Fiction Friday: STONY MAN DOCTRINE

My first cover-to-cover read of 2020 was this classic. I first read STONY MAN DOCTRINE back in either junior high or high school - I can't recall which - as my schools had a lot of donated fiction and someone must have had a collection of Gold Eagle titles. I remember back then thinking how amazingly badass the GE books were, with tons of technical detail and blistering action scenes.

For those of you totally in the dark here, SMD is the first book in Gold Eagle Books' Three-Series "Stony Man" world (I guess Sons of Barabas is also in this world but I don't really count it here) which encompasses the Mack Bolan Executioner series, the Able Team series, and the Phoenix Force series. Essentially the three men of Able Team and five men of Phoenix Force work for Bolan, and in this book they're all brought together for the first time to take on a multi-national terrorist organization called Hydra (no, not THAT Hydra), which is planning to carry out a series of WMD-style chemical weapon attacks against major US population centers unless the US government withdraws all military forces from foreign countries. The President decides that he cannot abandon America's allies, so he calls in Bolan and Co. to hunt down the terrorists and wipe them out.

Reading this again thirty years later, it is still entertaining action fare. The usual Gold Eagle titles are far slimmer than this book, but the author is able to stitch together what're basically two and a half novels' worth of action in order to deliver the first "Super-Bolan" book. Instead of action-interlude-travel-action-interlude-travel as you have in, say, an Able Team novel, this book can just go from team to team to team and keep the action coming.

One thing I did forget about this book was how early on in the lives of the Able Team and Phoenix Force series this took place. I believe it's right around the same time as Able Team #6, and Phoenix Force #5. It was definitely a cool idea someone had to bring all three series together for a big operation, but it is also evident of why it wouldn't work as a formula for every book - the end battle alone, where all nine combatants are fighting, just doesn't give enough "screen time" to each of the characters, and winds up jumping around a lot in order to show us what everyone's doing.

Overall, pretty darn entertaining, and I'm glad to have been able to re-read it after such a long period of time and not be crushed that it wasn't as awesome as I'd remembered.

Media Monday: Rambo V - Last Blood

There's no good way to approach a review of this without sinking neck-deep into the current socio-political quagmire. There just isn't. I'm going to do my best to talk about it without engaging this, but I will fail. I'm just putting it out there that this review isn't meant to be a discussion of racism and politics in film, but rather, how to handle such issues in a way that doesn't make you look like a pack of morons.

Rambo: Last Blood is a garbage movie. There, I said it. Bring on the hate. I grew up watching the Rambo movies on VHS and (edited) television channels, so if someone wants to accuse me of not loving mindless action movies, come at me, bro. I saw Rambo 4 in the theater and left absolutely thrumming with adrenaline because I thought it was, if not a masterpiece, certainly leagues better than Rambo 3, and felt like they at least put some effort into addressing the complexities of the issues at hand with how outsiders view violent civil conflicts, and the futility of "helping" in regions where such help is marginal at best, and bloodily counter-productive at worst.

Last Blood, on the other hand, appears to have been conceived for the sole purpose of getting to the last 20 minutes of the film, and no one gave any real thought or care as to how the film got there. In order to talk about this, I'm going to have to deal with some extensive plot spoilers, so now is your chance to bail now if you don't want this.

Keep scrolling.

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A little more.

Last chance.

Okay then, don't blame me if you're reading this and don't want spoilers.

The long and the short of it is that Rambo is now living on a horse ranch in Arizona with Maria, a woman who is at least approximate to his age, and Gabriela, a young girl who is graduating from high school and going off to college. The first big problem here is that Rambo's relationship to these two women is never actually explained. At the end of Rambo 4, you see Rambo going to a place that you assume is his family farm, but in this movie, you don't really know who is related to whom. Rambo isn't Gabriela's father, or even her grandfather. There's mention of her mother, and a deadbeat dad, whom Rambo stopped apparently at one point from beating up the mother. I'm not even sure of the relationship between Maria and the younger girl - I think she might be an aunt, but I can't say for sure. Seeing as the film spends at least its first 20-25 minutes establishing the family dynamic, the fact that I couldn't figure out the relationships makes this just sloppy writing. This is especially annoying, because the entire reason Rambo goes so batshit later on is that the girl is so emotionally important to him, the "one good thing in his life".

OK, according to Wikipedia, Rambo has no relationship to any of these people. The horse ranch belonged to his dead father, and Maria is the grandmother to Gabriela, and Maria just...runs the household? That at least makes sense, but this relationship isn't really ever laid out clearly, which shouldn't be that hard. You at least know that Gabriela's mother died of cancer when she was little, and after that, her father - who was apparently always an asshole - leaves her with Maria and goes off to Mexico. Fast forward to now, when Maria is 18. A childhood friend of hers - Gizelle, who is referred to as a "bad girl" by Maria - is now living in Mexico, and she has found Gabriela's father, who apparently lives in the same Mexican town. Despite Rambo and Maria repeatedly telling her that her dad Miguel was a violent asshole and she shouldn't have anything to do with him, and Rambo even telling her that she should maybe let her urge to visit her father simmer a little before she makes the decision to visit him, Gabriela almost immediately ducks out and drives down to Mexico to go find Gizelle and her father.

I've already spent two long paragraphs here, so I'll keep this short. Dad is an asshole (surprise) and tells Gabriela to beat it. Gabriela is sad, Gizelle takes her to a club, where she sells (!!!!!!) Gabriela to some sex traffickers, who then drug and kidnap Gabriela. Gizelle then calls back to Maria, tells her she lost Gabriela, and Rambo goes full batshit mode and drives down to Mexico, where he finds Gizelle, realizes she sold out Gabriela, and gets her to point out one of the bad guys. Stuff happens, Rambo fails, and gets beat up by the rest of the bad guys, who decide not to kill Rambo, a guy who just tortured one of their own, and showed up with a pistol and a knife.

Gabriela gets doped up, gets her face slashed, and is put to work as a forced prostitute. Eventually Rambo learns from an "independent journalist" (who just happens to watch him torture one of the bad guys and saves him after his beating) where to find Gabriela, but alas, after he saves her, she dies in his car as they're just...I don't know, driving around in the dark. Yes it makes no sense. He finally drives over the border and brings her body home, then buries her on the farm. Maria just packs up and leaves. Rambo tells her he's going to leave too, but that's a lie. He goes back to Mexico and kills one of the two lead bad guys in a way so that they know it was him. He then comes back home, preps his murder maze, and in the last 20 minutes of the film, kills everyone. The end.

You might be thinking, "Hey, this actually sounds awesome, what's the problem?" but honestly, everything is just so stupid. It's not that the characters make stupid decisions - although there is some of that - but that every time the story reaches a point where something could be done in an interesting, intelligent, nuanced fashion, the car screeches off the road and goes into the ditch. By the time you get to the climactic battle at the end, it is boorishly obvious that the entire reason the film was made was to show Rambo running around an underground death maze, murdering bad guys with knives, punji sticks, old-timey guns, booby traps, and other assorted ordnance (claymore mines and hand grenades???). There isn't even any strategy or cleverness to any of it - bad guys just die, over and over, running flat-out into death and screaming in blood and pain.

I'm sure many of you are STILL shaking your heads and saying, hey, what's the problem? The problem is, it is stupid, sloppy work. This movie could have been a really good reflection on the plight of old soldiers who never really left the war behind. On PTSD and re-integration, on wanting to be left alone, only to find violence at one's doorstep again. And while you might think there's some of this, the movie only ever skims the surface, like a stone skipping across the water, but never sinking, just bouncing back out on the other side of the river. What was the point of the movie? What themes does it dig into? What message does it send? You could get the same thrill just firing up your XBox and killing dudes in some FPS game for a couple of hours.

And yes, I am skirting the whole "Mexico" issue. The only thing I'll say about that is, you could have told the exact same kind of story, even with most of the major plot elements relatively intact - and not use Mexico as this sort of Hades-esque underworld that you only venture into at your own risk. It is, again, sloppy, tone-deaf plotting that so obviously doesn't care how it is going to be received, and in fact is probably counting on "snowflakes" hating the movie to stir up buzz and get defensive butts in seats in support of the movie. I don't know, and that's not something I want to engage with, but again - there were many directions the movie-makers could have taken this story and at the same time, left its bones intact. They picked a route through some really, really questionable waters, and at the same time, made a film so sloppy and superficial that there's no real substance to back up the choices they made, except to get us to the finale with extreme prejudice.

Honestly, I am really disappointed.

Tom Clancy Classics: The Hunt for Red October

(Yes, I know it's been over nine months since I wrote a blog post. That's a loooooong story. But here we have a new post, so...yay!)

Back in high school during the early 1990s, I started reading Tom Clancy's novels, and continued to do so into college, where I finally stopped when I tried reading The Bear and The Dragon, which was so gigantic a novel and so deeply entrenched in Clancy's fantasy universe (because by the time Clear and Present Danger came along, the series was no longer a "might be happening right now" and in the realm of pure speculative fiction) that I just had no interest, especially since this was right around 9/11 (aka, sixteen years ago). I haven't gone back to read any Clancy since then, but I found myself iin the mood after visiting Battleship Cove in southern Massachusetts, where they have the USS Massachusetts, as well as a destroyer, a submarine, and an East German missile frigate.

There will be spoilers ahead, since THFRO was published over thirty years ago, and the movie came out over a quarter-century ago. If you cared that much about spoilers for either, you'd have read/watched them by now. Also, I'm not going to write a synopsis - that's what Wikipedia is for.

First off, I love the THFRO movie. It has a great score, great acting by everyone, some excellent submarine combat scenes, and just an all-round great "techno-thriller" feel. I think that term, "techno-thriller" gets thrown around way too much lately, but THFRO is really one of the first novels to define the genre, and while the movie demonstrates some of the elements, it is in the novel where the elements of the Techno-Thriller really shine, because so much of the book's detail comes in not only Clancy's passion for technical precision, but in now military technology - both intelligence gathering tech and combat tech - plays a crucial role in the story. There's a whole scene around an Alfa-class Russian submarine suffering a reactor incident that, while extremely technically dense, creates a sense of impending dread in the reader as each aspect of the reactor failure is detailed, culminating in the fatal sinking of the submarine. While not everyone enjoys that level of detail, you have to admit that Clancy was very good at laying the details out and using them to ratchet up the tension of the story.

I've probably watched the movie ten times, but as this was the first time in probably 25 years I've re-read the novel, I was impressed with how much of the book has nothing to do with Ramius and Ryan. A lot more of the novel is given over to the standoff between the US and Soviet naval forces, something that is just touched upon in the movie where a Tomcat collides with a Russian plane and makes a crash landing on the carrier's flight deck. The novel really does a great job of showing the vast scope of the operation, from both sides.

Speaking of the opposing side, we have to discuss Captain Tupolev. In the novel, Tupolev is a former student of Ramius', but he goes after his old mentor out of duty, not some insane, bug-eyed obsession. Stellan Skarsgard was fine in his role, even if it was fairly limited, but the movie's Tupolev was a sweat-sheened, chain-smoking madman who would risk a reactor incident in order to catch and sink Ramius. The novel's Tupolev, at the end of the story, stumbles across Red October by accident, thinking it is an American Ohio-class missile submarine. You cheer Tupolev's death when you watch the movie, but I was actually sad to see him die in the novel, because it is clear he's rather conflicted, especially as in the novel, the submarine duel is three against one, no two against one as it is in the movie.

Other things of note?

In the movie, the fight with the saboteur takes place during the submarine battle, while they are separated by a couple of days in the novel. Ryan is also described in somewhat more unflattering terms in the book, a wealthy desk jockey with a bit of a paunch who was a second lieutenant in the Marines for three months (years in the movie) before being injured. Interestingly, the events that take place in PATRIOT GAMES are mentioned in brief in the novel, but not in the movie, which is interesting. I wonder as to the reason Clancy included that little side-note at all, unless he was already writing PG when finishing THFRO and decided to slip it in at the last minute.

In the novel, neither Jim Greer or Sonarman Jones are mentioned as being African-American. I think it was great that Hollywood (in a rare display) diversified the cast a little in picking two actors of color for those roles. Interestingly, though, there was a black submarine officer aboard the Dallas, who disappears (or isn't cast as such, I can't keep track of all those characters). So, the balance is really more like +1, instead of +2.

It's amazing how much of the novel gets cut away in order to make the movie. And the movie moves at a truly break-neck (no pun intended...) pace. There's also almost countless POV shifts, something that is a Clancy trademark in most of his novels, and something that many thriller readers and critics I know dislike - they prefer the story stick to the POV of just one character. As popular as he was, Clancy's stories and his writing style were not designed for the "average reader" in mind. You had to be able to keep track of many characters and be able to read, comprehend, and follow along with a lot of dense technical information.

Also, for a story that deals with so much cutting-edge technology, and still reads well 30+ years later, I did have to chuckle a bit when they start talking about computers, because their specs seem so antiquated now (I looked up the Cray-2 supercomputer that gets used in the novel - a 2012-era iPad is more powerful than the Cray-2). This isn't a fault of Clancy, of course, so much as it is a sign of just how far computing has come since the early 1980s.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Please feel free to leave any comments, and we can keep the discussion going!

BOOK REVIEW: HAWKER #1 Florida Firefight by Randy Wayne White

Full disclosure: I was offered a free copy of this ebook by the publisher in exchange for a review. You can buy Florida Firefight on Amazon by following this link.

I'd never read any of the HAWKER novels back in the day, so the new ebook version was my first exposure to the series, which starts from a premise well-known to anyone who likes vigilante fiction from the '60s through the '80s. Courts are soft on crime, lawyers are all scumbags, and cops are either incompetent administrators gunning for a run on a political ticket in the future, or tough, hard-bitten streetwise crusaders trying to keep the criminal element in check, while constantly being undermined by "the system". Meanwhile, gangs of violent psychopaths and drug dealers roam the city streets like some kind of Tolkien-esque invasion of orcs and goblins.

Enter Hawker, a cop who doesn't play by the rules, blah blah blah. He kills a bad guy against orders and winds up resigning from the force, only to be hired by a reclusive millionaire to become a one-man vigilante army. You know the deal - the Punisher, but with better financing. To start the series off, Hawker goes to Mahogany Bay, a south Florida town where some Colombian drug-running bad guys are pushing around the townsfolk while using their land for smuggling purposes.

Hawker goes down there and purports to be the new owner of the Tarpon Inn, a formerly successful tourist spot which has definitely seen better days. He immediately gets into a fight with some of the Colombians and gets his butt kicked, but then beats up their leader and pulls a gun on them. He soon hooks up with a Native American woman named Winnie Tiger who is a biologist working in Mahogany Bay, and the only one who helps Hawker when he first encounters the Colombians. There is sexual tension from the get-go, and eventually they have sex. Of course.

I don't really need to give the shot-by-shot plot structure of the book - that's easy enough to find and it's a short book anyway, with a quick enough tempo that ensures an engaged reader will zip through it in a couple of evenings or a lazy Sunday. There's a good amount of gun porn and the violence is suitably visceral, with people getting shot, stabbed, punched, blown up, set on fire...even violated with an air tank and inflated to death (more on that later). While the body count isn't extreme, it is substantial enough to satisfy those whose primary reason for reading such fare is the satisfaction of punks and thugs getting their comeuppance.

And, to be fair, the plot did take me a bit by surprise. Hawker doesn't just go to Mahogany Bay and start slaughtering Colombians. Instead, he actually spends a couple of months in the town, working with the locals to bolster both their pride, and the town's economy. One of the more satisfying scenes in the book involves the townsfolk attacking the Colombians' stronghold and giving them a thorough whupping - sans killing, for the most part. Hawker had cautioned the locals against turning into killers, and there is an impressive amount of restraint and moral obligation there. Of course, even in the few moments where Hawker himself tries non-lethal means to deal with his foes, circumstances conveniently force him to proceed otherwise, and he does the lion's share of the killing in the book, aided by the Tarpon Inn's cook and bartender, both of whom are more than they appear.

I also really enjoyed Hawker using a (in 1984 terms) advanced computer system to track down information about the various players in the situation and gain an information advantage over them. Most of the protagonists in these books, if they do computerized information gathering at all, outsource that to some nerdish ally who is a "computer genius". While Hawker was trained by such a genius on how to do this, he does do it all himself, employing some convenient hacking software and an old-school phone modem to search various databases, even planting a false identity at one point to establish his cover. I hope this is something that continues throughout the series.

Unfortunately for readers in 2016, there are a lot of cringe-worthy parts in the book. Without exception, all of the "good guys" are white, while all of the "bad guys" are minorities. Even the alluring ("mystical" of course) Winnie Tiger is secretly in cahoots with the bad guys. There's one white German bodyguard of a bad guy, but Hawker hints that he thinks the guy is gay, calling him "...a candidate for AIDS disease.", a line that was so stunning, it took me a moment to even grasp its full, historical, implications. There's also a "hulking mulatto" named Simio (...really...?), given all the usual apelike descriptive portraiture, who likes to inflict pain as a strongman for the Big Bad Guy of the novel. Hawker kills him in a horrible fashion when Simio's pants split at the backseam during a fight, exposing his buttocks, and Hawker rams the nozzle of an air tank in Simio's backdoor and turns the valve, inflicting horrific trauma upon Simio's insides. I'm sure a Freudian could write a paper on that scene alone.

Setting aside racial and homophobic issues for gendered ones, there are four female characters in the book. Winnie Tiger, the mystical Indian woman who has sex with and then tries to kill Hawker, two large-breasted blondes who both die only after their shirts are ripped open to expose their assets in death, and Hawker's ex-wife, with whom he has dinner with before going to Florida, and who he almost, but I think does not, has sex with. She factors into about three or four pages of the book and is then completely irrelevant, making me wonder why she's even included except as a possible means to make Hawker seem more three-dimensional. Police Sergeant Dee Dee McCall (HUNTER television series, debuting the same year - 1984 - as this book) would not be impressed with the gender politics of Florida Firefight.

If you can get past these usual, rather uncomfortable artifacts (and if you made it past the first chapter, I'm sure you can), this is still a satisfying read for fans of such "serial vigilante" books. The ebook edition is well-formatted and there aren't any OCR typos that I noticed, typical for Open Road Media's products, which are usually very well done.

Book Review: KILL ZONE by Zeke Mitchell

I must admit to feeling rather conflicted about this book. Author Zeke Mitchell clearly loves the "Men's Adventure" genre of fiction made so popular in the '60s through the '80s, as well as '80s action movies such as COBRA or INVASION U.S.A., and every ounce of that love was poured into writing this book. There are a bunch of direct and indirect references, both in tone and otherwise, that show the intent of making Kill Zone a child of its inspiration.

On the other hand, I think this diamond is still just a little too rough. While the author is able to craft a solid action sequence, and the overall plot of the book flows well enough as a series of action set pieces, I think the story definitely needed some more constructive criticism. I'll give a rundown in no particular order of importance:

- The term "kill zone" appears in the body of the book thirty-eight times. While using the title of one's work in the body of said work is fine in a rock ballad, in a novel it is generally frowned upon, and while once or twice is fine (that, "Okay, I get it" moment), several dozen instances are way too many, and immediately jar the reader out of the narrative. After finding multiple uses in the first chapter, I stopped reading to use the Kindle search feature - which gave me the total. If I am that distracted by the over-use of the term to stop reading and do a word search, this is a problem.

- I understand the desire to make the character a lone hero. Many of the best protagonists of the genre are "lone wolves", but when you pay attention to the books and movies in question, the protagonist is always interacting and balanced by a host of secondary, supporting characters. In this book, aside from "interacting" with bad guys by riddling them with bullets, Thorn only makes a couple of phone calls and delivers one or two extremely short bits of interactive dialogue. Without someone to play off against, either a partner or a recurring antagonist, we spend way too much time just reading Thorn's own inner monologue, which got somewhat tedious, especially during the more fast-paced combat sequences. The author really should have just focused on the action-reaction-action-reaction of the fights, rather than the repeated running mental commentary in Thorn's head, which slowed the pace of the text down somewhat.

- The author's writing style isn't going to work for everyone. Many short, clipped sentences, as well as paragraphs separated by other "paragraphs" of extremely short sentences, or even single-word paragraphs. While this device is good for demonstrating a pivotal moment, it's repetition throughout the novel weakens the impact of the device when it is needed most.

- Although it is just playing to the source material, I thought the idea that the government would send a single man - albeit highly successful and well-trained - to dismantle through violence a criminal empire responsible for a *global* drug epidemic a little far-fetched. Yes, I know, the one-man army trope is a classic one, but I feel the hyperbolic nature of the story was a little extreme, especially as this is the first book in the series. I feel like now, there isn't a lot of leverage to up the ante in subsequent stories. This complaint is just personal preference, but I would rather have seen a smaller, more "street level" story - perhaps Thorn being sent to nip in the bud a drug kingpin right on the verge of making it big, rather than one whose drugs are causing a global catastrophe affecting millions upon millions of lives.

All the above being said, I still enjoyed the book a lot. Technically, the ebook was well-formatted, and I only caught a couple of very minor typos, of the sort that always slip through no manner how carefully a book is proofread. The book's cover is absolutely superb, and no doubt has caught the eye of many of the book's buyers, leading to that "one-click" impulse buy, as does the short but very evocative product description. As of right now, Kill Zone's Amazon book ranking is hovering a little above 2,000 in the Kindle Store, which is extremely good for a debut indie novel.

In conclusion, if you're the sort who enjoys '80s action movies starring Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone, et al, as well as serial Men's Adventure novels like The Executioner, Able Team, The Death Merchant, and so forth, I think you'll enjoy this book, and you can pick it up on Amazon by clicking here.. There's a ton of action right from the get-go involving fast cars, big guns, explosions, knives to the face, flamethrowers, rocket launchers, more explosions, people's heads being blown off, even bigger guns, and a couple more explosions. While I have been somewhat critical above, I hope the author doesn't take it as discouragement from writing more books in this series, but rather as helpful feedback.

Book Review: THE GLASSHOUSE GANG by Gordon Landsborough

When I first became interested in this series, I assumed it was another Dirty Dozen ripoff - a team of convicts who are recruited by some semi-mysterious Intelligence Officer and offered the chance of a clean slate in order to take on some (no doubt near-suicidal) Commando-esque mission. This was the basic plot of the Destroyers/Dirty Devils series (see previous reviews of books 1 and 4 below), and there is of course no reason multiple series using the same basic plot premise couldn't be written (see also: every ripoff of The Executioner...).

However, Gordon Landsborough's THE GLASSHOUSE GANG is quite different from the expected plot-line. The story instead revolves around a band of British military prisoners, who've been busted for a variety of crimes - some minor, some completely reprehensible - and are serving time in the notorious (but as best as I can tell, completely fictional) Sharafim Prison in Egypt. The prison is run by officers and staff sergeants who are, at best, criminally lax in maintaining humane conditions at the prison, and are, at worst, vicious sadists who take great pleasure in beating and torturing their charges to within an inch of their lives - and occasionally beyond.

The first scene of the book is just such an example of two "staffs" brutally tormenting John Offer, the main character. Offer was formerly a Territorial Army quartermaster's sergeant, whose black-market dealings caused him to go on the run. He joins the Regular Army under an assumed name and becomes a lieutenant, but gets recognized by someone from his TA days, and Offer eventually gets busted because of it, demoted to private and sent to the "Glasshouse", slang for prison. Being a former officer (even a false one), Offer is constantly beaten and tormented by the staff sergeants who work there, and when he is finally released, Offer decides that something needs to be done to settle the score against the non-coms and officers who run the prison system.

One interesting aspect of Offer's background is that he was originally a stage actor, and once released from prison, Offer puts this background into good use. He gets a local tailor to make him a Captain's uniform, "requisitions" a lorry for his own use, and begins to find and recruit men from the Glasshouse he can trust as they are eventually let out after their sentences are over. Using the power of his assumed role and a cadre of men around him to reinforce the legitimacy of his ruse, Offer and his "Glasshouse Gang" spend the first third of the book slowly building up their numbers, acquiring resources, and taking revenge on a few of the "Screws" (prison guards) who were especially vicious to them.

The second third of the book involves Offer and his G.G.C.U. (Glasshouse Gang Commando Unit) executing a prison break, where they free a couple dozen prisoners from Sharafim, and then set up their temporary camp on the edge of the city, where they feast on stolen food and get drunk off of stolen liquor. Eventually these good times end, and the G.G.C.U. flees the law, taking off into the deep desert and eventually arriving at the Siwa Oasis...just as the Germans are attacking and driving the LRDG (the Long Range Desert Group, a unit of deep desert recon men in the British army) out of Siwa. Offer's gang holes up in a grove on the edge of the Oasis for a few weeks, until they discover some of their men (who they thought dead) as well as some LRDG men, in an outdoor prison encampment in Siwa. The last third of the book involves Offer and his men planning and executing the rescue of these prisoners.

All in all, this was actually a very entertaining read. John Offer reminds me a lot of Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith from the A-Team - a leader who thinks unconventionally and fights dirty when he's forced to fight at all. There's not a lot of action in the book in the traditional military sense, but what there is, is written well and maintains a brisk, exciting pace. The rest of the characters are amusing and flesh out the story nicely, especially the conflict between Offer and McTone, one of the more dastardly prisoners who joins the G.G.C.U. during the Sharafim jailbreak.

I can understand why the series only went four books - it's not really the sort of story that lends itself to a long run without becoming repetitive - but I quite enjoyed the first novel, and as I have acquired the other four books, plan on reading them and reviewing the titles here. If you want British WW2 adventure fare that's a little different, do your best to find and read THE GLASSHOUSE GANG.

Book Review: OPERATION KILL IKE by Charles Whiting

First, apologies for posting a review of the fourth book in a series of six - this just happened to be the first book in the Destroyers series to reach me via the various meandering routes these used books are taking to get to me. I am now reading the first book in the series, OPERATION AFRIKA, and I'll be reviewing it as soon as I finish it.

Charles Whiting is probably one of, if not *the* most prolific writer of WW2 fiction out there, having penned a number of series over the years under several different pen names (such as "Leo Kessler"). This series, the Destroyers, centers on a British army lieutenant, Richard Crooke, VC, who won that medal in the failed attempt to kill Rommel during Operation Flipper. Crooke was a colonel then, but gets busted back to second lieutenant for punching a general in the face when Crooke's request to return to North Africa is denied (all of this is laid out in the beginning of Operation Afrika, by the way).  The series, as best as can be determined, was originally titled "The Dirty Devils", a play off of "The Dirty Dozen" (written a decade before this series was penned) of course, but someone must have realized that wasn't actually a good thing, and renamed them the Destroyers, as the later books post-Afrika refer to them as such, although the "devils" term is still used a couple of times in KILL IKE.

EDIT: After some more digging, it appears that "The Destroyers" is the UK name for this series, and when it was brought over to the US, it was renamed "The Dirty Devils", no doubt to play off of the name recognition of The Dirty Dozen. 

Crooke leads a four-man team of scumbags, all of whom have been given prison sentences at one point or another, and they're basically let out of jail to go run amok against the German army on various "dirty" missions, sent on their way by one Mallory, a commander in British Naval Intelligence. The Destroyers are comprised of one Cockney Brit, one half-English, half-Egyptian thief, one Yank, and one defected German. I do like the idea that the unit is multi-national, although it does play into a lot of caricatures (a not-too-terrible problem with such pulpy fare).

In OPERATION KILL IKE, the Destroyers are sent to the front lines in the Ardennes Forest, famous for the Battle of the Bulge. They are to meet a German scientist who has a bottle of "heavy water" that Allied scientists need to analyze in order to determine how close the Germans are to building an atomic bomb. However, when they get to their rendezvous, the scientist is dead, although the bottle is intact, and the German offensive kicks off just as they're trying to make their way back to friendly lines. As they try to fall back, they encounter an American soldier named Weed, a very innocuous-seeming fellow, but it turns out that Weed is actually a German Abwehr agent, who's been sent behind the lines to - of all things - find and assassinate General Eisenhower. The Destroyers then enter into a cat-and-mouse game across France as they try to catch Weed before he completes his mission, which would throw the Allies into such a state of disarray that the Germans (might) have a chance of throwing back the Western front long enough to turn their full attention towards the Russians.

Overall, this was a pretty interesting read. There was a lot less combat than I expected, mostly because of the investigative nature of the mission, but there were a few short fights here and there, and a goodly amount of tension. Whiting as a writer doesn't focus that heavily on the "gun porn" aspects of the action, keeping things breezy and using typical slang like "tommy guns" and "schmeissers", which is again perfectly fine for writing like this. The book is also a very quick read, and easily finishable in either one long evening or over the course of a lazy weekend.

You can find these used paperbacks online (I found all of mine through various used booksellers on Amazon), and although they might be a bit on the pricey side, if this sort of pulp WW2 fare is your cup of tea, you're probably willing to pay for these vintage paperbacks. I still paid less than ten bucks apiece per book - still not cheap, but half of the cost was typically wrapped up in shipping, anyway.

Next up - OPERATION AFRIKA.

On Sale Now: COMMANDO Operation Dervish (Book 4)

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North Africa, November 1941. Days before the British launch Operation Crusader, Corporal Lynch and the other Commandos are given the task of accompanying a makeshift strike force of British tanks and armoured cars deep into the Libyan Desert.
Their mission: carry out a series of lightning-fast raids against Axis bases, creating a diversion to confuse the enemy commanders in the critical hours before the British Eighth Army pours over the border into Libya.
Meanwhile, Afrika Korps Captain Karl Steiner guides a squadron of German panzers into the deep desert in order to provide warning against any British advances. The two forces, German and British, are on a collision course than can only end in blood and flames, littering the desert sands with slaughtered men and shattered tanks.

Operation Dervish is the fourth book in a series of military action - adventure novels written in the spirit of classic war movies and wartime adventure pulp fiction. 

I managed to get the ebook version of Operation Dervish out a little earlier than expected. I hope to have the trade paperback version out the first week of December at the latest. This book was a ton of fun to research and write, and features, if I may say so myself, some kick-ass action scenes. The big challenge of writing a series like this is keeping the stories fresh, and I think Operation Dervish pulls that off quite handily.

Book Review: TRENCH RAIDERS by Sean McLachlan

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TRENCH RAIDERS is a well-written historical war adventure story, short but tightly-paced and full of engaging characters and gripping action. Author Sean McLachlan has a lot of experience in writing historical reference materials for companies like Osprey Publishing, and he knows how to research a topic and bring it to life.

This novel starts out in the first few months of World War One. It is evident to anyone who has at least passing familiarity with the war that so many of its iconic images have yet to be developed. For instance, the trenches that give this series its name are only just being dug in temporary fashion as both sides come under heavy artillery and machine gun fire. Steel helmets aren't worn by either side yet, and the usual "charge across an open field and get shot to pieces" tactics are in full swing. Several well-placed hints by the author indicate how various developments are going to come about in the months and years to come, little "Easter eggs" for knowledgeable readers.

The story also features a good cast of characters, from the roguish shirker who'd rather be plundering farm houses than stand sentry duty, but who is still the man you want with you in a fight, to the stuffy officers eating their lunch with porcelain and silver while shells drop all about, to young educated gentlemen suddenly thrust nose-first into the horrors of 20th century warfare. I also liked how the story involved some of the French colonial troops, and showed the various socio-political relationships between them, the British, the Germans, and their French masters.

Overall, I think this is an excellent introduction to a series that has the potential for many volumes to come. The war has years to go and many, many battles yet to be fought before the end of 1918. I hope the author sticks to his guns, so to speak, and continues the journey his characters have started.

BOOK REVEW: ALPHA by Greg Rucka

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This was a surprisingly solid novel. I was dubious about the premise of a Die Hard-like story set in a Disney World analogue, but Rucka pulls it off with aplomb. The crafting of Wilsonville, from its history to the mythology behind the characters and the way in which they interact, was very well done - I think I'd rather vacation there than DW any day (well, except the day of the attack...).

Jad Bell is an interesting character, competent but at least moderately realistic in the sense that while he's your typical "Tier One" type, there are a number of little details that give him a surprising degree of humanity. The choice of making his teenage daughter deaf, and weaving in chapters written from her perspective, gives this story a very unique feel. I also appreciated the complexity of the sleeper agent, his relations with the other terrorists and his superior, and the chain of planning and events leading up to the attack. The door is definitely left wide open for more books in the series.

I have been a fan of Rucka's since he wrote the excellent spy comic QUEEN AND COUNTRY, and I read his Wolverine titles as well. He's written some Punisher too, although I haven't checked it out yet, but after reading ALPHA, I think I need to make it a priority. This novel is highly recommended, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next book in the series.

BOOK REVIEW: The Assassin's Prayer by Mark Allen

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Mark Allen was a "slow burn" indie writer who put out a number of short stories and novellas in the beginning of his indie career, most of which sold a very modest amount of copies. However, with his first full-length novel, THE ASSASSIN'S PRAYER, Allen's success as an indie writer took off in a very impressive fashion. Now, although his sales have slowed slightly since the book's initial release, Allen's novel of bloodshed and redemption is still going strong.

THE ASSASSIN'S PRAYER is the story of Travis Kain, a killer-for-hire who once worked for the CIA, but now most often sells his services to organized crime. He lives in a state of almost constant melancholy after the death of his wife several years ago, using violence to dull the pain of his loss.

When we meet him, Kain is contracted to kill off another organized crime "made man" of some considerable status, and while the job goes mostly as planned, there are complications involving some innocent witnesses. Kain has vowed to never harm innocents (part of the "prayer" which gives the book its title), and so walks away from tying off these loose ends, an act that has serious consequences for him later on.

Kain also runs into an old flame from years gone by, and this kindles some old passions he thought were long-dead. There's a lot of conflicting emotions going on, as Kain tries to sort out his feelings for this old flame while still hurting from the loss of his wife.

To further complicate matters, the CIA - who never drop a grudge - sends one of their top "operators" after Kain, because apparently his departure from the Agency was less than mutually accepted. The operator who goes after Kain is a real sumbitch, and he's got a whole cadre of other sumbitches along with him.

All of this comes together to create a pretty action-packed, dramatic novel. Allen is a big fan of the action genre, and heaps it on with gusto. The violence is bloody and unforgiving, and some of the fights are spectacularly gruesome. If you're not into vivid depictions of violence and gore, this may not be the book for you.

Taken as a whole, TAP is a solid debut novel. There are a couple of major coincidences that form plot points in the story, and they'll either make or break a reader's enjoyment of the novel; either you'll accept them and move on, or you'll lose your suspension of disbelief and fall out of the story. I was willing to carry on and swallow the coincidences, but I'm sure it'll be a deal-breaker for some readers.

There is also a lot of emotional conflict, most of it tied to both the death of Kain's wife and the rediscovery of his long-lost flame, but there's also some deep-seated angst regarding his former best friend, whom Kain now despises. There were several times I just wanted Kain to cowboy up and quit weeping into his whiskey. If I wanted to be cheeky, I'd refer to Kain as an "Emo Assassin", but since the story moves at a pretty brisk clip, the maudlin moments don't slow the story down, and I think it helps distinguish Kain from the legion of near-robotic Grim Hired Assassins out there. Some other reviewers clearly liked a more complicated, emotional protagonist, while others found it annoying. As usual, your mileage may vary.

So if you're interested in a cool Hired Killer Thriller, consider picking up THE ASSASSIN'S PRAYER. And if you're such a cheapskate that you don't want to invest $2.99 on the book, check out some of his other works, such as "The Killing Question" and "Resurrection Bullets". Allen has quite the collection of varied short stories, and I'm sure there's something for everyone.

MOVIE REVIEW: Sabotage (2014)

When I first saw the trailers for Sabotage, I was enthused but otherwise wasn't expecting much. I've been happy to see Schwarzenegger making a Hollywood comeback, because even in his "retirement" years, he's still a badass. I really enjoyed The Last Stand, and even Escape Plan was a lot of fun, if somewhat goofy.

So, this latest action flick looked to be more of the same. Dudes with guns running around killing other dudes with guns, some chases, some revenge, some shots of Arnold glowering menacingly. Pretty standard stuff, really. Right?

Wrong.

This movie is brutal. I don't mean brutal as in Commando-era Arnold running around hosing down countless pissant soldiers who pirouette and drop to the ground when shot. I mean gruesomely, unrelentingly violent. This is easily the most graphically violent movie Schwarzenegger has ever done, and I don't say that lightly. While his movies have high body counts, and some (like Total Recall) have some messy bits, the graphic, in-your-face nature of the violence in Sabotage is unique to his career. While I can get icked out by torture scenes in movies, graphic violence usually doesn't phase me much...but I was uncomfortable at times with this film, and that's saying something.

Furthermore, this is Arnold like we've never seen him before. There has always been at least a hint that Schwarzenegger is winking to the audience in his movies. The "I'll be back" line, the posing with the guns a la Commando, the corny one-liners, and so forth. We've come to expect it, to the point where we don't even notice it until it's gone. But in Sabotage, there's none of that Schwarzenegger self-referentialism. I won't say he's "acting" better than ever, but he is able to, more than I've ever seen him, put away his Hollywood MegaStar-ness and just play a role as straight as possible, without any mugging or otherwise playing "Arnold".

As for the movie itself, there's nothing truly original or jaw-dropping here. Schwarzenegger plays "Breacher" Wharton, an old, grizzled DEA door-kicker (thus, the "Breacher" moniker) who leads an undercover team of agents who infiltrate drug organizations, then tear them apart. These guys are the DEA version of Delta Force and Seal Team Six, unconventional warfare types who roll with lots of tattoos and facial hair and highly customized kit loadouts. As the movie opens, they're taking down some drug cartel and they hide ten million dollars in cash on the premises, hoping to steal the money for themselves, but when they return for the money, someone's taken it. Whoops.

Come to find out, the FBI was running an operation in parallel with theirs, and knew how much money was in the place, so the fact that ten million dollars is missing doesn't go unnoticed, either by the DEA or the Cartel, who doesn't like losing their money to the government, but likes having it stolen by government agents for their own personal use even less. But of course, the thieves can't tell anyone it was stolen from them without admitting they stole it in the first place. Six months of investigation and interrogation by the DEA, and none of the members breaks, and they're finally - begrudgingly - put back on the job.

I don't want to give away any spoilers, because this movie does have a few twists and turns that are definitely worth keeping hidden. Suffice to say, some members of the team start getting killed. Breacher and the surviving members begin to turn on each other, assuming that the Cartel is coming after their money, and they all begin to suspect that someone on the team beat the rest to the money and took it for themselves. We also begin to learn some dark aspects of Breacher's past, as well as seeing the tensions and conflicts within the team. Operators who always live on the ragged edge of right and wrong can lose track of where the line is drawn, and that becomes a very scary place to live.

Badass Digest, one of my favorite film and television websites, wrote a really good review of this film, one that I more or less agree with. This isn't a "great movie", but it is one of the best Schwarzenegger movies, and if you're a fan of his films, you really need to see this. Even after more than 30 years of movie stardom, the big guy can still surprise us.

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.

Teaser Post: HANGMAN: SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER

I just wanted to take a moment and update readers on one of my current projects. I'm working on a new novel, tentatively titled HANGMAN: SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER. Those of you who've read KILLER INSTINCTS might get the reference, but for those of you who missed it, "Hangman" was Jamie Lynch's call-sign while a member of SOG during the Vietnam war. Jamie is the uncle of William Lynch, the protagonist in KILLER INSTINCTS. Jamie is also the older son of Thomas Lynch, the main character in my COMMANDO series.

This (first) HANGMAN novel is being written for two reasons. First, to bridge the generation gap between Thomas and William Lynch. When I originally began writing KILLER INSTINCTS, my intent was to go back through the generations and write about each of the Lynch men who went to war, what I'd called at the time the Lynch Legacy. The first COMMANDO novel was the first completed volume in this idea, but I'd actually written the first thousand words of HANGMAN while writing KILLER INSTINCTS. Only now, over two years later, am I finally going back and writing the rest of the story.

The second reason for writing this book is to try and write a kick-ass '70s-style Men's Adventure novel. In 1973, Jamie Lynch has been out of the Army for a little less than a year, and he's going stir-crazy living the life of a beach bum in San Diego. After getting in touch with his old commanding officer, Jamie is given a job working for Steiger, a Silicon Valley CEO. One of Steiger's top engineers has gone missing after stealing a prototype for an ordnance guidance system, and Steiger fears the prototype will fall into the hands of one of his competitors. Lynch teams up with Blake, Steiger's chief of security, as well as an enigmatic mercenary gunslinger named Richard...

SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER is going to be violent. It's going to be crass. It's going to get ugly. People are going to get killed in not-very-nice ways. There's a lot of drinking and swearing and even a little sex. There's cars and guns and arson and torture. The good guys aren't so great, but the bad guys are even worse.

I'll probably have the first draft of the manuscript finished by the first week of April. I'll be looking for some beta readers, so if you're interested, shoot me an email and I'll put you on the list. My target date for publication is June 1st.

MOVIE REVIEW: Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)

I've seen this movie kicking around on Netflix for a while now, as well as Amazon Prime Instant Streaming, and since it falls into a time period I'm currently interested in (early 1970s) I decided to check it out.

It's 1971, and Mitch, a Sargent First Class in the Green Berets, is looking to return home and marry his fiance. He and three of his Green Beret buddies (one of whom, oddly, is played by Marvin Gaye) are out drinking after running some recruits through a combat exercise, when Mitch learns that his fiance and one of her friends was killed in an automobile accident.

We see the accident before he learns about it, in a scene where the Wizards, a large biker gang led by T.J. (played by the indomitable William Smith), encounter Mitch's girl and her friend driving down the highway. Casey, one of the Wizards, starts harassing the girls, and when they make a sudden turn off the road, she wipes out a couple of bikes. This enrages Casey, who goes after the girls and smashes their car's windshield with a chain (it's a really nasty-looking weapon, reminiscent of a medieval flail). The attack causes the girls to go off the road and over the edge of a cliff, and they crash. Another driver comes along and the bikers take off, but the good samaritan gets to the girls just in time to for Mitch's fiance to whisper "devils...devils". She's not referring to the name of the gang, but rather, their insignia - a smiling devil-face on the back of their cuts (aka, vests - I watch a lot of Sons of Anarchy).

Between the good samaritan's account of the bikers leaving the scene, and his fiance's last words, Mitch puts two and two together and starts trying to track down a biker gang called the Devils. Unfortunately, bikers don't take kindly to a bunch of medal-wearing, spit-and-polish military types going around asking questions about other gangs. Mitch and his buddies get the runaround, and it is clear that they'll need to find another way to track down the Devils.

This is where the movie gets interesting. See, Mitch and his friends are Green Berets, trained in unconventional warfare and out-of-the-box thinking. First, they go and buy themselves Kawasaki dirt bikes (not traditional "choppers", which is important later on during an off-road chase scene). Then they ditch their military uniforms for civilian biker attire. Next, they take a map of the area and break it down into quadrants, each man taking a quadrant of the map and agreeing to meet back after their reconnaissance mission at a predesignated time and place. 

As usual, I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but suffice to say, Chrome and Hot Leather was a pretty entertaining movie. Mitch and his fellow Green Berets carry out their mission of vigilante justice with military precision and special warfare-style tactics. There's a great moment when a couple of the GBs sneak up on some bikers in the dark and take them down, commando-style, that had me grinning. Later on in the film, there's a huge brawl between the GBs and the bikers, and although it is definitely a Hollywood-style fight, it's awesome to see the Green Berets go through the bikers like a scythe through wheat, clearly displaying superior unarmed-combat skills and dropping every biker with one or two carefully-placed blows.

The most interesting aspect of the film is how the "justice" is handled at the end. When I first started this movie, I was expecting a biker-gang version of Rolling Thunder, but instead the film takes a different turn, one that I feel is actually a lot more realistic. Mitch and his fellow soldiers are just that - soldiers - highly-trained, disciplined, and with strong moral values. Although they no doubt went through hell in Vietnam, the war is over for them, and as much as the action junkie in me wanted to see it, there is no "kill-crazy vets go on a bullet-blasting rampage!" in this film. These are guys in full control of themselves and their emotions. Coming at the tail end of the Vietnam war, I actually think this is a really interesting, perhaps even brave, decision on the part of the film makers, to portray these veterans without PTSD or other hang-ups, and show them in the best possible light.

So, if you have Netflix or Amazon Instant Streaming, I recommend checking this out. It was a little cheesy in parts (especially the almost comedic scene where the GBs learn how to handle their dirt bikes in some mud flats), but overall, a pretty cool and unusual addition to the "vigilante war hero" subgenre.

BOOK REVIEW: Fargo #3 - Alaska Steel by John Benteen

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John Benteen (aka, Ben Haas) knocked another one out of the park with this, the third installment of his long-running FARGO series. This time around, we find Neal Fargo - ex-soldier and Rough Rider, now mercenary adventurer and gun-for-hire - standing in as a Hollywood extra on the set of a Western film (a nice bit of self-referentialism here, I must say). Another old comrade of his got Fargo a bit part as a gunslinging heavy in a cowboy picture, but Fargo being Fargo, he turns down an offer by the filmmaker to get into the movie-making business full-time.  Of course, he's also a little annoyed that he has to slow down his quick-draw so he doesn't pull faster than the hero of the picture, although the movie star who "kills" Fargo on-camera later asks him to demonstrate how to perform some fancy pistol tricks, rolling and spinning a Peacemaker in a way that'll please the crowds.

However, the pistol-spinning comes to an abrupt halt when Jane Deering, a young and sexy Hollywood starlet, drops by looking to invite Fargo to her home later that night to discuss business (and have sex). Fargo of course accepts, since the only thing he enjoys more than making money and shooting guys in the face is having sex with gorgeous women. Deering has a simple business proposition for Fargo - travel to Alaska and acquire confirmation that her estranged husband is dead. Deering is savvy enough to understand that Hollywood (even circa 1914) is just a meat grinder for talent: young, beautiful, naive people go in, and come out prematurely aged, washed-up and kicked out to pasture as the studios move on to the next big name. But Deering's husband was wealthy, and if she can find proof of his death somewhere in the wilds of the great white north, she will inherit his fortune. Fargo agrees to take on this assignment, although he is reluctant to bring Deering along with him, since she insists she's as tough and capable as any man.

What follows is a great action-adventure story set in the wild and unruly world of early 20th century Alaska. I was especially eager to read this particular novel because, as a native-born Alaskan myself, I was curious to see how Benteen (Haas) portrayed the territory and its people in these largely lawless, pre-statehood days. Overall, I wasn't disappointed. Even today, Alaska is a place for the independent of mind and spirit, for people who are self-reliant and take satisfaction from being in control of as much of their lives as one can be in the 21st century. But a hundred years ago, it really was one of the last North American frontiers, a place where the unwary could be killed by the savage winter cold or the teeth and claws of even more savage predators, by knife or gun or whiskey bottle or icy stream.

The extraordinarily dangerous environment is well-envisioned in this novel, but equally impressive is the amount of action and intrigue that takes place in the story. I won't give away any spoilers, except to say that Fargo and Deering stumble into a situation much more deadly than they'd ever imagined. There are a number of good fights in this book, from fists to knives to pistols and rifles, and of course Fargo's infamous double-barreled shotgun gets a good workout. There is a large battle at the end of the book that feels like something out of the battle for Berlin, 1945. In fact, the only criticism of the book I might have is that the final battle is a little TOO huge and bloody - but of course, that's just crazy talk.

If you've made it to Alaska Steel, you're no doubt a Fargo fan like myself, so I know I don't have to sell you on it, but rest assured, this is another excellent volume in what has quickly become one of my favorite action-adventure series. Pick it up, because you won't be disappointed.

IRON HEAD and Other Stories Charity Anthology on Sale Now

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I'm happy to announce the first Fight Card charity anthology, IRON HEAD and Other Stories, is now live on Amazon.com as an ebook. This is the first of several charity anthologies to be published by the folks who've been bringing you two-fisted fight fiction for the last couple of years. Here's the product description: 

Fight Card Presents: Iron Head & Other Stories is the first in a series of charity anthologies from the Fight Card authors cooperative – a writers community featuring many of today’s finest fictioneers, including Jory Sherman, Ryan McFadden, Mark Finn, Troy D. Smith, Ed Greenwood,  Jack Badelaire, James Scott Bell, James Hopwood, Bowie V. Ibarra, and Matthew Pizzolato.

Compiled by Paul Bishop and Jeremy L. C. Jones, 100% of the proceeds from these anthologies will go directly to an author-in-need (in this case, revered western writer Jory Sherman) or a literacy charity. Words on paper are the life blood of a writer.  The writers in this volume were willing to bleed in order to give a transfusion to one of their own – and then continue to bleed to give a transfusion to literacy charities in support of that most precious of commodities ... readers.  They are true fighters, every one ...

I was lucky enough to be asked to write a fight story for the anthology, and not only was it accepted, but it was included in this, the first of (at least) four volumes. My story, "A Sergeant's Duty", features every COMMANDO fan's favorite Highlander Sergeant, Dougal McTeague, as he tries to find his sense of duty and purpose (and bash a few skulls along the way) after the British Expeditionary Force's defeat in 1940.

So, if you're looking to do your good deed for the day, you're a fan of pulpy fight stories, or (perhaps) you're a fan of my COMMANDO series, there's no better way to spend $1.99 today than picking up IRON HEAD & Other Stories. Great fiction for a great cause at an unbeatable price.

Movie Review: The 13th Warrior (1999)

Recently, I popped this movie in the DVD player and gave it a viewing for the first time in a year or two (I've probably watched it over a dozen times, however). My objectivity surrounding The 13th Warrior, I'll admit, is somewhat shaky. Okay...it's pretty much non-existent. A few of you out there who know me were there, that fateful summer day in August of '99, when we went to see this at the Cheri theater downtown as a matinee. At the time, the main hall of the Cheri was probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, screen in Boston proper, and so this movie was definitely given a real "cinematic" presentation. I'll always maintain that certain movies need to be seen on the big screen, in the theater, and even today's mega-televisions and home theater sound systems don't compare to what a real movie theater can provide. Perfect evidence of this was when I saw Conan the Barbarian in the theater for the first time about six years ago, and my already favorite fantasy movie suddenly became one of my greatest cinematic experiences, period.

But I digress. The 13th Warrior is adapted from the Michael Crichton novel, Eaters of the Dead, which was in turn his attempt at writing a "historical" interpretation of Beowulf, using some fake "found documentation". Written in 1976, it was one of his earlier novels, written way before Jurassic Park, when he was just another writer turning out cool books in various genres. The premise, in a sentence or two, is that the story follows an Arab diplomat as he gets caught up with a band of Viking badasses as they venture far into the hinterlands of Scandinavia to do battle with a horde of, to put it simply, cannibalistic Neanderthals. Crichton uses the cave-dwelling, fire-toting savages as the stand-in for Grendel, the Dragon, and Grendel's Mother.

Right there is the first problem - when you explain the plot of the film, it sounds a lot dumber than it is. there's a great deal of superstition and mystery surrounding the "Wendol" as they are known, and the Vikings all believe them to be actual supernatural creatures, a race of legendary were-bear creatures that are half man, half beast, lurking in the deep forests and appearing in the night with the mist, to raid and kill and make off with the heads of dead men, and most disturbingly, "...it is said...they eat the dead...". Thus, the name of the book.

The movie also had a very difficult birth. John McTiernan started directing it, and then there were severe creative differences between him and Creighton, to the point where McTiernan left and Crichton finished directing the film (at this point Crichton had already directed a successful film, so this wasn't necessarily a dumb decision on the part of the studio). The movie does exhibit a kind of mixed personality disorder; it doesn't know if it should be horrifying and scary, or more straight action-adventure. The Vikings are also very..."Mythical" is how I like to put it. All the badasses wear armor and clothing that come from a wide range of cultures and time frames, many of them anachronistic. There were a LOT of people who tore the movie apart on this factor alone. I look at it as simply representing the Vikings as widely traveled adventurers, who've been to a lot of different, exotic locales.

In addition, there is the infamous "I listened!" language montage. If you're actually paying attention, it is pretty clear that Antonio Bandaras' character is spending weeks traveling with the Vikings, and as an educated man who probably speaks a couple of languages already, he over time picks up bits and pieces of the Viking's language, until he surprises them by being able to speak their tongue pretty well. Many folks thought this process took a couple of days, perhaps as short as a single night, which isn't really supported by the montage unless you're not really paying attention. Ultimately, it is a gimmick to get around a language barrier that would've killed the story before it even began (not that some critics would be upset by that). Ultimately, I think it is fine; if the Stargate television series can get away with EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE speaking perfectly understandable English, then I think we're okay here.

Beyond these and some other criticisms of varying merit, I think this movie is flat out one of the best historical action-adventure movies of the last twenty years. The Viking Band is so perfectly cast, so well-populated with these tough, gritty, steely-eyed asskickers. The dialogue might be a little hammy, but it is so well-suited to the badassitude of the movie that it just plain works. A few quotes snagged from IMDB:

Herger the Joyous: When they come, we form a circle in the center of the room, backs to one another.
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: I am not a warrior.
Herger the Joyous: Very soon, you will be. 

Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Have we anything resembling a plan?
Herger the Joyous: Mm-hm. Ride till we find them... and kill them all. 

Buliwyf: I have only these hands. I will die a pauper.
King Hrothgar: You will be buried as a king.
Buliwyf: A man might be thought wealthy if someone were to draw the story of his deeds, that they may be remembered.
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Such a man might be thought wealthy indeed.

I also want to emphasize that, although this movie at some points isn't sure if it wants notes of horror or pure adventure, in many ways, it is still a good blend. The Wendol, until you get what they are later on, are a creepy, evil, almost goblin-esque race that hide in the shadows and "come in the mist". It isn't until about halfway through the movie that the characters can confirm that their opponents are simply men who dress and think of themselves as bears. The dark, misty, foreboding nature of the landscape, as well as the more disturbing scenes inside the caverns of the Wendol also contribute to the eerie quality of the movie, as does Jerry Goldsmith's incredible score. In fact, for years I used the soundtrack as tabletop role-playing game "mood music" because it just carried such a sense of adventure, mystery, suspense, and horror, all mixed together. Like another one of my favorites, The Brotherhood of the Wolf, the "supernatural" elements lend a horror to the story that complements the action in my mind, rather than subtracting from it.

All in all, it is a shame this movie is considered such a disaster. It was extremely expensive to make, re-shoot, and market, and made back only a fraction of its costs ($60m in revenue vs. $160m in expenses). The financial failure of this film, I think, colors for many people the overall quality of the film, as many probably were introduced to it over the years already knowing it was a flop. On the other hand, there is a small, but quite strong, following for this film out there, mostly folks who understand it for what it is - an epic, mythic adventure story. Novelist and movie critic Stephen Hunter reviewed the film when it came out, and his review from the Washington Post can still be found here. Hint: he opens with, "Think of "The 13th Warrior" as Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai" jacked on amphetamines."

There's Never Enough Firepower

I'm finishing the draft of COMMANDO: Operation Cannibal in the next day or two. Currently writing the start of the massive climatic final battle. The previous two books had large end battles as well, but the firepower involved was fairly limited. This time around, let's just say, everything's getting an upgrade...

Book Review: FARGO by John Benteen

Click the Cover to See it on Amazon

To me, Neal Fargo is a combination of Robert E. Howard's Conan mixed with Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Fargo, John Benteen's (aka Ben Haas) eponymous globe-trotting adventurer/mercenary is in his late 30's, a highly-skilled and incredibly lethal fighting man who's already had a lifetime's worth of adventures by the time we meet him arriving in El Paso in the beginning of the book. Like Conan, Fargo is a lone wolf, a man who really trusts no one and nothing except, perhaps, his weapons. He fights for money and because it's what he's best at, and because he's one of those rare breed of men who, unashamedly, needs to be in mortal conflict with man and the elements in order to feel alive. Fargo knows he'll meet a violent end one day, and you know his only hope is that he dies on his feet, surrounded by his enemies.

But at the same time, the world Fargo lives in is one of chaos. The series is set in the era around WW1, a time of change and upheaval, of increasing mechanism in the manner in which men kill each other. Like the men of The Wild Bunch, you get the sense that Fargo is a man born out of an earlier age, symbolized, I feel, by his shock of white hair, evidence of how life has aged him far beyond his relatively young years. He's a man who is, in a way, better fitted to the latter half of the 19th century than the beginning of the 20th. But to Fargo, it is a small matter; he knows men skilled with guns, knives, and their bare fists are still in demand all around the world, and his reputation is such that he can command top dollar.

In this first novel in the series, Fargo is looking for employment along the border with Mexico. He knows the revolution to the south is a perfect place for a man of his skills, but Fargo won't throw in with just anybody. He picks and chooses based on the most profit and the best chance of success, although sometimes those two might be at odds to each other. Fargo is approached by Ted Meredith, a man who owns half of a silver mine three hundred miles south of the border. The mine is under siege by a Mexican bandit lord by the name of Hernandez, and Meredith knows the mine is lost to him, but perhaps they can sneak out with a mule train loaded down with a quarter million dollars' worth of silver coins. Meredith offers Fargo ten percent of whatever they get out of Mexico, and Fargo agrees to take on the assignment.

I don't want to spoil the plot, because there are a number of twists and turns, some predictable, some not so much. There's a lot of fighting, especially gunplay, and this is one of the areas where Benteen/Haas lavishes a lot of strong detail. Fargo is a man who lives and dies not only by his wits but by his weapons, and he carries a small arsenal with him wherever he goes. I was somewhat reminded of that scene in 1999's The Mummy when O'Connell - a fighting man in the same "globe-trotting adventurer" vein as Fargo - throws his duffel on a table and opens it up to reveal a small army's worth of weapons and ammunition. Fargo always brings with him a steamer trunk filled with weapons and ammo. He carries a .38 caliber Colt Army revolver, a Winchester .30-30 rifle, and, his most prized firearm, a custom-made Fox ten-gauge double-barrel hammerless shotgun given to him by none other than Teddy Roosevelt. Fargo rode in the Rough Riders and fought on San Juan Hill, and as payment of sorts for an unnamed favor, Roosevelt gifted Fargo this shotgun. Fargo cut the thirty-inch barrel down to a more portable thirteen inches, and keeps the weapon loaded with double-ought buckshot. There are several times in the book where this shotgun is fired with both barrels, and the blast of shot has the seeming effect of a Napoleonic field cannon loaded with grape, but I'll forgive Haas the embellishment because, frankly, it's just that badass. Fargo also carries with him a razor-edged Batangas knife, better known as a butterfly knife, that sports a ten-inch blade. Fargo is dazzlingly lethal with this knife, and in one epic fight scene, demonstrates his gift of ambidexterity.

The wonderful folks at Piccadilly Publishing are re-releasing all of the Fargo books as ebooks, and this first novel is a steal of a deal in ebook format for $1.99 on Amazon. It is an incredible read, full of high adventure and epic battles, dangerous villains and sultry women. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, and my greatest frustration is that I'll have to wait for the followup volumes to be released (the original paperbacks can be found, but the one I have is rather brittle, and I'd rather just read it as an ebook).