Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast (second review)

Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast, by Dean Ballenger

October, 1973  Manor Books

I’ve been meaning to re-read this first volume of Gannon for many years; my original review of Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast was one of the first posts on the blog, way back in July of 2010. Sixteen years later, I can only say that Blood For Breakfast, aka Meet Gannon per the cover, no longer seems as outrageous to me. This is yet another testament to how reading men’s adventure novels will eventually rot your brain. 

For one, I don’t think it registered on me last time that hero Mike Gannon, most often referred to as a “tiger,” never even kills anyone in the book…save for one guy at the very end, but given that Gannon and the guy are struggling for possession of a gun, it could be that the other guy shoots himself accidentally. Instead, Gannon “merely” beats and maims his opponents…and here indeed is where the book is still outrageous, if only for the dark humor Dean Ballenger brings to the gore. 

Speaking of Ballenger, an interesting thing about the Gannon books is how little they come across like his previous work. Many years ago I also reviewed a few men’s adventure magazine stories Ballenger published in the 1960s; the narrative style in Blood For Breakfast is not at all like them…it’s more of a perverted, funhouse take on Spillane, or hardboiled pulp in general. 

Perhaps the biggest difference between this reading and my first back in 2010 is that I now see how similar Blood For Breakfast is to the early volumes of The Butcher, particularly those written by James Dockery. My favorite recurring bit in The Butcher is the opening of each volume, in which a memorably-colorful Mafia goon tries to kill Bucher and finds out Bucher is impossible to kill. Well, the entirety of Blood For Breakfast reads almost exactly like one of those sequences. 

There is no question in my mind that Dean Ballenger was inspired by The Butcher. Everything, from the goofy syntax his underworld characters speak in to their bizarre names, like for example “Rhino Rogers,” could come right out of a James Dockery novel. But whereas The Butcher ultimately heads off into a globe-trotting adventure each volume, Gannon is a proud working-class stiff and stays in the gutters of Cleveland. And by the way, this similarity with The Butcher is something James Reasoner noted in his 2008 review of Gannon #1, so he was way ahead of me! 

Another book Blood For Breakfast has much in common with is the superior (and equally rare) Bronson: Blind Rage. That novel too featured a hero pushed to sadistic lengths to avenge a loved one who had been wronged by the rich and powerful. Both Gannon and Bronson find themselves up against wealthy miscreants who literally get away with murder due to their fancy lawyers, and thus the two men must take gory justice into their own hands. 

Manor Books leaned hard into this setup, with future volumes dubbing Mike Gannon a “Robin Hood” who looked out for the poor. Ballenger, who even writes the third-person narrative in the same gutter-view syntax that his underworld figures speak in, takes rich people to the coals often and frequently in Blood For Breakfast, likely envisioning how his blue-collar readers will pump their fists in agreement. In other words the class divide is very much played up, and it’s very black and white: the average stiff must suffer and follow the law, while the rich get away with rape and murder and own the law. 

I still think it’s interesting that we are specifically told that Mike Gannon did not serve in a war, which goes against the grain of the typical men’s adventure protagonist of the era. While Gannon did serve in the military, it was between Korea and Vietnam, though we’re told he “saw some action” in off-the-books operations. His military background isn’t much dwelt on. Rather, Gannon’s current job is: despite only being 31, Gannon has worked his way up to being the chief security officer at a shipyards in Seattle, where he’s really learned to kick some shit; another thing I’d fogotten in the past 16 years since I last read this book is that Gannon’s colleague at the shipyards is the person who gives Gannon his “spiked knucks,” even warning Gannon that the things are so sharp that they can “shear off ears.” Gannon will prove this a few times in the course of the book. 

Gannon was born and raised in Cleveland, which is where the entirety of Blood For Breakfast occurs. Those from the area looking for a topical view of the city in the early ‘70s won’t find much; Gannon #1 takes place in dingy bars (or, in the weird vernacular of the book, “happy stores”), dingy restaurants, and dingy houses, plus a long sequence where Gannon strangely enough finds himself trapped on a boat as it drifts along Lake Erie. 

Ballenger begins with an action scene – Gannon coming back to his motel to find a trio of hoods waiting for him – and then goes back to tell the story. Long story short, Gannon is back in Cleveland due to “poor little raped Sandra,” ie Gannon’s 15 year-old sister, who was raped by a pair of college-age punks named Reese and Hobbs. A few witnesses came across the raped and bleeding girl on the roadside where the punks dropped her after raping her, and thus Reese and Hobbs for sure looked to be serving time in the upcoming trial…but now suddenly the witnesses have changed their stories, and Gannon suspects foul play. 

He leaves Seattle to go back home, and Blood For Breakfast is also unusual for a men’s adventure novel in that Gannon’s father factors into the story, but Bud Gannon doesn’t have much in the way of dialog or narrative space. Mostly he just argues with his son, thinking that Mike is imagining things. Gannon’s mother is also present, but humorously she doesn’t have any dialog. Same goes, surprisingly enough, for Sandra, who says nothing for the majority of the novel, Ballenger treating her like the Maguffin she is, even though she is the one who was raped and beaten by the punks. 

No, the focus is squarely on Gannon, who slips on his spiked knucks and goes around Cleveland beating and maiming the goons hired by Reese’s father, a wealthy bigshot who is running for Governor. Gannon, trying not to skirt the law, refrains from killing anyone, even though he carries a .38 with him. But instead of killing, he beats, and sadistically so; there is a ton of wonderfully dark humor throughout Blood For Breakfast, particularly the snappy rapport between Gannon and the grizzled cop who always comes around to “clean up Gannon’s mess.” 

The violence is raw and brutal, but Ballenger doesn’t dwell on the maimings. The back cover warns off squeamish readers, and Ballenger certainly lives up to expectations: Gannon “wrecks faces” with his spiked brass knuckles, lopping off ears and noses and disfiguring the goons who try to get the better of him. He also has a fondness for “stomping in the pumps,” ie kicking someone in the balls; there is a bizarre vernacular throughout the novel that almost attains the level a grimy American cousin of Anthony Burgess. 

But while the violence is colorfully and gorily described in a handful of sentences, the same cannot be said of the surprisingly-frequent sex scenes; all of them occur off-page, and Ballenger doesn’t even exploit the ample charms of the female characters. Gannon picks up three women in the course of the novel, but in each case we are only told how Gannon feels the morning after, or we get off-hand mentions that the girl “knew how to screw.” 

Gannon also isn’t very bright, but then his is a cunning street wisdom. Two of the girls try to get the better of him; the first selling him out and the second being a “pussy trap” that Gannon quickly falls for. Not to worry, though, as Gannon will eventually get his girl. Humorously, we are frequently told that the third girl, a waitress in a dive, is not pretty, but she’s there for the taking, so Gannon humps her a few times because he doesn’t feel like scoring a new chick! 

There is a surprising amount of padding for a book that runs only 190 big-print pages. There are also a lot of plot errors that are expected of Manor Books. The main one being: Gannon (which is to say Ballenger) focuses solely on bigshot Reese, the father of one of the rapists…but the other rapist, Hobbs, doesn’t even factor into the book, and nor does his father – even though it’s established from the beginning that both families are wealthy and connected. No, Hobbs is completely forgotten…there’s a part toward the very end, where Gannon is getting his final revenge on the elder Reese, and only then does Gannon think of Hobbs, but he basically says to hell with it. One suspects this is Ballenger himself explaining the error to his readers…but then one also wonders why Ballenger had it as two rapists. He could’ve just removed Hobbs entirely and the book wouldn’t have changed. 

What makes it even odder is that there’s a long, but certainly memorable, part in the final third where Gannon hires a pair of thugs to beat and maim the rich lawyers who got the two rapists off in court. (Okay, the last half of that sentence sounded strange.) While it is darkly humorous – and certainly violent, with ears getting ripped off and testicles getting smashed in as the two thugs trade maiming techniques – the scene could have easily been replaced with Gannon getting revenge on Hobbs. As it is, these two thugs have nothing to do with the rest of the book. 

There’s also a puzzling and long part where Gannon gets trapped on a yacht with one of his female conquests, a pair of maimed goons tied up below decks. Neither Gannon nor the girl know how to handle a yacht, so they are trapped on it as it lazily goes down the river. Ballenger does this for the sake of the plot, so Gannon can’t be there when the trial happens and “poor little raped Sandra” is fed to the wolves by witnesses who have been bought out, but still it comes off as a puzzling interlude that makes his hero seem incompetent. 

Otherwise, Blood For Breakfast moves at a rapid clip, and Ballenger doesn’t waste our time with a lot of subplot or subtext. It’s not that kind of book. Mike Gannon is a “Tiger,” a 5 foot 8 scrapper who “look[s] like Burt Reynolds with a little early-day Mickey Rooney mixed in,” who quickly figures out that Reese has bought off witnesses and has hired goons to prevent his son from going to prison. There are a handful of parts where Gannon confronts the elder Reese in his office – indeed, the rapist kid himself barely factors into the novel – which includes more of Ballenger’s dark humor, particularly courtesy “the lesbian” who serves as Reese’s secretary. 

But Gannon’s chief foe in the novel is Rhino Rogers, a hulking stooge who first appears cradling a Thomspon submachine gun, which he accidentally blows away one of his own goons with, thanks to Gannon’s fast moving. Rhino keeps showing up to get the better of Gannon – Ballenger has his hero being caught unawares too many times for my liking – and it is not until the finale that he is permanently dealt with. 

It’s funny when you re-read a novel after a long interim and you see the stuff that stuck with you over the years. For me it was the guy who got blown up under the car in Blood For Breakfast. This is Spider, and his appearance occurs early in the book; Gannon catches him in the act of planting a bomb beneath his rental, and after a long dialog exchange – in which Spider lies that he was simply trying to break into Gannon’s car – Gannon orders Spider at gunpoint to get under there and take the bomb off. The explosion leaves a “gore-trail” of Spider’s brains on the pavement, and also seems to have inspired the uncredited cover art. 

In conclusion, Blood For Breakfast is more “sleazy hardboiled pulp for the ‘70s” than it is men’s adventure; the debt to Mickey Spillane is clear, even if Gannon isn’t a private eye. But with its focus on maiming and mutilation, it is more of a grindhouse take on ‘50s pulp, with an added layer concerning the class divide. As mentioned Manor played up on this, with the next two volumes featuring Gannon avenging more unfortunates against the wealthy…but still not getting his revenge on Hobbs! In fact, Blood For Breakfast ends so haphazardly that I wondered if Manor cut down Ballenger’s manuscript; Gannon goes off to “roll” the ugly waitress once he’s dealt with Reese, and the book hurriedly ends! 

So yes, I certainly enjoyed Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast on this second reading, with the caveat that it didn’t seem as outlandish to me now that I’ve read a steady diet of ‘70s pulp over the past several years. The biggest takeaway this time – which I didn’t realize the first time I read it – was how similar it was to The Butcher, with the difference being that Gannon doesn’t kill anyone. At least in this one. I can’t recall if he does in the next two volumes, but I will gradually find out, as I will be reading them again next.

Gannon #3: Blood Beast

Gannon #3: Blood Beast, by Dean Ballenger
No month stated, 1974  Manor Books

For Karen Bonner it was a terrifying night. Her first night in jail. But the worst part were the two dykes who tried to lesbian her.

Yes, friends, we are back in the crazed world of the Gannon series by Dean Ballenger, a man whose narrative style and syntax are so outrageous that he can even use nouns as verbs. Sadly this was the last of the series (so technically it could be considered a trilogy, I guess), but it’s a hell of a way to go – despite the fact that Blood Beast comes off like a clone of its two predecessors, it’s just as wild, violent, and mean. (The title, by the way, comes from Gannon, who refers to himself as a “blood beast.”)

Once again Gannon serves as a “Robin Hood,” taking on the rich fat-cats who exploit the working class. And once again, Gannon is almost a co-star in his own series; he isn’t called onto the scene until events are well underway, and there are many scenes where he just disappears. But again as in the previous two books, it’s not like Ballenger spins his wheels when Gannon isn’t around. As ever, Ballenger populates his tale with a cast of upper-class and lower-class oddballs who talk in a bizarre patois, like ‘30s gangsters mixed with truckdrivers.

The above-referenced Karen Bonner is the mark this time, set up to take a fall by her super-rich boss, Peter Hibbs. Reason being, Hibbs’s playboy son Brian is “vigorished” by Juice Ollman, a hood who extorts the kid for seventy-five thousand. Hibbs Jr goes to his dad, who sets up Karen Bonner, a gorgeous blonde who works in accounting who wouldn’t let Hibbs sleep with her. Hibbs has the books done up so it looks like Karen embezzled, and after a joke of a trial she’s sent to jail, where the aforementioned “lesbianing” takes place.

Karen’s dad, a working joe who can barely afford his mortgage, hears about Gannon and gives him a call. As in the past, when Gannon shows up his potential client feels underwhelmed; Ballenger reminds us that Gannon’s just a “little tiger” and doesn’t look anywhere as tough as he actually is. But one look in Gannon’s eyes and Karen’s dad knows he has found his man. Gannon as is his custom doesn’t want any money from Karen’s father; he’ll get his payment from the fat-cats and hoodlums he busts up.

Even though this novel takes place about two weeks after #2: Blood Fix, Gannon has apparently become a kung-fu master. This is mostly so Ballenger can throw in the occasional “donkey fist” or other martial arts term in the brawl scenes, but also so he can write things like “the kung-fu’d dude” in regards to the people Gannon beats up. Also worth noting is that for once Gannon doesn’t employ the spiked brass knuckles which he used so memorably in the previous books.

Gannon pays Karen’s bail and insists she live with him as Hibbs or the crooks will surely send some hoods after her; Karen could easily blow Hibbs’s entire story. It’s funny because, while Gannon feels sorrow for the shafting Karen was given, and her living with him is necessary to keep her alive, Gannon doesn’t let that sway him from planning to give the gorgeous lady a “shafting” of his own. There are many humorous scenes where Gannon, while reflecting on the current case, will segue into the “good thoughts” of how he will soon go back to his hotel to screw Karen…only thing is, Karen is probably the weakest female character yet in the series; she only has a few lines of dialog, and most of the time she’s either crying or freaking out over the corpses Gannon has just created.

And to be sure, Gannon once again creates a ton of corpses. I think Blood Beast has more action scenes than the previous books; there are many scenes of Gannon blowing away hoods with his Sten gun. There’s even a goofy scene where Gannon goes to Hibbs’s corporate office and threatens the guy; Hibbs calls in his security guards, one of whom is a psychopath, and a firefight ensues, complete with Hibbs himself leaning out of his own office window and blasting away at Gannon down in the parking lot!

Hibbs Jr and Sr are mostly forgettable, but Juice Ollman is another of those Ballenger-patented creeps who jumps off the page. He spends the entire novel trying to off Hibbs and Gannon, always failing. He does succeed with offing Hibbs Jr, though, and this is another of those unsettling but played for laugh scenes that Ballenger excels in, where Juice calls in his two best guys, a pair of sadists who hoist Brian Hibbs up on the rafters of an abandoned loft and take bets on how long he will live after they set him on fire – putting the flame to his exposed genitals, of course. (In fact, poor Peter Hibbs suffers the most in this tale; after getting screwed over by Juice he then gets his ears cut off, and later on gets his thumbs cut off!)

But the usual darkly comic sadism is in full effect, for one last ride…people get blown apart by Thompson subguns, shot in the face, set on fire, beaten to death. The action stuff is great, but had me wondering. The igenuity and determination people show after Gannon arrives on the scene makes their earlier reluctance questionable. What I mean is, Peter Hibbs spends the narrative trying to get Gannon killed, when meanwhile all he had to do was show this same determination at the beginning of the tale, and have Juice Ollman killed after he tried to extort Hibbs’s son. But I guess that’s missing the point.

It’s hard to relay the dark humor Ballenger so effectively doles out, in both the narrative and the dialog. And Once again his hero is an unflappable, hardcore bastard, not even fazed when a pair of would-be muggers get the jump on him – and, mind you, Gannon doesn’t have a weapon on him:

Gannon looked at Costigan. He had a Webley in his hand. With a silencer. Concealed by his attache case from anyone who might come into the lot.

“It’s not a healthy thing,” Gannon said, “laying a gun on people. It’s liable to get you dead.”

“Listen, wise ass, just drop that wallet!” Costigan said.

“You’re making the kinds of sounds,” Gannon said, saying it low but very hard, “that people make who are tired of this world. So rip off, stupids, while you still can!”

I love these books, they’re just a blast to read and Ballenger’s style is so unusual that, as I’ve said before, you don’t even mind how he tramples over ordinary grammatical and writing rules. But I wonder how much longer this series could’ve lasted. Ballenger makes no intimation that this is the last volume; like its predecessor, Blood Beast ends with Gannon planning to leave town posthaste, given that once again a lady (Karen herself) wants to become “Mrs. Gannon.”

I think it would’ve been tough for Ballenger to keep this up for more volumes. The story setup is too limited; how many times can you read about Gannon getting hired to clear the name of some poor sap who was screwed over by the rich? All of which is to say that I think it’s a good thing the Gannon series only ran for three volumes, giving us an undilluted blast of nutzoid violence that never grew stale.

Gannon #2: Blood Fix

Gannon #2: Blood Fix, by Dean Ballenger
January, 1974 Manor Books

It took me nearly a year to recuperate from the sadistic, brutal, and incredible first volume of the Gannon trilogy. Actually I've been meaning to read this second volume for quite a while, but I kept putting it off for other books. But this may have been for the best, as Ballenger's distinctive syntax and diction is probably best enjoyed infrequently -- reading these novels back-to-back would no doubt dillute their impact.

Hero Mike Gannon has now become a "Robin Hood" for the working-class stiff; this is exactly how Manor refers to him, which is funny because it's hard to imagine Robin Hood lopping off ears with spiked knuckles. But due to his ransacking of the corrupt upper-class in the first volume, Gannon is now seen as the go-to guy for blue-collar types who get screwed by the man. Such is the case with a guy in Kansas City who is set up by a millionaire named Thorpe; Thorpe wants to own the man's property so he can make a few more million off of its sale. Hence Thorpe sets the guy up on a phony rape charge, and further hires a stooge to kill the girl so it will appear that the man is both murderer and rapist. But Gannon arrives to save the day, and "the little tiger" wages war against Thorpe and his gang of thugs.

Gannon doesn't even appear on the scene until about 40 pages in -- but trust me, those initial 40 pages are as graphic and insane as anything in the first volume. In my review of Gannon #1 I mentioned the "Chandler goonspeak" every character employed; the same holds true here, with even the narration written the same way. If anything Ballenger has perfected the form with this second volume. It's odd in a way, as Ballenger commits every writing sin: he POV-hops with abandon, every character speaks exactly the same, and he even repeats many of the same phrases throughout. But hell, when the writing is this unusual, you don't really care. And it's addictive, too; pretty soon I found myself wanting to talk like these hoodlums: "Listen up, shit-shooter. Stop fritzing around and rip off, before you get scragged."

If Blood Fix was published today (that is, if it could find a publisher), it would either be heralded as the work of a genius or derided as the rantings of a sociopath. It is in every way as twisted as its predecessor. "Only" a few people die here, as compared to the mass deaths one may encounter in the average men's adventure novel, but each murder packs a wallop, again complete with mutilations via spiked knuckles or eviscerations/decapitations via Thompson submachine guns.

And once more Ballenger doesn't shirk on violence against women -- there are many uncomfortable scenes in which female characters are "stomped" by thugs, complete with graphic detail on the damage they incur before their horrifying deaths. What's worse is that these women -- blue-collar working girls the lot of them -- always scream stuff like "Don't kill me! Fuck me instead!" before getting killed. It's all like the literary equivalent of those ultra-creepy cover photos on the "men's detective" magazines of the '70s, which always showed a gorgeous woman in the process of being murdered. (Not only were those magazines very successful -- and plentiful -- but not-so-surprisingly they were found to be favored reading material of many serial killers, Ted Bundy among them.)

But here's the weird thing: Blood Fix is funny. I mean, really funny. Despite what I wrote in the paragraph above -- content that would turn off the average reader -- there is a definite tongue-in-cheek vibe here, one that isn't in the least subtle. This goes beyond the over-the-top nature of the book and its characters, but also includes recurring jokes and situations. For one, there's easy stuff like a running gag where hoods keep taking handfuls of expensive cigars from the humidor on Thorpe's desk, but there's also more elaborate stuff like when a pair of thugs, while laying in ambush, argue over if they can steal Gannon's wallet after killing him.

So I think it's safe to say that this is another of those instances of a writer just going as far out as he can in order to amuse both himself and his readers. And he succeeds on pretty much every level: the lurid stuff will offend the easily-offended and the outrageous stuff will tickle the most jaded of hearts. None of it is to be taken seriously. More evidence? One of the main villains, after being mauled and mutilated by Gannon, wants to die, and so goes for a gun. Gannon shoots him. "Goodbye, cocksuckers," the man says, and then dies.

I mean, I have no idea how Ballenger did it. As I say, he breaks pretty much every writing rule, but still comes out on top. Just like his "hero" Gannon does -- once again he "rolls" a few gorgeous gals who just throw themselves at him; in another funny bit Gannon realizes that one of them wants to become "Mrs. Gannon," and so clears town asap.

Anyway, Blood Fix is a blast from the first page to the last -- and that's the ding-dong truth!

Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast

Gannon #1: Blood For Breakfast, by Dean Ballenger

Manor Books, 1973

If you're not squeamish you won't want to miss this one!

Where to start?? Blood For Breakfast is one of the grimmest, bleakest, goriest, vilest, and misogynist books I've ever read. It's great!

The start of a three-volume series, this details a few weeks in the gutter-view life of Mike Gannon, a 31 year-old shitkicker who served in the military (missing both Korea and Vietnam though), saw some action around the world, and now works as a security officer. Gannon's sister is raped by two rich kids whose fathers now protect them from justice, so Gannon returns to the city to kick some shit. Mobsters, goons, college punks, gun molls, and other assorted pieces of riff-raff fall beneath his spiked brass knuckles or his savage karate chops.

Sure, the plot's standard, but the way Ballenger writes it... There's no way to truly replicate the dimestore Chandler goonspeak he's created here. Everyone talks the same way -- this super tough-guy chatter filled with brutal imagery that would stun a hardboiled private eye. (Choice line, from Gannon to a secratary -- one whom we're told, again and again, is a lesbian: "Get him on the phone or I'll kick your kotex up between your ears!") The gangsters, the gun molls who associate with them, the hard-living waitresses Gannon picks up (and "rolls"), even Gannon himself -- all of them talk in a fashion that reminds me of nothing so much as Fat Tony and his mobster goons on The Simpsons.

The problem with this novel, for me at least, is Gannon himself. No one but him is right, he barrels through his opponents without breaking a sweat, and even when he is captured he manages to turn the tables with ease. He has a violent streak which dwarfs even that of the so-called bad guys. He also has no problem with smacking women or chopping them in the throat.

Gannon straps on his spiked knuckles and delivers beatings which leave his victims mutilated for life -- and the narrative doesn't shy from the gore. In fact, this is one of the goriest books you'll come across, with mobsters blown up in car explosions, people shot in the face and hands, and ears chopped off as trophies. It's all as lurid as the '70s could get; even the sex scenes are grotesque, with Gannon the ladies man picking up women left and right, taking them back for a quick fuck, and then taking off.

This is a quick-moving piece of hardboiled crime fiction which will certainly leave an impression on you -- whether revulsion or slack-jawed disbelief (or both).