Remo, Daremo is superhumanly skilled in the lovemaking department, but has no actual “drive” to do the deed…and when he finally does do it (or does her, I guess I should say), it’s of course left entirely off page. 

The girl’s name is Michelle Bowers, and despite himself Meyers makes her a memorable character: a failed actress who has ended up a hooker in Hong Kong. A recurring joke has her wanting to tell Daremo why she became a hooker, and Daremo not being interested in knowing. Anyone who has read a Meyers novel will know that at some point Michelle will be captured, tied up, and degraded, and of course this happens in Serpent’s Eye, but with a different outcome than expected. 

Book three is almost tiresome in its lameness. More of a puppet than ever, Daremo needs to get into mainland China for reasons he cannot comprehend, and ends up hanging out with a traveling theater group that’s a Peking Opera type of affair. Eventually this builds to a low-rent psychedelic affair where Daremo climbs this high mountain, beset by gods the entire time – and I forgot to mention, but Daremo often meets and converses with gods in the course of the book. 

SPOILER WARNING: Skip this paragraph, but I’m noting it here for my own sanity whenever I get up the courage to read the next book and need to remember what happened in this one. Anyway, it is revealed in some of the laziest bullshit-first draft writing ever that “Daremo” has actually been Scott Harmon all this time, ie the ‘Nam vet introduced in book one of Serpent’s Eye, and I guess he’s been Daremo in the previous two books? The real Daremo all along has been “The Figure In Black,” ie what we thought was the villain, but has really been Daremo guiding his puppet Scott Harmon along the path…which explains why Harmon was so confused as to his own objectives and whatnot. Not only does Harmon die at the end of the book, but so does the superhumanly-powerful Chinese ninja that has been a plague since the start of this series. “He died” is literally and lamely how Meyers describes this major series event, showing absolutely no ability nor desire to draw out the dramatic import – and folks I kid you not, the novel ends with Daremo laughing happily on this big mountain in China. 

End spoilers. Serpent’s Eye was super stupid, and overlong at 244 pages, but if the entire series was more like the sub-Destroyer section in book two, Year Of The Ninja Master would at least be worth reading. But man I think I’d be more willing to read The Miko before I take the plunge and read the next – and thankfully last – volume in this series.

Lion’s Fire (The Year Of The Ninja Master #2)

Lion’s Fire, by Wade Barker

April, 1985  Warner Books

If you’re looking for an ‘80s ninja fest with guys in black costumes jumping through the air and slashing at each other with swords, then you’ll likely be disappointed in this second installment of The Year Of The Ninja Master. But if you’re looking for a quasi-mystical excursion into unfathomable prose, plus a lot of travelogue about Isreal, then chances are you’re gonna love it! 

But man, it’s becoming increasingly hard to believe that this is the same Ric Meyers who wrote the awesome Ninja Master #2: Mountain Of Fear. (On the other hand, it is easy to believe it’s the same Ric Meyers who wrote Book Of The Undead #1: Fear Itself.)  With this four-volume sequel series, it’s as if Meyers wanted to drop the pulp action of Ninja Master and go for more of an Eric Lustbader vibe. And as I think even my six-year-old kid could tell you, that was a mistake. I mean I can appreciate that Meyers wanted to do more than just a sleazy cash-in on ‘80s ninja action, but at the same time that’s exactly what I want this series to be. Instead he’s gone for a strange, almost surreal vibe, a very dark one, and in the process has dropped the entire “ninja vigilante” setup of Ninja Master. 

Anyway, it takes us quite a bit of time to learn this, but Lion’s Fire takes place two years after first volume Dragon Fire. The setup for The Year Of The Ninja Master appears to concern the former Brett Wallace, the hero of the previous series, now calling himself “Daremo” and on the run from his former friends while waging war on some shadowy ninja overlord sort of group that is behind world events. Or something. But Ric Meyers is one of those men’s adventure authors who wants to write about everyone except for the series protagonist; in truth, Daremo only appears on a handful of pages. The true protagonist, as with Dragon Fire, is Jeff Archer, now sometimes arbitrarily referred to as “Yasuru” (Japanese for “archer”). This series could more accurately be titled The Year of the Ninja Master’s Student. 

Meyers took poor Archer through the wringer last time, hitting him with a crippling nerve disease (that caused him to shit himself repeatedly!) and then having him beaten up throughout the book. So in the climactic events of Dragon Fire, a South American shaman-type localized Archer’s nerve disease in his left arm, so now Archer goes around with a limp left arm and must fight one-handed. It soon becomes evident that Meyers is inspired by the various “one-armed swordsman” movies in ‘70s kung-fu cinema; despite only having one arm, Archer is of course more deadly than most everyone he meets, and there are lots of parts where he takes on several opponents who understimate this one-armed guy. 

The action picks up in Isreal, and will stay there for the entire narrative. Archer doesn’t even appear until about a hundred pages in – as with the previous book, this one’s a too-long 287 pages – and the protagonist of the first hundred pages isn’t even anyone we’ve met before, but a sexy Israeli female cop by the name of Rachel. Meyers introduces sleaze to the series with an opening in which Rachel picks up some dude on the road – not knowing or caring that he happens to be a Muslim terrorist – and takes him back to a cabin for some sexual tomfoolery. After which a crying Rachel cuts her own thigh. The lady has some mental turmoils, and we learn that this “pick up a guy, screw him, then cut her thigh” thing is a recurring schtick for Ms. Rachel. 

The reader can’t help but wonder what any of this has to do with ninjas. It gets even more involved with Rachel getting in a firefight with some terrorist-types and her colleagues getting wiped out. There’s also the revelation of a plot involving nuclear armageddon. It’s all like a different series. Occasionally we will have murky cutovers to Daremo, who himself is in Israel, surrounded by an “army of dead” who exist in his mind – the ghosts of everyone he has killed. There is an attempt at pseudo-Revelations imagery with talk of a “Hooded Man” and metaphysical confrontations of the Lion taking on the Dragon and etc, etc. I mean it’s all very weird, and on a different level than the previous series. 

Oh and adding to that Biblical vibe, we get a lot of stuff about the Biblical Rachel. I mean a lot of it. And a lot of incessant travelogue about Isreal. We also get that Meyers staple of a female character being depredated; Rachel is captured and tortured by terrorists who grill her for info. And yes of course this part features the recurring Meyers motif of the female character being gagged. However she’s saved by the “cloaked one,” Daremo himself, who somehow is drawn to Rachel and has been shadowing her…if I understood all the metaphysics correctly, it’s because Rachel’s estranged husband is like a nuclear scientist or something, who might be part of that nuclear attack subplot. Also, there’s a wildly unbelievable reveal toward the end of the novel of who has been posing for the past several months as Rachel’s husband. 

On page 87 the actual protagonist of the series shows up: Jeff Archer, standing there along the road in Israel with his limp left arm and getting a ride from Rachel. Somehow he’s become fluent in Hebrew since the last volume. Meyers really goes to some odd places with these two characters. Essentially, they fall in love over the span of a few days – but it’s a cosmic sort of love…one that actually entails them being able to speak to each other telepathically. Yes, read that again. A little past midway through the book the two are sending each other their thoughts and communicating mentally and it’s…well, it’s just lame. While the sex is mostly off-page, there is infrequent action, with Archer displaying his one-armed skills against various opponents. A memorable action scene occurs in a “harlot” encampment. 

But where is Daremo, aka the protagonist once known as Brett Wallace? He’s here and there. He mostly appears for a few pages intermittently, getting in weird pseudo-apocalyptic battles with the Chinese ninja who was posing as Brett Wallace in the previous volume. This villain even has his own quasi-Biblical name: The Figure In Black, and as described he sounds like the second-wave version of Snake-Eyes, from the mid-‘80s: the one in the black costume with the visor over his eyes. This is exactly how the Figure In Black is described. He almost kicks Daremo’s ass in a desert battle, and the intimation is that he is the representative of the ninja world order that wants Brett Wallace/Daremo dead. 

Speaking of which, on page 225 Rhea and Hama show up, aka Brett’s former girlfriend and colleague, respectively. As we’ll recall, in Dragon Rising Hama was retconned into being this guy who hated the hell out of Brett Wallace and Jeff Archer, resenting these white guys from infringing on Japanese-only ninjutsu. He continues acting in the role of villain here, blindly following the whims of ninja tradition, which demands that Daremo be killed for disrespecting the clan. Meanwhile Rhea just stands around blinking away the tears and not doing anything else – a far cry from the tough ninja-babe she was in Ninja Master. These two get in a quick fight with Archer – who is again fighting in place of Daremo – and here Archer shows off some surprise skills with his limp left arm. Regardless, it’s annoying because this entire Hama-Rhea subplot just comes off as a nuissance. 

But then, the entire plot of Lion’s Fire is a nuissance. Meyers really goes hard for the metaphysical stuff with Archer and Rachel suffering some sort of mind-explosion that cancels out their short-lived telepathic abilities, there’s that lame and unbelievable reveal of who’s been posing as Rachel’s husband, and the book ends with everyone in the exact same place they were in at the start: Daremo is still off in the shadows, hiding from everyone, Archer is obediently pursuing him – and fighting for him, and Rhea and Hama are duty-bound to kill them both. 

Surprisingly, there was another four-volume series after The Year Of The Ninja Master, this one titled War Of The Ninja Master. Hopefully these later volumes drop the pseudo-mysticism and get back to the vibe of the original series. Even Vengeance Is His was better than this!

Dragon Rising (The Year Of The Ninja Master #1)

Dragon Rising, by Wade Barker

January, 1985  Warner Books

It’s not noted on the cover or in the book, but this is actually the first volume of The Year Of The Ninja Master. The first page does state that this is “The Year Of The Ninja Master: Spring,” so I guess Warner was using seasons instead of numbers to differentiate the volumes of the series. At any rate this is the followup series to Ninja Master, with Ric Meyers serving as “Wade Barker” for the entire four-volume series (as well as the four-volume series that followed this one, War Of The Ninja Master). 

Dragon Rising takes place “two years, almost to the day” after the final installment of Ninja Master, Only The Good Die. Meyers refers to that volume, as well as many other volumes of Ninja Master, throughout this novel, so it would certainly help to have read that earlier series before reading this book. Curiously though Warner Books makes no mention of Ninja Master on the cover or back cover, etc. The title on the back cover states that “Brett Wallace is the Ninja Master,” but otherwise there’s no mention that hey, this is a sequel to an eight-volume series we published a few years ago. Also the publisher has clearly packaged this sequel series differently; gone are the action-focused cover paintings of Ninja Master, replaced with a fairly generic “ninja silhouette” cover theme by Gene Light. Also this novel is a good hundred pages longer than those earlier books; each volume of The Year Of The Ninja Master and War Of The Ninja Master comes in around 280 pages. The print’s pretty big, though, so we aren’t exactly talking a Russian epic here. My take from this is that Warner was trying to cater more so to readers of Eric Lustbader’s The Ninja than to readers of, say, The Executioner. 

However Dragon Rising makes for a pretty frustrating read for anyone who enjoyed Ninja Master, as the “heroes” of that previous series spend the entire friggin’ novel trying to kill each other. The close-knit group who took on scumbag psycho killers in the earlier books are now mortal enemies; Brett “Ninja Master” Wallace has become a psychopath, his student Jeff Archer has been cast adrift, Brett’s gal Rhea is now a spurned woman who cries all the time, and cook Hama is revealed to be a “judge” whose job is to monitor Brett for the ninja family that trained him…and to kill Brett for dishonoring the family. I don’t remember anything about Hama from the other volumes, but he did feature prominently in Only The Good Die, so my assumption is Meyers used that final volume as his springboard for The Year Of The Ninja Master. Because as it turns out, the events of that final volume – which featured Brett and team taking on a trio of vigilantes who were killing innocents in addition to criminals – really messed up hero Brett Wallace. 

Now he is plagued with nightmares, in which he sees himself shooting the lawyer who was the boss of those vigilantes. There’s a definite horror vibe to this novel, with lots of visions and nightmares, and even a metaphysical bent that becomes more prominent. There’s even a veritable cockroach attack in the final pages, not to mention the appearance of the Aztec lord of the dead. But then a very dark vibe permeates the book. This is not a fun read by any means. Our heroes from that earlier series are truly messed up now; fighting their own demons in between fighting each other. Jeff Archer takes the brunt of it, riddled with a disease called “Huter’s chorea” which causes him to go into frequent seizures in which he is reduced to rolling around on the floor while he spouts gibberish and pisses and shits himself. Oh and there’s no cure…he’ll just get worse and worse and then lose his mind. So it’s like Meyers was just really in a bad mood when he wrote this one and decided to take it out on the characters. 

And they really do try to kill each other throughout the novel. Hama and Rhea will try to kill Archer (as Meyers refers to Jeff, so I’ll start doing the same) even when he’s in the hospital…there’s a part where Hama’s about to chop Archer’s head off even when Archer is convulsing on the floor (once again shitting himself…there’s even more of a “shit your pants” fetish here than the average William Crawford novel). And meanwhile Brett Wallace has become a terse cipher who realizes he enjoys killing and getting away with it. It’s like the characters have nothing in common with their earlier incarnations. Hama here is a stubborn defender of the clan, and also it’s revealed that he and Archer basically hate each other…this before the developments of the plot cause them to start trying to kill each other. Rhea meanwhile is also affected; established as a ninja babe in the earlier books, here she basically does nothing but cry over Brett…or help Hama try to kill Archer. But then, Meyers has never seemed to know what to do with Rhea. He seems to prefer female characters who are tied up and subjugated (as Rhea herself was in the final volume of the earlier series), and it’s kind of hard to do that when the female character in question is supposed to be a “born ninja.” So Meyers basically just keeps Rhea off-page so he doesn’t have to deal with a strong female character. For this volume, at least. 

I mentioned in my review of Only The Good Die that the finale was a bit off-putting, as it featured Brett Wallace torturing one of his enemies to death. Again Meyers has used this as a springboard, as we learn that Brett was very affected by his encounter with the Gun Club (ie the trio of vigilantes), given that he realized their modus operandi wasn’t much different from his own. We’re to understand that Brett’s increasing sense of loss over this has led to a rift in the “Wallace school,” with the four characters now opposed. Ultimately we’ll learn that the breakdown is this: Brett himself has embraced his dark side, uncaring how his former friends feel about it; Archer has been cast aside, loyal to his sensei Brett, but shut out by him; Rhea too has been shut out by Brett (we learn that Brett told Rhea to stop sleeping with him months ago!); and Hama has resolved to “judge” Brett for dishonoring the clan and thus execute him. Rhea will go along with this, given that she was born into this clan and represents it just as Hama does. 

The only part in the novel that seems reminiscent of Ninja Master is a fun early sequence where Brett, dressed up like a gas station attendant, pulls off a daring dayling hit on a mobster. As ever Meyers excels in featuring unexpected weapons; Brett makes his kill with a sharpened credit card, which he hurls like a throwing star. But even here the darkness descends; Brett makes his escape in a sewer tunnel, chased by a pair of Mafia goons, and kills them sadistically. But when one of them starts crying in fear as he dies, Brett realizes what he has become. There is a surreal texture to the entire novel; this sequence climaxes with Brett wandering around a desolate part of San Francisco, where he randomly comes across a pedophile about to rape a little girl. Brett almost casually kills the guy…and then wonders if he imagined the whole thing. After this he realizes that he has become a “magnet;” it was a million to one chance that he would come across a pedophile in action, so Brett reflects that now sick people find him so as to be killed. 

After this though the novel becomes a steady beating in which Archer becomes the main protagonist and goes through various levels of hell. This starts in another off-putting sequence where Rhea, Hama, and Archer finally put aside their hatred of one another to confront Brett in his dojo. There they find the Ninja Master waiting for them in full ninja gi, complete with black goggles hiding his eyes – and he immediately goes on the attack. Like literally trying to kill them. Rhea in particular he seems to relish in beating unmerciful, and trying to kill her even when he’s in the middle of combat with Hama or Archer. Curiously though, he keeps using Chinese styles, which is odd for a man trained in Japanese ninjutsu. Just when the reader can’t take anymore of this, the real Brett Wallace magically appears – turns out it wasn’t him in that ninja gi – and fights to defend his former friends. It all ends with everyone practically dead, Brett and the fake Brett taking off, and the dojo burning down. 

The narrative picks up eight months later and Archer’s in a special hospital or somesuch, and we learn that it’s been a hard road to recovery for him. Plus he finds out he’s contracted the apparently-fictitious Hunter’s chorea. The cop who appeared in Ninja Master #6 interrogates Archer, trying to pin the dojo fire and “deaths” of Hama and Rhea on him…and then meanwhile the real Hama and Rhea show up in Archer’s room that night and try to kill Archer. Man, it’s a real beating to read as these former friends try to kill each other. As mentioned, Hama even prepares to chop off Archer’s head when Archer goes into one of his pissing-and-shitting-his-pants seizures. But Archer manages to convince the two to let him go, as he claims to know where Brett Wallace is. 

Here Archer becomes the main protagonist of the novel. And here too I picked up some bad flashbacks to the latter volumes of Jason Striker; a South American setting, ninjas, amnesia, mysticism (complete with visions of Aztec gods), and more shit-yourself escapades. (Shitscapades?) Archer goes through Mexico and on down into South America, at this point the novel becoming a travelogue. The chorea attacks him in waves, and there’s lots of stuff of him abruptly drooling on the floor as he, you guessed it, pisses and shits his pants. Curiously Meyers never notes that Archer washes his pants afterwards, but whatever. At length Archer finally reaches his destination: El Salvador, where Archer has figured out that Brett Wallace might be located. 

At this point the “ninja” stuff has been lost and it’s as if we’re reading the average ‘80s action novel; it’s all about Contras and Sandanistas and guys with M16s wearing camo. Archer runs afoul of various rebel groups and whatnot, at one point nearly dying (while suffering yet another shit-himself “spaz out,” naturally), and he comes to amid a pile of corpses. Eventually he stumbles upon another group of rebels – and among them is a white man with sandy hair and dead eyes who is none other than Brett Wallace. Yet we readers know that Brett Wallace is no more; something Ric Meyers dwells on, which I’d forgotten, is that Ninja Master #1 (which wasn’t even written by Meyers) established that “Brett Wallace” was originally named Brian Williams. This was his birth name, and he only became Brett Wallace after returning to the US as a ninja to gain vengeance. As such, Brett Wallace was just another disguise, and it’s now been dropped. 

The former Brett Wallace now refers to himself as “Daremo” (and presumably will for the rest of this series and the next). This is Japanese for “Nobody.” Archer learns this when the American commando working with the rebels informs him that “the new guy,” ie Brett, is named “Dare Moe.” However there’s a problem with this. I studied Japanese in high school and spent a semester of college in Japan, and while I’ve forgotten a lot of the language I still know Japanese pronunciation. Daremo is pronounced “daahrey mo.” There’s absolutely no way an English speaker could mishear “daahrey” as the English word “dare.” And yet this American commando, Frank Bender, states that the new guy’s first name is Dare. Anyway this is a minor quibble – I mean we’re talking about a surreal ninja yarn – but it still bugged me. 

Even here though there is no emotional reunion between student and sensei. Daremo is a cipher, and doesn’t even seen touched that Archer has traveled all the way to El Salvador to find him. Hell, Daremo doesn’t even seem much bothered by the whole Hunter’s chorea thing. There’s even more ‘80s-style action combat here, as Daremo, Archer, and Bender get in various firefights. Also the mysticism becomes more pronounced, with Archer stating that he and Daremo “share the same nightmare.” In fact Archer suspects that the Hunter’s chorea was intended for Daremo, but Archer got it instead. The two will occasionally go into seizures, victims of metaphysical psychic attacks. And also Daremo is determined to find an ancient Aztec temple called Milarepa, where he thinks he will find the answers to what is going on. 

There is a horror element to Dragon Rising, particularly in the last quarter. After surviving several hellish battles, Daremo and Archer arrive in the remote Milarepa location. Meyers delivers memorable horror-esque moments here, like terrorists in hoods and infrared goggles hiding beneath cockroaches, and coming out from under them with AK-47s blasting. There’s also a creepy bit where the two ninja heroes must wade through a tunnel of cockroaches. Milarepa is this hellish place where terrorists, led by a white man and woman, use sound wave technology to brainwash and train recruits. Lots of splatterhouse-type stuff here, with people being ripped apart and tortured and whatnot, and meanwhile Archer gets laid by the lady in charge of the operation. But it’s more repugnant than sleazy (plus Meyers doesn’t elaborate on it at all), with the girl smiling afterwards, “I’ll think of you during the abortion.” 

The horror vibe gets stronger as Daremo and Archer, inspired by yet more Aztec god visions, hack and slash their way to freedom. Despite all the violence, though, this isn’t a very gory novel, as Meyers usually doesn’t get into the grisly details. Instead he peppers the action narrative with a lot of martial arts terminology. Given that we’re at the end of the novel, Rhea and Hama magically appear, having tracked Archer here…and so too appears the mysterious “fake Brett” ninja from earlier in the novel. After another battle between him and Daremo, the ninja escapes – the representative of a Chinese clan that has vowed to destroy the “Brett Wallace family.” Apparently the gist here is that all the festering bad blood among Daremo, Archer, Rhea, and Hama has been due to the psychic attacks from these Chinese ninja, or something. 

At novel’s end Daremo feels reborn, though there is absolutely nothing redemptive for him in the climax, at least nothing the reader experiences vicariously through the narrative. All of his former friends are out cold: Rhea and Hama knocked out during the melee, and Archer again suffering from his various medical misfortunes. The chief priest of Milarepa however claims that he can cure Archer, though Archer will need to stay at the temple for quite some time. Presumably Archer, Hama, and Rhea will return to the series at some point, but so far as Daremo’s concerned it’s so long to the old crew, and he rushes off to his new destiny alone. We’re informed that the season of “Summer” has now begun, which wouldn’t you know it is the subtitle of the following volume. 

I continue to struggle with Ric Meyers’s narrative style. He creates effective imagery, but at the same time doesn’t properly exploit it. At times the novel almost comes off like a screenplay, with little insight into the motivations or reactions of the various characters. It’s basically a lot of flat declarative sentences with little emotional content. And also Meyers still POV-hops like crazy, going in and out of various character perspectives with zero warning. What I mean to say is, no line breaks or anything to let the reader know that we’re suddenly in someone else’s thoughts. Actually as I read Dragon Rising it occurred to me that what I dislike about Meyers’s style is that he seems to write with the assumption that the reader knows what he is thinking; there isn’t much attempt at bringing anything to life or explaining anything, so that we readers feel we are missing out on a portion of the story. 

Overall this one was cool if you like ‘80s ninja action mixed with splatterpunk horror, but the outline-esque writing style kind of ruined it for me, and the storyline of these former friends trying to kill each other left the bitter-sour taste of defeat in my mouth.

Ninja Master #8: Only The Good Die

Ninja Master #8: Only The Good Die, by Wade Barker

May, 1983  Warner Books

Once again I’ve taken years to get back to the Ninja Master series. This final volume is courtesy Ric Meyers, who after Ninja Master wrapped up spun hero Brett Wallace and crew out into two ensuing series: Year Of The Ninja Master and War Of The Ninja Master. Initially it seemed to me that Meyers was just rewriting his previous volume here, with Brett up against a trio of psychopaths, but as it turns out Only The Good Die is a bit more complex…and muddled. 

Maybe it’s my new contacts, which require me to wear friggin’ readers to even see the words on the page, but this time I found Meyers’s prose a bit too hard to follow. Some of his sentence structures I thought were a bit awkward, particularly in the action scenes, which often pulled me out of the moment. In fact I get the impression that he wrote Only The Good Die on a tight turnaround. The plot is also as jumbled, opening as it does with a trio of psychopaths killing some poor young girl (a recurring Meyers staple if ever there was one – that, and jamming an s&m rubber ball in the mouth of the girls before their torture). But then this ghoulish opening incident is completely ignored until very late in the novel. The result is that the reader keeps wondering who the hell those three psychopaths were and how their story ties in with the novel itself. 

So serial killers torturing and then offing young women is a thing with Meyers; that’s been established in every other book of his I’ve read. This installment opens with three separate chapters in which three separate women experience brutal fates: in the first, and most squirm-induing, a young black girl in New York is abducted by those three psychopaths and driven off to her death. In the second, a successful businesswoman in New York is pushed in front of an oncoming train. And in the third, a young Japanese girl is burned alive when a gang war breaks out in a New York club, the place being set on fire in the melee. Nothing connects these three atrocities, and Meyers does his best to confuse readers by next jumping into another seemingly-random chapter, where a bald and muscular Chinese dude barges into an apartment filled with New York lowlifes and starts beating the shit out of them. 

Eventually we’ll learn that this is Hama, the cook “at the Rhea Dawn in Sausalito,” ie the Rhea who is the Japanese beloved of series protagonist Brett Wallace. Not that Brett still bothers to show up, though. Instead, Hama seems to be the star of the show, next wading into another group of gangsters, these ones Chinese triads, in a Manhattan movie theater. Meyers here indulges in his own interest in martial arts cinema, with mentions of the Shaw Brothers and Japanese samurai movies. And finally, on page 60, the Ninja Master himself appears, slipping out of a hole he’s cut in the film screen with his ninja sword and taking out the triads who have gotten the better of Hama. At length we’ll find out that the young Chinese girl killed in chapter three was Hama’s niece, and a vengeance-minded Hama headed for New York without informing anyone. Brett, Rhea, and Brett’s student Jeff Archer quickly followed him. 

This is the setup. But it’s a clunky first quarter before we figure out what the heck is going on. And really, Meyers just turns the tale into a series of extended action scenes. Brett and team get in frequent clashes with various street punks, to the extent that you keep wondering what the point of it all is. And Brett too seems to wonder what the point is. For there is a muddled mystery at the heart of it all – the gang wars, the Triad club-burning in which Hama’s niece was one of the victims, and even those opening murders of the three women are all somehow connected. But this isn’t Agatha Christie we’re talking about. Instead the vast majority of Only The Good Die is comprised of Brett Wallace engaging a seemingly-endless series of New York punks in bloody combat. 

But the helluva it is, I found the action scenes so awkwardly handled. I constantly found myself having to re-read certain passages to determine what was going on. Maybe it’s just me, though. Meyers does include some fun stuff in the narrative. Brett kicks one guy in the crotch and we learn afterward that the guy’s “private parts looked like three-alarm chili.” And there’s a long sequence where Brett battles a “street mob” in a tenement building that’s very reminiscent of Able Team #8, only minus the auto shotguns and drug-mutated street punks. Brett hacks and slashes his way through an endless horde of punks, using a variety of ninja weaponry. In this sequence Brett learns that the punks aren’t just after him, but given that they’re members of rival gangs they’re trying to kill each other at the same time. There’s a crazy bit where Brett kills several of them in sixty seconds while they are occupied with fighting one another: “They were all biodegradable punks on a one-way trip.” 

Meyers introduces a nursery rhyme conceit to Only The Good Die, with occasional mentions of “The Butcher, The Baker, and The Candlestick Maker,”’ as well as “Jack jumped over the candlestick” and such. In fact the first-page preview would have you believe the Butcher, Baker, and Candlestick Maker – ie the three psychopaths in the opening sequence – will be the main villains of the tale. While that ultimately proves true, it isn’t until very late in the novel that we learn how it connects. And for that matter, this too is muddled, as it turns out the villains with nursery rhyme nicknames are really just underlings in this crazy army, not the leaders. For example the “Baker” turns out to be a psycho chick who gets off on being tortured, and who has lured Brett into this long tenement battle…again, it’s all very hazy and jumbled, but apparently “the Baker’s” bosses learned about this “Oriental” avenger who wiped out the Triads (ie Hama – though they think Hama is really Brett…or something), and this tenement attack has been staged to entrap him. 

I’m assuming in the ensuing series Meyers further elaborates on Rhea and Jeff; the former only has one memorable scene here, and the latter doesn’t do much except get shot (in the chest!). Rhea’s bit has her using “saimin jutsu” on a detective, a sort of seductive hypnotism which has the cop slackjawed at Rhea’s beauty and thus giving up confidential info to her. But for all this empowerment Rhea ultimately suffers the same fate as most other female characters in a Ric Meyers novel: she’s caught toward the end of the book, tied up, and shipped off to an “elegant sexual torture chamber,” which made me think of the swank sex chamber in the groovy film version of The Adventurers. And yes, a rubber ball is shoved down her throat when she’s tied up. I mean it just wouldn’t be a Ric Meyers novel if one wasn’t. As for Jeff Archer, I honestly thought he was killed in the finale; he gets shot in the chest and that’s the last we see of him, before Brett quickly exposits in the final chapter that Jeff’s seriously wounded but will recover. 

Meanwhile, the Candlestick Maker turns out to be aligned with the Black Liberation Army For Social Terrorism (which totally shouldn’t be confused with BLM); this group of black terrorists has taken credit for the nightclub fire that killed Hama’s niece. This entails another extended action scene, but one with a bit of a TNT flair, as Brett faces attack dogs in explosive vests in a TV studio. His sort-of companion here is Tommy Gun Parker, a mountain of muscle-type who is fond of wielding Mac subguns in each hand. While they start off as enemies, Parker being one of the thugs hired to kill Brett, they ultimately develop a sort of Lethal Weapon relationship of bantering. But speaking of Tommy Parker and Meyers’s sometimes-confusing prose style, check out this excerpt and tell me if you too think it’s a bit hard to follow what’s going on: 

Things wrap up in an estate outside the city where the three freaks from the opening paragraph finally return. And it turns out they aren’t psychos in the purest sense; indeed, they’ve been hiring “homicidal psychopaths” to do their dirty work in the city. And their dirty work is cleaning up the streets. These three men have suffered their share of misfortune due to rampant crime and have decided to go outside the law to restore law and order. To this end they’ve started a variety of gang wars, hoping to use their homicidal psychos to stir shit up. Of course, the resulting loss of innocent life is just seen as collateral damage. These are the guys who capture Rhea in the finale – despite her being an asskicking ninja babe in her own right – but Brett and Jeff are there to save the day. The final sequence is very odd, as Brett wants the main killer to suffer horribly, and tortures him via drowning. Overall a strange, somewhat off-putting way to finish off the Ninja Master series. 

A year or so later Brett Wallace was to return in Year Of The Ninja Master, also published by Warner. Since I took so long to read Ninja Master I think I’ll dive into the first volume of that next series posthaste.

Ninja Master #7: The Skin Swindle

Ninja Master #7: The Skin Swindle, by Wade Barker
March, 1983  Warner Books

I didn’t expect to take three years to get back to the Ninja Master series – I also didn’t expect to only do one post this week, but the stomach flu wiped me out last week. Anyway this penultimate volume is courtesy the same mystery author who gave us #3: Borderland Of Hell and #5: Black Magician, delivering for the most part more of a martial arts thriller than a ninja yarn, one that goes very heavy on the sleaze.

Now folks there’s good sleaze and bad sleaze, and sorry to say, but The Skin Swindle is bad sleaze. The type of sleaze you just don’t want to read about. That cover of the whip-wielding babe and the back cover copy had me expecting a lurid entry in which Brett “Ninja Master” Wallace waded into the world of mafia-backed porn or whatnot, but man…well, the author instead focuses on the “kiddie” portion of that illicit market, making for a not very fun read. Not very fun at all! There are some subjects I think shouldn’t be broached, and this would be one of them…it’s for the same reason I’ve still not read the fifth volume of Ryker, The Child Killer.

But then, Ninja Master is known for pushing boundries. The previous volume, courtesy main series writer Ric Meyers, already featured little kids getting murdered by sadistic serial killers. So I guess at this point putting them in porn movies is just the next logical step. It’s just not the sort of thing I look forward to reading, and it’s the sort of thing that makes me wonder about the author – though I suspect this might be one of those times where the author has his tongue in cheek. I mean The Skin Swindle opens with an outrageous take on the “casting couch” cliché, only in this case it’s a seven year-old girl who’s servicing the sleazebag producer, all while her mother happily watches on. 

Luckily the author doesn’t go full-bore with the details on the various acts involving children in the book, but we do get a damn lot about it…of course, leavened with the occasional condemnation of such despicable acts! It’s stuff like this that always makes me suspect (or at least hope) that an author’s being ironic, particularly given that the opening casting couch bit directly leads to a fairly explicit sequence of Brett going down on his casual girlfriend Rhea, she of the “eternally erect nipples.” Still though, The Skin Swindle makes for a very unsettling read, “irony” or not, and thus it was by far my least favorite volume of the series…even the slow-as-molasses first volume was better. 

Well anyway, the mystery author enjoys referring to his previous volumes, giving the series a bit of continuity; Brett’s sidekick Jeff Archer, who proves to be irritatingly useless this time around, boasts about their having trounced the bad guys in Borderland Of Hell. The author also stays true to his version of Brett Wallace, delivering a more relatable character than Meyers’ version; this Brett enjoys the occasional drink, spends most of his time in various restaurants, and likes to blast “Steely Dan’s new album Gaucho” in his fancy sportscar. The Steely Dan appreciation was also noted in previous volumes, I believe. And more importantly so far as the series goes, this Brett Wallace is more of a martial arts superman than a ninja, content to kill people with everyday household objects instead of the exotic weaponry of Meyers.

Brett’s read about the sadistic porn industry in a series of articles published in the LA Times, and when he gets to the mentions of the kiddie flicks his fury is activated. He tells Rhea he’s going to get into it – she stays off-page for the rest of the novel – and rounds up young Jeff Archer to come along. Why Brett takes Jeff is a mystery because in this author’s hands Jeff is a complete loser. He runs Brett’s martial arts studio but proves incapable of fighting anyone in the course of The Skin Swindle, constantly getting knocked out or abducted. The expectation that he’ll provide the customary “comedic sidekick” role is also dashed, as Brett and Jeff are seldom together on-page.

Instead, Brett’s partner for the most part is the crusading journalist who wrote those porn articles: “Sam” Loring, who of course turns out to be a mega-hot and mega-built blonde named Samantha. The expected Brett-Sam conjugation doesn’t occur until late in the narrative, and as usual with the author it’s fairly explicit. Sam has a bit of personality but for the most part the author just uses her to regurgitate exposition about the porn industry. Brett presents himself as a freelance journalist from a major Japanese news conglomerate, looking to write a book on the subject. Sam agrees to show him around the sleazepits of Los Angeles, informing him that you can get practically any sort of magazine if you know the right people to ask.

It all just goes on and on with only occasional action. Brett’s learned via Sam that there’s a “King” of the industry, a guy behind all the snuff flicks and kiddie flicks and whatnot, and soon enough random thugs are coming out of the woodwork to waste Brett for poking his nose where it doesn’t belong. But yet in every single case Brett just kills these goons and never stops to interrogate them – like even simple “Who sent you?” sort of stuff. I mean it’s great the action’s there and all but still, Brett comes off kinda stupid. He knows there’s a mysterious figure behind the industry, one whose existence is almost a legend, and clearly it’s this dude sending out the thugs…and Brett could work his way backward from them, but never considers the idea.

Brett again displays his bizarre talent for using random objects to kill; he doesn’t take out as many people this time, and the violence is for the most part bloodless, other than the occasional mention of blood or brains. He kills with chopsticks, quarters, a mouth pellet, a knife, a blowgun, the pole of a street sign, and even a ninja sword which has been modified so that it hides inside his “ninja belt.” For the most part each “fight” is over quick and features Brett outmatching his opponents to absurd degrees. There’s never any sense of danger for him, so the author has to resort to placing Jeff and ultimately Sam in danger, as they both find themselves about to be the unsuspecting stars of a snuff flick.

But Brett disappears for too many portions of the narrative, with the author focusing on Cedric Gregg, the “king” of Hollywood’s illicit underground industry. He’s one of those criminal masterminds who just goes around killing any underling who has displeased him. We get arbitrary scenes of him killing such and such a porn-world figure, usually for having slipped evidence of Gregg’s connection to the industry. There’s a lot of squirm-inducing stuff with Gregg cavorting with his favorite passtime: young boys, one in particular whom Gregg is trying to woo with a new print of The Empire Strikes Back. It’s really all beyond outrageous so far as the kid stuff goes, and the author does himself no favors with having some of the child “actors” talk like veteran professionals: “I think this chick and I both know why we’re here,” as a ten year-old “star” of one of Gregg’s films says of his seven year-old costar.

Brett’s also not the most proactive of men’s adventure heroes in this particular volume. Early on Sam tells him of a woman she’s met whose daughter was taken by the lady’s estranged husband and put into porn flicks – the law, by the way, is humorously incapable in The Skin Swindle, with the vague explanation that “payoffs” allow the sleazebags to make their movies without any legal or punitive repercussions. Anyway Sam’s concocted a plan for this lady to visit a notorious “producer” and give him a b.j. in his office, something the producer expects of all his female guests, whether she be adult or child. After the oral servicing the producer’s schtick is that he goes off into his private restroom to clean up, and leaves the woman/girl in the office alone. Well, Sam says this lady can pretend to be someone else, do the oral job, then look through the producer’s files while he’s in the restroom and find the address where they’re keeping her daughter.

I figured Brett would come up with some augmentation for this plan…but instead he tells Sam to make it happen, then he and Sam wait in a diner for the lady to call them after she’s gotten the address! It’s like that throughout; Brett spends at least 30% of the narrative in various restaurants or diners, one of them a dive frequented by kids who are looking to get picked up by adults. (No, it’s not a pizza parlor!!) After checking the grungy place out – and the grizzled owner of the joint, by the way, steals the entire book with his acidic temper – Brett sends Jeff back, to pose as a teenager looking for a sugar daddy! This of course leads to yet another moment in which Jeff is abducted and Brett has to save him.

Oh, and the whip-wielding cover babe does finally appear; we see the makings of one of Gregg’s snuff flicks, and the babe is in full s&m getup and whips some manacled dude to bloody ribbons, then slits his throat. She factors into the finale, an outrageous snuff-kiddie-Nazi exploitation extravaganza which is to feature Jeff and Sam in supporting roles against their wishes, but curiously she is the only person Brett decides not to kill. The author even goes out of his way to have Brett explain why he doesn’t feel the need to kill her (she’s powerless in the scheme of things, or something to that lame effect).

The novel ends with Brett and Jeff heading back to San Francisco and Sam certain that she’ll “never forget” Brett. And this was it for the mystery author; Ric Meyers wrote the next volume of the series, which was to be the last. After which Meyers, still posing as “Wade Barker,” brought Brett and co. back for two ensuing series, which ran for four volumes each: Year Of The Ninja Master and War Of The Ninja Master.

Ninja Master #6: Death's Door

Ninja Master #6: Death’s Door, by Wade Barker
November, 1982  Warner Books

Ric Meyers is back with another Ninja Master that pushes all the sicko sleaze buttons – honest to god, Death’s Door features some of the most outrageously twisted stuff I’ve ever read in a men’s adventure novel, which is really saying something. But in this slim novel you’ll read horrific sequences of teenage boys being chopped up on butcher blocks (as well as chainsawed), their girlfriends skewered on pot racks and raped (as well as chainsawed), and entire families being slaughtered. Hell, even little kids are killed!

It’s my understanding that this was the first volume Meyers got to conceive and write on his own, his previous volumes having been catered to plots begun by another author(s) and already-commissioned cover artwork. But man, if Death’s Door is any indication, Meyers has one twisted imagination. The book seems to be inspired by the era’s fascination with slasher movies, only everything is taken to an absurd degree of sick insanity. I’ve read a bunch of these books by now, so I thought I was pretty desensitized, but as I read the nightmarish opening sequence I was like, “Please god, let it end!”

But we read as a pretty teen girl, her friend, and their boyfriends come back to her parent’s home after seeing the latest slasher horror movie. They walk into a horror movie of their own when three sadists swoop out of the shadows and begin torturing and mutilating them. One wears an old man mask, another has his face painted white and black, and the third is fat and wears a leather mask. Gradually, as her friends are being butchered in super-graphic detail, the teen girl realizes that all this seems familiar; the sadists are in fact recreating certain scenes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, up to and including a chainsaw. Only, the girl discovers as this grisly opening scene finally ends, the trio plan to “change the ending” for their recreation – the girl will not escape, as in the film.

We finally meet up with Brett “Ninja Master” Wallace, who is keeping abreast of these horrific massacres occuring here in Southern California – the girl and her friends weren’t the only victims; her mom and dad were also slaughtered that night. Later there will be another killing courtesy the three sadists, again going on and on and raising hackles; in this one they also kill two young boys as they watch a horror movie on television in their bedroom, even hanging their corpses in garish displays for the teenaged babysitter to discover, before her own gory end. I mean good grief, forget about the desensitization I thought I’d achieved – I was about ready to email Dr. Phil!

Meyers clearly makes his villains as horrible as can be so that we readers can feel the rush when Brett Wallace ultimately takes care of them; Meyers has done the same thing in each of the two previous books he’s read, only a helluva lot more so this time around. And also Meyers is unique among these men’s adventure authors in that he doesn’t shirk on the villain’s payoff; Brett usually goes to great pains to ensure the villains suffer mightily before he finally sends them to hell. But at the same time, I wasn’t sure Meyers really had to go that far – I mean, you don’t have to see Doctor No murder a bunch of kids to feel satisfaction when James Bond kills him.

Anyway Brett is on the scene, as ever perfecting his “no man” aura. Brett has also mastered the vibes he gives off, so that whatever he pretends to be, the person he is speaking to will presume that’s what he is. In other words, if Brett gives off “cop” vibes and talks to a real cop, the cop will just assume he’s speaking to a fellow officer who happens to be off-duty or somesuch. So here Brett is in a diner, mulling over these nightmarish atrocities, when in walks Lynn McDonald, a good-looking babe Brett apparently had a brief fling with sometime between volume 1 and volume 2. Brett’s just agreed to see her again for dinner when a group of psychos break into the place and start coming after her.

Meyers also reinforces the concept that Brett Wallace is a modern superhero, one with a “half-secret identity;” twice Brett makes comparisons to Batman, even reflecting that he has his own high-tech “Batcave” beneath the Asian restaurant he co-owns with his girlfriend Rhea. So here, as the psychos attack, Brett must stop them while not demonstrating his near-superhuman abilities to any of the witnesses. This is one of those fun action scenes Meyers does so well, with Brett using everything from dinner plates to barstools to take out the psychos, who prove to be suicidal in their vain, desperate attempt to kill Lynn. 

The reader thinks Lynn’s going to be the novel’s heroine, but she’s off-page for the duration; shortly after this she is abducted from her apartment, carted off by an old woman and her young son, both of whom also seem violently insane. Brett ends up killing both of them in another novel action sequence, one which again sees the would-be assassins turn suicidal when they too fail in their goal. However Lynn is hurt in the action, knocked out, and spends the rest of the novel comatose in the hospital. Brett will save her life again and again as more would-be assassins come for her.

Indeed, one of these would-be assassins turns out to be a sexy nurse named Claire, and her sequences lend the novel a similar vibe to that of Murder Ward, which is interesting given that Meyers himself turned in a few Destroyer installments. But then Meyers’s Ninja Master practically is The Destroyer, only with better action scenes, more sex and gore, and none of the annoying genre-mockery. (I also enjoy it a whole helluva lot more.) But anyway Brett, superhuman as ever and invisible in his ninja costume, prevents Claire’s attempts at putting Lynn to sleep forever and then corners Claire in a closet, slicing away her nurse uniform shred by shred until she’s mostly nude. 

From Claire Brett learns of Dr. Shenkman, who runs the government-funded insane asylum The Sanctuary. The Murder Ward similarities continue as Brett gradually learns that Shenkman might be behind these crazy murders. There’s also a link to a company, which the fathers of the two massacred families worked for. Claire turns out to be the closest thing to a lead female character, and she also turns out to be the novel’s female villain – every Meyers installment has had one – sent to Brett one night to seduce him, but really acting as a diversion for some thugs who show up to kill him. We get more Remo Williams-esque stuff as Brett uses his masterful technique to reduce Claire into a quivering wreck of ecstasy, but the Ninja Master himself is interrupted while taking his share of the pleasure, as the thugs break in at that moment.

None of these thugs prove much of a match for Brett, of course. As for the three main psychos, turns out they do in fact work for Shenkman, but have been doing jobs for the CEO of that big company; Shenkman provides psycho-assassins for mercenary work, and the fathers in the two massacred families, as well as Lynn McDonald, somehow got wind of the plan and had to be taken out. But the three psychos are just demanding more pay from the CEO when Brett sweeps into the room, decked out in his ninja suit and bearing all his ninja gear, and starts slicing and dicing.

As mentioned Meyers usually doesn’t cheat us when it comes to villain comeuppance, but again it must be stated that these three don’t suffer nearly enough for the awful things they’ve done. In a running sequence Brett doles out his typically-brutal punishment, from a plain old sword through the head to one dude getting a “steel enema” and then his dick chopped in half. The fat psycho manages to escape, leading to another slasher flick tribute where he runs to a camp filled with sleeping kids and takes them hostage, giving in to his lurid impulses with the busty teen chaperone. Meanwhile Brett slips in and takes care of the bastard; Meyers has a great knack for having Brett magically appear, pull of some superhuman feat, and then backtrack to quickly explain to us how he managed to pull it all off.

This kill is particularly inventive – Brett appears to enjoy trying out new techniques on his victims – with the Ninja Master slicing a square through the fat dude’s chest and then punching it out, heart, guts, and all. The finale continues with the gory vibe and retains the “Brett vs an army” climax of Meyers’s previous books. Brett heads back to the Sanctuary and takes on the legions of psycho-assassins, to the point that he’s “ankle deep in gore and guts.” However this sequence is more quickly-relayed than previous finales, likely because Meyers at this point is past his word count, Death’s Door being slightly longer than previous installments.

The Ninja Master also isn’t one to screw over, even if you happen to be a sexy woman, as duplicitous Nurse Claire discovers; after Claire tries to kill him with a syringe injection, Brett overcomes the fatal dose with some ninja internal magic and then hunts her down in the burning ruins of the Sanctuary. And that’s that – Shenkman’s plot is foiled and Brett’s secret identity is safe, but meanwhile poor Lynn McDonald has finally woken up and it turns out she’s now practically a vegetable.

Meyers’s writing is as ever good, with lots of forward momentum and as mentioned copious gore, but he is a rampant POV-hopper, and he neglects to use the same names for his characters in the narrative, which causes confusion. For example characters are referred to by first and last names throughout in the narrative, which jars the reader, in particular when it comes to the female characters. When you read “McDonald was still in the hospital” or somesuch, after a pause you’re like, “Oh – he means Lynn!” Meyers does this for Brett as well, randomly referring to him as “Brett,” “Wallace,” or “Ninja Master” throughout. I mean it’s fine for the characters to use multiple names for each other, but the narrative should be consistent.

But it’s only these pedantic little things that annoy; otherwise Death’s Door is a lot of fun, with the caveat that some of it will certainly raise your hackles.

Ninja Master #5: Black Magician

Ninja Master #5: Black Magician, by Wade Barker
September, 1982  Warner Books

Given that the Ninja Master series was an obvious cash-in on the success of Eric Van Lustbader’s The Ninja, I guess it was only a matter of time before an installment of the series ripped off the novel itself. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if someone took Lustbader’s book and trimmed off all the fat, then you should check out Black Magician.

Here’s my understanding of the Ninja Master series: Stephen Smoke wrote the first volume, and then turned in a manuscript for the second volume. But Warner Books rejected Smoke’s manuscript and hired Ric Meyers to write a new novel based on the already-created cover art; they then hired Meyers to do the same thing for the fourth volume. Meanwhile, Warner hired some other author to write the third volume, and this person went on to trade off with Meyers, with Meyers writing the even volumes and the mystery author writing the odd volumes.

I’d love to know who this guy (or girl?) was, because he’s pretty good. My assumption going in was that Meyers’s novels would be superior, but that might not be the case; the quality of these two authors is about the same. They both know how to write good pulp, they both deliver the martial arts violence, and they both enjoy doling out the sleaze; so far, neither is more outrageous than the other, though Meyers appears to offer a bit more gore. However, this author features more lurid and kinky sex, usually involving Japanese women being debased and tortured.

There are other differences between the two authors. Meyers appears more knowledgeable about ninjutsu, and has hero Brett Wallace using a host of exotic ninja weaponry with which he skewers his opponents in bloody fashion. Meyers’s version of Brett also often dons a ninja costume in his battles. The mystery author’s version of Brett Wallace is more of a martial arts superman, capable of inhuman feats, and he not only doesn’t wear a costume but seldom if ever uses any ninja weapons. In fact, he’s more fond of turning everyday objects into weapons, like shoelaces.

Also, this author delivers a more human Brett – he occasionally drinks, he jokes, and he swears a lot. Compare to Meyers’s almost robotic force of vengeance, who sometimes comes off like Richard Camellion on a bad day. Finally, the mystery author is much more concerned with staying true to Stephen Smoke’s first volume, often referring back to the events that happened therein; he also employs Kung Fu inspired sequences where Brett will flash back his days of ninja training and the bursts of wisdom he received from Master Yamaguchi. Meyers never does this; his version of Brett Wallace has advanced far beyond the need to reflect on past training.

Anyway, Black Magician. Take the plot of Lustbader’s The Ninja, add a little more sex and violence, change the names of the characters, make it a lot shorter and a whole lot more entertaining, and you’ll come up with this book. An evil ninja is afoot in San Francisco, killing off older men who were part of a commission that was tasked with rebuilding Japan after World War II. Meanwhile, this same evil ninja is getting his rocks off murdering Japanese hookers in SanFran massage parlors.

The commission members are dying of natural causes, but it’s obvious they are being murdered in some unknown way. Also, they each receive death threats shortly before meeting their end, and the threats are accompanied with strange Japanese characters. The cops hire a Japanese professor at Berkley who eventually determines that these characters are obscure ninja symbols. Gradually Lt. Bill Wright, who has been put in charge of the investigation, is put in touch with Brett Wallace, who decides to help the cops bring in the evil ninja – just like Nicholas Linnear agreed to help Lt. Croaker in Lustbader’s book.

The sleaze is afoot as “The Oriental” (ie, how our author constantly refers to our mysterious evil ninja, who eventually is revealed to be named Seikiei Kojiro) visits various massage parlors, always demanding a Japanese whore. He turns down the constant offers of an “Oriental” girl (the word “Oriental” is used about a zillion times in the novel, by the way); he wants a Japanese girl only. And when he gets her, he will offer her money and then debase her, demanding she repeat the words “I am a Japanese woman without honor” as he sodomizes her – killing her once he’s finished!

Meanwhile Brett himself is getting some good Japanese lovin’ via Rhea, his “no commitments” bedmate who owns the Rhea Dawn restaurant. Unlike in Meyers’s installments, this version of Rhea isn’t as involved in Brett’s war upon crime and injustice; nor this time is Jeff Archer, Brett’s younger pupil who is slowly learning the ways of the ninja. Once Brett realizes that an evil ninja is in town, he tells Jeff to stay away from him – for, Star Wars style, Brett fears that the evil ninja will tap into some sort of force and realize that there’s another ninja here in San Francisco…!

This author’s previous installment, Borderland Of Hell, clouded the sleaze element and slowed the pace by having Brett go into investigator mode through most of the novel, going around and asking one-off characters various questions. Luckily there’s none of that this time, and the author keeps things moving throughout, with more members of the seven-man commission dying “naturally” just hours after receiving their death threats. They’re all in town, by the way, as they’ve been invited by David Watanabe, a 60 year-old billionaire who became rich decades ago due to his bribing of the commission.

Obviously, these murders are payback; the commission was notorious for taking funds away from established, already-wealthy people and corporations in Japan and turning the money over to upstarts like David Watanabe. So, just as in The Ninja, these modern murders are rightings of wrongs made back in the years immediately after WWII. And just as in Lustbader’s novel, Brett gradually realizes that the evil ninja is a legendary figure he’s run into before, a man who killed off a few members of Brett’s ninja clan back in the day, including Brett’s best friend there.

Brett and Lt. Wright develop a relationship clearly “inspired” by that between Linnear and Croaker, with Brett even working for the cops only if they promise never to look into his background or attempt to find out what his real name is (apparently he’s afraid of the ramifications if they discover that he’s the guy who killed all those bikers back in the first volume, or something). Not until the cops deduce that the recent hooker murders might be by the same guy killing the commission members does Brett put two and two together and realize that the killer is none other than Seikiei, a legendary ninja who is more myth than man.

In fact Brett isn’t much help to the cops, and can only stand by as another commission member dies; meanwhile, Seikiei shows up in David Watanabe’s penthouse and sodomizes the dude’s Japanese mistress, forcing him to watch! Later Watanabe too is killed, with Brett not there in time to save him – however, in the meantime, Brett has saved the final two members of the commission, using an acupressure massage to ward off what he’s discovered is behind the murders: the legendary “touch of death.”

The story climaxes with a Brett/Seikiei match on top of Mount Tamplais at midnight; the Black Magician briefly kidnapped Rhea (she assures Brett that she wasn’t raped) to have her issue the summons to Brett. Instead of going straight into an action scene, the author instead doles out blocks of exposition, as Seikiei reveals that he was the son of David Watanabe’s partner, a man Watanabe murdered many years ago while he was bribing the commission. The two ninjas just stand there talking until they finally get to the fighting.

Again, this is nothing like the Meyers presentation of the character and his skills, with Brett basically flipping around and doing karate moves instead of decimating Seikiei with exotic weapons. He doesn’t even dispatch the villain in a novel way, instead thrusting himself and Seikiei off the mountain and grabbing hold of his sword (which he’s wedged into the earth) at the last second, to dangle there as Seikiei plunges to his death on the rocks hundreds of feet below. And that’s that; Brett happily returns home to Rhea, telling Lt. Wright it’s all “finally over.”

Like I said, this mystery author isn’t bad when it comes to pulp writing. The action scenes are pretty well done, usually featuring Seikiei taking out his opponents before they can even blink. The author retains his fondness for having characters employ everyday items in deadly ways, most notably when Seikiei takes out a cordon of police with nothing more than coins, burying them in their foreheads with a savage flick of his wrist. The author also incorporates a supernatural bent with the revelation that Seikiei can even spit fire out of his mouth, something depicted on the plot-faithful cover.

Also the dialog is good, with colorful cursing from the various cops. A downside is the author’s tendency to spin wheels with repetition, again usually via dialog, and also the fact that his version of Brett Wallace sort of comes off like a well-dressed flake who seems to enjoy drinking Perrier a little too much. In this author’s hands, the series loses the savagery it has under Meyers’s authorship, so I have to say I still prefer that author’s contributions.

Ninja Master #4: Million-Dollar Massacre

Ninja Master #4: Million-Dollar Massacre, by Wade Barker
May, 1982  Warner Books

Ric Meyers returns to the Ninja Master series with an installment that isn’t as great as his first one, but it’s still pretty good – at least, once our author has remembered that he’s writing a bloody piece of ninjasploitation pulp. Before that Million-Dollar Massacre loses its footing in a sort of padded-out Yojimbo riff, with hero Brett Wallace posing undercover as an underworld hitman.

My understanding of this volume is that, like Mountain Of Fear, Meyers was brought into the fold once the author of the first volume (apparently some dude named Stephen Smoke) turned in a manuscript that was deemed subpar by Warner Books. Since the title, cover, and back cover copy had all been devised, Meyers was required to stick to them. But whereas the similar situation he’d been presented with in Mountain Of Fear, with its redneck kingdom of sadists, still allowed Meyers to deliver a story more in line with his natural talents, the one Smoke came up with for Million-Dollar Massacre was a little more involved.

Basically, Smoke had it that in this installment Brett Wallace would infiltrate the Atlantic City underworld as a roving hitman, playing one godfather against another. So Meyers had to follow suit with his story, and the shame of it is that the majority of Million-Dollar Massacre reads like it could’ve been an installment of any other series. There’s no ninja stuff to it, and Meyers vents his frustrations with this setup through Brett himself, who toward the end of the novel basically says to hell with it and goes back to being the ninja master he is, the whole undercover angle be damned.

The novel still opens with a sadistic bang, as we meet a young Atlantic City prostitute named Vicki as she’s “entertaining” a gun-wielding john. Vicki assumes it’s just this guy’s quirk, as the bordello she works for, The Shop, caters specifically to people into bondage and the like. This is a very disquieting scene to say the least. In his previous installment Meyers proved himself an author unafraid to venture into full-on exploitation and sleaze, and boy he does so here, with the “john” screwing Vicki and then telling her he plans to kill her.

Meanwhile, in the span of just a few pages, Meyers has gotten us to care for this character Vicki, such that her terrible death – which calls to mind the similarly-horrific end another prostitute met, in Manning Lee Stokes's novel Corporate Hooker, Inc. – really jars us. It’s way over the top, with the john, who turns out to be a hitman hired to kill off everyone in The Shop, inserting his revolver in a certain part of the poor girl’s anatomy and pulling the trigger. And Meyers does not fade to black here, with the ensuing gore copiously described.

And humorously enough, hero Brett Wallace shows up…like two seconds after the girl is dead!! We’re told later that he had trouble sneaking into The Shop, but still…you can’t help but wonder if poor Vicki might’ve survived if Brett had left home just a few seconds earlier. And it’s made even worse by the later revelation that Brett’s here in Atlantic City for the specific purpose of saving Vicki! Hired by the girl’s mother in San Francisco, Brett has come here to Jersey to find her and bring her home.

Instead he finds her mauled corpse, and thus Brett’s mission of mercy becomes one of vengeance. He promptly goes about dishing this out, and it’s that patented Ric Meyers Ninja Master vengeance you know and demand, with Brett truly making the bastards pay. In particular Vicki’s murderer, who gets his balls kicked off by the Ninja Master before finally meeting his maker. This occurs after another harrowing moment, where the killer has discovered that Vicki had a baby, one lying in a crib up in The Shop’s attic; Meyers toys with us, making us think the sadist is about to kill the baby, too, before Brett intervenes.

Brett has “plans” for Vicki’s daughter, but Meyers doesn’t share them with us until the final pages. Meanwhile he decides to go undercover to find out who exactly ordered the massacre of The Shop – every single person has been killed, gangland style. Here the novel sort of sets into a rut. First Brett hires a hitman named Stillman to kill top Atlantic City don George Arrow, but instead Brett himself kills the hitman just as the dude is about to kill Arrow. It’s all an elaborate ruse so Brett can thrust himself into Arrow’s world as an important hitman himself.

Here begins the Yojimbo stuff. Posing as “Shack Sullivan,” Brett ventures about on various assassination missions for Arrow. But instead of killing his victims, Brett instead infiltrates their security and offers his services to them. Arrow’s first job has Brett going off to kill Arcudi, owner of yet another whorehouse. After screwing one of the hookers in a nondescriptive sequence, Brett sneaks around the place, only to discover that Arcudi is not only a woman…but she’s also Arrow’s daughter!

While this is certainly intriguing, the problem is that already Meyers’s storyline for Million-Dollar Massacre has been undermined. Brett decided to go undercover to find out who ordered the massacre at The Shop, and he finds out a few pages later that it was George Arrow. But instead of killing the dude outright, Brett instead continues with his undercover shenanigans. This is all quite puzzling for the reader. To Meyers’s credit, he does eventually explain why (long story short, Brett wants to collect payment for his fake hits into a savings account for Vicki’s daughter), but he waits until the very end to do so.

This means that the reader spends most of the novel wondering why Brett Wallace doesn’t unleash his ninja skills on George Arrow and his minions. That’s not to say the novel isn’t fun. Indeed, it’s kind of cool how Brett uses his ninja skills to keep his targets alive. Meyers is smart in that he works in this angle where Brett gradually realizes he’s fooling himself with all these charades; Brett is a ninja, an assassin, and his purpose in life is to kill his enemies, not to use trickery to play one against the other.

Only when Brett is nearly killed himself, by upstart mob boss John Testi (who has a fake right arm with a gun built in it), does Brett realize the error of his thinking. From thence forth he drops the “Shack Sullivan” guise, pulls out his ninja costume, sharpens his swords, and goes on a killing spree. The final quarter of Million-Dollar Massacre is an endless action sequence, filled with the severed organs and gory bloodsprays of Mountain Of Fear, and again makes the reader wish the Cannon Group or some other production company had bought the rights and made a movie of this series back in the ‘80s.

The stuff before this is only marginally entertaining, mostly comrpised of Brett sneaking into this or that establishment in order to kill his latest victim, but instead spiriting the person away and offering him or her his services. The graphic content of the novel’s opening sequence is all but dropped, with even the hooker-sex Brett enjoys given cursory description. I bring this part up again only so as to mention how Remo Williams Brett is in the lovin’ department, so hyper-skilled that he breaks through the “professional façade” of a working girl.

But really, in Meyers’s skilled hands Ninja Master basically is a variant of The Destroyer, only with a ninja overlay and lots more gore. In fact, whereas the action scenes are generally tossed off in that earlier series, Meyers devotes his full attention to them here, so that the reader feels every slice of Brett’s blade. Meyers also imbues the books with an on-the-level vibe; in other words, this series, thankfully, doesn’t have the satirical nature of The Destroyer. That being said, Meyers himself wrote a few installments of The Destroyer in the late ‘70s, and one of these days I’ll check them out.

Anyway, the finale. After Arrow tells “Shack” to meet him late one night at the Million Dollar Pier, Brett suits up in his ninja gi and lays in wait. On his way into the place his senses, which are almost supernaturally developed, inform him that there are people lying about in ambush. Due to this he’s able to avoid the conflagration of gunfire which erupts from the silent bumper-cars around him. Here begins an action scene that will go on to the last page.

First Brett takes on the gunmen, hacking and slashing with his swords. After he’s killed all of them, he’s assailed by a helicopter that comes out of nowhere, a gunner in the passenger seat shooting at him with a sniper rifle. Proving his superhuman powers once again, Brett not only kills the sniper, but also crashes the helicopter! But his ambushers aren’t totally gone yet; after walking from the burning ‘copter, Brett’s almost ran over by a horde of limousines, which have been sitting silently off of the pier.

Worse yet, each limo bears a shotgun-wielding goon, and Brett’s shoulder is shredded by an errant blast. Once he’s hacked apart every single one of these guys, Brett limps for Arrow’s casino, where the don and John Testi are supposed to be having a face-to-face. Finding the casino security guards all murdered, Brett takes up the uniform of one of them and continues his battle, dazed and bleeding, against a group of ski-masked assassins.

It all culminates in Testi’s headquarters, where Brett finally determines who was behind the huge ambush – Arcudi herself, along with some barely-mentioned female character named Tamara, who we met for like one sentence early in the novel, where she was introduced as Arrow’s girlfriend. Despite the brevity of Tamara’s entrance, her exit is friggin grand, as Brett punches through her skull and into her brain!

Testi has a concrete room, from which all air can be sucked; this is where Brett almost died, earlier in the novel, caught unaware by Testi. When Arcudi orders him at gunpoint into the chamber at the novel’s end, she snidely assumes Brett won’t last a few seconds. Still, she gives him several moments in there. When later she goes in to look at Brett’s peaceful “corpse,” Meyers delivers yet another memorable moment, a veritable Friday The 13th-esque bit of schlock shock where Brett’s eyes pop open as Arcudi’s kneeling over her, and his hands go for her throat.

And with that Million-Dollar Masacre ends, and it’s a hell of an ending, an awesome cap-off from the previous fifty or so pages of mayhem. It’s also a sterling reminder of the insanity Ric Meyers is capable of, and makes one wish the rest of the novel had been up to the same caliber.

It appears that Meyers was able to come up with his own plots and storylines in his next two installments (volumes 6 and 8), so here’s hoping they will be more like it.