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.

Pulp Fiction is a McDonald's Cheeseburger

via mcdonalds.com

I almost never eat traditional "fast food". In a city with over 300 pubs, bars, and taverns, the most common fast food is really pub food, but I've noticed over the years that traditional chains like McDonald's and Burger King are becoming increasingly rare. About the only time I'm ever inclined to eat from one of those chains is when I'm on the road, because they are the kings of interstate rest stop food establishments.

This past weekend, while stopping at one such rest stop, I had a terrible craving for a McDonald's cheeseburger. I eat one maybe once a year, so I figured now was as good a time as ever. I bought it (it cost me $1.19) and scarfed it down in about two minutes, mostly because I was taking the time to check my email on my phone.

Back on the road, I began to think about what makes those crappy little cheeseburgers so appealing. I won't say "so good", because they're not "good" in any real sense of the word, but there is something that draws you to them. I came up with a few reasons:

• They're cheap (under two bucks)
• You can eat them fast and on-the-go
• The bulk of their ingredients aren't terribly special, but there's a certain...something...to them that makes them tasty. For the McDonald's cheeseburger, the ketchup and mustard combined with those little chopped onions and the pickles, contrasted with the sweetness of the sugar-laded bun, makes for an interesting flavor combination.
• They're bad for you, but in moderation, they can be a "guilty pleasure".

It occurred to me that the qualities that make these little bundles of joy attractive are the same things that make pulp fiction attractive. They're cheap, fast reads that you can take and consume anywhere. The basic ingredients (overall writing proficiency, characters, plots) might not be that dazzling, but they're always something special in each series that makes them appealing. I mean, even a series as often disturbing as the Death Merchant wouldn't have lasted over 70 volumes if people didn't read it, right?

And just as there are a myriad number of different fast food burger joints, there are a bunch of different pulp fiction types and styles, from edgy hard-boiled crime to flashy swords & sorcery, to action-packed men's adventure fiction, and within each of these, different series and authors lend their own special flavors that some people find better than others. And, while I wouldn't recommend a steady diet of nothing but pulp, they can make a great break from some door-stopper of a history book, or never-ending epic fantasy collection.

As for me, although I've had my McDonald's cheeseburger for the year, I'll keep snacking on pulp fiction - at least it doesn't increase the waistline!

Lies, All Lies.

I'm a big fat liar.  I claimed several weeks ago that I'd be getting back on the horse and posting more, writing more, yadda yadda yadda.  It hasn't really happened.  I spent most of my holiday vacation working around the home, overseeing the renovation of my bathroom and some other floor work, as well as dropping about a grand in new bits and pieces for the apartment.  Who's got two thumbs and sank $400 into just Venetian blinds and curtains?  This guy.

A few things, however.  First is that it appears we finally have a publishing date for the new Death Merchant novel, The Ways of Killing Men.  I may actually cave and buy myself an "autographed copy" of the book just for the novelty of it all.  The Death Merchant series is one of the catalysts for my interest in "post modern pulp fiction" and the fact that someone (or some people) out there liked the series enough to ghost write a sequel to the series tickles me to no end.

Let's see, what else?  I set up both HFJ #1 and my short ghost story Rivalry on Amazon Select, so they can be "borrowed" for free by Amazon Prime members.  Shockingly enough, someone's already "borrowed" HFJ #1.  Am I going to make bank off of Select royalties?  No.  Am I making bank off of just plain selling those two titles? No.  So, I'd rather go with the option that gives more of an opportunity to put my works in the hands of more people.  Money, if it comes at all, can come along later.  I am content with this right now.

I really really hope to get down to the nitty gritty of editing Killer Instincts over the next month or two.  I know what needs to be done, and I know what I need to do to make it happen, I just need to do it.  Six months away from the draft is more than enough time to separate myself from the work, I just need to move forward.  I need to tell myself it's not going to be perfect, it is going to be what it is going to be, and if there's problems with the novel, I just have to absorb those mistakes, learn, and move on.  Fingers crossed.

That's it for now.  I hope to get some book reviews coming along soon.

Review of Death Merchant 15: The Iron Swastika Plot

I had read this Death Merchant novel quite a while ago, back when I first started collecting them, but the details became fuzzy over time (sharks, ships, Nazis, etc.) so I gave it a re-read. Overall, this is a pretty interesting Death Merchant novel as almost all the action takes place at sea - there's ship to ship fighting, boarding actions, and even underwater fighting in shark-infested waters.

Long story short, a neo-Nazi organization known as Die Spinne (The Spider) has finally located the handful of survivors from a German U-boat that sank off the coast of the Falkland Islands near the end of World War Two. The submarine was carrying a fortune in Nazi gold, jewels, and other precious commodities, as well as a great many secret Nazi files that could reveal many of Germany's still-murky wartime secrets; something of even greater value than the treasure to the right organizations (remember that this takes place in 1974, only 29 years after WW2; many of the idealistic young Nazi officers in their 20's during the war would only be in their mid to late 50's, successful older men still vital enough to want to see their precious Reich rise up again).

Richard Camellion is brought in to find and "recruit" one of these survivors, and while he fails in getting one man out of Europe alive, he succeeds with another who knows where the submarine sank. Unfortunately, the Die Spinne agents also captured one of the survivors and got the location as well, so the rest of the novel is a race to see who can beat who to the treasure. Each side has at their disposal a yacht as a floating base of operations, and each side battles the other on the seas and below the waves, as well as ashore. Rosenberger did a fair amount of research into the capabilities of deep-sea divers during the 70's, including cutting-edge advances and discoveries into the sorts of exotic breathing gases (the 'diver's cocktails') needed to survive down hundreds of feet below the surface. This great attention to detail is one of the most positive hallmarks of the Death Merchant series, and goes to show that despite some of his other faults and quirks as a writer, Rosenberger has a great mind for detail and a knack for research.

I will also point out that this is the only Death Merchant novel I've read where Camellion gets laid. In order to provide a reasonable cover with regards to their pleasure yacht, several female CIA staff members are recruited and assigned to "lounge about" on the deck of the yacht, to give the impression to anyone who sails past that the ship is simply enjoying the sun and waters of the south Atlantic. Camellion beds one of the women, but the way in which he interacts with her is almost sociopathic; he seems to have little regard for her as a "real person", but not necessarily because she is a woman; more because Camellion has, in a sense, an almost autistic inability to relate to other people, and while he shares his bed with the female agent, in terms or real human closeness, the Death Merchant might as well be on Pluto.

Overall, this was a fun novel. Nazis, especially post-war neo-Nazis, are great villains to drop into any kind of PMP-style storyline, and Rosenberger makes good use of them in this adventure, particularly the ties between South America and Nazi Germany. True fact: I had a college roommate my freshman year for half a semester who was one-quarter German, three-quarters Argentinian. He as much as came right out to say his grandfather was a Nazi. Kinda creepy, actually, but cool in that surreal, pulpy, that-just-happened kinda way.

Original PMP Death Merchant Series Overview

I'm posting here the original Series Overview I wrote for the Death Merchant on the now-defunct Post-Modern Pulps Review Page website. I'm not going to re-write it now, although there may be some amendments to it down the line. I realize now looking at my old files that there were some DM books that I read but didn't write a review for, so I may need to re-read them and write a review - specifically #15, the Iron Swastika Plot, since I've read #14, and now #'s 17 and 18.

Without further ado:

The Series Overview:

Richard Camellion (yes, I think it really is supposed to sound like "chameleon", and yes, it is corny) is a nigh-indestructible badass who travels the world on the tab of the CIA, FBI, NSA, or any other government organization willing to pay him a hundred grand or so. He's a go-anywhere, kill-anything kind of guy, a "Merchant of Death" in the violent sunset years of the Cold War era. I hope you brought your .44 Automag and a lot of spare ammo, 'cuz it's gonna be messy...

Warning! These books are really "politically incorrect". Racist, sexist, classist, and just downright morally offensive at times, back "in the day" they would have elicited a head-shaking chuckle and an embarrassed sigh from most of their white middle-class male American readers. Nowadays, the author would probably be drowned under the flood of litigation filed against him by minorities and women's rights advocates. I make no apologies for Rosenberger's writings, nor do I defend them - the offensive nature of his material is, and always will be (I hope) an aspect of Free Speech, and the bad must come hand in hand with the good. And, to be fair, the sort of people who would actually manage to get through the murderous festival of carnage that is a Death Merchant novel probably don't give a crap about name-calling in pulp fiction entertainment.

The Writing & Content:

The writing on the whole is competent if a little dense at times, digging a little too deeply into the gritty details of weapons and unarmed combat. Not only are the fight scenes lengthy, but they're detailed with near-scientific precision as Rosenberger gleefully charts the wound channels of each lethal impact, tracing the bullets of the operator's guns as they plow through tissue, organs, bone, and brains. Often the kills are punctuated with such sadistic asides as "Instant death, quick and painless!" or "Utter annihilation!", the author clearly delighted with the carnage his characters inflict.

In fact, the hand-to-hand combat that most fight scenes inevitably boil down into (as characters discard their emptied firearms to close in with bayonet, knife, and fist) is even more graphic than the gunplay. Rosenberger clearly knows something about martial arts combat, and whether or not his knowledge is purely theoretical, his Shuto hand strikes and Atemi nerve attacks are covered in ruthless detail. I have actually squirmed in discomfort while reading about someone being kicked in the crotch so hard their pelvis was shattered and driven into their ruptured bladder, or a blow to the throat that leaves the victim choking on their own blood and shredded tissues.

The most annoying parts of these books aren't the exhaustive blow-by-blow battle expositions, but the dialogue between combat sequences, where the characters debate various aspects of world politics. I honestly can't tell half the time if this is pure character-driven political commentary or the author using his creation as a handy mouthpiece for his own viewpoints, but it does a lot to detract from what is otherwise a fairly entertaining festival of carnage. Israeli / Palestinian atrocities, political coverups, the CIA's (supposed) involvement in Watergate, the doomsday prophecies of Nostradamus (???), and a plethora of Cold War era brushfire war politics all feature prominently. It is clear that the author feels something for these topics, but it's sometimes a little difficult to tell where it's just a character playing Devil's Advocate, or if it's Rosenberger's own voice coming through the commentary.

In conclusion, the books are filled with some amazingly graphic violence and they're written with a very sadistic sense of humor, but the politics between the gun battles and karate fights are not only very "conspiracy theory", they're also just plain boring unless you really get off on a discussion of Cold War history as told through the voices of a bunch of bloodthirsty mercenaries roaming around the world killing for fun and profit. I should also make mention of the fact that Rosenberger is the only pulp author I've seen who makes extensive use of foot-notes, both to provide added details about weapons and equipment, to fill the reader in on various historic factoids, and to note when events from other novels are mentioned. As strange as it may seem, I think in a series like this, its oddly appropriate.

Review of Death Merchant 14: Vengeance of the Golden Hawk

I haven't read a Death Merchant novel in...well a long damn time. Probably at least three years, if not four. I read about a half dozen of them while writing for the original PMP website and burned myself out, mostly because Joseph Rosenberger's writing style is best likened to a firehose filled with acid. It's not that it's terrible; it's just that it is so jam-packed and dense that reading more than one of his novels at a time can be a pretty fatiguing. The level of detail and exactitude that fills every fight scene and every description of an exotic locale, weapon, or piece of equipment is really impressive, but it also causes the writing to become entangled; the action doesn't flow from shootout to shootout but rather from individual bullet to individual bullet.

Still and all, the level of detail is very good. Rosenberger covers language, customs, food, clothing, geography, architecture, politics and history, religion and philosophy. We in the 21st century have the world at our fingertips and any detail is just a quick internet search away, but back in the 70's you had to achieve that level of detail the hard way - good old fashioned research, analog research; journals, magazines, books, encyclopedias, maps, hours upon hours at libraries and other reference centers, finding sources and making phone calls and asking questions, jotting down notes, and compiling it all to create what you're looking for; a believable environment within which to set some seriously balls-to-the-wall action.

Anyhow, let's look at Death Merchant 14: Vengeance of the Golden Hawk.

Richard Camellion, the Death Merchant, is vacationing in Israel when he is approached by Israeli intelligence and asked to go undercover as a mercenary explosives expert to infiltrate a radical splinter group of the PLO known as the Vengeance of the Golden Hawk, or VGH. This group has acquired six Iraqi missiles and a substantial amount of nerve gas, and is planning on striking Tel Aviv, an act that would kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of Israelis and would no doubt cause nuclear retaliation on the part of Israel, possibly leading to World War III.

The Death Merchant goes undercover by getting himself locked up into a Jordanian prison with another undercover Jordanian spy and three captured members of the VGH. Escaping through the use of hidden explosives, Camellion and his cohorts fight their way free of the prison (Camellion and the undercover Jordanian making attempts to not kill the guards, who are being unwittingly sacrificed by their government for the sake of maintaining the ruse) and escape into the outskirts of Amman, where they meet up with an underground contact and begin sneaking their way into southern Iraq, where the VGH have set up a secret base.

Over the course of the novel, the Death Merchant and his compatriots get into four major battles; the prison break, an ambush in a marketplace that moves into a mosque, a battle out in a desert wadi, and finally the battle to defeat the VGH and destroy the missiles, which takes up the last fourth of the book. There is little hand-to-hand combat during these big fights, but it does crop up here and there as Camellion has to show distrusting VGH members at a couple of points in the book that he is not a man to be screwing around with. The end battle gets quite epic, with rocket launchers, explosives, incendiaries, machineguns, grenades by the bucketful, and even an armored car. All told, there's probably over a hundred kills in the novel, perhaps half directly attributed to the Death Merchant, the rest divvied up between his Jordanian spy cohort, the VGH members he hooks up with, and finally their undercover contact within the VGH.

All in all, this was a pretty good Death Merchant novel. It's still early in the series, so in places its a little rough, and I think Rosenberger is still figuring the character out a little bit, but he's definitely his own creation by this point; certainly no Mack Bolan clone by any means, just as Rosenberger is in no way attempting to pastiche Don Pendelton.

Next up, a chance of pace; I'm going to be reading a Nick Carter: Killmaster novel, so stay tuned.

Oh Yeah, That Just Happened

Yes, it has been almost three years.

And I'm sure no one actually reads this blog; I've got 110 followers right now over at Tankards & Broadswords, but this blog has been largely ignored as my interests in blogging shifted from post-modern pulp fiction to role-playing games and miniatures war-gaming.

However, I still have my collection of post-modern pulps, and I keep meaning to work on this blog - spruce it up (which I just did), and especially post a bunch of the material I had up on the original postmodernpulps.org website. I had a bunch of reviews of different series as well as reviews of individual novels. Sooner or later, I'll have to get all that up here.

Anyhow, last night I received an interesting e-mail. I don't want to give away too many details, but here's a hint:

http://www.thedeathmerchant.com/

Oh yeah...this is going to be good.

More to come, pulp lovers. Get your AMT Automags out, load up, and smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Rise of The Death Merchant

So back a few years ago, when I started collecting these "Post-Modern Pulps" as I began to call them - men's adventure novels from the late 60's into the 90's - the Death Merchant series by Joseph Rosenberger became the focal point of my little project. Here was a series of SEVENTY novels published over the course of more than a decade (the exact years escape me at the moment), and at the time I was looking online, there was nothing out there. No fan websites, no author information, nothing. A few used bookstore websites caries copies of the novels, but there was no real information about who the author was, what else he had worked on, reviews of his novels...not a damn thing out there.

I was amazed.

Now several years have passed, and it looks like things have picked up just a little. The rise of wikipedia has given us:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_Merchant

A pretty good resource of general information about the series. Even more recently, someone has gone and created this site:

http://www.death-merchant.com/

Just cover thumbnail photos at the moment, but it's a start.

Now, I don't exactly claim to be the catalyst for getting the whole Death Merchant internet movement going, but I would like to note that back in the day, if you were looking for this series on the Net, my site was really the only thing you'd hit, and there's still a good amount of chatter about the books on the PMP Message Board.

Now that the main PMP site is defunct, I'll be porting over my reviews of the Death Merchant books and other titles to this blog. If you're like me and have a soft spot for completely and utterly non-politically-correct action / adventure fiction, you might just like Rosenberger's blue-eyed Texan psychopath, Richard Camellion, the Death Merchant.