Media Monday: Rambo V - Last Blood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honestly, I am really disappointed.

Book Review: MEKONG! by James R. Reeves

I first read this book when I was a wee lad, probably about 10 or 11 years old. I may have read it again some time in either junior high or high school, but either way, it'd probably been 25+ years since I'd read MEKONG! last. I had a few memories of the book, and remember it was violent and cool (for a kid obsessed with war fiction) and very dark and disturbing at the same time.

In recent months, I'd discussed with several people the idea of writing a story set in Vietnam. While Jamie Lynch (of KILLER INSTINCTS and HANGMAN) is a Vietnam vet, I wasn't sure if I was ready to tackle the war in anything but anecdotes and flashbacks, but it'd been a long time since I'd read any Vietnam war stories. A few years ago I read MATTERHORN, an excellent Vietnam novel, but it is a huge tale, and much more literary than I was expecting at the time. I wanted to get back to the older, slightly pulpier 'Nam stories of my youth.

So, I bought MEKONG! used via Amazon. It is interesting to see the reviews - four of them, evenly split between 5-star and 1-star. Those who gave five stars found it an engaging and well-written story, while those who give it one star condemn the book on the grounds of Stolen Valor. The author, James R. Reeves, claimed he wrote the book after interviewing the protagonist, a former Navy SEAL who'd served in Vietnam. Apparently, James C. Taylor never served in 'Nam, nor was he a SEAL - he was a Navy mechanic, stationed stateside.

Now, I have no idea what actually took place to bring this book together and get it published. It is apparently the author's first novel, and it was put out by Ballantine books, a major publisher. I'm skeptical of the notion that Reeves was able to go through the whole publishing process without anyone questioning if Taylor was the real deal, so either Reeves lied to Ballantine, Taylor fooled Reeves, or Ballantine worked with Reeves (and possibly Taylor) to pump up the "true life" aspect of the book. Any of the above could have happened in one fashion or another, and I doubt anyone involved cares one way or another at this point.

While I am disappointed that this isn't an actual novelization of someone's SEAL tour in Vietnam, as far as a war novel goes, it is pretty damn good. The characters of Tyler and Brewster, Chief and Poppa and Lieutenant Commander Grey all come to life and resonate well during the reading. There's a lot of action and reflection, a lot of anger and yet, some great laughs along the way. The story of the bar and the attack dog is great, as are a few of the other light moments. The story really does a solid job of depicting "guys in war", with all the good and bad that comes with that.

There's a lot of violence, too. There are multiple chapters with combat in them, from killing sentries to full-blown battles and firefights, to riverboat attacks and ambushes. There's a pretty graphic description of a sentry being garroted by a length of piano wire that'd stuck with me since the first time I'd read the book. There's also an ad-hoc post-mortem of a dead VC where the damage done by various weapons is broken down (the characters are rather distainful of the M-16's 5.56mm round, and Tyler acquires an M-14, which he carries for the rest of his tour). There are a few other scenes of graphic violence involving booby traps that are highly disturbing, as they should be, of course.

Overall, this is a pretty solid, entertaining war novel, especially as someone's rookie effort. Setting the problem of Stolen Valor aside, it does a good job of reading as a memoir as well as a novel, and I think probably comes pretty close to hitting the mark as to the attitudes and actions of Riverine sailors and SEALS in the ~1970 time frame, as the war turned more and more to "Vietnamization" of the war effort, training and handing duties over to the ARVNs. Paperbacks can be had for a song on Amazon, so if you've got an interest in the subject matter, check it out.

HANGMAN #1: San Francisco Slaughter - Available Now

Click the Cover to See on Amazon

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.

Meet My Main Character - Jamie "Hangman" Lynch

My friend and fellow author Justin Aucoin has asked me to carry the torch for another leg in a great "Meet My Main Character" blog-hop. This is an opportunity for writers to introduce to readers the main character of a work in progress or soon-to-be-published work. So, I'm picking Jamie Lynch, the MC of my current work in progress.

Before reading more, be sure to check out Justin's blog post, where we meet his main character, Jake Hawking.

1) What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

My character's name is Jamie "Hangman" Lynch. He's a fictional character, part of my "Lynch Family Legacy" of characters featured in my other books, such as KILLER INSTINCTS and my COMMANDO series of WW2 novels. Jamie is the son of COMMANDO's Tommy Lynch and uncle to KI's William Lynch.

2) When and where is the story set?

The story is set in 1973, and starts in San Diego, California. The story quickly moves up the coast to San Francisco, where events take place all over the Bay area, from Palo Alto to Bodega Bay.

3) What should we know about him/her?
 
Jamie's 24 years old in 1973. He's a former sergeant in the United States Army, 5th Special Forces Group, and from 1970-72, served in the top-secret Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG). Previous to that, he was a corporal in the 101st Airborne Division, and fought in the Battle of Hamburger Hill in 1969, where he was wounded. In 1973, Jamie has been out of the military for about nine months, living above a surf shop along Mission Beach in San Diego.

4) What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

Jamie made it back from Vietnam in fairly good shape, both physically and mentally. He suffered a few minor wounds, but he's in prime physical condition. Mentally he's doing okay, although he has recurring dreams and nightmares about the war. Most recently, his dreams have involved going back to the war, and even though in some of his dreams he gets killed, the overall sense in his dreams is that Jamie is happy to be back "home" in the war. He's self-aware enough to realize that the hum-drum civilian life isn't for him; he's spent his entire adult life so far in the military, training for and fighting in a war, and now he's basically a beach bum, living off some money set aside and working a part-time job in the surf shop he lives above.  Jamie begins to feel like "a tiger in a cage, restless and confined", and worries that one day he'll channel that aggression and confined feeling in a way that will wind up with him in jail, dead, or some other unfortunate outcome.

So, Jamie gets in touch with General Carson, an officer who used to be Jamie's CO back in Vietnam. He confesses his problems and asks Carson for help. Carson tells Jamie he knows of a businessman up in San Francisco, the head of a tech company with strong ties to military technology research, who is in need of someone with Jamie's skill set to "solve a problem". Jamie, not caring much what the problem is and only knowing it'd give him an escape from his cage of inactivity and boredom, accepts the job. A great deal of violent conflict ensues shortly thereafter.

5) What is the personal goal of the character?

Jamie's primary motivation throughout the story is to find purpose in his civilian life. Like many veterans, he's come back to the "real world" after being in the military for over five years, and the Army is the only adult life he's ever known, and his skills-set is, at the very least, pretty specific. He can't picture himself living the life of a 9-to-5 office dweller, driving to work every morning in a station wagon, typing up reports and sitting in meetings, then going home at the end of the day to a house surrounded by a white picket fence, containing a darling wife and two perfect children. Even at the young age of 24, Jamie firmly believes there's no way that kind of life is his destiny.

On the other hand, Jamie understands that selling his lethal skills in the private sector is a dangerous game. As the story unfolds, and the events begin to spiral out of control, with more and more collateral damage and unforeseen consequences, Jamie realizes he's essentially a murderous criminal, and there's a good chance his actions might get him killed or sent to prison for the rest of his life - exactly the sort of outcome he was trying to avoid in the first place. On the other hand, he's got several other characters in the story, especially the mysterious gun-for-hire named Richard, affirming that this is the life for him. It becomes a tug-of-war between Jamie's moral character, and his belief in his ultimate place in the world outside of the Army.

6) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?
 
The book is titled HANGMAN: SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER. I hope this will be the first in a series of short novels featuring Jamie as he goes on further adventures, all under the HANGMAN series title. I wrote a teaser blog post regarding the book here.

7) When can we expect the book to be published?

I hope to have the first draft completed by the beginning of May, and off to a small cadre of interested Beta readers. Depending on their feedback, and the amount of rewriting I have to do nor not do, I hope to have the novel out on Amazon for the Kindle and Trade Paperback formats some time in June.

UPDATE: Author Mark Allen is the next stop on this blog-hop - you can meet his main character, Travis Kain, here on his page.

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: Bronson - Street Vigilante: Streets of Blood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teaser Post: HANGMAN: SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER

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

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

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

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

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

MOVIE REVIEW: Chrome and Hot Leather (1971)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Review: Hard Target (1993)

I'm a really big fan of the "men hunting men" sub-genre. The Most Dangerous Game is one of my favorite short stories, and I've even got the DVD of the 1932 film adaptation. It's a plot that's appeared in one form or another in countless works of written fiction, television, and film.

One of the most well-known of these works is John Woo's action spectacular, Hard Target. Although by the time the movie came out in the early 90's Jean-Claude Van Damme was already a well-known action movie star, this is one of my favorite JCVD films. I find his ridiculous hair, his long black trenchcoat (in New Orleans, no less), and the Cajunification of his natural accent a welcome change from his usual clean-cut, each-chararacter-a-clone-of-the-next appearance. To add even more awesome to the mix, we've got Lance Henricksen, Arnold Vosloo (who I swear is a mummy, because he doesn't appear to have aged a day in 20 years), Yancy Butler, Wilford Brimley, and Sven Ole Thorson (a personal favorite of mine). Brimley as a friendly backwoods Cajun moonshiner with a penchant for explosives and archery steals more than a few scenes in this film.

The plot, if you live under an action-movie rock and have no clue, is simple: Fouchon and van Cleef (Henriksen and Vosloo, respectively) facilitate illegal "man-hunting" expeditions for wealthy men who want to know what it is like to hunt and kill other men. The two travel from city to city around the world with their good squad, finding "volunteers" to serve as rabbits for the chase. These volunteers are typically combat veterans from one war or another; destitute, desperate men who'll risk their lives for a money belt containing $10,000, theirs to keep if they manage to escape their hunters.

Of course, we figure out pretty quickly that no one ever escapes with that money. And when Natascha Binder (Butler) comes to New Orleans to find her father Douglas, who has stopped responding to her letters, she discovers that he was recently laid off from work and has become one of the city's many homeless. Doug Binder was a Vietnam veteran, a Force Recon Marine, and was offered money by Fouchon to risk his life in the hunt. He's killed of course, but his murder was concealed by a warehouse fire. Miss Binder hires Chance Boudreaux (van Damme), a down-on-his-luck former Force Recon marine himself to help her find her father, after Boudreaux saves her from a pack of violent thieves.

From there, we have a pretty standard but solid action flick. Fouchon and van Cleef go chasing after Binder and Boudreaux through New Orleans and the nearby bayou swamps, with running gun battles, rattlesnake booby traps, lots of stuff exploding everywhere, and multiple spin-kicks to the face. This movie wouldn't rate nearly as high on the awesome-meter if it wasn't for John Woo's ability to make such boilerplate violence into a cinematic ballet of bodies, bullets, spent casings, and flying debris. Everything that makes me groan with disgust when Michael Bay tries it, I cheer and applaud when it is done by Woo.

One interesting fact about this film is that the screenplay was written by fellow Bostonian Chuck Pfarrer (who also plays Doug Binder), a former US Navy SEAL turned screenwriter. Beyond the usual action-movie conventions, there is a strong thread of honest concern in the film for the plight of the homeless veteran. Fouchon manages to convince his "volunteers" to risk themselves for the money because, he tells them, with it they will be able to get back on their feet again - get a place to live, buy new clothes, find a job - in other words, be a man again. This lure dangled in front of the starving pride of these men is tempting bait indeed.  Pfarrer makes a point to show the homeless veterans as honest, soulful men who just want a chance to show they still have something to give to the world.

If you haven't seen Hard Target, you need to "take a chance" and check it out. As I said earlier, I think it is one of the more entertaining examples of its sub-genre, although above all you need to read and watch The Most Dangerous Game first so you have a firm grounding in the source material.

MIA Hunter Available as an Ebook!

Just the other day, veteran Men's Adventure writer Stephen Mertz e-mailed me to let me know his M.I.A. Hunter was available as an e-book from Crossroad Press.

Check it out here.

Great to see Stephen is working to get some of his older MA books out as ebooks. My only complaint is that the Crossroad Press site only accepts PayPal as a form of electronic payment. I've got a PayPal account, but it is so old that I can't actually remember the last time I used it. Nevertheless, I'll have to dust it off, feed it a few bucks, and pick up Stephen's ebook on general principle.

Stephen also has a number of other books out as ebooks on Amazon. Check them out if you get a chance.

Book Review: Across the Fence by John Stryker Meyer

I read this book within a couple of days - it is a short (but not too short) and engaging story about the author's experiences as a SOG commando in Vietnam.  It is an interesting counterpart to the other book I read on the same topic, SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam by John L. Plaster.

Plaster's book is much larger in terms of the scope of the story he tells - the exploits of many SOG Recon Teams and Hatchet Forces are covered, and the time frame extends throughout SOG's involvement in Vietnam.  Meyer's story is much more personal; it starts with his arrival in Vietnam and follows him for several months.  Only a few side stories involving other friends and Teams are discussed, but these are also engaging and informative.

One of the more interesting aspects of Meyer's story is that he's coming into the SOG experience rather late in the game.  The Studies and Observation Group had been established for several years by the time Meyer fought during late 1968 to early 1969.  From what I've gleaned reading Plaster's book, Meyer's tour put him in-country during the word period of SOG's operations, the point where almost every team was being ambushed as it was reaching the LZ, and SOG was regularly losing whole teams, never to be heard from again.

Meyer's story is well worth the read.  It is very personal, very raw at times, and it is interesting to read about many of his Recon Team (or as they were called in his AO, Spike Teams) missions.  Particularly grueling is one mission where Meyer's team has to flee enemy search teams by climbing a mountain under bad weather, pursued by dogs and sapper teams.  The team was carrying so much ammunition for its experimental pump-action grenade launcher (which is a cool bit in the story in and of itself) that the team had to bury and booby-trap ammo left behind.

If I have one complaint about Across the Fence, it is that this memoir seems to end rather suddenly.  I didn't really feel a sense of closure, and there is no real discussion of the end of his tour, or his opinion of the war or the effect his missions had on the war effort.  Meyer is a good writer, with a lot of heart, and I would have enjoyed reading more about his impressions of the war.  As it is though, this is well worth the money, without unnecessary vitriol, ego, or anger.

Summer Action Adventure Movie: Super 8 (2011)

Children are not stupid.  A child or adolescent is an information processing machine that is unmatched by any adult - their brains are assimilating data at an amazing rate, their body chemistry is designed to help them learn and develop quickly, and they have yet to fall into dangerously predictable patterns of thinking.  A child can make intuitive leaps of logic and imaginative reasoning that would never occur to an adult, and because of this, we often underestimate a child's ability to figure out problems and find solutions.  Wisdom does often come from the mouths of babes.

All that having been said, I think children today are a lot worse off than children from my generation and older.  Yes, I'm going to say it -  back in my day, which let's be fair, wasn't that long ago - we had to learn a lot of stuff on our own.  There was no Wikipedia or Google or Ask Jeeves; there were school books and libraries and the home edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Learning was a more painstaking, time-consuming process, and there was a lot less information to cram into our young minds.  We weren't distracted by Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or internet porn or IMs and texting; there were distractions, but there weren't so many and they weren't so in your face, all the time.

I was a bookworm as a kid, and something of an introvert, but I still spent time outside, countless days running around in the woods capping imaginary terrorists and Soviets with a Crossman scoped air rifle and an imitation Colt Python CO2 revolver.  I also played with friends, thank you very much, and all sorts of normal childhood activities that got me out of the house and into the world around me.  I made stuff with my hands, found problems and came up with solutions.  I got hurt, I got better, and I learned from my mistakes.  I read about geology and history and mechanical engineering, what made a jet fly faster than the speed of sound or what kept the moon circling the earth.  I think a lot of us forget that at that time in our lives, we were in many ways more learned than our parents, who'd forgotten so many things and fell into focusing on the singular tasks of their job, raising their family, and putting food on the table.  Every child was a Renaissance Man (or Woman).  Think about that for a moment.

So what does any of the last three paragraphs have to do with the dang movie, you might ask?  It's just this; Super 8 is the direct descendant of all those movies I grew up with as a kid, movies that showed kids not only holding their own against the world, but finding ways to come out on top.  Movies like E.T., War Games, Goonies, Cloak & Dagger, and even Red Dawn.  Movies where the kids figured out problems and found solutions before the grownups, who were usually too unwilling to face the situation or believe there was another solution besides their own.  I don't know if these movies were a reflection of Generation X's anti-authoritarian streak, or if they helped nurture it, but these kinds of movies influenced young kids such as myself, reminded us that grownups didn't always have the answers, to believe in ourselves and trust that we were smart, capable, and when need be, heroic.

This is the heart of Super 8; it is a movie that reminds us that back when we were young, we weren't stupid kids who didn't know anything and couldn't do anything.  We were bright, creative beings who could take what life threw at us and climb right over, then come at you swinging.  We could make movies, we could find clues, we could solve mysteries, and we could show that sometimes, adults didn't always have the answers, and there was always another solution to a problem.

If you want to remind yourself of that time in your life, you should go see this film.

Summer Action Adventure Movie: We Were Soldiers (2002)

I saw this movie when it came out in theaters, and a few years after that, I read the book.  In 2002, Mel Gibson wasn't quite as notorious a Hollywood figure as he is today, and watching the movie again today I must admit knowing his predilections and prejudices sours the film a little for me.  Like a number of Hollywood personalities, we have a hard time separating our feelings about them as people from how we feel about their performances or their directed / written / produced works.  I know there a number of people in the industry who I consider rather abominable people, but find their bodies of work to be quite solid. C'est la vie.


We Were Soldiers is a film adaptation of the book We Were Soldiers Once...and Young by Lt. General Hal Moore and Joe Galloway.  The book and the film cover the multi-day battle for the Ia Drang Valley between the US Army's Air Cavalry and the NVA.  It was the first major engagement between these two bodies and one of the few major "set piece" battles during the war.  Both sides suffered heavy casualties, and both sides claimed victory.  The battle did, among other things, give validity to the air cavalry operational model, which would become the hallmark of almost all operations during the Vietnam War (our first "Helicopter War").

In a way, the battle for Ia Drang Valley is a miniature version of the entire war for Vietnam.  US forces engage the NVA or VC, we bloody their noses badly before they inevitably fall back although we take substantial casualties ourselves, and then we almost immediately fall back after the battle is declared "won", giving the ground up to the NVA or VC who move back in and re-claim the battlefield. This is a cycle we will repeat for the next seven years.  Whether or not the US military and the government could foresee this cycle at the end of 1965 is still, I feel, up for debate.  That the American people did not foresee this cycle is, I feel, without question.

Still and all, I think We Were Soldiers is a pretty solid movie.  There is a lot of melodrama in it that can be tear-jerking and / or teeth-grinding depending on your disposition, but be forewarned that it is there.  Probably the most solid and enjoyable aspect of the film is Sam Elliot's portrayal of Sergeant Major Basil L. Plumley.  Sam Elliot is one tough ol' sumbitch, and he puts every ounce of that mettle into his performance.  No one makes five combat drops in two wars and then goes on to fight through a third, and is still kickin' at the age of 91, without having balls of solid, stone-polished brass.

Here's an alternate trailer for the film, without the "Daddy, what is a war?" crap in the beginning that makes me throw up in my mouth a little.  I wish I could find other, better clips from this film, but they are rather scarce, of have spoilers I don't want to reveal.  Pay special attention to Sgt. Plumley's opinion of Armstrong Custer - it's classic.

Book Review: SOG by John L. Plaster

I think we can all agree that the Vietnam War was a pretty messed-up affair.

No war is pretty, but when we look back at such conflicts as the Great War, World War II, and Korea, things seem, if not simple, then at least straightforward. Of course, if you dig deeper, there are layers and sub layers and sub-sub layers of intrigue and self-interest and many other maneuverings going on behind the scenes, but the public perception of these conflicts is largely a positive one. Even the activities of such organizations as the OSS and SOE, who practiced many "dirty" tactics to win the war, were seen as largely thrilling "spy adventures"; James Bond meets Sgt. Rock, if you will.

Vietnam? Not so much. With a country still reeling from a presidential assassination and the messes of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, along with years of quiet "advisement" by the American military and the CIA before we ever went to "war" in Vietnam, America was a country in no mood for a new war, especially a war in some pissant country on the other side of the globe, a civil war no less, fought "to stop the spread of Communism". Hey, didn't we just fight one of those ten years before? Yeah, that one wasn't fun either. Hey, aren't we on the brink of civil war here in the States? Yeah, man, totally. Make love not war, brothers and sisters!

So from the very moment we put boots on the ground in Vietnam, the public perception of the war was completely screwed. This was a war being fought by politicians and the "military industrial complex" wrapping some mysterious dark agenda in the flag of Capitalism and thrust down the throats of drafted minorities. An ugly business all around, and it got uglier as time went on, eventually culminating in America's first "lost war". One of the things that made the war so ugly was the CIA's involvement in so much of it, and that many casualties of the war were occurring during various "covert actions" that no one could talk about. Once the American people smelled that they were being lied to about the way little Jimmy got killed while in Vietnam, it was just a big political dungheap from that moment onward.

Foremost among the "covert actions" taken during the war were the "cross-border operations" undertaken by secret teams of Green Berets, SEALs, and USAF Commandos. Brought together under the benign-sounding "Studies and Observations Group", these teams of elite special forces soldiers, some of whom had fought in Korea and even World War II (only twenty years gone in 1965), partnered with their fearless indigenous allies such as the Montagnards and Nungs.

These teams of elite warrior-scouts would chopper into North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in order to find and report on the operations of the NVA and their VC allies in areas where American troops were, officially, never touching the ground. These were classified, covert missions and at the time officially denied by all levels of government. Even today, much of what went on and when and where it took place has not so much been revealed by the government as "admitted by lack of retribution". This is especially true when the missions involved something other than simple recon, such as prisoner snatching, electronic surveillance operations, and more "direct action" assignments.

I've always had an interest in the Vietnam war. Having been born in the 70's, growing up I knew a number of Vietnam veterans and as a young kid, when others were reading Charlotte's Web or The Giving Tree, I was reading Vietnam memoirs like Mekong or Huey, or pouring through gun magazines and paramilitary rags like Soldier of Fortune. Because of this, I had heard of SOG long ago, and had a fair understanding of who they were and what they did during the war; classified commando operations in countries where we were officially not supposed to have military assets.

But the details of SOG's role in the Vietnam war have been shrouded in a lot of myths and legends, mostly because a lot of the official disinformation released during the war has remained public perception in the minds of most people. So even knowing that there were "layers or truth" going on, reading SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam by Major John L. Plaster, three tour SOG veteran, I was blown away by the exploits of these elite commandos. When every battle was an hours or days long running gunfight against an enemy force that outnumbered you a hundred to one (if you were lucky), it's amazing that any SOG team made it out of the jungle alive.

Unfortunately, many did not. The war swallowed whole recon teams without a trace, hundreds of men who disappeared and went MIA, possibly captured, possibly killed - we'll never know for sure. Probably the most eerie part of reading SOG were all the actions that ended with "RT Such and Such was never seen or heard from again" or "One Zero Sgt. Whathisname's body was never found". Even when the fate of SOG members was known, it was often brutal and nasty; men who were blown away, burned up, shot to pieces or plummeting from damaged helicopters. Some years, a SOG base's personnel (typically 40-50 Green Berets and twice as many indigenous allies) would suffer in excess of 100% casualties; every member of the SOG teams had been either killed or wounded, sometimes wounded more than once, or a member was killed, only to have his replacement wounded or killed as well. Casualties also included MIA, and some years, up to half the American casualties would be MIAs.

On the bright side, however (if you can call it "bright"), many SOG teams did manage to fight their way through impossible odds. Reading this book, so many of these battles are amazingly, mind-blowingly heroic; men fighting through ambushes and evading whole companies of the enemy, suffering mortar and RPG fire, grenades and withering hails of bullets, wounded multiple times and still fighting on for days before daring helicopter crews literally plucked them from the jungle at the end of STABO harnesses. These are the men who earned more medals and commendations per unit than any American military force in the 20th century (and many actions were either denied or had awards downgraded due to their covert nature), and in reading these accounts, you can understand why; kill ratios among SOG teams were some years as high as 150:1, ten times that of the average American military unit. And yet, if a man had survived more than twenty missions, his comrades wondered how he was still alive.

Sadly, the worst part about reading SOG is the jaw-clenching anger you may feel reading about the ways in which SOG operations, especially rescue operations to find POWs and MIAs, were hindered or thwarted by government politicians and senior military brass more concerned with appeasing the enemy or "neutral" (hah!) governments than rescuing their own military men. I can understand when a government says "these are sterile, deniable operations" that there is a risk MIAs and POWs will remain such, but if they can be rescued without public exposure, they should have been. Of all the terrible things that happened during the Vietnam war, I think it was the mishandling of POWs and MIAs that angers me the most. I might be able to forgive a "dirty war", but I can't really forgive preventing able and willing men from doing what it takes to rescue their lost brothers-in-arms.

So, if you have any interest in Vietnam, or in the history of American Special Forces operations, I highly recommend this book. Heart-breaking and pulse-pounding in equal measures, it is an utterly unforgettable read.

My Reactions to the Death Wish Novel

Over the holidays, I found, bought, and read a copy of Brian Garfield's 1972 novel "Death Wish". This is the novel that was adapted into the 1974 film of the same name starring Charles Bronson, which then went on to have four sequels, most of which depart from the somewhat believable reality of "a gentle man pushed to the edge decides to seek revenge on a cruel world" and by the last couple of movies, Bronson's character Paul Kersey rivals any other 80's - 90's over-the-top action hero for his gratuitous violence.

Truth be told, I've only seen Death Wish I and II, and only small snippets of the other movies, but I know Death Wish 4: Crackdown ends with a climax involving Kersey killing a bad guy in an apartment building by blowing him to bits, literally, with a LAWS anti-tank rocket. This has definitely moved well beyond the realm of a roll of quarters in a sock and a small caliber revolver. Regardless, this post isn't about the films, but the book that inspired them - Brian Garfield's dark and twisted little 1972 crime thriller.

The plot of the book is pretty close to the plot of the film. Paul Benjamin (the name is different) is a middle-aged accountant (not architect) who's always lived in NYC. An avowed liberal, Benjamin contributes to a number of charities and social welfare / benefit organizations. He's the sort of mild-mannered "bleeding heart" who feels that it's the fault of "the system" that so many people fall on hard times and find themselves in positions where they commit crimes for a variety of "sob story" reasons. He knows there's crime in the streets, but he also feels that a lot of it is hyped up by a sensationalist media, and that a variety of social programs, re-education, and "understanding" could make it better.

Needless to say, when his wife and daughter are victims of a brutal home invasion, his wife having her neck "wrung like a chicken" and his daughter suffering such psychological trauma that she enters a catatonic state and needs to be committed, that liberal bleeding heart attitude begins to lose the majority vote, so to speak. Growing more and more frustrated with a justice system that can't find the guilty parties, health care system that can't do anything to help his doctor, and friends and family who are confused, angered, and ultimately moved on past his tragedy.

Finally, feeling like he has come to the breaking point, Paul decides to pick up a roll of quarters at the bank and drops it into a sock, making himself an ad hoc blackjack or kosh of sorts. He goes out and gets himself mildly drunk, and walking home late that night a young scared kid tries to pull a knife on him and rob him. Paul whirls around and swings his kosh at the kid while bellowing an inarticulate cry of anger and frustration. The young punk runs away terrified, and although the incident causes him a great deal of stress at first, the next day Paul realizes that he feels better than he has in weeks, "...that he was experiencing all the symptoms of a sexual release".

While on a trip to the southwest, Paul finds a sporting goods shop and purchases a snub-nosed .32 caliber Smith and Wesson 5-shot revolver, along with several boxes of ammunition. He spends the afternoon that the shop's shooting range and gets comfortable with the pistol, and then takes his chances and smuggles the pistol home on the plane. Back in NYC, Paul eventually works up the courage/gumption to go looking for trouble, and eventually winds up killing a junkie who tries to rob him at knife-point.

After the initial "what have I just done" wears off, long story short, Paul Benjamin begins to hunt down criminals on the streets of New York City. He realizes he made some elementary mistakes his first time around, and learns from them (such as buying a reversible coat, hat and gloves that can be taken off and put in pockets, etc.). He makes sure to vary his hunting patterns some, and when the newspapers begin to catch on that there's a vigilante killer on the loose, he starts to be wary and avoid anything that might resemble a police trap set up to catch him on the prowl.

One thing that Garfield spends an almost inordinate amount of time focusing on is the public reaction to the killings, to the idea of a vigilante killer on the streets. Almost the entirety of the books third-to-last chapter is a multi-page article in a local newspaper covering a psychological profile of the killer. The psychologist interviewed gives an almost spot-on description of Paul; a middle aged, white collar, semi-affluent social liberal who has suffered a terrible personal tragedy at the hands of a random criminal element, and not having seen justice done, decides to strike out at that random criminal element in his own way. The psychologist qualifies that while the killer's behavior is utterly reprehensible, he doesn't consider the man deranged or insane, but simply pushed past the breaking point, where all bonds of societal inhibition have come undone.

Before this article, of course, there is much discussion in the papers, on the radio, on the television, about whether the killings are a good idea or a bad idea, whether it's one lone man or a group, if it's some Vietnam vet coming home broken in the head (it is 1972 after all). Paul's biggest concern is the police; there is constant debate in the public forum about whether or not the police tacitly approve of what the vigilante is doing, and how they are going to approach it. The police's public statement is of course that "every effort is being made" to catch the vigilante, but off the record, some police think it's "the only way to clean up the streets".

I will leave the end of the book a mystery to anyone who hasn't read it so as to avoid any gratuitous spoilers. I was a little surprised at the ending, and at first, disappointed. After a while, though, I've warmed up to it and think it ends on the right note, or at least, A right note. Definitely a more thought-provoking ending than I was expecting, and quite different from the ending of the film.

In conclusion, I think that this book is one of the best treatments of the vigilante I've seen or read in a long time. There is nothing at all macho or heroic about the character. In fact, while reading the book, I wasn't even picturing Charles Bronson in my mind's eye, but someone far weaker, gawkier, potbellied; an out of shape middle-aged desk drone who's never had to do any more exercise than lift his briefcase or a bag of groceries. Because, these are the sort of people who fantasize about striking back at the world; not the ex-special forces commandos, not the retired CIA agents, not the peace-loving black belts. Rather, it's the accountants, the computer programmers, the mild-mannered English teachers. This, more than any other aspect of the book, is what makes Death Wish so good; seeing a mild-mannered white collar liberal (and please note, I don't have any particular loathing for this demographic) tumble down the rabbit hole of fear and anger and emerge from the other side a very cold-blooded vigilante killer.