Wargaming Wednesday: Not Just Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons was the first pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing game I ever encountered. I started playing in the summer of '93, when two of my friends had the "Big Black Box" edition of the DnD Basic Rules set. For those of you who know what the BBB version is...well I don't need to tell you anything. For all you newbies out there, this was a really big intro boxed set that had a ton of "rules cards", a big map adventure, tiny cardboard monsters and PCs...basically everything you'd need to play the first few levels of your characters - which is not unusual for the D&D boxed sets - but in a larger format, with full-color maps and cardboard counters.

Up until this point, I really hadn't been into "Fantasy", but I had read the first three Dragonlance books (that's a post for another day), and so I had some idea of what I was getting into. Needless to say, I was immediately hooked - in fact, far more than the two other people I was gaming with. I quickly bought the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, and the over the next few years, I bought EVERYTHING that TSR produced - settings, Class handbooks, DM's guides...the works. The biggest problem, unfortunately, was lack of players, since I was living in a fairly rural small town in Maine, and my high school peers, for the most part, weren't interested in gaming.

When I moved off to college in 1995, I brought most of my gaming materials with me, certain that I'd be able to find a DnD group at a large urban university. But of course, as soon as I found some nerdy brethren and asked who played D&D, I received mocking laughter. "We don't play that game, you dork. We play White Wolf games. Those are real role-playing games".

I got sucked into a Werewolf: the Apocalypse game, and really enjoyed it, and I played a little Vampire and a little Mage as well. My RPG tastes began to grow, and I started buying other games, surprised that there were dozens of games put out by a wide variety of publishers in any genre you could think of. And of course, this was the late '90s, when the Internet gave us the ability to communicate around the world and share documents online with each other, enabling the explosion of what is commonly known as the "indie gaming" revolution. New voices emerged in the industry, edgy people with games that strayed far from the staid boundaries of D&D, GURPS, Rifts, World of Darkness, and other, more established platforms.

Fast-forward twenty years, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dungeons and Dragons is now well into its fifth - and most popular - edition, and most of the old guard are still around in one form or another. But smaller, indie presses and self-published games continue to arrive on the scene almost daily. In addition, the disdain most D&D folks had for the 4th edition rules, coupled with the death of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax back in 2008 sparked the "Old School Renaissance", where many gamers went back to the old editions of the game, breathing life back into them and using the bones of their rules sets to create a huge variety of different games.

Over the decades, I've collected a lot of role-playing games. Far more than I ever have, or ever could, play. I don't know what the current number is, but it is probably creeping up towards a hundred different RPGs and/or editions. And yet, that barely scratches the surface of what's out there, even from larger game companies, never mind "indie" developers. It's interesting that Dungeons and Dragons is more popular and more mainstream than it has ever been, and yet, most people have no idea of the immense variety of games out there - settings, play styles, rules types - whatever your interests might be, there is likely a game for you. And, just to give a minuscule taste, here's a YouTube video I watched last night, which dips a toe into the fathomless pool of games out there:

Yes, the video is a bit long, but if you have any curiosity about role-playing games, it is definitely worth your time to watch, and certainly better than me trying to pitch a bunch of different games. Oh, and it is worth noting that of the ten games they mention, I only own one of these - Call of Cthulhu - and it's an old edition. So if I own nearly a hundred RPGs, and only 1 of them is on this list, that gives you some idea of the variety out there.

Media Monday: People Read Less - So What?

Now that we've gotten that no doubt controversial post title out of the way - yes, according to this article on The Passive Voice Blog, a recent study on how Americans use their leisure time showed that in the last fifteen years, the amount of time we spend in leisure reading has dropped about 30 percent.

Now, before you run off and claim this is a sign of the fall of Western civilization, feel free to head over to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and take a look at the Time Use Survey data. Unless there's a more select breakdown of this data, their categories are pretty broad, and if I may say so, kind of antiquated. They refer to "computer use", but don't seem to indicate if that also includes mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. They also list "socializing and communicating", but I'm not sure if that includes communicating digitally via messaging or other social media. Further, they refer to "watching TV", but as there are so many people these days who almost exclusively stream their TV content via a computer, what if I am watching television via my laptop? Or I'm watching YouTube or Twitch, but on my television?

The crux of the worry here, for this blog post at least, is that people are reading less. And I think the above paragraph might shed a little light on why. Although claims have been made that we've been reading less since the 1980s, I would wager the decline has been more rapid in the last 10-15 years, and for obvious reasons. People these days simply have more ways in which to spend their leisure time, and although I don't know if people have more or less leisure time these days, We all have only so many hours in the day, period. Looking back at the 1980s as the starting point for this decline, we have the arrival of cable television and computer video gaming as two major time sinks. Cable is especially important when you look at that time use survey and see that by far, "watching TV" is still considered the largest leisure activity. Once the average person's TV content went from a handful of channels to dozens, including channels that showed theatrical movies, there was a lot more content for the TV viewer to consume. Also consider that this would have been a boom time for cassette tapes, VHS tapes, and then as time went on, CDs and DVDs. "Home entertainment" exploded in the '80s and '90s, even if you set aside home computing and console gaming, which you really can't.

But what about the books? Someone on the Internet told me that Men stopped reading because [insert awkward and sexist bullshit here]. Well, it is true that a lot of "Men's Fiction" dried up during this time period, but I believe it had less to do with the lack of testosterone in the Publishing World, and more to do with a lack of profit, both for the authors and for the publishers. Most of the serial fiction writing was done on a write-for-hire basis, without any royalty structure, which meant you got one paycheck for your novel, regardless of how good or bad it was. This, along with rapid turnaround times for getting books out the door, and the steady merge-merge-merge of smaller houses being bought up by larger ones, and little imprints being abandoned because they weren't profitable enough, caused a lot of venues for "Men's fiction" to simply dry up. Why should a major publishing house pump out skinny little dimestore novels when it could put out a doorstopper hardcover, then sell the same book six months to a year later as a mass market paperback?

This article about veteran novelist David Morrell is pretty telling in this regard. His iconic character, John Rambo, first came to live in a novel where (spoiler alert) he's killed off at the end. But Morrell was lucky enough to sell the rights to the novel as a movie deal, and in that film, FIRST BLOOD, Rambo doesn't die in the end. In fact, he goes on to make multiple blockbuster movies, including one coming out this very month. Even the author himself notices that he has a moment of disconnect when he sees his character in its screen persona, so far removed from that character he penned decades ago. Morrell lived through this transformation in the publishing business, where the question stopped being whether it was a good book that would sell, into just how marketable is the book - how far can you carry it into possible TV or film options. What about streaming venues? Video games? A book is no longer just a good story, it is precious intellectual property that can be branded and milked for every possible drop of profit.

And to circle back to advancements in media for a moment, while traditional publishing houses might have failed not only their authors but their readers, leaving their leisure time to be consumed by TV and video game entertainment, now multimedia entertainment means anyone carrying a smartphone has in their pocket access to whatever form of entertainment they desire - from books, to music, to movies and television, to video games and instructional videos, newspapers, magazine articles, interpersonal and social media communication channels, and much more.

We have access to more information - reference and entertainment - right now in our pockets than anyone before us in the history of the world. It is only natural that we make use of that access, and such use eats into time that, in decades past, was used to read a novel. And you know what? That's okay. I have always been an avid reader, and I would never tell anyone to not read for pleasure, but there are so many other venues for entertainment these days, and there's nothing wrong with partaking in them, because at the end of the day, if you gain enjoyment out of doing it, that's what's most important.

Now, does not reading mean we are negatively impacting our vocabulary, our own literacy, our very imagination? Maybe yes, maybe no. I know a lot of early Gen-Xers and Boomers who bemoan that "kids these days" are illiterate and can't write a proper sentence or spelling...and then you see these people post on Facebook, and in my mind, their arguments become invalid. If someone wants to better their vocabulary or educate themselves, the online and digital resources available to them now make the resources available to me when I was growing up pale in comparison. I regularly turn to YouTube or some other online resource for information on a wide variety of topics, and these digital resources can provide information in a way that no written text ever could.

So at the end of the day, yes, people might be reading less, but does that mean they are learning less? Are they using their imaginations less? Are we simply shifting where we are dedicating our time and changing the way we learn? Is watching a YouTube channel on history worse than reading a history book? Is watching a Netflix series about bank robbers worse than reading a series of novels about bank robbers? Is watching someone stream a video game over Twitch really that different from going to an arcade and watching someone play Pac-Man?

Media Monday: Death Kiss

A bit of a brief post today, as I'm in what's typically the busiest week of the year at work. If you've been around this blog for any amount of time, you know my fascination with the DEATH WISH series, both the two books written by Brian Garfield, as well as the *five* movies made starring Charles Bronson. And of course, it's no secret that much of my fiction writing is inspired by the notion of the urban vigilante.

So I was definitely curious when the micro-budget crime movie DEATH KISS came onto the scene. Basically, you can treat it as an unauthorized, unofficial follow-up to the Death Wish film franchise, although that is never truly acknowledged. Death Kiss is available on Amazon Prime Video, and you can check out the trailer here:

 

Just as interesting as the movie (and perhaps for some people, even more so), pulp aficionado Bill Cunningham of Pulp 2.0 Press has written a book that does a great job of breaking down the production and marketing of Death Kiss from a business perspective.  Allow me to quote my review of his book Death Kiss - the Book of the Movie, here:

To preface, I have seen DEATH KISS and read through Cunningham's dissection of the film, and I write this review from the point of view of a novelist and storyteller, as well as someone who went through film school in the late 1990s, when low-budget independent film-making was on the mind of many of my fellow classmates. I am also a huge fan of Brian Garfield's original DEATH WISH novel, as well as the 1974 adaptation by Michael Winner. I've put out articles about vigilante storytelling, and have written a bit of it myself.

I say all this because the idea of an indie project designed specifically to tap into that Garfield/Bronson/Winner-inspired vigilante crime story market was immediately appealing to me. I watched the film DEATH KISS before reading the "Cinexploits!" case study, and while there were portions of the film that I might have criticisms about, I think overall, with the resources available to the director, the overall final product was entertaining - I honestly enjoyed it more than the 2018 remake with Bruce Willis!

And so, having seen the film, I decided to read the DEATH KISS case study. It is an excellent breakdown of the idea behind the film, and how so often in the entertainment industry, the people you know and the connections you make - both "above the line" and below - can make or break the project before it even goes into production. The relationship between Rene Perez and Robert Kovacs - a man with, shall we say, a particular set of skills - allowed the idea of a DEATH WISH-styled independent film to grow from the seed of an idea into a full-bloomed production.

Further, and this is something I especially take to heart as a novelist, Cunningham takes a lot of time to discuss the pragmatic, commercial, *business* of film-making - about making sure that your idea isn't just a good story, but that it is a story you can *sell*, and knowing what markets would be best for your idea, and making sure that you are delivering a product that fits with those markets. Artistic storytelling for the sake of storytelling is a noble concept, but it doesn't pay the rent or the talent. If you are in the *business* of film-making, you must understand first and foremost that your business is commercial in nature, and that you must, above all else, make money from the sale of your product. Period.

Of special note is the breakdown of the ARKOFF Formula. I won't go into the details here, but it is a point-by-point process epitomized by the methodology of Samuel Z. Arkoff, who did great business during the second half of the 20th century producing and distributing commercial theatrical films. I find the ARKOFF Formula worth studying by anyone who has an interest in storytelling designed to - first and foremost - get people to part with their money.

As this review is already fairly lengthy, I will end it by pointing out that the book also includes the DEATH KISS script, as well as a lot of great details about low-budget film production. As part of my day job I regularly interact with faculty and staff that support student film-making, and I have been in many a meeting where people argue for the best film cameras and the best lenses and the most expensive NLE hardware builds and finishing spaces. While more money and resources usually doesn't *hurt*, it often puts people in the mindset that more money is the answer to the practical problems they face during production. However, you don't tell a better story because you don't have the most expensive lens, or because you're only shooting in 1080 vs. 4K. Good stories are still good stories, even if they are produced on non-Hollywood grade production equipment. It is skill, talent, and ingenuity that tells great stories, not the most expensive ARRI rig you can get from a rental house.

If you have an interest in independent film-making, commercial storytelling, or even just the idea of taking a 1970s cult hit and using its gravity to slingshot an idea forty years later, I highly recommend you get your hands on DEATH KISS: The Book of the Movie.

So if you are a fan of low-budget film-making, a fan of vigilante action, or a blend of both, check out both the movie and the book.

Wargaming Wednesday: The Pure Insanity of Warhammer 40,000

Continuing with my push to deliver more blogging content, I'm dedicating Wednesdays to wargaming and role-playing games. Although in recent years I haven't been able to get in much (or really any) of either tabletop wargaming or pen-and-paper RPG playing, I still count both among my hobbies and interests.

Today I just wanted to highlight the wargame I am most invested in on an emotional level - Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. For those who don't know what it is - I'll do this REAL QUICK - a bunch of British tabletop miniatures folks had a set of wargaming rules called Warhammer. It had armies of Elves and Dwarfs and guys with swords and pikes, and orcs and goblins, even skeletons and ghouls and "chaos" warriors and monsters. Basically every fantasy trope you can think of circa 1985 or so, thrown into a blender. Warhammer became super popular, and as it grew, they decided to do a version of the game as a sci-fi skirmish game, which they decided to call "Warhammer 40,000".

Just Another Day in the 41st Millennium

The universe of Warhammer 40,000 has changed somewhat in the 30+ years since its inception, but, well, I'll just cut and paste in the quote that appears at the beginning of most of their products:

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Yeah, it's like that. This is the kind of science fiction wargame you dream up when you're a young British nerd who subsists on a diet of heavy metal, Michael Moorcock, Tolkien, the punk aesthetic, European political chaos, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, the Alien franchise, Hammer horror films, and a thick, heady dose of Generation X nihilism.  The "good guys" in the Warhammer 40K universe are the Imperium of Man, but you quickly realize that in 40K, "good" just means not quite as demonically horrifying as the "bad guys", but still pretty goddamn awful. The Space Marines, genetically modified super-humans in a suit of nigh-invulnerable power armor, might be call "the Emperor's finest", but they're also know as "The Angels of Death", and they'd stomp your skull into paste as soon as look at you if they thought you were a threat.

'Ello Guv'ner!

Even the Imperial Guard, the "good little guys" who were just your normal humans in basic body armor and carrying basic guns - somewhat analogous to regular army guys of today, just with sci-fi trappings - are often portrayed as psychotically violent and xenophobic, or just plain insane. Many of them come from "death worlds" where everything there tries to kill you, and it's basically Rambo with a plasma rifle and a chainsaw sword.

Some of my favorite parts of 40K are when things get delightfully subversive. There are nuns in 40K, but they are sociopathic religious zealots running around in black powered armor with all-white hair (white head covering, black outfit, like a nun's habit), blazing away with guns and flamethrowers, slaying heretics and the "impure". The Space Marine chaplain isn't a kindly older man giving you spiritual guidance...well okay he is, but he's also an eight foot-tall crazed murder machine in coal-black armor with a skull-shaped helmet, smashing people to pieces in the name of the Emperor and driving on the troops with his "inspiring presence". Yeah, it's like that. Even the Librarian is a force to be reckoned with, as "Librarians" are actually Space Marines with psychic powers, who can blow your body apart with their minds, set tanks on fire, and cause all sorts of supernatural havoc.

Yes, this is one of the Good Guys.

If anything, my biggest criticism of 40K in recent years is that they seem to be toning down the darker, more punk-rock elements of 40K in favor of something a little more family-friendly. There are still demons and mutants and heretics, but the Good Guys are a little more Good and the Bad Guys are a little more Bad. While 40K has always bee appealing to teenagers, I think Games Workshop knows that they need to aim for a younger audience, in order to get brand loyalty at an earlier age *and* tap into the "toy money" of the parents, rather than 30- or 40-somethings who have discretionary income, but who can also say "$35 for a single model an inch and a half tall? Ehhh...".


And that's my other big complaint - the cost. New model kits and new pricing structures mean that a playable, "competitive" army can set you back $400 or more if you buy everything at store prices. Sure, hobbies can be expensive, but the nature of wargaming is such that you feel the need to buy the newest, coolest stuff, as the rules and the "meta" changes to give different armies an advantage.

Glorious Old-School '90s Boxed Set Artwork!

But despite these problems, I really like the universe of Warhammer 40,000. It's cruel and violent and cynical and bloody as hell - in fact, it reminds me of that other British dystopian setting, JUDGE DREDD, in a lot of ways - but back in its earlier times, 40K didn't take itself as seriously as it does now, and I think the new, more serious 40K has lost a little something because of that.

Now, pardon me while I go burn some heretics - I mean, search on eBay for an out of production miniature...

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: 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 AFRIKA by Charles Whiting

This here is the first book of the series, which I received shortly after reading and reviewing the fourth book in the series, OPERATION KILL IKE. Now, of course, things make a little more sense!

In short, Lieutenant (er, Leftenant?) Crooke, VC, is given the task of tracking down a Brandenburger agent who is loose in Cairo, tasked with freeing a German-sympathizing Egyptian general and getting him into Axis-controlled Libya, where his presence on the side of the Axis forces will cause a schism in the Egyptian army and throw the British war effort into chaos.

Crooke is picked for this mission because he is intimately familiar with the North African desert. Crooke was a LRDG (Long Range Desert Group) Lieutenant-Colonel until the disaster of Operation Flipper, where his LRDG men, tasked with guiding in the Commandos sent to kill Rommel, are caught and killed. Crooke was the only man in his unit to make it back to friendly lines, wounded in the left eye and nearly dead. Crooke punched out a superior officer when he was denied assignment back to the front, and busted back down to Second Lieutenant, where he languished until Mallory, a Naval Intelligence officer, picks him for this mission. Mallory believes that the Brandenburger agent is going to smuggle the Egyptian general out through the deep desert, and so Crooke is the natural choice for the mission.

This is where, of course, things get a little silly. The author makes it clear that Crooke and the "glasshouse men" (read: soldiers in a military prison) he picks for the mission are the only manpower available to Mallory because all the other active-duty men are needed at the front. Of course, this is a mission of vital importance to the war effort as well. So really, while the need for a squad or two of highly trained and motivated men to assist Crooke on a mission which could alter the course of the war is clear, Crooke is forced to find, essentially, the worst of the worst. The men he picks are proficient, to be sure, but they're rogues and criminals, thieves and cowards. In no form of reality would such an important mission be assigned to this goon squad - rather, they'd just pull a squad from the front, since ten men here or there would make little difference in the overall health of the front.

Regardless, this series was clearly written with the idea of piggy-backing on the success of The Dirty Dozen. The series was named "The Destroyers" in the UK, where it originated, but when published in the US, it was renamed "The Dirty Devils", and all references to the Destroyers in the text itself were altered for the American edition. And, of course, having a half-dozen scoundrels running amok in the deep desert is more interesting than a squad of bland, chipper fellows who're just doing their part for king and country.

Overall, this was definitely an interesting read. The plot is a bit over-complicated, as the Brandenburger turns out to be a former German desert explorer now past his prime, who has a personal connection to the Egyptian general, and there's some oddball plot hooks that could probably have been left to the side in order to move the story along. However, there's a good deal of action throughout the book, and the desert adventure scenes - including a very memorable sandstorm - are very engaging.

If you get a chance to pick up OPERATION AFRIKA for a few bucks from a used bookseller, and you enjoy pulpy British WW2 adventure fiction, this is a good series for you, especially since there's six books in the series, so it has some legs to it. The books may be a little hard to find, but with some digging, you should be able to land a copy.

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.

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

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

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

HANGMAN #1: San Francisco Slaughter - Available Now

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My '70s-era Men's Adventure novel SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER is now available on Amazon for the Kindle, with a trade paperback format to follow later this month. I'm copying the Amazon product description below. Thank you again to everyone who gave feedback and support to this project - I couldn't have done it without you!

Amazon Book Description:

California, 1973. Back home after three years in the jungles of Southeast Asia, former Green Beret Jamie “Hangman” Lynch is enjoying the good life, drinking beer and chasing skirts along San Diego’s Mission Beach. But Lynch finds himself growing increasingly restless, and dreaming of getting back into the fight again.
Lynch asks his former commanding officer for guidance, and is offered a chance at some excitement: a private sector job working for the CEO of a San Francisco tech company in need of a man who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. The assignment? Hunt down a man named Roth, a whiz-kid engineer in debt to the Vegas mob. Roth has stolen an advanced military prototype and is looking to sell it to the highest bidder.
Lynch accepts the job and finds himself working with Richard, an enigmatic Texan mercenary, and Blake, the company’s head of security. The three men face off against Cranston, a murderous ex-cop turned enforcer-for-hire, who’s got an army of ruthless thugs turning San Francisco upside down looking for Roth. If Cranston gets to Roth before Lynch and his partners do, Roth can kiss the prototype - and his life - goodbye.
SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER is a hard-edged action-adventure novel. There's drinking, profanity, and sex. There's fast cars and big guns, sharp knives and loose women. Arson, torture, and murder are just tools in the hands of men who’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done. And while the good guys aren't so great, the bad guys are even worse.

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!

BOOK REVIEW: Bronson - Street Vigilante: Switchblade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BOOK REVIEW: Dirty Harry #1 - Duel for Cannons

The first three Dirty Harry movies came out between 1971 and 1976. Then, there was a hiatus of seven years, until 1983's Sudden Impact. With the franchise dead going into the '80s, Warner Books decided to begin a series of media tie-in novels (although I doubt they were called that at the time) featuring the eponymous maverick cop and his Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum. The series ran from 1981 to March of 1983, nine months before Sudden Impact was released. The series was written by two authors; Ric Meyers (who wrote the Ninja Master books) and Leslie Alan Horvitz, a writer I'm unfamiliar with. Meyers apparently wrote #'s 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, and 11.

The first book in the series, Duel for Cannons, opens with the line, "Boopsie's head exploded". The unfortunate Boopsie is a guy in a cartoon-figure suit at a knockoff Disney World-esque theme park in California. Boopsie is killed by a gunman who then gets chased by an off-duty San Antonio sheriff visiting the amusement park with his family. The sheriff gets drawn into a running gun battle with the shooter, and is eventually killed. Of course, the deceased is an old friend of Harry Callahan's, and Callahan doesn't take kindly to his friends being killed, even less so when the killer makes it look like the death was actually the sheriff pulling off a mass murder/suicide.

Although everyone else almost immediately dismisses the inconsistencies in the case, Harry pursues the evidence, and eventually uncovers a shadowy killer who seems to be trying to draw Harry to San Antonio. Eventually Harry goes there, and discovers that H. A. Striker, a wealthy business magnate, essentially runs the city, owns the cops, and gets to do whatever he wants. Striker had been opposed by the Sheriff, and one of his underlings, a tactically brilliant investigator named Nash. Harry teams up with Nash to try and bring down Striker, who is actually furious that the assassin - a .44 Magnum-loving killer named Sweetboy Williams -  lured Harry to San Antonio. Striker tries to get Harry arrested or driven off several times, only to get foiled on every occasion.

The story culminates with a ton of gunplay, as Striker tries to use a captured Nash as bait to lure Harry into a place where his bought cops - or Williams - can kill Harry. There's a ridiculous amount of gunfire and stuff getting smashed / shot / blown up, and although the killing isn't too gratuitous, at least one bad guy gets his head "blown clean off". I don't want to give away the details - there are a few twists and turns - but the ending is pretty satisfying, although the middle third of the book does sag a bit, and I found the whole plot a little hard to believe. With the police corruption looking SO blatant and rampant in San Antonio, and with the amount of evidence Nash gathers on Striker's doings, I don't see how he couldn't have just passed the information on to the FBI or some other, larger agency.

But overall, I found Duel for Cannons to be great fun. I've recently re-watched the first three Dirty Harry movies, and this book definitely references his filmic adventures extensively. One minor deviation is that DiGiorgio, an inspector who appears in all three earlier movies, is alive in this book, while (SPOILER) he's killed midway through The Enforcer. I suppose he was too good a secondary character to leave dead and buried, since his chubby, laid-back persona is a great counterpoint to Harry's belligerent, wound-up personality. There's also enough time spent in San Francisco dealing with punks and criminals there, that I'm looking forward to later stories taking place in the city itself. Meyers is able to capture and reproduce a lot of Harry's personality, and I can easily hear Eastwood speaking the dialogue in the book with Harry's typical laconic delivery.

It looks like Amazon has most, if not all of these books available for a somewhat reasonable price used, assuming you're not looking for mint condition specimens. I've already ordered the second book in the series, and I'll review it as soon as I can.

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.

BOOK REVIEW: BRONSON - Blind Rage by Philip Rawls

I ordered a used copy of this somewhat rare volume way back in September of 2012, after reading a great review of the book by pulp reviewer extraordinaire Joe Kenney over on his incredible Glorious Trash Blog. So as to not duplicate effort too much (i.e., I'm feeling lazy this morning), I'll link to Joe's review of this title, and his review is definitely worth reading. I read the book incredibly quickly - I think I zinged through it between one long Friday evening and a lazy Saturday morning. The action moves fast and the writing, as Joe states, is quite good for what is an extraordinarily trashy, lurid piece of 70's vigilante escapism.

However, unlike Joe, I'm just not feeling the love for this book. Most of my problems center around Bronson himself. The back cover copy claims the character used to be a "Knee-Jerk Liberal" who feels that criminals are simply poor misunderstood unfortunates in need of some TLC. However, none of this comes up in the book itself, and it is clear that the publisher is stealing the character from Brian Garfield's DEATH WISH, or more pointedly, the first DEATH WISH movie (naming the main character "Bronson" is a bit of a giveaway). Within the first five or six pages, our "Knee-Jerk Liberal" is already cold-bloodedly plotting how he's going to hunt down and exterminate all those responsible for his family's murders. He goes to a pawn shop and buys a silenced nine-millimeter automatic (funny how he manages to score one of those in 1975 at the first pawn shop he visits...), then almost immediately (it might be that very same night) starts hunting and killing off members of the gang affiliated with his family's killers.

As Joe points out in his review, Bronson has no problem killing anyone, and this is where it starts to get somewhat ridiculous. Supposedly he's doing this because he doesn't want to get identified, but of course within a few days of his rampage, the papers and the police are already fingering him for the murders since - surprise! - when you drop off the grid and then the criminals associated with your family's murder start dying, you're a suspect. In fact, since most of the killing Bronson does in his home town is with the same pistol he's used to kill a number of people who're clearly not in any way part of the killer's gang, if he'd gone to trial any sympathy related to his revenge killings would quickly go by the wayside. For a guy smart enough to wipe off his fingerprints everywhere he goes, and to at least occasionally pick up his cartridge casings, it is clear he hasn't thought a lot of this through. And, of course, if he wanted to be really thorough, he should have iced anyone who provided him with the weapons and information he uses in his rampage (the reporter, the pawn shop owner, the guy who sells him his car). But of course, one would never kill "real" people, those with jobs and who are productive members of society. Hookers aren't really people, right Bronson?

In retrospect, after reading through the book, it feels more like 190 pages of pure vitriol aimed at the "scum of society", and that means gays, minorities, and pretty much anyone else down on their luck. Although the elderly black woman who serves as his informant early on isn't depicted all that negatively, Bronson doesn't even hesitate to gun down in cold blood the young black men who visit her house while Bronson is there after he's discovered her dead (and of course, they're all armed). Sure, they're going to assume he killed her, but instead of using this as an opportunity to show some restraint on the character's part, the author just has him pulling the trigger. And, further on, Bronson and Teresa (his underage Chicano lover) are accosted by a Chicano gang that immediately attacks them in the parking lot of a diner, and they later go after the couple again in the middle of the highway during a blizzard (???). As for the way in which the author handles homosexuality, every gay man in the novel is depicted as some simpering, lisping, limp-wrist who comes onto Bronson like a runaway freight train. Honestly, it reads way too much like the archetypal anti-homosexual viewpoint that a gay man will try to pressure any straight man into having sex, no matter their personality (of which Bronson is entirely lacking) or looks (and we don't even know really what Bronson looks like, since he's essentially a cypher, an empty vessel we're supposed to pour our indignant selves into while reading).

In fact, throughout the book, Bronson has all the personality of your typical first-person shooter POV character, moving from target to target and killing / torturing in all matter of creative ways. I actually had less of a problem with the torture killings than I did with other aspects of the book, mostly because at least the people he tortures are directly responsible for the misery in his life. Again though, there is so little emotional justification - or emotion AT ALL - that I have essentially zero sympathy for Bronson. No, I don't need maudlin reflections on an idyllic white-collar suburban paradise now laid to waste, but Bronson might as well be the Terminator, for all the emotion he displays - and I also stick by that with regards to his relationship with Teresa, which I felt was extraordinarily wooden and stapled on, more of a "Yeah, I love you too - now shut up with your womanly caterwauling!" than anything else. Call me a Knee-Jerk Liberal, but I was pretty disgusted by a scene in the car where Bronson beats the crap out of Teresa for saying something about his family that he took offense to, and she tells him it's okay that he beats her up, as long as he doesn't hate her, and then she proceeds to tear his clothes off and have sex with him, because she's so turned on! 

To conclude, I can see this book reading well for its target demographic circa 1975, but it doesn't age very gracefully. I'm not looking for all the psychological self-reflection Brian Garfield put into DEATH WISH (here's my review of that book if you're interested), but the character of Bronson is so non-existent, I felt the only depiction of his character - and by that I mean, inner character - was in his actions, and those don't create a very sympathetic protagonist.

BOOK REVIEW: Hardman #1 - Atlanta Deathwatch by Ralph Dennis

Despite its somewhat unfortunate series name (right up there with The Penetrator, I think), this opening volume in the HARDMAN series is some pretty solid, gritty, sleazy, hard-boiled goodness. I decided to pick up Atlanta Deathwatch after author Lee Goldberg repeatedly sung the series' praises on Facebook, and I was able to acquire a copy cheaply via Amazon. Sadly, it being forty years old and not printed on the highest-quality materials, my copy is pretty fragile. The first page or two fell out while I was reading it, and I had to be careful in holding the book open by the middle of the pages lest the pages start separating from the spine at the bottom of the book.

Hardman (that's actually his last name, not just the series title) is an ex-cop, kicked off the force for dating a woman later revealed to be involved in an organized crime money laundering scheme. Hardman himself was a "clean cop", but once given the boot, he turned to any job that paid the bills. As the story opens, he's tailing a co-ed named Emily Campbell, whose father is a politician concerned that she's getting mixed up with a bad crowd. Hardman follows her to a blacks-only bar, and winds up getting the crap beat out of him by a couple of black guys who show up in a car after Hardman gets eyeballed by one of the bar's occupants. Strong-armed into dropping the job, Hardman bows out and goes to work for another employer, taking a trip to NYC where he picks up a briefcase full of heroin!

Turns out Hardman will do pretty much anything for cash, and his partner, Hump Evans, a towering black ex-football player, feels the same way. They've been making the NYC drug run regularly along with their small-time "problem solving" gigs. When Hardman and Evans get back to Atlanta, they find out Emily Campbell has been murdered, and soon all signs point to a former boyfriend, Eddie Spense, a troublemaker with a history of violent tendencies and bad behavior. Soon, Hardman finds himself working for a Black Mafia kingpin known only as The Man, a shadowy figure who, we discover, has been romantically involved with Emily for a while now.

The plot from this point on gets fairly complex, and I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I'll end the synopsis here. The book cover erroneously labels Hardman as a PI, and at one point Hardman's former partner comments on how he shouldn't really be doing PI work, since he isn't one. The legally ambiguous nature of Hardman's activities is one of the more amusing aspects of the novel. Early on, Hardman's former partner warns him that he better not find Hardman carrying a gun, but then later on has no problem with it when Hardman kills someone trying to kill him first, and at the end of the novel, Hardman even goes on a raid of sorts with Hump Evans and another plainclothes officer, the three of them armed to the teeth. I do like how Hardman has one foot on either side of the law, and - typical for these kinds of sleazy, hard-boiled stories - everyone seems to be more or less okay with that arrangement.

There's a whole laundry list of little gems to be found in this story. Hardman and Hump are always - always - drinking, everything from beer to wine to Scotch to cognac. There's one scene near the end of the book where they're on a stakeout, tailing one of the conspirators, and passing back and forth a half-pint bottle of Hennessy. This being the 70's, and these two clearly having cast-iron livers, no one ever gets so much as a buzz on, the cognac merely providing warmth on a cold night-time stakeout. Practically every time they return to Hump's apartment, the two of them break out a bottle of J&B scotch or a few beers. After all, what good is a paid sleuth if he's not half-sauced all the time?

I also dig the way the story handles guns. Weapons are described very simply, but everyone's got a basic, functional piece tucked away somewhere. Hardman carries around an old Colt .38 Police Positive, and Hump has a .38 Hardman once pocketed off a drunk - a "clean" gun, so to speak. Hump also has a fancy double-barreled shotgun given to him as a gift in his football days. Eddie Spence has a .45 automatic - possibly taken while he was in the Navy - and random hoods have .32 caliber "Saturday Night Specials". Then there's pump shotguns here and there, plus a "machine pistol" described as WW2-era German, probably an unlisted "souvenir" MP-40. The "world" so to speak of the novel gives the feel that everyone has access, somehow, to a "piece" tucked away in a shoebox or a sock drawer somewhere.

There's also a lot of racial tension in the story. On more than one occasion, the "partnership" between Hardman and Hump is questioned, with people typically thinking Hump works for Hardman, rather than with him, but Hardman always makes it clear that they are partners, on equal footing. Hump is also shown to be Hardman's equal in terms of his ability to come up with ideas and angles to the investigation - he's not just a big bruiser, he's smart, too. Things also get complicated when Hardman and Hump deal with The Man, especially with respect to The Man's status with his own men and how they view his dealings with this white ex-cop and his black partner. There's another layer of tension when it is clear not all of The Man's underlings liked the idea of their boss in love with a white woman. I could list many more examples, but suffice to say, the novel handles race in a pretty sophisticated way, especially given it was written in 1974.

I will agree with a couple of comments I've seen on Facebook, that the HARDMAN series looks superficially like a "Men's Adventure" series, especially the look of the cover, the series title and names for the individual books - everything looks like it could be a much more action-oriented series. However, the level of violence is pretty low, and actually a lot of the book's body count takes place off-camera. This is much more of a hard-boiled PI / cop mystery thriller than Men's Adventure. Still, I found the book highly enjoyable, and a very fast read once I got into it - I read the last two-thirds of the book in one evening. I'll probably pick up the next book in the series, although I'm not sure when I'll get to it, but if Atlanta Deathwatch is typical of the series, it'll be a fun, sleazy ride.

IRON HEAD and Other Stories Charity Anthology on Sale Now

Click the Cover to See on Amazon

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.