Len Levinson's THE SERGEANT - Great D-Day Weekend Reading

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I am a huge fan of Len Levinson's THE SERGEANT, as well as his Pacific Theater series THE RAT BASTARDS, and the folks at Piccadilly Publishing were kind enough to work with Levinson and bring the former series to the Kindle. The WW2 European Theater exploits of Master Sergeant CJ Mahoney make for great, pulpy, Men's Adventure wartime action reading, at a price that just can't be beat.

So if this D-Day has you reflecting on those historic events from 70 years ago, instead of popping Saving Private Ryan in the DVD player for the umpteenth time, give THE SERGEANT a try. The first few volumes are available now, with more to come as time goes on.

BOOK REVIEW: Bronson - Street Vigilante: Switchblade

My original assessment of the three BRONSON books was off somewhat. While they are written by three different authors, the third book in the series does not start a new character or storyline - it follows the Richard Bronson of STREETS OF BLOOD. This leads me to wonder if the "reboot" of the second book is a reaction to BLIND RAGE and it's less than sympathetic protagonist, and that this was, in fact, originally intended as a long-running series that simply never got off the ground.

In SWITCHBLADE, the story starts off with Bronson and Jenkins hot on the trail of the Unholy Three, a team of punks that have been performing rapes and stabbings and robberies over the last few months. Jenkins is the detective from STREETS OF BLOOD who agreed to help out Bronson as long as he stuck to just killing violent criminals, and as we saw at the end of the second book, Jenkins has gone from passive observer to someone actively helping Bronson.

Bronson tracks the three punks to a shoe store, and arrives just a little too late. One of the punks is in the process of raping the woman who owns the store, and her husband, a paraplegic Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, has been brutally beaten and threatened. This time around, Bronson comes armed not with a shotgun or his Browning, but with a custom-made switchblade, and he kills two of the punks with it in just a few seconds, then runs down and strangles the last punk, a spoiled rich kid named Herbert Vincent Mardin III. "Herbie" is a rich little turd who gets off on power and violence, and he's recruited a couple other youths, one black, one Hispanic, to commit crimes. In stereotypically racist fashion, the black kid is described as only wanting to rape white women, and the Hispanic is only looking to get cash so he can buy pot and get high. Herbie, of course, is in it for the violence.

So, Bronson bumps off Herbie and friends, then goes home only to discover that Nora, his dead wife's sister, is in town and came by for a visit. Nora bears an uncanny resemblance to Bronson's dead wife, and she is clearly looking to sleep with Bronson, who initially protests before giving in, rationalizing it because his usual lay, the model next door, is out of the country on a photo shoot for a month. Nora is savvy enough to not "fall" for Bronson, but the two do fill emotional holes in each other's lives. Bronson finds Nora similar enough to his dead wife to enjoy her company, and Nora finds Bronson interesting and sexy, estranged as she is from her husband, from whom she is seeking a divorce.

Meanwhile, Herbert Vincent Mardin II, Herbie's father, is in a complete state of denial over the circumstances surrounding his son's death. Rather than accepting that Herbie was a violent psychopath, he considers him an "unfortunate victim of today's society" or some other nonsense. He begins digging to find the vigilante who killed Herbie, and when the police (who are tacitly helping Bronson) don't offer much help, Mardin calls in a few favors (He's a top-level executive in an International Bank) from the CIA, who put him in touch with Matthews, a former CIA operative who's been in the world of cloak-and-dagger operations since the days of the OSS. Matthews shows up with a team of other ex-Agency men, and they agree to track down the vigilante killer for a price.

I don't want to go any further into the plot of this book, but I will say the turns the story took were pretty interesting. Bronson finds himself pitted against not only a rogue cop, but these former CIA agents, as well as a trained assassin. There's a lot of move and counter-move as each side tries to get the best of the other, and overall it's a pretty enjoyable read. There's not quite as much over-the-top violence as in the previous two books, but I think the story works well without it, and there's still a good body count for the action junkie readers. There's also quite a bit of sex, as we follow Bronson, Mardin, and even Detective Harper, the rogue cop, into the bedroom with their respective mates.

One plot thread I did find unnecessary involved a diplomat from some "South American Banana Republic" who is portrayed as a violent, woman-beating, murderous lunatic. A number of comments are made regarding how the diplomat is little better than a "primitive savage who doesn't belong in the civilized world" or some such, giving a really racist slant to a story that didn't need to be in the book to begin with. Bronson and Nora run into this creep at the opera, where the diplomat's bodyguards are physically abusing anyone who gets in his way, and Bronson winds up decking one when the bodyguard shoves Nora. This gets blown up in the media to be an "attempted assault" on the diplomat, although no one knows the identity of the assailant. We later learn the diplomat beats up and abandons a girl along the side of the road after an attempted rape, and later kills and wounds a number of people in a drunk driving incident. Of course, due to "diplomatic immunity" (one of the most oft-abused plot devices ever, in my opinion) no one can do anything to the guy. No one, of course, except a Vigilante. Hmmm...

Overall, SWITCHBLADE was pretty good. I don't know if I enjoyed it as much as the second book, but it was certainly enjoyable. I think the author, whoever he was, tried emulating a lot of Len Levinson's style from book 2, but doesn't quite pull it off. Still, it is something of a shame that, after two books of creating a cast of characters, the series ended.

Len Levinson Comments on BRONSON - STREETS OF BLOOD

After reading my review of his entry in the BRONSON series, author Len Levinson was kind enough to write me regarding his experiences writing the novel. I asked if he minded writing me a few comments I could use as a blog post, and he was happy to share the experience with my readers. So, without further ado...

Len Levinson on STREETS OF BLOOD

STREETS OF BLOOD came about through the following chain of events.  One day I received a phone call from an editor at Manor.  He asked me to come to his office and discuss a project.  I knew him when he was an editor at Belmont-Tower, don’t remember his name now.

 

When I arrived in his office, he explained they were developing a series based on the popular movie DEATH WISH starring Charles Bronson, and wanted me to write one of the novels.  Naturally I said yes due to my constant need for money.  So a contract was drawn up and I signed it.

 

The DEATH WISH movie was very controversial at the time.  I’d never seen it but had read about it in many publications.  The story was of a self-appointed vigilante killing criminals in New York City.  Many people thought that vigilantism was horrible.  Others thought it was a great idea, because NYC was a high crime city back then, and the NYPD seemed ineffective.

 

I really got into the novel because I’d been a crime victim numerous times, mugged in front of a bar in the East 60s, mugged on the subway, held up at knife point in the East Village, and a few of my apartments had been burglarized.  It was a great pleasure to kill criminals in my imagination, like I was getting even at last.  Regarding the plot, mine was entirely original except for the basic vigilante premise.

 

I’m very grateful for Jack’s insightful review.  I especially appreciated his comments on sex in novels.  Some writers go the straight porno route with lots of anatomical details.  Others try to rip-off PLAYBOY or James Bond.  I tried to be true to life.  I’m glad Jack thought I was successful.

BOOK REVIEW: Bronson - Street Vigilante: Streets of Blood

As can be read in my review of the first BRONSON book, BLIND RAGE, I was somewhat disappointed with the first of this weird, unconnected, three-book series. I found BLIND RAGE to possess a main character who was not only unsympathetic, but downright loathsome, and there were tones of strong racism and homophobia that went beyond mere character PoV.

However, I knew that Len Levinson - a veteran writer of more than 80 books under countless pen names - wrote STREETS OF BLOOD, and so I gave this second volume a try. None of the three BRONSON books are related in any way beyond the premise that a guy named Bronson becomes a vigilante after his family is killed by criminal scum. In SoB, Bronson is a high-powered businessman living in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, after moving his business to New York several years ago, when his wife and children were killed by muggers.

Unlike the Bronson of the first book, this Bronson is a war hero, a former Captain in the Green Berets who'd served with distinction in Vietnam. He's smart and capable and ruthless to his enemies, but he also fights to protect and defend the other innocents out there. While the first Bronson really didn't care about anyone else, and was fine with collateral damage, SoB's Bronson hunts criminals not for revenge, but to clean the scum from the streets so they can't harm anyone else. This change in characterization goes a long way towards making him a more sympathetic character while still maintaining a badass attitude.

Also unlike the first book in the series, the point of view shifts between Bronson, Jenkins - the detective who first suspects Bronson of being a vigilante - and several other minor characters, such as Rinaldi, a crooked cop, as well as various victims and criminals. Some readers dislike this kind of PoV switching, and I think it can be handled badly at times, but here it works pretty well, and I think it is a trademark of many Levinson novels. It works best, in my mind, to build the rich atmosphere of the seedy 1970s New York City that the story is set in, a place Levinson knows very well. You can smell the exhaust, taste the cheap liquor and greasy food, and feel the gritty pavement underneath your feet. It goes a long way towards immersing the reader in the story.

As for the plot, it is pretty straightforward. Bronson kills four rapists in Central Park with a sawn-off shotgun, then eacapes, but is stopped by Jenkins. He's questioned, but since Bronson looks like a well-to-do businessman, Jenkins lets him go, figuring this guy couldn't possibly be a vigilante killer. But when the victim of the rape describes her savior as someone who matches Bronson's description, and later changes her story after Bronson visits her in the hospital and asks her to help conceal his identity, Jenkins becomes suspicious. As Bronson continues to kill and Jenkins closes in, he has a change of heart - Bronson is skillful and disciplined, and he doesn't harm innocents. Jenkins makes the decision to just let Bronson do his thing, as long as no one gets hurt who doesn't deserve it. While this does sound ludicrous, consider that the original DEATH WISH has a similar outcome - both the book and the movie - where the cops tacitly agree to look the other way, to one degree or another.

However, things go sour when one of the hoodlums Bronson kills is the nephew of Scarlotti, a mob boss with a lot of weight. Scarlotti's sister demands justice, so he begins to hunt down the vigilante, and eventually learns of Bronson's identity. There are some attacks and counter-attacks, and as things come to a head, Jenkins actually teams up with Bronson to take out Scarlotti, after the mob boss has a cop killed. This was a pretty cool, unforeseen turn of events, since before, Jenkins came off as something of a jerk. But when he goes "rogue", he develops a lot more of a backbone.

I also can't review this book without talking about the sexual content that pervades the novel. Levinson is great at maintaining a semi-sleazy vibe throughout the book, but it is never gratuitous or offensive. Characters have sexual drives, and sometimes those drives influence their behaviors. Bronson gets seduced by his next-door neighbor, a young woman who is a professional model. Bronson is reluctant at first, having remained faithful to the memory of his dead wife for years, but he finally comes to the conclusion that she wouldn't want him living alone and lonely for the rest of his life. Jenkins also has a brief extra-marital affair with a woman who tends bar at one of Scarlotti's joints, and we learn a little about the mob boss' own sexual appetites. Levinson's characters live in a world where both the bad guys and the good guys check out women, and occasionally get checked out themselves, and that's okay. I find it adds a layer of reality that's often missing in Men's Adventure novels, where the characters are either bizarrely chaste or outrageously promiscuous.

In conclusion, this was a fun read, and a welcome change of pace from the first BRONSON title. The third and final book, SWITCHBLADE, is on its way to me as I type this, and I'll be sure to review it as soon as possible.

Book Review: Doom Platoon by Len Levinson

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Originally published by Belmont Tower Books in 1978, this slim novel tells the story of one Sergeant Mazursky, as he leads 2nd Platoon on a desperate mission; to hold back an entire German Panzer division during the opening moves of the Ardennes Offensive, better known to most as the Battle of the Bulge. With only 29 men, can Mazursky and his unlucky few stand their ground and slow the Panzers for the few precious hours their division needs in order to fall back and regroup?

I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but the story takes more than a few twists and turns along the way, dividing itself into three pretty clear arcs. Even though this book was written years before The Sergeant or The Rat Bastards novels, you can certainly see the origins of Mahoney and Butsko in Sgt. Mazursky, as well as the sort of rogues gallery of other squadmates that pop up in those novels, and the sorts of conversations the characters engage in during down time. Writer/Blogger Hank Brown states, and I'll agree, that if you've never read Levinson before this might not be the best introduction to his WW2 fiction, but if you like his war stories already, this would be a neat look into the genesis of those stories.

Overall, this is a really quick read. I zipped through the book start to finish in a long evening's reading, most of it on my cell phone. Ben Bridges of Piccadilly Publishing has partnered with Levinson to publish a bunch of Len's old books under Bridges' own PULP HEAVEN imprint. Overall the ebook version is quite well done, with only a couple of minor formatting errors, probably due to OCR conversion. Other than that, the ebook is very nicely put together, and has a couple of essays at the end written by Levinson, discussing his life and career.