Yankee King Of The Islands

Yankee King Of The Islands, edited by Noah Sarlat

No month stated, 1963  Lancer Books

Another vintage Men’s Adventure Magazine anthology I picked up many years ago, Yankee King Of The Islands is credited to editor Noah Sarlat, whose name appeared on many such books at the time. Sarlatt was an editor at the Atlas Magazine line, and thus the stories collected here are taken from those magazines – with the caveat that we are not given the names of the magazines themselves, just the date of their original copyright. Another thing to note is that the cover – which I believe originally appeared on an issue of For Men Only – is misleading. The majority of the tales collected here occur in the 1800s; only two of them take place in WWII, and one other takes place in the 1950s. 

Another thing to note is that, unlike anthologies like Our Secret War Against Red China or Women With Guns, the stories here are more pseudo-factual, like actual news articles, than the narrative-driven fiction that was typical of the men’s mags. 

This unfortunately means that the stories are not as fun as the average men’s adventure yarn; at least they weren’t as fun for me. I like the escapist stories, and the ones here are too mired in history. There’s also much less of the female exploitation one generally encounters in the average men’s mag story; zero in the way of the sleaze that would eventually take over the mags, too. About the most we get is that a busty island native gal will “please” one of our heroes, and that’s it. 

The title story is up first: “David Whippey: Yankee King Of The Islands,” by Robert J. Levin and copyright 1958. This is one of the stories where we only learn rather late that the action is occuring in the early 1800s. It’s about a young American who ventures to the South Seas to get away from “the white man” and learn about the native culture first-hand. 

The story is also Avatar a few decades early. Whippey even undergoes a “test of the heart” where he has to endure various stages of a trial – walking over coals, chasing after the unmarried women as a sort of tribal mating right, and finally engaging a rival tribe in warfare. Here though we learn that this collection will lack the escapist vibe of the typical men’s adventure magazine story, as it’s all relayed in a dry tone – there’s zero in the way of the customary female exploitation, and Whippey’s native bride receives a scant few lines of text, none of it exploitative. 

Rather, the focus is on telling who Whippey was and how he became one with the natives on this South Seas island; it’s essentially a history story, with little in the way of the action and escapism the reader might expect. 

Next up is “32 Wives For The Captain,” credited to Robert J. Fuller and copyright 1958. This one at least takes place in contemporary times, but the story is so strangely written…essentially it’s the summary of a trial a woman named Charlotte Lemieux endured in France in 1951. So the tale is focused on what was said in the courtroom, again as if the story is a recounting of true events – something you’d read in a standard magazine, not something with a Nazi strapping a busty blonde to a torture device on the cover. 

Again, the narrative thrust is nonexistent as we are told, not shown, of the horrors poor Charlotte endured – she and her husband discovered a lost island in the South Seas, and were prompty taken captive by the inhabitants…her husband locked in a cage and forced to have sex (off-page) with all the women on the island. The women however were French, and long story short, Charlotte deduces that they were the in-bred descendants of a crashed ship of French whores that was lost at sea in the late 1800s – indeed, the titular captain refers to the man who sired all the ensuing generations, taken captive by the 1800s whores and impregnating 30-some of them. 

The wonderfully-titled “The Adventures of a Yankee Beach-Comber on Many-Bride Island” is next, credited to Leon Lazarus and copyrigth 1960. We’re back in historical times, the 1850s to be exact, and Captain Josiah Flagg is shocked one day when a nude young island woman washes up onto his ship. This one is more of a survival at sea tale, as the horny men onboard want the girl, but Flagg insists on keeping her in a room and nursing her to health; there’s even a part where they endure a long storm at sea. 

Then eventually they crash and Flagg is washed up on a deserted island where he lives for two years, eating seal meat and such, untill one day some natives from another island come by and take him away. Eventually Flagg hooks up with the chief’s daughter or somesuch, but again the girl is barely a presence in the story, and at the end she helps Flagg fake his death so he can be put on a boat and set out to sea and return to his own people. 

By far my favorite story in the collection is the next one: “The Amazing G.I. Who Took Three Head-Hunting Brides,” by Bill Wharton and copyright 1961 (it’s also the latest story in the collection). It concerns Geoffrey Hunter, a British soldier in the Sarawak Islands who leads a guerrilla band of native headhunters in attacks on “the Japs.” The titular brides, native beauties with “small, firm breasts” once again are incidental to the story; much more focus is placed on Hunter training the headhunters how to fight the Japanese. 

Curiously the story too approaches the vibe of a “real” piece of journalism, with a long climax in which we’re told of Hunter’s escapades post-war…how he decided to stay on the island, living with the headhunters, how he sent a detachment of them to handle the troubles in Malaysia some years later, and then ultimately how he died there in the early ‘50s. 

Perhaps one of the more unlikable protagonists in men’s adventure mag history follows, in “Pacific Girl Trader,” credited to George V. Jones and coyright 1960. Another “real history” piece (though I had to look the guy up to learn he did in fact exist), this one focuses on Nels Sorensen, a guy from Denmark who became a US citizen and is now the “lone white man with a native crew” in the South Seas. With the detail on how Sorensen was a deep sea diver with the US navy, I thought this was another contemporary yarn, but once again we have a late-in-the-story revelation that it’s actually in the 1880s. 

Sorensen makes his sleazy living in the South Seas, sailing to and fro and selling stuff to the natives…that is, when he isn’t kidnapping them and selling them into slavery. I knew I was in for an unusual sort of yarn when the story opened with Sorensen gamely watching a friendly tribe kill off some captured enemy and then eat them, and Sorensen helps himself to a chunk of thigh. From there he figures he could buy the captured women for a pittance, and he takes them onto his ship…where they “please” him, the book as ever not getting full-on sleaze, and then he sells them off. 

The crux of the story is more focused on Sorensen’s scheme to trick people into signing on for an expedition into the South Seas and then leading them into captivity while there, but the plan backfires and he’s sent to prison. But he escapes, and the rest of the story is about him trying to concoct various schemes to get back to the South Seas, including even setting himself up as a notable in early 1900s America. But all told the story is again delivered in that dry, journalistic tone, robbing it of the escapism of the average men’s adventure story. 

“Marooned In Paradise” is another one by Robert J. Fuller and copyright 1958. It’s another dry, pseudo-factual yarn, this one with the novel conceit that it features a Japanese protagonist: Akio, a Japanese navy man who is marooned in ’42 and washed up on a deserted island of Arabic people, and fell in love with a girl there, but managed to get off the island and now is consumed with finding it. 

The last tale is another historical yarn: “Jacky-Jacky: King Of Convict Women Island,” by Robert Irwin and copyright 1958. It’s the 1800s and the titular Jacky-Jacky is a notorious convict on the penal colony of Australia. This one has an opening that’s actually like the average men’s adventure mag story, with Jacky-Jacky making the moves on a busty waitress before discovering it’s an ambush. But from there we are back into the pseudo-reportage that sinks all the other stories here. 

Unusually, this one also has a bit of a social justice undertone, as Jacky-Jacky – another real person – rose to fame posthumously for his statements on the horrible life of the penal colony. Also, the “women island” of the title is such a non-event in the story that it made me chuckle: there’s a part late in the story where Jacky-Jacky is on an island prison where women are also kept, and we’re told that some of the other men make use of them, but Jacky-Jacky himself is too busy plotting escape. Mel Gibson could’ve done this one instead of Braveheart; at least his Australian accent would’ve made sense. 

And that’s it for Yankee King Of The Islands. Not the best introduction to men’s adventure magazine stories, but interesting in how it shows what paperback publishers of the day thought readers would be interested in.

Las Vegas Madam

Las Vegas Madam, by Matt Harding

No month stated, 1964  Domino/Lancer Books

While the spine and cover state “Domino Books,” the copyright page clarifies that this is a Lancer publication. So clearly Domino was the “adult” wing of Lancer, and that’s what we have here with Las Vegas Madam, with the usual caveat that this 60 year old book is not nearly as “adult” as it once was, and in reality the tale is more hardboiled comedy than it is outright sleaze. 

Also, the cover and title have absolutely nothing to do with the book’s plot. So once again I’d wager a guess that the good editors at Domino had a title and a cover, but their author – likely a house pseudonym – just did his own thing, only anemically catering to the general idea the editors requested. Of course this is all supposition, but I’m sticking with it. 

But boy, what a cover it is! Uncredited, though. In its own way this cover is as eye-catching as the cover on a contemporary “sleaze” paperback: Vice Row. But again, this cover – and the misleading back cover copy – implies that Las Vegas Madam is about a hotstuff blonde babe that runs a sort of hooker hotel in Vegas…something author Matt Harding, whoever he was, only caters to in the most minimal sense. 

As it turns out, the titular “madam” isn’t even a madam, but a college-aged beauty named Linda who has recently been willed a hotel called Bikini Beach in Vegas, which had been owned by a relative…all the girls who work there wear bikinis (including Linda herself), and our hero quickly deduces that most of the girls are selling it on the side, but Linda herself claims to be unaware of this and hell, Linda herself claims to be a virgin, so again, the book we get is not the book we are promised on the back cover. A common occurrence, really. 

So what is this breezy, 140+ page book really about? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s about a pro footballer named “Big” Mark Hale, or just “Mark” as he’s referred to in the narrative; he plays for the New York Comets, and the tale opens with Mark suffering a severe knee injury on the field which he’s afraid will keep him from playing next season. Humorously, there’s a dangling, never-resolved subplot here where a senator, who attended the same college as Mark, offers our hero a job looking into crime…but this is never followed up on. Almost makes me wonder if Mark Hale was conceived as a recurring character. Oh, and the senator is named Martin Stone…not that Martin Stone, however… 

At any rate, Mark hops in his Thunderbird and drives to Vegas for the dry heat to fix up his knee…but first he stops to bang the mother of one of his college pals. This is Jennie, a buxom 38 year old who married an older man who is now dead. Jennie is afraid her son, Tommy, has gotten in over his head with gambling in Vegas and might drop out of school, or something, and she wants Mark to look into it…but first she wants Mark. 

Our hero has long lusted after the full-breasted, long-legged beauty who is the mother of his best pal, and thus ensues a mostly off-page sex scene that leaves practically everything to the reader’s imagination. We do learn that Jennie is a “nymphomaniac” who tells Mark that “the eighth time” is the best, to which Mark responds, “Oh brother!” There’s also some stuff here about Puffy Lansing, a “homo” from Hollywood who apparently has a burlesque show in Vegas and who goes around with his own musclebound entourage…Jennie is afraid her son has fallen in with Puffy, and this is another thing she wants Mark to look into…all for five thousand bucks, money which Mark doesn’t want, anyway. 

So this turns out to be the plot of Las Vegas Madam, sort of. Actually, the novel is more focused on the bantering between Mark and the titular madam, who as mentioned isn’t even a madam, but a naïve gal with an incredible bod (always well displayed in a bikini) named Linda…who falls in love with Mark at first sight. The recurring gag here is that Linda wants Mark, but, being a virgin, she’s afraid to go all the way. 

This quickly becomes grating. Linda’s “pulchritude” is often noted (that the word “pulchritude” is used should tell you how sleazy this book actually is), and Mark often gets her in a state of undress, but she’s never able to commit…in many cases jumping out of bed and running away. In other words the book could just as easily – and more accurately – been titled “Las Vegas Tease.” 

Mark handles it well, taking cold showers and whatnot…humorously, midway through the book the author seems to remember this is supposed to be an adult novel, and he has a random girl show up, again from Mark’s college past, who has sex with him asap. This is Aggie, a notorious college slut or somesuch, and the author gets slightly more risque here, but again the novel is anemic even in comparison to what would be mainstream fiction in just a few years. 

The plot about Tommy and Puffy is most often forgotten; Mark will make periodic trips to the hotel where Puffy has a recurring show, but Puffy’s never there – again, the author just barely catering to the plot he’s apparently been given by the editors. Instead much more focus is placed on Linda following Mark around, telling him she loves him, and Mark wondering why he can’t stop thinking about her. 

There are periodic attempts at action, like when Mark is sapped from behind but can’t figure out if he was indeed sapped or if his knee just went out on him and he knocked himself out while falling. Later on Mark is shot at – right after boffing Jennie, who has come down to Vegas to follow up on him. Humorously, Matt Harding strives to make the book more risque as it goes along, with Jennie’s sudden appearance a facile way to have Mark get laid again, as Linda isn’t giving him the goods – a scene that features the humorous line, “[Mark] buried his head between the two twin mounds.” So either Jennie’s like that mutant-breasted chick from Total Recall, or Harding just didn’t bother editing his manuscript. 

I suspect the latter, as Las Vegas Madam becomes more nonsensical and typo-prone as it goes along. There’s a head-scratcher of an editing mistake on page 98; Mark is once again driving off from Linda, leaving her on the road…and then suddenly he’s sitting in a club and about to get in a fight with Puffy and his musclebound entourage. Puffy hasn’t even been introduced in the book yet, and this sequence is clearly intended to take place later in the book, but someone at Lancer dropped the ball in the rush to get the paperback out. 

There’s also a weird bit where we are suddenly in the perspective of Jennie, and also in the perspective of a scummy type of guy with the great name Slats Hannigan, but these sequences too are strange because otherwise Mark is our only protagonist. But Harding abruptly builds it up that Slats is in love with Jennie, and the author almost drunkenly ties this plot in with Puffy Lansing and Jennie’s missing son. 

Sensitive modern readers – as if they’d be reading this book in the first place – should steer clear of Las Vegas Madam. There is a lot of old-fashioned gay-bashing in the novel; Puffy, whose gender is constantly questioned (how prescient!), makes Mark’s skin crawl…there are many scenes where Mark can’t fathom how his college pal Tommy might have gone gay, and a recurring gag is that Mark just wants to know what gender Puffy really is…leading to a crazy finale where our “hero” pulls Puffy’s pants down and mocks his small size. Methinks “Big Mark Hale” might not realize he’s in the closet. 

All told, my assumption is that Las Vegas Madam was conceived as a sleazy hardboiled crime yarn about a titular madam running a hooker hotel, but instead author Matt Harding got roaring drunk and turned in a light-hearted screwball comedy about a football player meeting – and falling in love with – a super-stacked virgin in a bikini. And a lame crime subplot is mixed into this, but it goes nowhere and no one’s killed or even really hurt in the course of the book. 

And that’s it for Las Vegas Madam, a book I bought many years ago and have been meaning to read; a book that I thought would be about something else entirely, which just goes to prove how talented those paperback publishers of yore were – they could make any book sound good.

Women Of The Green Berets

 
Women Of The Green Berets, by Rand Michaels

No month stated, 1967  Lancer Books

I have to admit, I never would have thought of combining Robin Moore’s The Green Berets with Jacqueline Susann’s Valley Of The Dolls, but obscure author Rand Michaels thought of that very thing. Or perhaps it was publisher Lancer Books who came up with the genre mash-up and slapped a blurb on the back cover of Women Of The Green Berets, who knows. The important thing is that this paperback original of 223 pages does a fairly good job of juggling hellish ‘Nam battle sequences with soapy melodrama – the only problem is, there’s zero in the way of the exploitative stuff you might expect, with the novel ultimately coming off as rather anemic on the trash front. 

The novel also doesn’t really live up to its title, as it is more so concerned with the Green Berets themselves, instead of their women. Also, I was surprised that the entire novel is set in Vietnam; I assumed there would be stateside material with those lonely and sex-starved Green Beret women playing the field. Rather, there’s only one wife in the book, her name Evelyn, and she’s come to Saigon to see her husband, 27 year-old Captain Mike Colby. Otherwise we have a native woman who is involved with Ken Hubbard, another guy on Captain Mike’s force, and also a hotstuff doctor named Nina Field, who is involved with yet another of Captain Mike’s men, Dave Lawlor. And yes, “Captain Mike;” author Rand Michaels for the most part refers to all characters by their first names. 

It's Eveyln who serves as the main female protagonist, and Michaels takes her through hell over the course of the book. The plotting has you expecting that soap opera stuff, and what’s funny is the author seems to be catering to it…only to go in an entirely different direction. Long story short, Evelyn comes to Saigon to see Mike, but due to the war and all they’re unable to meet. Evelyn nearly gets picked up by another white guy here in Saigon on business, but he ultimately turns her down because as it turns out he is married, too, and wants to be faithful. So Evelyn then is determined to have some extramarital sex. She goes into a bar to get picked up, only to get drugged by yet another American here on business, one who thinks he’s accidentally killed Evelyn with an overdose, and thus orchestrates leaving her body to be found. As I say, the plotting is all over the place in this one. 

It only gets more frenzied, as it turns out Evelyn did not die of an overdose, just passed out. A kindly native kid takes her back to his home so she can change into clean clothes (the “faked death” orchestration entailed putting Evelyn’s “corpse” in a crashed car)…and then the kid’s dad comes downstairs, pulls Evelyn back up to his room, and rapes her all night! Actually, this does have a bit of a dark Jacqueline Susann vibe to it. Shockingly, this is I think the only sex scene in the entire novel, though its of course up to debate whether a rape scene even counts as a sex scene. Personally I’d say it doesn’t, but I’m only noting here because this is it so far as the sleazy stuff goes…and all of it occurs entirely off-page! 

So yes, folks, this is one of those curiously “dirty” books that isn’t dirty at all. Rather, it is as mentioned the war stuff that takes more of a focus in the narrative. Captain Mike can’t meet with Evelyn when she comes to Saigon because he’s been tasked with starting up a new base out in the ‘Nam hinterlands, and must put together an A Team to helm the base. So he spends the majority of the novel in the field fighting Charlie. Rand Michaels certainly has an understanding of the nightmarish life of an American soldier in Vietnam, with Mike and team alternately bored out of their wits or vastly outnumbered by an entrenched enemy. Michaels also has no qualms with killing off major characters in these battle sequences. 

Michaels also has no qualms with dropping potentially-interesting subplots. Nina Field, the hotstuff doctor who works the base and handles the injured GIs, has an early subplot that I thought was the most interesting thing in Women Of The Green Berets. She’s kidnapped early on, by the thugs who work for a native who is clearly wealthy, and taken to a place where a VC bigwig demands that Nina do plastic surgery to his injured face. Nina does so – and Rand Michaels displays some plastic surgery knowledge here, again giving the book the vibe of a Susann et al potboiler – but she also permanently disfigures the guy’s face with a “V” and a “C” on each cheek, so that he will be unable to hide his true nature. Nina manages to escape, and tells the military authorities…but nothing else is done with this. I envisioned a plotline of a guy with “VC” on his face coming after Nina for revenge, but it never happened. 

Instead, there is a lot of stuff about Mike and his crew out in the Vietnam jungle trying to get a base started while fending off frequent VC attacks. There is a definite air of defeatism to the battles, so this certainly isn’t a gung-ho combat novel. And yet, there’s no real violence, either. Mike and crew will “shoot down” VC and occasionally we’ll read of someone “blown to bits” by mortar or bomb traps. So this isn’t The Black Eagles, is what I’m saying, and is more of a prefigure of Michael Herr’s Dispatches, with the author managing to convey the nightmarishly surreal atmosphere of combat in ‘Nam. 

In this regard there’s a lot of material about Captain Mike and team trying to fortify the base while winning the hearts and minds of the natives. “Pacification” is the concept Mike keeps drilling into his team. This is an especially hard lesson for Dave Lawlor, sort of the “Animal Mother” of the group, for those of who have read Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers…or seen the film version, Full Metal Jacket (which pales in comparison to the source material). Even here, though, Rand drops potentially-cool subplots. There’s a part early on where Mike and team get some R&R in Saigon, and Lawlor goes out with a sexy native babe he’s fairly certain is a VC honey trap. He goes along with her, pretending ignorance, laughing to himself how she’s so clearly leading him into a trap…and ready to kill her VC pals with his bare hands. 

And the reader keeps waiting to get back to this section – in true potboiler style, Rand Michaels tells Women Of The Green Berets in a sort of snapshot style, jumping from character to character – and the reader is disappointed. Ultimately we do not see any of it happen; when finally Lawlor returns to the narrative, it’s from the perspective of Nina Field, and she has to mend the beaten-up Lawlor who is carried into her operating room. Only through dialog does a bloody but grinning Lawlor inform us that he did indeed kill those VC scum with his bare hands. Strange decisions like this ultimately sink Women Of The Green Berets; it’s like the author cannot fully commit to either a soapy melodrama or a violent war yarn. 

On that note, Mike and wife Evelyn handle the brunt of the melodrama stuff. They spend the majority of the novel separated, until briefly reconnecting during another of Mike’s infrequent R&Rs, late in the book – and here again all the lovin’ is off-page. The soapy stuff is all from Evelyn’s perspective, as after the rape she’s decided she will divorce Mike, due to shame or somesuch, but after a week together with Mike she apparently changes her mind. But Rand throws another plot curveball and things pan out much differently than Evelyn suspected – and the author doesn’t even bother to give us a resolution to this subplot, as the last we see of Evelyn she’s flying back home to America. 

Meanwhile Women Of The Green Berets ends on a big battle scene – we’ve already had a long sequence detailing a Khe Sahn-like siege the base endured – with the Green Berets withstanding a big VC attack. We get more “Animal Mother” stuff with Dave Lawlor cruelly toying with his prey before killing them, and also more on the hell of war with VC “kids” being gunned down in the crossfire, even after the American soldiers have let them go. And here Women Of The Green Berets comes to a close, the titular “women” long forgotten about and ultimately inconsequential to the narrative. All of which leads me to conclude that it was in fact Lancer Books that slapped this “The Green Berets meets Valley Of The Dolls” tag on the back cover, because as it turns out that is not the novel Rand Michaels actually delivers.

The Troubleshooter #2: The Black Hearts Murder

The Troubleshooter #2: The Black Hearts Murder, by Ellery Queen

No month stated, 1970  Lancer Books

An early attempt at packaging a mystery series like men’s adventure, The Troubleshooter only ran for 3 volumes and each volume was written by a different writer, though the series was credited to Ellery Queen. This second one was by Richard Deming, a veteran crime writer; searching the blog it looks like so far I’ve only reviewed some of his short stories in various ‘60s crime digests and also his Good Guys Wear Black novelization. Deming’s The Black Hearts Murder is pretty much the same as the other material of his I’ve read: a workmanlike mystery with not much pizzaz to it. If it is indicative of the other two volumes of Troubleshooter (the first by Gil Brewer and the third by Edward D. Hoch), then there’s no mystery why the series didn’t last. 

But then “mystery” pretty much sums up the vibe of the novel. The Troubleshooter is similar to later paperback mystery series like Hardy and Renegade Roe in how it is misleadingly packaged like gun-toting men’s adventure. In point of fact, titular Troubleshooter Mike McCall doesn’t even carry a gun! It’s interesting though that Lancer Books was already jumping on the men’s adventure series bandwagon; in that regard, The Troubleshooter must be one of the earliest instances of a publisher trying to follow the success of The Executioner…which only around 1970 was beginning to pick up steam. (Per Don Pendleton in his interview in A Study of Action-Adventure Fiction, it took a handful of years for The Executioner to become a successful series.) In fact, The Troubleshooter has all the hallmarks of a venture by book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel…and indeed the series setup is so similar to later Engel venture Chopper Cop that I wonder if Engel was inspired by this series. For, just like Terry Bunker in Chopper Cop, Mike McCall is a lone gun who reports directly to the Governor…but whereas Bunker’s boss is clearly identified as the Governor of California, McCall’s boss is the Governor of some never-identified state…which clearly seems to be California. 

Another similarity to an Engel venture is the slugline that The Troubleshooter focuses on “top-of-the-news” subjects; very similar to Engel’s concurrent Now Books For Today’s Readers pseudo-series of unrelated standalone novels. The hot topic covered in The Black Hearts Murder is, as the title and cover should inform you, the civil rights movement. Mike McCall, whose official title is The Assistant To The Governor For Special Affairs, is sent by Governor Holland to a city called Babury in this never-named state, where racial tensions are high. The novel is an interesting relic from an earlier era; McCall and Governor Holland are the even-headed rationalists who embrace progressivism so far as black people should have the same rights as white people. But also it is interesting that in this novel both sides of the debate are given equal weight, complete with the concern that the whites might riot – in other words, the racists are given equal voice on the public platform. It is indicative of the sea change of the past few decades that such a thing would be inconceivable today – and these are real racists, mind you, not because they merely disagree with the party line but because they are wholly against blacks having equal rights. Today of course the “racist” accusation is tossed around so much that it has lost all meaning, but The Black Hearts Murder is from an era when some white people really did march against civil rights and whatnot…don’t think you’ll find too many of those whites today, despite the media/government’s obsession with “white supremacy.” 

Deming doesn’t get too preachy; McCall’s position as mentioned is more rational than impassioned. His is the voice of reason as he confronts the various racists in Banbury…and “voice” is pretty much all Mike McCall uses in the book. That and his rugged good looks. For the most interesting thing about The Black Hearts Murder is that, even if it’s progressive in the race-relations arena, it is so backwards in the gender-relations department that Richard Deming would automatically be cancelled in today’s woke era. That is, if he could even get published. (Tocsin Press would take him!) McCall, who has an athletic build and rugged good looks, indulges so frequently in what is today called “the male gaze” that it’s actually humorous – twice in the book he so stares at good-looking young women that the women become uncomfortable. 

But only a little uncomfortable, that is, because both women end up throwing themselves at McCall. The novel is almost an exercise in wish-fulfillment, as literally every single person in Banbury has heard of “the famous Mike McCall,” and his name opens doors for him everywhere. And the women are all aware of McCall’s notoriety as a lady-killer…and are plumb eager to add themselves to his list. The first is an auburn-tressed beauty who works as a secretary, and Deming has no issues with filling in incidental background detail about McCall; it would be interesting to see how this jibes with the other two authors who worked on the series. Anyway, Deming’s McCall has a thing for auburn hair, even though “his mother did not have auburn hair.” This was one of the more peculiar Freudian slips I’ve ever encountered in a book…like what the hell does McCall’s mother have to do with his longtime attraction to auburn-haired women? 

McCall’s second conquest is a blonde-haired mega-babe who happens to be a cop. When McCall oggles her it’s another unintentionally humorous bit, as he flat-out tells her she’s too hot to be a cop. And of course, later in the novel when the lady’s cop-skills might prove necessary, she instead turns to McCall for help…later admitting that she’s “mostly just a secretary” at the precinct. McCall’s rugged virility appears to be a big gimmick with the series, and I assume is just as focused on in the volumes by Brewer and Hoch. Also he manages to score with both women, with the novel ending on the certainty that he’s about to score with a third – and these are literally the only three single women in the entire novel, so McCall gets them all. But it must be noted that Deming is very much a “fade to black” author. In each case the chapter ends pre-boink, usually with the sentence, “McCall spent the night there.” And then next chapter will open the next morning and McCall’s saying goodbye to the babe to head off onto the next lead in the case. 

Unfortunately The Black Hearts Murder is a dud when it comes to the suspense angle as well. McCall basically just drives around Banbury and engages various characters in conversation. The setup is that Harlan James, the leader of a militant black movement called The Black Hearts, has been indicted by a racist district attorney, but James didn’t show up for his court date. James’s disappearance and the complicity, or lack thereof, of his fellow Black Hearts takes up the first half of the novel, and it’s a slow-grind of boredom. But then suddenly on page 94 something happens – another of Banbury’s racist political figures, who intends to launch a national movement, is assassinated during a rally…by a black man dressed all in black and wearing a domino mask. This is the part where Beth, the hotstuff lady cop, just goes into panic mode and McCall is the only one who gives the assassin chase. 

I mentioned that McCall doesn’t carry a gun. About the only thing he has weapon-wise is his training in judo, which he uses sporadically in the text. He isn’t the most capable of heroes, though, as the novel contains two separate scenes in which McCall is captured, put in a car, and driven off to his death. This is what I mean about Deming’s workmanlike plotting; the author himself seems to be bored with it all. The first “being driven off to his death” scene is the highlight of the novel, as the black man in the domino mask captures McCall and drives him out to a desolate part of the countryside. Here the man holds a pistol on McCall and has him lug a tire chain down to a river, so as to drown him. But McCall manages to escape, leading to a tense chase – pretty much the only tense moment in the entirety of The Black Hearts Murder. 

Otherwise the novel is just a lot of talking and time-killing, as we’re told incidental details like McCall going back to his hotel room and eating and brushing his teeth. I mean it’s all just so mundane. And it’s also funny that, despite civil rights being the subject of the novel, there are hardly any black characters in it. During the course of his investigation McCall meets a few of the Black Hearts, including Harlan James’s wife, but the black characters are mostly on the periphery, with more time spent on the various Banbury government officials who are aligned against the Black Hearts. There’s also a lot of stuff about a local radio station that plays messages Harlan James has left for them. The most puzzling thing is why Mike McCall’s character even exists; he demonstrates nothing special about himself in this particular installment, and his even-headed manner could have been supplied by any number of the governor’s functionaries. 

This lack of anything special extends to The Troubleshooter itself, so if The Black Hearts Murder reflects the vibe of the other two installments, it’s not suprising that the series never caught on. It seems as if Lancer wanted to jump on the action-series bandwagon but at the same time didn’t want to fully commit to it. And on that note, it also seems that Lancer concurrently published The Troubleshooter through its Magnum Books imprint, only minus the volume numbers on the covers, which would indicate they weren’t exactly sure what sort of series they wanted The Troubleshooter to be.

President’s Agent (Bart Gould #1)

President’s Agent, by Joseph Hilton

No month stated, 1963  Lancer Books

Look everyone, yet another ‘60s spy series that tried to tap into the success of James Bond! But judging from the publication date, Bart Gould was one of the first on the bandwagon, coming out a year earlier than even the long-running Nick Carter: Killmaster. A big thanks to the Spy Guys And Gals site, which clears up the mystery of authorship on Bart Gould; this first volume was written by (and credited to) an author named Joseph Hilton, but the remaining seven volumes were written by a variety of authors and credited to the house name “Joseph Milton.”* 

This initial volume was written by Joseph Hilton, then, and it looks like he returned for one more installment: Baron Sinister, which was the fifth volume of the series and published in 1965. His writing is fast-moving and economical and brings to mind the work of J.E. MacDonnell in the similar ‘60s spy series Mark Hood. And, like Mark Hood, this series starts off on relatively realistic ground before getting into more fantastical realms (juding from the back cover synopses of later volumes, Bart Gould doesn’t seem to get as fantastical as Mark Hood, though). Hilton does a fine job of introducing us to the titular character and bringing to life the settings and the characters, and also doles out more action than I expected in the final quarter, including gunplay. Unlike Mark Hood and other swinging ‘60s spies (ie Jonas Wilde), Bart Gould doesn’t just rely on his martial arts skills and is fine with blowing off the faces of his enemies. 

An also unlike those other characters, Gould is not a secret agent when we meet him. Rather, he’s an international playboy type, one with a varied background (race car driving, some military service, big game hunting, etc). Hilton doesn’t dwell on Gould’s backstory, which is one of the things I dig about vintage pulp; he just leaves it that Gould’s been around the world – even getting a Medal of Honor at one point – and now at 36 he’s bored with it all. He grew up in wealth and now lives in a luxurious pad near Washington, DC; when we meet him one of his servants is giving him a rubdown after a quick boxing match. That night Gould gets a call from a former Senator named Titus Banning, an older man who now works in an unstated capacity for “the new President.” Banning has some business he wants to discuss with Gould. 

The never-named “new President” is clearly John F. Kennedy, and likely President’s Agent was written in 1962: he’s nine years older than Bart Gould, and also was sort of a mentor to Gould when they both were kids in Cape Cod. The President even makes an appearance in the text, but he’s not described and is presented more as dashing figure from myth, someone everyone looks up to regardless of partisan politics. He personally has tasked Titus Banning with summoning Gould and offering him this particular job: to go down to San Barrios, a fictional Caribbean country, and look into a plot that might entail sending a bunch of uniformed troops across the border into the US as a veritable invading army. 

Gould’s offered the assignment not only because he knows the President – and also because the President is aware of Gould’s military record and all-around adventuring skills – but also because he owns land in San Barrios. As mentioned Gould comes from wealth, and has inherited land down there, so it makes for perfect cover for him to abruptly visit the country. So then, Bart Gould in President’s Agent isn’t your typical secret agent; he has no training, and has literally been sent on the job by the President himself, mostly due to their past friendship. Also it’s interesting to note that Gould is a lot more hot-tempered than your average ‘60s spy protagonist, with none of the calm, cool, professionalism of someone like James Bond. 

Hilton brings to life the tropical paradise that is San Barrios, with Gould going about the capitol city and trying to find out what happened to the Foreign Service ambassador here – whom we already know has been killed, thanks to a suspenseful opening which features a memorable villain (an oversized muscular dwarf who serves as henchman for the novel’s main villain). Action is not really frequent, but at least it’s not a slow-moving dirge like another ‘60s spy paperback set in Latin America: The Survivor. Gould isn’t even that focused on the local beauties, though he “promises himself” he’ll find the time for some of them as he flies into San Barrios. As it turns out, Bart Gould won’t get lucky until novel’s end. 

Hilton seems to be taking us into that direction early on; Gould on the street is approached by a sexy young lady (whose name turns out to be Paquita), but she’s just a cover for some guy who tries to shove a knife in Gould’s back. Our hero defends himself, gets the knife, but both the attacker and Paquita take off. This leads into more of the vibe of a private eye yarn, as Gould hooks up with a local contact and goes on the hunt for Paquita, to find out who hired her. Eventually Hilton works in a plot featuring a local commie rabble-rouser, and Paquita’s boyfriend is involved with this guy’s group. All this turns out to be a red herring, as Gould ultimately learns that the threat comes from a German named Norden who owns the land near Gould’s own, and indeed is looking to take over Gould’s land. (How very German!) 

An interesting thing about President’s Agent is that, while there isn’t much in the way of action, it still moves along very quickly, and holds the reader’s interest. The action really doesn’t come along until Gould is captured by Norden and breaks free, escaping across the camp of Norden’s soldiers. It’s a thrilling sequence, but I did feel that Hilton didn’t suitably exploit some of his characters. For example the muscular dwarf, with the deformed face; he’s much built up, but Gould dispenses of him rather perfunctorily. And in fact Gould’s first kill isn’t until page 119. However, this escape sequence features more action than many other ‘60s spy novels, with Gould blasting away with a .45 and other appropriated weapons. He also manages to shoot a helicopter out of the sky at novel’s end – one that happens to be carrying the traitorous wife of an American dignitary, indicating that Bart Gould doesn’t let things like gender get in the way of completing an assignment. 

And speaking of which, Gould finally finds the time for one of those native beauties once the job’s been completed, the act occuring well off-page given the publication date…and for that matter, Hilton doesn’t much exploit his female characters. He does set up another volume, with Titus Banning informing Gould of a potential assignment in Austria – that is, after the President and Gould have gotten to play a little tennis. I liked this “personal agent” setup for the series and will be curious to see if it continues into the next volumes, whether they stick with the “new President” angle or change it given Kennedy’s assassination. 

*Lancer Books attempted to clear up the confusion, though; I have the third printing of President’s Agent, dated 1967, and the cover credits the book to “Joseph Milton,” not Joseph Hilton. The ’67 reprint date is interesting, given that the last volume of the series, The Death Makers, was published in 1966. Maybe Lancer was trying to drum up enthusiasm for the series to see if more volumes were warranted? Here’s the cover of my reprint edition:

Infinity Five

Infinity Five, edited by Robert Hoskins

No month stated, 1973  Lancer Books

This was the fifth and final Infinity collection Robert Hoskins edited; I don’t have the others, but it’s my understanding they all were along the same lines: forays into the “new wave” science fiction that was en vogue at the time. In other words, no space opera or pulp or anything, but lots of drugs and sex and four-letter words, the stories generally taking place in some perverted future (which is now the past in most cases). It doesn’t look like these five volumes have much clout in the sci-fi world – I mean you don’t see them namedropped like Ellison’s Dangerous Visions books – but my copy was so inexpensive I figured I had nothing to lose. 

Overall the stories are fairly weak; it seems that the various authors were so excited about the prospect of having curse words and “dirty stuff” in a sci-fi story that they forgot about little things like plot and character. Also too many of the stories veer into satire, trading on spoofy extrapolations of the era – in other words, futures with mass psychedelics, wanton free sex, new permissiveness, and other trends of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s. Also a lot of the writers don’t even bother with plots, going for stream-of-conscious exercises in the manner of William Burroughs. I mean I’m all for the “future ‘60s” or “future ‘70s” setups, but I’d like a little plot and story to go along with them, and for the most part the stories collected here fail to deliver. On the other hand, all of them are original to this book, so if they weren’t reprinted elsewhere this might be the only place to find some of them. 

“The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame” is by Robert Silverberg and starts off the collection. This one seems more of a writing exercise than a full-on story, yet regardless I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It alterntes between the viewpoint of an unnamed sci-fi fan in his 30s and excerpts from the various sci-fi stories and novels he’s read over his life, which range from psychedelic to space opera to pulp. Honestly I think this one would’ve worked better if it was a full-on novel, with more space to flesh out the narrator and maybe see how the story-snippets intertwine with his life story. At any rate he’s a lifelong sci-fi fan, with whole collections of magazines and novels; interestingly, all the novels and authors he refers to, at least the sci-fi ones, are fictional. The “A” story has it that the narrator worries over how he could still be a sci-fi fan at such an “old” age, and also how it gives him comfort in that he’s afraid of the future and looks to sci-fi for a “road-map” of how the future will pan out. The dude could’ve saved himself a lot of trouble and just bought a copy of Orwell’s 1984! 

Silverberg’s writing is good, especially in the excerpts from the fictional stories; he has a firm command of the various styles, and again some of them would’ve been fun to see fleshed out more, like the psychedelic take on two characters sharing a “thought-transference helmet.” But in this short story format the effect is sort of squandered, as the excerpts seem wily-nily and don’t have any bearing on the narrator’s plot, which gradually concerns his veering into science fiction realms during his waking moments, as if he were losing his mind. We also get a few LSD shoutouts, per the era. But I have to say, for a sci-fi geek the guy gets laid a lot; the story opens with the memorable moment of him picking up and screwing some blonde the night of the moon landing (complete with her “frenzied” climaxing as Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon), and later we learn he’s having an affair with his friend’s wife. Otherwise though, I found this story thought-provoking, and wish there had been more of it. For as it turned out, this was my favorite story in the collection. 

“In Between Then And Now” by Arthur Bryon Cover is a short narrated by an alien in a never-ending war against another alien, which is female. This one is very much in the “art for art’s sake” department and came off as unreadable for me, for the most part. 

“Kelly, Frederic Michael: 1928 – 1987” by William F. Nolan continues the trend of stream-of-conscious gibberish. This one’s another short of featuring random events from some guy’s life, but as with Silverberg’s story it’s just wily-nily with nothing to hold it together. Only it’s much worse, here. At this point I was getting annoyed with the book. However, we have yet another scene where a narrator gets lucky while watching the moon landing on TV! (Or, “She twisted under me, doing a thing with her pelvis, and I came.”) The plot per se has to do with the narrator going into space in 1987 at age 59 to help with “a new system,” but the entire “story” turns out to be “thought transcripts” picked up by aliens who have captured him. Or some such shit. 

“Nostaliga Tripping” by Alan Brennert is more of the same, but slightly more focused. This one’s another short of some guy experiencing various past timelines, and as with Silverberg and Nolan’s stories it randomly jumps from era to era with no thread. It’s short, at least; late in the game we learn something happened in 2003 and either the world came to an end or some other event occurred. The most notable thing about this one is the past timelines are incorrect, and keep changing, like for example the Rolling Stones releasing albums in 1949. 

“She/Her” by Robert Thurston is yet another short narrated by an alien, a la Cover’s story. This one has a little more semblance of plot, but still is more opaque than one would like, as Thurston really tries to capture the viewpoint of an alien being. Basically the narrator now thinks of himself as a “he,” even though the aliens don’t have gender – it’s all due to “corruption” by the humans, who insist on thinking of the narrator being as “him” and another of the alien beings as “her.” Same as with the Cover story, this one has feelings developing between the two alien beings, with “she” wanting to travel off with the humans and “he” being against it. This story too left me dissatisfied, but I did appreciate Thurston’s attempts at capturing a truly alien viewpoint. 

“Trashing” is by Barry Malzberg, who around this time was penning the Lone Wolf series. This one’s as psychedelic as that Mystery novel I reviewed years ago, and so similar at points that I wondered if Malzberg was the “Matthew Paris” who wrote it. This short is also in first-person, as are the majority of the tales in Infinity Five, and concerns a professional assassin who works for “The Committee.” He’s after a “madman” politician who (apparently) has an army of killers he lets loose on the populace wherever he appears, or something. The LSD fumes were particularly thick with this one. 

“Hello, Walls and Fences” by Russell Bates really tried my patience. Another vague “weird future” story where a narrator, who is like a builder or engineer or something, is offered a job by a rich guy but is so offended by the job that he storms out of the office…dithers around at home with his girlfriend…then months later changes his mind about the job, only to be told it’s no longer available! We’re never even told what the job is nor what so offended him about it! 

“Free At Last” is by prolific Ron Goulart and reminded me why I have never been able to get into his work – for, like his other novels at the time, it is a satirical look at the near future, with overblown ‘70s concepts and whatnot. Told mostly via dialog, this one features a guy in a “Wide Open Marriage” in 1992; his sexy wife enjoys wearing “neotex skirts” and is apparently having multiple affairs, her lovers ranging from a cyborg to a warlock(!). Meanwhile the guy, Stu, is having an affair of his own; the belabored setup has it that his aunt is old and sick, but in reality she’s dead, and Stu is sleeping with her “nurse” while the corpse rests in cold storage nearby. Overall this one was another dud, an unfunny comedy, mostly comrpised of made-up “futurespeak” words. 

“Changing of the Gods” by ubiquitous sci-fi editor Terry Carr continues the “wacky future ‘70s” trend, only to more extreme and perverted lengths. This one’s about Sam Luckman, an agent at an advertising firm (just like Darrin in Bewitched!) whose latest job is to come up with the concept of “unselling children” for an order of religious “Pragmatists.” We learn Sam went to college in the ‘70s and is now 38, so once again we have another “future” that is long in our own past, but anyway the setup is that various religions collapsed in the ‘80s and new ones, like the Pragmatists (as well as monks who are “psychologically addicted to LSD”), have sprung up. 

Meanwhile the population is way overblown (Sam has to stand in a long line with other executives just to use one of the urinals), and so is crime – we learn that if Sam were to use the regular employee bathroom, he’d encounter the danger of “tough homosexual rapists” lurking about. But Sam has problems at home – an ultra-horny “youth-injected” wife who enjoys hitting on preteen boys…and might be in the midst of an affair with her own 13 year-old son! Carr pushes all the sleaze buttons in this one, with Sam catching his wife and son in the actual act (complete with the unforgettable phrase “his long pink incestuous dork”), after which Sam goes off the deep end in the ensuing commercials he devises for the Pragmatists, which make children look like everything from violent street punks to baby vampires. This one’s wild and wacky to be sure, but at the same time comes off as so satirical that the center just doesn’t hold. 

“Interpose” is by George Zebrowski and seems to be a take on Jesus and time travel, but at this point I just wanted the book to end so I skipped it. 

“Grayword” is by Dean Koontz and is clearly the centerpiece of the book, running to around 90 pages. This full-blown novella seems to have come out of the Lyke Kenyon Engel fiction factory, and is so close to the Richard Blade setup that you wonder why Koontz never became one of Engel’s stable. After all, around this time Koontz published Writing Popular Fiction. This is the sole story in the entire collection that follows a standard plot, and also whittles way down on the sex and kink factors. And the only drugs here are ones that have been devised for research purposes. While I appreciated having an actual plot and characterization, I have to say that ultimately “Grayworld” was as frustrating a read as the others, mostly because it just kept repeating itself. 

The opening is memorable, at least: a well-muscled naked dude wakes up in a sort of laboratory, one filled with strange computers and the like. Much like a reverse Richard Blade, with Blade waking up in the teleportation chamber instead of a new world in Dimension X. The guy has amnesia, and has no idea how or why he came here; he finds a skeleton in another chamber, and what appears to be cryogenic chambers – also with a skeleton in one. Eventually he pieces it together that his name must be “Joel,” given the name above the chamber he woke in, but before he can figure anything else out a “faceless man” with syringe-like needles on his palm comes out of nowhere and slaps at him, and Joel goes into darkness. 

From here “Grayworld” picks up its maddeningly repetitive plot; Joel continues to wake up in a sequence of realities, all of them always featuring the same three people: himself, a hotbod brunette usually named Allison, and an older guy usually named Henry Galling. In some “realities” Allison is Joel’s wife, in others she’s a nurse (with a different name) who claims Joel has tried to rape her. In some realities Galling is Allison’s uncle, and in others he’s running a research project into a new drug. It goes on and on, Joel passing out – or being knocked out by the ever-present faceless man – and coming to in some new reality or other, not knowing which is real…but certain that the initial one, of him waking up in the chamber, was the “real” one. 

Koontz drops some eerie foreshadowing in the opening sequences; in particular mentions of dust on everything and everyone, even how “dust lay between the full cones of [Allison’s] breasts.” (For some reason I suddenly want ice cream!) The reader can ascertain that we are in some dystopic future; nothing seems to exist except for the countryside mansion in which all this occurs. It’s also very heavy on the mindbender vibe, with Joel – in multiple realities – discovering that the scene outside the window is just a hologram; one can even reach out and touch the moon! But this forward momentum is lost as Joel is incessantly thrust into one new reality after another; in some he’ll have Allison on his side, ready to escape, then the faceless man will come around again and in the next “reality” Allison will be someone else…or even one of the people behind the mind games. 

So let me jump to the reveal here, SPOILER warning. “Grayworld” has the biggest copout ending ever. Joel has had one “flash” that something big happened at some point, something he glimpsed out the window, but he’s unable to remember it. And finally, after 80 or so pages of endless mysteries, he remembers everything immediately. So basically there was like an “eco disaster” which destroyed hummanity, and all this is occurring a thousand years later. Joel is the last human on the planet, part of a group of astronauts who were supposed to leave Earth but who never got off the ground due to various computer snafus or something. So Joel has created androids from “vats” (it sounds like an incredibly easy process, too), and over the years he fell in love with one of them (aka Allison). But he was so haunted by this “miscegenation” that he gave himself amnesia so that he’d forget everything and have the androids put him through various trials…so that he would be able to gravitate to Allison free of any guilt, unaware that she’s an android and all. 

I mean honestly I think I speak for everyone when I say, what the holy hell??? And Koontz isn’t done yet; in the very last pages he doles out this eleventh hour plot about these evil creatures that have been trying to break in for hundreds of years or something, and Joel marshalled the androids to stop them before, but now he’s still getting over the amnesia so they have to remind him, and etc…and here the story ends, with Joel about to lead his android pals in attack. Just the most mind-boggling finale ever, but humorous in how Koontz flat-out kills off all the suspense and psycho-sexual mystery he spent the majority of the novella building up. 

“Isaac Under Pressure” is by Scott Edelstein and seems to have been about genies in bottles or something – it’s another short one – but I was so turned off by “Grayworld” that I skipped it. 

And that’s all she wrote for Infinity Five. This one sounded a lot more promising than it turned out to be, so there’s no mystery at all why this series is relatively unknown.

Soldato #4: Murder Mission!

Soldato #4: Murder Mission!, by Al Conroy
No month stated, 1973  Lancer Books

Gil Brewer turns in his second and final installment of Soldato, once again proving that, despite his talent as an author of hardboiled mystery yarns, he really couldn’t cut it as a men’s adventure writer. I can only assume he didn’t understand the genre – not that the genre is very complex or anything – and that he did his best to wing it over the course of 190-some pages. I mean folks the “climax” of this one features Johnny “Soldato” Morini hiding a room…for like 15 pages. 

Actually Morini is a former soldato, aka Mafia soldier, and Brewer again does a swell job of reminding us of his past and how he’s still hooked on the girl he was married to back in the earliest volumes. Brewer does at least invest the series with a lot more emotional weight than the genre average, but really is that what any of us are here for? Morini in Brewer’s hands is too pensive, too given to self-doubt and uncertainty; he’s comparable to Len Levinson’s interpretation of Johnny Rock in the first two Sharpshooter novels he wrote, The Worst Way To Die and Night Of The Assassins. Then editor Peter McCurtin gave Len the advice that his version of Rock wouldn’t last, that Rock must be more driven, more prone to violent action – that he must “kill with cold hate,” a phrase that spurred Len into turning in one of the better installments of the series, Headcrusher.

I guess there was no editor on Soldato to give Brewer any such advice. Thus we must endure Morini’s frequent anxieties, and while we’re often told of his burning hatred for the Mafia, very rarely does he do anything about it. In fact he goes out of his way not to kill at times. More unintentionally humorous though is his supposed helper slash “best friend,” Riley, the lawyer who set Morini up in his current capacity of one-man army for a cancer-ridden old Mafia don who wants to wipe out his former brothers. Riley does absolutely nothing to help Johnny (as Brewer refers to his protagonist, so I’ll start doing the same) for the majority of the tale, and most of the time tells Johnny not to call him! There’s a ridiculous amount of antagonism between the two, particularly in how Riley expects Johnny to do everything on his own and acts like it’s a huge pain in the ass to even answer his occasional phone calls.

There’s no pickup from Brewer’s previous volume, and when we meet Johnny he’s in New Orleans, already having established himself as “Bacchi” for local Don Marno. The gist of the series is that Johnny goes undercover in various Mafia families, busting them up from within; his operating parameters seem to be “kill everyone,” as Riley and his Justice Department cronies aren’t really looking for arrest warrants or anything. Johnny’s got a lot of problems this time, and one of them’s that the real Bacchi, a Chicago soldato, is in prison; Johnny’s pretending to be the guy, the story going that he busted out of prison and is now looking for a job with Don Marno. Of course, before novel’s end the real Bacchi’s Don will come down to New Orleans to hook up with Don Marno, adding a bunch more tension to the tale.

And as if that weren’t enough, the photo taken of Johnny in the previous volume has been destroyed, but L.A.-based Don Sesto got a drawing made of it, a drawing by a professional artist, and he’s flying around the country to show the various families this drawing. I mean he can’t mail it or anything. I mean the dude’s literally walking around with a single drawing, the thing covered in protective glass and everything, and showing it to other Dons across the country. The whole subplot is so ludicrous you have no choice but to just go along with it. Johnny manages to fix this guy, though, in one of the novel’s more tense scenes: Don Sesto just happens to fly into New Orleans after midnight, and Johnny chases him along a deserted highway before crashing him into a lake and getting in a brutal life or death struggle with him. A curious capoff here is that, when Riley belatedly arrives on the scene, he insists on taking the drawing instead of destroying it, like Johnny wants to. Given Riley’s general half-assery throughout, I almost wondered if Brewer was developing a subplot that Riley would eventually sell Johnny out, hence his keeping this drawing that could cost Johnny his life.

We get a quick reminder that this isn’t your typical men’s adventure series; the opening sequence introduces us to Don Marno and his orbit of followers, including his heroin-addicted brother Milo. There’s also a six year-old kid the Don treats as his own; the boy’s mom is Helena, Marno’s disowned daughter. There’s a subplot about Marno having killed Helena’s husband because he wasn’t worthy, and also Helena is hooked on heroin and etc. To Brewer’s credit, none of this goes where you’d expect: while Helena is introduced in a scene where she screams at her dad to be able to see her son again, she wants to be accepted back into the family and still has Mafia in her blood. Also, despite being the prettiest woman Johnny’s ever seen, our hero doesn’t get lucky – Johnny’s really a sad case when compared to his men’s adventure brethren, friends – other than a quick kiss. Indeed, Helena will go further than any other character to do away with Johnny…not that he does anything to get her out of his own way, even once he’s figured out what a threat she poses to him.

But this opening bit with Don Marno lets us know what we’re in for: a lot of talking, a lot of scheming and plotting. Don Marno is up against two rival local Dons: “Fats” Faturo and Logari. As with previous volumes, Johnny will try to engineer a war between the families…at least, that’s how it starts out. Instead the onus of the plot becomes more about Johnny trying to protect his identity, with more time placed on his fretting – and eating in restaurants and diners – than on action. The back cover even promises that in this one Riley will be taken captive, which hints at some action or at least tension; instead, the subplot’s over and done with in about twenty or so pages. A couple of Fats’s men get the jump on Riley, Johnny as “Bacchi” hears about it, and that night – after a big meal – Johnny puts on black clothes and springs Riley from the warehouse where they’re holding him. Riley doesn’t even thank him!

Speaking of meals, the novel is very much of a different era. Johnny’s constantly smoking or pouring himself a drink; before any action he’ll hit a very heavy meal, like a couple steaks and etc – plus “five different vitamins.” In fact Johnny seems to drink quite a bit in the course of Murder Mission, to the point that I wondered if it wasn’t some in-jokery courtesy Brewer…that it was more of an indication of how much Brewer himself was drinking as he ground out the manuscript. It’s clear though that he struggles with the basic tenents of this genre; the action scenes, for example, are almost dashed off, with more focus on the talking, the scheming, and the introspection. And Johnny is much too consumed with guilt for a men’s adventure hero; we’re even informed he sometimes sees the faces of the men he’s killed in his sleep – even the men he killed in self-defense. 

For that matter, Brewer fails to grasp basic action-telling principles. I mean no one could ever confuse Johnny Morini with Mack Bolan. For one, Johnny’s only ever armed with a Colt Cobra .38. Not that there’s a problem with this, I mean .38 revolvers were pretty much the standard firearm for ‘70s crime fiction. But the problem is the way it all goes down. For example, there’s a part where Johnny abducts Helena and ties her up in an abandoned building, to be collected by Riley (who of course bitches that Johnny has troubled him with this task). But Helena manages to get herself loose, call Milo (Marno’s junkie brother), and has him come over with some soldiers. So Johnny’s standing there in the room, sees three guys walking down a hallway toward him…and he runs away! This leads to a tense chase, at least, but still – dude, you’ve got a gun, and they’re all just walking toward you, conveniently bunched together. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but our hero instead desperately rushes for the window.

Even worse is the supposed finale. As “Bacchi” Johnny manages to talk Marno into hosting the rival two Dons – as well as the real Bacchi’s Don, from Chicago – on his yacht. Johnny gets some explosives from Riley (cue more bitching – seriously) and secretly sets them up…then for some belabored reason, he boards the yacht and must be present until right before the explosives go off, I guess to ensure everything works or something. But since he’ll quickly be outed as an imposter when the Chicago Don sees him, Johnny pretends to be sick and sequesters himself in a stateroom. This goes on for pages and pages. The ship moves further into the ocean, heading for the Gulf of Mexico, and hours later Johnny’s finally confronted by drunk goombahs who demand to see “Bacchi.” He manages to jump off the yacht as they start shooting at him; at least Riley proves his worth here in the finale, arriving on the scene in a helicopter to pick him up just before the ship blows.

I brought up The Executioner and again, as I mentioned in my review of the previous volume, I finally got confirmation that Gil Brewer was the mysterious author who was hired by Pinnacle to write the followup to Sicilian Slaughter (which was by William Crawford). I’ve read before that Don Pendleton often mocked an unpublished Executioner manuscript, one that had been sent in by some contract writer, and I’ve often wondered if it was Brewer’s manuscript Pendleton was mocking. While the writing itself is fine – the introspective stuff does add depth to the storyline, even though it’s unnecessary depth – the basic stuff you want from this genre is lacking. I mean imagine Mack Bolan hiding in the stateroom of a yacht for twenty-some pages in the climax of a Don Pendleton novel.

Time Rogue

Time Rogue, by Leo P. Kelley
No month stated, 1970  Lancer Books

Leo P. Kelley will always rank highly with me, if for no other reason than his novel Mythmaster, which I still think of often – pretty much the epitome of psychedelic pulp sci-fi. I was hoping for the same with this earlier novel, and while the psychedelic touch is there Kelley goes for more of a dramatic tale. In many ways Time Rogue is a prefigure of The Terminator, with heroes in the “present” (ie a 1980s very much like the late 1960s) finding out they unintentionally create a “cyborgian” future two hundred years in the future. Actually it’s more akin to Terminator 3 in that a female cyborg is sent back in time to stop them.

Indeed, it’s the “cyborgian society of Century Twenty-Two,” which Kelley introduces us to in a fast-moving first chapter which left me confused as hell. But that’s how sci-fi pulp rolls, friends; there’s no need for fancy-pants world building. Only gradually does one grasp that “Max Marie,” the hermaphrodite cyborg thing which initially is presented as your typical villainous robot run amok, is actually on the side of good…or at least what he/she believes is good in this skewed future. Max Marie has just driven insane one of the few mostly-human individuals left on this future earth, a guy named Caleb who is a professor of “temporal history.” As we watch in puzzlement Max Marie pulls out the essence of Caleb’s crazed mind, splits it into seven sections, sends these sections back to “Century Twenty,” and allows the “husk” of Caleb’s now-mindless body to die.

We will learn that Caleb has partnered with these cyborgs to prevent his future from occurring; it’s your typical nightmarish future of ‘60s sci-fi, a la The Mind Brothers, in which humans have become so roboticized and cybernetic that they’re no longer really human. Kelley is presicent in this, given how our own nightmarish present is quickly headed into a sort of post-human future, with gender now deemed “fluid” and the ACLU tweeting stuff like, “Men who get pregnant are still men.” Given this, it probably is only a matter of time before “humans” become biomechanical hermaphroditic creatures that have lost all touch with what they once were, and thus some people will no doubt yearn for the days of the past, as is the setup here.

Kelley doesn’t spend much time in this future world, other than a handful of cutaways to it, where we see the cyborg administrators of justice torturing Max Marie for info and then trying to figure out where in the past he’s sent Caleb’s splintered mind. We readers know it’s to the twentieth century, and while Kelley doesn’t pinpoint the date it seems to be 1983 or so, given the time stated since World War II. The novel plays out over the span of just a few days, and the main character for the majority of the narrative is Ruth Epstein, constantly referred to as “old and gray” in the opening chapters and on the back cover copy. Today she wouldn’t be considered old at all, given that she’s only somewhere in her sixties. Forty years before, in 1943, she was prisoner in a concentration camp, along with her younger sister; both were in their twenties at the time, and Ruth is still haunted by what happened there. 

There’s some unexpected character depth for a pulp sci-fi thriller, but then the same could be said of Mythmaster. What happened to Ruth’s sister in the camp is kept a mystery, but it’s something that has plagued Ruth throughout her life, something she’s blamed herself for to such an extent that she’s become a veritable old maid, living alone near her research facility in New Jersey. And her research is, you guessed it, centered around “uniting man and machine.” We meet her as she’s just successfully hooked a lab mouse into a computer. Of course the mouse dies but it’s a huge success. Thus in her own way Ruth will make possible the cyborgian world of the future, and must, per the hyperbolic back cover copy, die. Caleb enters Ruth’s mind in a memorable moment, quickly taking control and prompting her to follow strange requests – like driving to New York and attending a chess match.

This introduces the second of the seven characters who will mind-meld with Caleb: a twelve year-old chess prodigy named Barry Lamont who lives in a plush apartment with his wealthy parents. Barry proves to be a memorable character, somewhat wise beyond his years yet still retaining a childlike innocence about this possession of his mind by a man who hasn’t even been born yet – he just accepts this strange new reality for what it is. Unfortunately Barry is gradually minimized due to the other five characters who come into the fold. He makes a memorable first impression, taken over by Caleb on his way to a chess match, which he still manages to win. Then he meets Ruth, who has of course come to New York for him, Caleb pushing them to find one another so he can recreate himself here in this century. They also already know each other’s names, even though they’ve never met.

The next person is Sa-Hid, a Malcolm X type we meet as he’s giving a black power rant in Harlem (“Black is where it’s at!”). He of course brushes off Ruth and Barry when they approach him, but he too is unable to fight against Caleb’s mind control. Soon the three of them are heading back to Ruth’s home in New Jersey, Barry having gotten gruding permission from his parents, the story being that Ruth is a psychologist looking to study child prodigies. Sa-Hid contantly butts heads with them, which leads to Ruth nicely calling out Sa-Hid’s own racism and how he is “a mathematician of race,” only capable of seeing the world in black and white. A nice bit of shaming that would probably be deemed unacceptable in our victim culture society of today.

The fourth person is a flower child in a psychedelic print dress (one of the few topical touches that allow us to know the era) named Joan. There’s some off-page sex here as a penniless Joan offers her body to a taxi driver so he can give her a lift to New Jersey…plus an additional ten bucks! She has been compelled to Ruth’s clinic, and like the others she has her own sad background. I should mention that long stretches of Time Rogue aren’t even remotely sci-fi, particularly the parts with Ruth, Kelley more determined to examine the backstories of his various characters. This pays off, as he gradually builds a family dynamic, similar to what he did in the final half of Mythmaster.

And really, this is more of a character-driven piece than an action spectacular; the focus is more on this group of random people inexplicably thrust together by future events and how they work with one another, while temporarily being assailed by mental urgings from the disembodied Caleb. Action is promised though when we cut back to Century Twenty-Two and see the cyborg authorities of that era put together a Tracker who specializes in “detecting genetic continuities.” It is designed to track backwards in time through the various genetic streams to find the seven humans Caleb and Max Marie must’ve singled out as perpetrators of this future world. The Tracker is named Leda, and Kelley doesn’t do much to describe her, other than she is pretty.

The fifth person is Kirby, who shows up at Ruth’s house one day and promptly tries to rape Joan, whom he claims to love even though he’s never met her. Once this awkward bit is overlooked, Kirby turns out to be a swell guy. Seriously though at this point the brevity of Kelley’s paperback begins to rob his too-many characters of much depth. Kirby we learn is unhappily married and in his Caleb-possesion has learned that he and Joan are soul mates, destined to be married. But not much is made of this and the storyline comes off as hard to buy. Even worse treated is the sixth member of the group, a handsome gigolo type named Skeeter who lives in a cabin in the woods. He’s more of a cipher than anything else.

Kelley does a weird thing here; Leda, presented as the Tracker, gradually emerges to be a savior instead of a killer – unlike a Terminator, she’s not here to kill anyone, but indeed to prevent their deaths. It’s Caleb who plans to kill the seven, thus hopefully preventing his nightmare future. Leda explains this to Ruth when she appears to her one night; Leda’s capabilities are maddeningly vague, with her just appearing and disappearing with not much explanation. But Leda has gone back into the various timelines for each of the six – even she doesn’t yet know who the mysterious seventh person is – and has learned Ruth’s secret from the concentration camp. Leda explains what Caleb’s intent is and somehow instructs Ruth herself how to travel in time.

The seventh dude turns out to be a Mafia boss, and he’s so inconsequential to the plot as to be a waste of time; Kelley has it that this dude’s above-board business dealings, stuff he does to keep the prying eyes of the government from his mob activities, end up funding the cyborg research that will create the world of the twenty-second century. The other six are sent like automatons to a church, where the mobster’s daughter is getting married. Here the climax, such as it is, plays out. Rather than an action spectacular, Caleb is wrenched away in a mental fight with Leda, and ultimately the others realize that Ruth is gone – and, following Joan’s hunch, they deduce that she no longer even exists “in this timeline!”

Spoilers here, so skip the paragraph if you don’t want to know. Kelley unexpectedly delivers a toucing finale. We finally learn what happened at the concentration camp in 1943, the day that’s haunted Ruth. Her 1983 mind has traveled back in time to take control of herself in 1943, once again in the camp. The camp commander makes a daily game of choosing victims for the gas chamber, and each day Ruth has found a way to protect her kid sister. But on this particular day she has failed. We already knew this from the start of the book, but here in the finale we find out what happened afterwards: the commander, having chosen Ruth’s sister for the chamber today, asks Ruth if she would be willing to take her place. In the previous timeline Ruth said no, hating herself for her cowardice for the rest of her life. This time, of course, she boldly says “yes,” much to the commander’s surprise. So off she marches to the gas chamber, already forgetting Caleb and the others, as she has changed the future – perhaps the only book in history which features an uplifting finale involving a gas chamber!

While it doesn’t have the psychedelic vibe of Mythmaster, Time Rogue definitely scores in the character department. Kelley makes you care just enough about his characters that you want to see how they work their way out of this strange situation. The cyborg future is effectively portrayed, but still some of it could’ve been better fleshed out, like Leda’s character. Overall though I’d recommend Time Rogue for anyone looking for a quick pulp sci-fi read, one with an unexpected emotional depth.