QUICK SHOTS: Hitman #1: Chicago Deathwinds by Norman Winski

I've sorta avoided Norman Winski's Hitman series. I think it's a subconscious thing, because I've gone on record with my love for Kirby (Kin Platt) Carr's Hitman series and could I have too Hitman book series in my life? Would I be cheating on one with another? Deep thoughts. Well, I've cheated now and I'm feelin' fine.

Norman Winski was like a lot of the writers I read here. He kicked around a bit, apparently wrote a book called The Sex Urge in 1965. Sounds relatable. Then wrote some for the movies, the awesomely named Six-Pack Annie and a pretty solid Wings Hauser (one of my favorite actors) actioner called Hostage which co-starred the editors of Solider of Fortune magazine. He did the novelization of the radical Sword and the Sorcerer. His other writing is, uh, bonkers. It's made up of pop-psychology and bios, stuff on Carl Jung AND Ray Charles. Past that the dude ghosted the internet. I'm pretty sure he died in 2002. 

But Winski got a three-book series out of Pinnacle so that's pretty good, he had worked in the Pinnacle mines before, writing Able Team #2: Hostage Island. And Pinnacle was always on the lookout for another Mack Bolan or another Remo Williams, maybe even, if they had too, another Richard Camellion. Here we have Dirk Spencer, which I'm just going to assume was named after The A-Team's Dirk Benedict and Robert B. Parkers Spenser. He's a 'Nam-vet/rich guy with Uzi's, a Lamborghini and a thirst of action and ass-kickery, also if you believe the photos on the covers, little berets that he wears too high on his head. 

Dirks got it all, ladies, cars, etc. etc. but he misses "the action." Luckily for him (unlucky for others) a family he's friends is killed and it's a shady deal. Dirk decides to become a good old-fashion vigilante. He buys a bunch of guns and rocket launchers and the like and starts blowing people away. Everything goes good with his initial taste of street vengeance, and he basically sets himself up as Batman and sets his sights on whoever does evil. 

And here's where it gets real good, the bad guys are Neo-Nazi's and there's plenty of Nazi-killing! They are all headed up by a politician, Murdoch (again, A-Team?) who's just going around spreading racism, hate and murdering innocents. And Dirk being a good-guy doesn't care for Murdoch's Nazi-bullshit and just starts wrecking Murdoch's shit. Nazis are my favorite villains; they are the perfect bad guys because fuck them, amiright? 

This is an OVER-THE-TOP book, it's wild. There's Uzi drive-bys with planes, Nazi She-Devils, some nice gore, nasty torture, spunky lady reporters, and action galore. Winski was having a good time with this one. It's funny because it is a sorta 80s update of the 70s Kin Platt Hitman. They both wear black suits and masks and take one wild and vile villains. Both series have a playful energy about them even in the sleazy filth that the peddle of writers having a good time pounding typewriter keys. These aren't quite as wild as say, the TNT books or David Alexander's Phoenix books, but this one was close.  

These are a little difficult to track down, I got lucky and found all three in one old bookstore in the clearance section back before everyone looked up every book are priced everything too high. I think I got all three for around a buck-fifty. That's some solid value to the dollar. On the internet they all look like they all go form between ten and twenty-ish dollars. That's a little steep, bit I've paid more for less entertaining books, so...  

QUICK SHOTS: Renegade Roe #2: The Emerald Chicks Caper by L.V. Roper

Recently I added a new bookshelf; it's just a little squatty cheap one found at Wal-Mart for extra cheap. It was an impulse buy, but bookshelf-space is always limited at my joint, so I buy 'em when I find 'em. So, I found a spot in the bedroom (thanks, to my awesome wife for indulging me) and decided to make it an exclusively horror shelf and get a few books out of my basement to help me with my other gig over at Fathom Press reviewing stuff. 

That's a long-winded wind-up to me finding a book called The Reunion by L.V. Roper. And that's not even the book I'm reviewing here. Maybe I should just get to the point, huh? So that got me thinking about L.V. Roper who was among other things a member of the Kansas House of Representatives and I live in Kansas so it's an interesting little tidbit for me...and probably me only. Anyway, back in the 70s he wrote a couple of handfuls of Men's Adventure/Mystery novels, a couple that bordered on horror and romance novels as Samantha Lester. I think generally his best-viewed novel is Death-As in Matador, a hitman tale with a faux Paul Newman on the cover. I haven't read that one yet, I'm saving it for a rainy day I suppose. 

He clearly had a thing for private eyes. My personal favorite of his works is Hookers Don't Go to Heaven, a Kansas City set mystery book that though written in the 70s it really feels like 50's Gold Medal-type private eye yarn. Then there's Renegade Roe which pretty much oozes 70s. This is the kind of book that it would fee wrong to read without an ad for Kent cigarettes in the middle. It might as well come with a patch of shag carpet to set it upon once you're done is what I'm saying. 

I have read this one before and I hadn't really planned on reading it again. Though I did remember it sort of fondly, I think I liked the style and the feeling of the book rather than the ACTUAL book. When I found Roper's Reunion it made me wonder where the Renegade Roe books were and I found them on a shelf of honor, a big monster where I keep a lot of my favorite stuff on and me made me wonder if I actually liked the book or lumped it by Martin Meyers Hardy series because the covers are similar. 

I couldn't help myself I cracked it open and thought I'd just flip around and see what the whole jam was about and two hours of couch laying and a beer or two and I had reread the thing. After that I looked up Renegade Roe on the Men's Adventure Papers of the 20th Century Facebook group and low and behold I had given it a mini review of the book back in 2019. Here it is: 

"This is the 2nd "Renegade" Roe book starring swinging Native American private eye Jerry Roe. It's an easy going read, a little light on the action but it makes up for it with sex, day drinking, and talk about headbands. Even though mystery is fairly lightweight and the characters a just a smidge above cardboard cutouts it all works for me and it's a lot of funky 70s fun. L.V. Roper only wrote a handful of books, and I seem to have magically picked most of the up without trying too hard, anybody know anything about him?"

I liked it more than that this time. In fact, I really had a great time. I enjoyed all the day-drinking and talk about headbands EVEN more. It's very much a product of its time and if you go in expecting an action-packed tale with jets, fisticuffs and gunfights, you'll be disappointed. It's more akin to a 70s TV detective show. Only with more saucy bits. Roe is a fun character who's a cliche in every way and it's a fairly racist character at that. He's a step-above Tonto because at least he kicks ass, solves the mystery and sexes all the sexy ladies. The Lone Ranger would blush. 

But all these books are sexist and racist, I like to warn people (I think the cover is warning enough on this on though) if your sensitive to this kind of thing, this isn't the book for you. Not everything is for everyone and that's okay. But these are almost too goofy in concept and execution to take seriously. Though Roper's does have an easy writing style, clean and simple and he tells a pretty coherent story with some flourish, that's pretty much all I need with a slim paperback.

So yeah, I accidently this book and I'm glad I did. I really don't reread very much (there's too many unread books in my house for that) but it can be nice to visit an old friend. Pittsburg State University in Kansas houses Roper's papers, comprising of the normal stuff, correspondence and such as well as his manuscripts. They don't seem to have all his manuscripts, but one is entitled Jade Jaguar which makes thinks it might be a third book in the Renegade Roe series. It's got the same title gimmick (color/animal), and I can't find any other book Roper wrote with that title. I can imagine he already had this one written before popular library pulled the plug. So, there may be more adventures of Renegade Roe out there, just sitting a special collection room. Maybe one day I'll take a road trip and put on my Sherlock Holmes hat to investigate.  

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

QUICK SHOTS: No-Frills Books Mystery by Anonymous (Clark Dimond)

One of the allures of the paperback is the attractive cover. The woman of Robert McGuinness, the action of Gil Cohen etc. etc. There are people who collect the book FOR the cover, not what's on the inside. Some people collect people like that too. It's silly to me, I'm a reader, not an art collector. That being said if there's an edition with a sweet cover, I might lay down a few more bucks for the more attractive copy. I'm not made of stone. But what if there's basically no cover?

No-Frills Books was an endeavor by Jove publishing in 1981 created by a guy named Terry Bisson (the science fiction author) who walked through the supermarket one day and decided books could be wrapped in generic packaging just like the off-brand mac 'n' cheese on the lowest shelf. Talk about out-of-the-box thinking. But the idea was more than just not having to pay cover artist, the idea was to distill a genre into it cover elements and cliches. To have the tongue in the cheek and have hungry young writers crank out 18,000-word tales that briskly broke a whole genre down to its basics. It was mac 'n' cheese, but the cheese would be powderier and the noodles tougher. The ingredients were there but you might have to be in on the joke to eat it or be broke enough. 

So, we got Western, Science Fiction, Romance and the topic of the day here, Mystery. As you can see the books looks like a beer in Repo Man and simply tells us: "Mystery - complete with everything: 'Detective, Telephone, Mysterious Woman, Corpses, Streets, Rain.'" And isn't that all you want in a private eye novel? Apparently before it got sacked there was also going to be a No-Frill Bestseller and a No-Frills Movie, tackling bloated airport books and the No-Frills Movie seemed to be a screenplay. Both sound interesting.  

Clark Dimond was behind Mystery. He worked in and around publishing it seems, working on Warren Publications like Eerie and Creepy and apparently in the art department of True Detective magazine. He was also involved with Web of Horror, a competitor of Warren. He didn't seem to write much which is a shame, music seemed to be his main interest (which must have helped in writing Mystery) and had his own recording studio.

Mystery is a private eye novel. A pure-pulp private eye novel. Something that would have been at home in Dime Detective or Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. But it also has a little bit of 80s punk rock too it. An un-named detective gets involved with a sinister recording, one that hypnotically puts people in trances. The Dick rushes around, finding attractive singers, masked killers, shady record players, hypnotists, evil doers while eating beans for breakfast, and gin and tonics in the evening. He's got a .38 in a shoulder holster and some snark. The titular mystery is a little easy, but there's enough twists and turns to keep it all flowing.  Everything the cover promises it delivers, which is actually better than some painted covers! This feels like a hip-Roger Corman produced 80s detective movie complete with corresponding soundtrack on vinyl and cassette. It's Kiss Me Deadly for the MTV generation. 

It's obviously a brisk read, that was part of the idea. Recently I covered the 90s Dime Novel Predator which tread similar ground. Both concepts were designed to attract the customer with a gimmick. No-Frills had their mostly blank covers while Dime Novels were tiny, like, you know, a dime. Now eBooks shave similar stuff, books designed to be quick reads without a lot of challenge...sort of like cracking open a Black Mask in 1935. But no one has really seemed to fully crack the egg and make it popular. I wouldn't know how to either if I'm honest. Some sort of chip implanted into your brain? I.V. novels? Book-Tok or whatever that is?

Bottom line is that Mystery was a super fun read. There's very little in the way of time commitment. I read it one morning over a couple of cups of coffee and it was a nice way to start the day, a little extra pulp for your diet to get you going. 

And like always, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available now on Amazon as an eBook!

BLOODY, SPICY MOVIES: Bare Knuckles (1977)

     When I started this blog, I occasionally did some movie reviews and I'm going to try to add a new one every now and then to shake things up. Never fear, I'll figure out how to tie it all back to books. 

    Bare Knuckles is a L.A. shot 70s grindhouse/drive-in picture. So, a good kind of picture. Robert Viharo stars, he's probably best known for being in Valley of the Dolls. It co-stars former child-star Sherry Jackson, Gloria Hendry (from Live and Let Die) pops up too. Helping Viharo along the way is John (Black Shampoo) Daniels as, uh, a character named Black.  Even my man George "Buck" Flowers is in it, so you really know it was shot in L.A. It's got a pure-paperback-plot. Viharo is Kane, a bounty hunter on the trail of a kung-fu serial killer who's targeting women using his own martial arts skills. Yeah. Radical, right?

    Writer/director Don Edmond had a brief directorial career in the 70s, directing this, but most notably Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, its sequel and a handful of other movies. So, he's got some trash credentials. And he made a pretty fast-moving picture with all the things a drive-in audience would want in 1977. There's nudity, there's sexism, racism, a slight hint of giallo and plenty of sleaze. But most importantly there's plenty of action, both in the fist-fightin' and a you-know-this-was-too-dangerous car chase where Kane drives a bitchin' 1968 Plymouth Road Runner and hunts a guy on a motorcycle. This chase goes on forever and morphs into foot chase and then into the climatic brutal fight scene between Kane and the evil Kung-Fu Killer, who unfortunately for the movie, looks like a buffer Rick Moranis. 

    Low-budget 70s filmmaking hits different. They were shooting in dingy places, on the street without permits and the whole thing just has a dangerous vibe. Half the fun of these kinds of movies is checking out the surroundings, seeing long-lost artifacts on the street of a time long gone. There's a scene that takes place outside an old Pizza Hut and you can't buy that type of nostalgia. There are times where really feels like one-step above porn-level filmmaking, but that's charming to me at this point. Also, the picture looks pretty good which isn't surprising because this an early D.P. credit for Dean Cundey who shot Halloween (1978) and a lot of other John Carpenter films. Carpenter's early partner Debra Hill even served as script supervisor. It's funny how things like this happen. 

    But this is primarily a book blog, right? Yep. I'm getting there. First off Bare Knuckles is one of the closet films to really capture the seedy vibe of a 70s Leisure/Manor/Canyon paperback. It could have been a story from the pen of someone writing as Bruno Rossi, Len Levinson on vacation to Hollywood or a tale someone paid William Crawford to drunkenly write for the movies. And with Kane albeit brief partnership with, uh, Black there's minor shades of Ralph Dennis's Hardman books. I'm surprised there was never a really long going Men's Adventure series about a bounty hunter. It seems like a no-brainer. Tough crime stories, nasty villains on the loose, tough guy hero, seems simple. Alas it never was. But we have Bare Knuckles to show us what we missed. 

    But wait, wait there's more! Lead actor Robert Viharo is the father of private-eye writer Will Viharo who's first book, Love Stories Are Too Violent for Me is minor classic. Viharo's an interesting cat, living a Tiki-fused life with side gigs as a film programmer and hosting Thrillsville a burlesque/film show. He continues to write novels, but now openly experiments with the private eye novel form with added science fiction, horror and other gonzo touches. He's a great writer. Will talking about Bare Knuckles at some point got me to be on the look-out and eventually watch it.

    So, if any of that sounds good to you, check it out. It's free on Tubi, the best place to find every movie you forgot about and tons you've never heard about. 

QUICK SHOTS: Avenger #4: Manhattan Massacre by Chet Cunnigham

When I pick up certain books, I can feel smarter. A man, of taste. I'll go "ah, yes Moby Dick, what a fine piece of literature." Then there's a sliding scale the runs right down into the awesome muck that is Men's Adventure, Pulp, Trash lit, whatever you want to call it. I prefer being in the muck, as my tasters seemingly burnt out long ago.

80s Men's Adventure fiction has a different feel than the earlier stuff. Call it the Gold Eagle-fication of the genre. In the 70s sleaze was an important part of the equation, sex, depravity and nudity. The 80s still had some sex, but the emphasis was definitely shifted to pure action and copious details about various firearms. It didn't help that by this point a lot of the writers of the various series had in face written Mack Bolan for Gold Eagle by this time and if you're going to copy something, copy the most successful thing. 

Chet Cunningham had been knocking around for a while by the late 80s when he came up with The Avenger (no, not the pulp hero, though I wonder if he remembered the title from his youth) he had co-written The Penetrator books (they took turns, I like Chet's better) with Mark Roberts in the 70s, a fair amount of westerns, Scholastic young-adult fiction, and was in the first wave of new Mack Bolan writers. He also dipped his toe into the world of Carousel Books, the (supposedly) quasi-mob-owned publisher. Carousel was an off shoot of a "dirty book" publisher who was trying to go "mainstream," so they had Chet and people like Mike Newtown write them westerns, action yarns, horror stuff etc. etc. I covered Chet's "mystery-team" book Silent Murder a long time ago and had a good time with it. 

I like Chet's work; he's not a flashy author by any stretch, but he's always got his mind on the readers wants and needs. He keeps things moving, has enough flair to be a little memorable and has a good handle on writing action, mystery and suspense. He was an old-pro young and continued to put out work almost right up to his death in 2017. That's a long, good run. 

The Avenger started in the mid-80s. It has Jason Savas on the cover, who is basically the 80s Steve Holland, and has a fairly familiar set-up. Matthew Hawke, the titular avenger is a 'Nam vet and DEA agent who's too good and his wife gets killed by the baddies. He resigns and goes revengin' and that's the whole set-up. I knew this going in and since I didn't have the first book in the series, I just jumped headfirst into the fourth. The whole concept is reassuringly basic. It's nearly every direct-to-video action movie set-up and it clearly owes a fair amount to ol' Mack Bolan. Like Bolan, Mark Hardin and many more paperback heroes, Hawke goes town to town and fucks shit up for bad guys with guns, explosives and other tough guy antics. 

Chet wrote these books for Warner Books who was always trying to launch a lengthy Men's Adventure series it seems. They were probably most successful with their paperback Dirty Harry adventures, but their editorial staff never seemed to figure out the genre. They produced some fun series. Like the Ninja Master books, The Hook series, or S-Com but a lot of their titles didn't last more than four or five books. The Avenger is no different. 

#4 Manhattan Massacre finds Hawke in, uh, Manhattan and going after the deadly New Control, a fancy mob that has taken control of the drug trade. Hawke sorta just barges in, finds an old 'Nam buddy who's bored, buys some machine guns and tackles New Control. The rest plays out very much like you'd figure a book like this to play out. There's action and intrigue, some unfortunate racism of the time, firearm information, and Matt Hawke's sort of bland brand of psychotics. Hawke's not much of a character. I go back to the direct-to-video action movie vibe; he reads like a martial artist or model got a starring vehicle after the success of Segal or Van Damme but lacking in major personality. But as I have said Chet handles the action scenes well and they are frequent, the stuff in-between isn't too bad either. It's all just incredibly workman like. Which sounds like a dig, but I find that kind of writing comfortable.

The Warner Books must have had a shorter print run than the competitors because they're a little scarcer, not impossible to track down, but you'll pay a few books more for most of them if you're so inclined. I got lucky in a dusty old small-town bookstore a few years ago and got three of them off the 25-cent table, it was an easy mistake for a bookstore to make, they are nearly indistinguishable from the sea of Mack Bolan's. But I think they are worth a read or two if you need something the same-but-different-in-between an Able Team and a Pheonix Force.

And in my sleuthing and fact-checking for this review, I stumbled on a Barnes and Noble listing for Avenger #5: Radiation Wipeout, an eBook from 2012. The listing on Amazon for this is lost to time, but the B&N listing is still live and purchasable. I had to download the free Nook app and remember my ancient login-info for B&N to download a free sample (I'll probably buy it) to confirm, the first page says "Matt Hawke" and "AK-74," so it's truly an Avenger novel. My guess was that it was done before Warner's pulled the plug and Chet released it later as a "Chet Book" as it is called. From hanging out in various Facebook groups I know this is an isolated incident. James Reasoner released Diamondback, a first in a series that never saw the light of day, year later and it's a great Men's Adventure book. Lee Goldberg finished off the .357 Vigilante series later and so on. Makes you wonder what other hidden vintage works are lurking in writer's forgotten file cabinets. 

And again, my first book Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon now!

QUICK SHOTS: Crown Vic 2 by Lee Goldberg

I was eagerly awaiting a package from Amazon the other night, Jason Striker Martial Arts Series Volume 3: Amazon Slaughter and Curse of the Ninja by Piers Anthony and Roberto Fuentes, if you must know. That's a real inside baseball book, because I bought it simply to read the extra materials, magazine articles that appeared in Marvel's The Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu magazine, short stories and other paperback pitches. That's the kind of book-geek I am. 

When it did arrive, there were two packages and inside one was a surprise copy of Lee Goldberg's latest book, Crown Vic 2. I didn't order it and I've done a little work for Lee, writing the afterward for Jon Messmann's A Bullet for the Bride (where apparently, I misspelled the hero's name several times, according to the Glorious Trash blog. I'm going to blame autocorrect. But I've never said I was good at this) and have occasionally received other surprise books to review. I say that to be transparent, I didn't buy this one, but I was going to.

Because Lee can write. I've long been a fan of his work, having stumbling onto The Man with the Iron-On Badge on a teenage trip to the library. When I started to get into Men's Adventure fiction, discovering Lee wrote the .357 Vigilante books made them an instant purchase. I also particularly fond of his Ian Ludlow series. Oh, and The Dead Man. Can you tell I'm a fan? I hadn't picked up the first Crown Vic but immediately ordered it after finishing the second. 

Besides there's another thing that makes me interested in the Ray Boyd books: I drive an old Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. I've driven a couple of them. My first was white with the side-light and push bar. My current is some sort of metallic dusty gray with roll-bar and the glass cage in the back. It gives my passengers the thrill of being a criminal without the consequences. They are the last true American sedan. Powerful, roomy and extra-large all around. Kinda like me. 

So, Ray was a man after my own heart. 

Crown Vic 2 is a quick tale that packs a lot of punch. Boyd is off to hunt down some diamonds stolen by an old man who he was in prison with. He does this at first with bagels and games of Battleship and then by harsher means. Then throw it some naughty mischief he gets himself into at his motel and Boyd's got his hands full. Boyd's a right bastard in the best way but still slyly humorous and, uh, sexually adventurous. Early on there's a nod to Jack Reacher, a character Boyd could easily be compared to (like all modern book-heroes, at least on their covers) but Boyd's grittier and frankly cooler. The tale moves along nice and easy, twists and turns and ends up a little bloody. What more could you want?

The only problem with this one is that it's simply too short. I wanted more Ray Boyd. It's a wonderful throwback tough guy Men's Adventure series but thoroughly modern at the same time. You can just imagine a slightly more PG-13 version of this tale being the headliner in an issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. I hope Lee keeps writing 'em cause I'll keep readin' 'em.

My book, GUNPOWDER BREATH is OUT and available on Amazon!
Check it out!

QUICK SHOTS: Predator by Dick (Steve Perry) Flint

Before the pulps, there were the Dime Novels, cheap disposable bawdy tales of western heroes, detective tales and more. They were basically ground zero for the fiction that I review here. Obviously, time passes and things change, interests move to radio, movies, TV and now the cesspool that is the internet. Reading changed, dime novels turned into pulps, pulps to paperback and paperback to eBook. Except...in 1990 when the Dime Novel came back. Sorta.

Randy Byrd was an entrepreneur and former pizza parlor owner. He had an idea to crack into the impulse-purchase market for reading materials. Watch out Archie. He created a new format for Dime Novels. They were small paperbacks, roughly the size of a cassette tape, which was the style at the time, and selling them cheap. He set out with a line-up of books, all marked with their genre, including westerns, mysteries, horror, science fiction, fantasy, adventure, thrillers and five types of romance: historical, sensual, glitz, suspense and sweet or traditional romance. It was a grand idea, that like a lot of grand ideas sorta fizzled out and was mostly forgotten. 

Theres a few titles in the Dime Novels range that appeal the bloody, spicy reader. High Hat and Dead Ringer by Greg Mandel, one a private eye tale with The Pope as the detective, the other with Elvis. One of the others is Predator (not the monster) by Dick Flint. Dick Flint is not really a cartoon character (see photo) but noted science-fiction author Steve Perry. Perry has written Star Wars novels, Indiana Jones novels, Aliens novels, Tom Clancy's NetForce, and his own Matador series. He's also written Predator (the monster) novels. And a lot of the cartoons I watched as a kid (and some as an adult) The Real Ghostbusters, Batman: The Animated Series, Godzilla: The Series and a Conan cartoon. He even wrote the novelization to the Jim Carrey movie, The Mask. That's a fine career. 

For Dime Novels, Perry also wrote the Fantasy entry, The Hero's Curse under his own name. But what about Predator? Well, imagine a Hard-R version of Pheonix Force or Able Team meets Knight Rider but on a boat. There's a tough team of commandos who work a shadowy organization with a big checkbook that has given them The Predator, which is the name of the boat. It's got big 'ol guns, top-of-the-line-90s-computers, and colorful crew members. There's an Australian, and a professor and the tough commander. Throw in a lovely female undercover agent who's topless a lot and then send them out to hunt down Viper who's dealing drugs or maybe something worse. 

Like Able Team, each team member has their quirks, one doesn't carry a gun only throwing knives, one's a nerd, one loves the boat engine, etc. etc. The female undercover agent is pretty competent, even though she used to be a stripper and also lead the story gratuitous nudity. The villain is right evil and has a back-story with the hero. Perry really crams a lot of stuff it in the tiny book. It's basically a short story and yet there's multiple gunfights and sneaky around and witty banter. It feels like a really good R-Rated episode of an 80s action TV show like the A-Team or the aforementioned Knight Rider. So, right up my alley.

I enjoyed it immensely. I really wish there was more short-Men's Adventure fiction. It's a nice palate cleanser between novels. I enjoyed Perry's writing style and will have to add him to the ever-growing list of authors to check out thoroughly. The Dime Novels experiment is really cool; it's a forefather to Kindle's Short Reads or Rapid Read novels or the various attempts to get people to read via low page count. I don't know how well it works either. Nowadays the various Dime Novel titles are sorta hard to track down, they must have had low-print runs. High Hat by Greg Mandell is available as a new paperback and eBook, but I don't think any of the rest are. Shame. 

And once again, my first novel Gunpowder Breath by Kilroy is available on Amazon as an eBook. The print version is coming soon. I'm low in the algorithm, but I've found typing "Gunpowder Breath kindle" makes it pop up every time. It's a 5-Star book at the moment (thanks, mom!) so be sure to check it out. Here's the awesome cover drawn by my incredible wife! 

 

QUICK SHOTS: Hitman #4: They're Coming to Kill You, Jane by Kirby (Kin Platt) Carr

 

You know a book is going to be good when the title is so long it has a comma in it. All these Hitman books by Kin Platt have ridiculous titles. Like You Die Next, Jill Baby or Don't Bet on Living, Alice. Commas too. I assume to let you know that Platt's tongue planted firmly in his cheek. If I'd have to bet these books were written fast (like too fast) and straight for the money. He was writing for Major and Manor books and Platt had some pedigree (mostly in children's books) so I'm sure he viewed these books as a place to play around.

I've written about Platt before; he's an interesting writer who wrote pretty much everything. Pulps, comics, animated TV, mysteries, children's books and, of course, smut. At the same time, he was cranking out The Hitman books, he also was writing a pretty fun private eye series starring Max Roper, that would be of interest to people who read my ramblings. 

Mike "Hitman" Ross is back...for like half the book as per usual and with the rest of the book we hang out with the weirdos and the bad guys. A mobster named Scorpio (not Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons, sadly) who is blackmailing rich dicks with a youth potion that he got in exotic Asia. Ross is lurking around and killing as many dudes as he can to avenge the death of...Betty. There's a Jane in the book though I swear. Ross is a Batman/Punisher hybrid with a black nylon suit with a cowl, tons of guns and a cool combat van. I don't think we wears a hockey mask like he is portrayed on the covers, but the writing is sorta sloppy enough I could have missed it. In this one there's some light brainwashing, tons of goofy "tough guy talk," plenty of shootin' and a-fightin' and some terrible racial stereotypes. It's also clear that as some point Platt realized he had written too much back-story and stuff that he was rapidly approaching his word count that he wraps it all up rather abruptly and Hitman sorta sits out his big action climax. Bummer, I know Hitman likes murdering. 

All that makes it sound like I didn't care of this book. I did. For some reason this series is one of my favorite Men's Adventure series, its simply too far out and messy for me not to like. I also LOVE the whole comic booky-set-up and all the ripped from the tabloid-kooky directions its takes. There also have a couple of covers that are just pure awesomeness. And Platt can write and there's always really good stuff in these books, which makes it a shame that they are so hard to track down these days and I'm sure no-one is clamoring to put them out as eBooks.

...speaking of eBooks my first novel, Gunpowder Breath is officially available here on Amazon. It's an action packed (actually its ALL ACTION) tale of a mercenary trying live through a weekend packed full of gunfights.  

Gunpowder Breath by Kilroy

Well, it's really happening! After a tease a while back (long while) my first novel Gunpowder Breath should be on Amazon as an eBook next week at the latest! The print version will follow along shortly. I'll keep you posted here and, on my Instagram, for when it's actually available.

So, what's it all about you ask?

One Friday, Dick Mulligan, a mercenary on the ropes suddenly finds himself the target of a powerful Russian mobster after a drug deal gone south. With wave upon wave of killers after him Mulligan has to figure out why this mobster wants him dead and live through three incredible gunfights through a hellish weekend of booze, bullets, drugs, grenades, and punches as he tries to get to Monday alive.

A gonzo homage to 90s direct-to-video action movies and Men’s Adventure paperbacks. GUNPOWDER BREATH is a funny, rollicking short novel with too many guns, too many bad guys, too much ACTION!

Just how many people can Dick shoot in a weekend?

Writing this book has been a long time coming, it took years of reading and writing bad stuff to hopefully write this good stuff. The book is also packed with EXTRAS, Dick's personal reading list and some movie recommendations as well. And in the print version a SHORT STORY entitled Mid-Morning of the Kickfighter. This is hopefully the first of many books from me, providing that anyone actually likes it. 

Thanks everyone for reading this non-book review post and yes, I'll get better at reviewing again, look for a new one soon!

The Beginning of the Illuminatus...

I'm always very interested in the beginning of things, or even before the beginning. The rough versions of what would later bring them success (or not), the strange hang-ups the flow and morph until it becomes the best version of whatever said writer's main idea is. It took several almost Saint's before Leslie Charteris settled down on the saint. Lester (Kenneth Robeson) Dent toiled with several pulp characters with Doc Savage-like traits before he mashed them all together to flesh out the Man of Bronze. Even 'ol Travis McGee had firm roots in the other Florida crime novels of John D. MacDonald (especially Jimmy Wing in A Flash of Green) and though I've never tracked them down, the, uh, adult novels that Don Pendleton wrote about Stewart Mann are said to have some of that Mack Bolan flavor. 

Speaking of smut books. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, both formally of Playboy magazine, had written the Illuminatus. That sprawling, wild-ass tale of conspiracy theories, golden submarines and Old Gods but unsurprisingly it took a while for it to get published. In the meantime, Wilson got The Sex Magicians published from the California Porn publisher Sheffield House, which specialized in gay porn books. The general idea is that some of the stuff from the Illuminatus books kinda migrated over to The Sex Magicians. Obviously, the book didn't set the world on fire but did become a cult classic within the Illuminatus fans and eventually became a sought after and very expensive paperback. I'm sure more people have read the transcript version that has been floating around the internet since dial-up, don't worry Wilson thought it was cool to pirate this book.

Years ago, when I was a far too young and dumb kid, I read the first Illuminatus book The Eye in the Pyramid when I ran into the full set of the 70s Dell paperbacks. I bought it on the groovy covers and the whole intriguing world. I knew nothing about them before that used bookstore trip and I didn't think I knew anymore after the I read the first one. Again, young and dumb. Or maybe that was the right time, and I should have read them all in a white-hot reading session. Such is life. I didn't get them at the time, but the book stuck in my mind's craw, and I eventually began diving in and learning more. And in reading more hippy-dippy sci-fi and Men's Adventure of the time, certain things kept popping up that were also in the Illuminatus. Hasan-i Sabbah, the old man of the mountain and the father of assassins, appeared in Michael Kurland's Mission: Tank War, things like that. I also fell down a rabbit-hole recently involving The Church of the Sub-Genius, the half real /half big joke religion which counts The Illuminatus as a major influence. It's time to read them all. So, I decided to warm up to it and start with The Sex Magicians.

I've read a fair amount of these smutty books, usually because the author later became famous. Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake come to mind. Bob Trailins, George H. Smith and Ennis Willie also come to mind, as well as Jack Lynn's Tokey Wedge. But I've also dabbled in Clyde Allison's 0008 books and The Man from CAMP by Victor Banis. So, I know my way around this kind of adult entertainment. At best they are examples of hungry young writers plying the craft for cash on the barrel head, at worst it's the lowest kind of hack work. I've never come across a middle of the road one. The one thing most of these books have in common is that the sex scenes are rather quaint, and minor compared to today's smut.

Not The Sex Magicians.

Boy howdy this is a smutty book. Hitting a lot of taboos and engaging in LONG scenes of graphic sex. It's still a little goofy, but I think it was always supposed to be goofy. Wilson wasn't a super serious guy in his writing. The put-on is part of it, but so is the serious parts. The Sex Magicians is about Dr. Prong, Josie, Tarantella, Josh Dill, and Markoff Chaney (who returns for the Illuminatus books) among others in Chicago tied up with MAJOR VIBES that are making the city get DOWN. From the Orgasm Research Insitute and the Illuminati to the Hugh Hefner-like Pussycat Magazine, the plot runs along with a lot to say in-between all the sex. There's a little satire, a little history, a little taste of practical sexual magic and a lot of whacky situations. It's a little like one of those Ted Mark Man from ORGY books cranked to 11 and spun around on its head and also, uh, good. But mostly a lot cooler, man.

Usually with the smutty books, I sort of skip over the sex scenes. They are rarely titillating and really don't have anything to do with the rest of the book. But the sex scenes here are INTEGERAL to the plot. It's the whole point. That being said, I still think Wilson really gets going when in-between the sex stuff. When he's laying out his ideas on sex magic, old assassins, the Bavarian Illuminati and joking. There are wonderful nods to the likes of The Shadow (Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?), King Kong and Frankenstein. All that being said, he certainly didn't phone in the sex scenes. Whoa, they get CRAZY. But enough fun to keep going. Not to mention that theory that the book was published as some sort of sex magic itself to get The Illuminatus published.

I know the Illuminatus books don't have as much of the dirty stuff, which was honestly the part I liked the least. There was so much that it was desensitizing, so I'm good to go down my path of tackling the series. I'm glad I read this one though, it was out there and fun and I needed a wild and crazy shake up for my reading. It's widely available as a PDF on the internet, but I actually bought the fairly new republished (for the first time ever) from Hilaritas Press, which specializes it out-there books. I'm glad it's been reprinted for future weirdos, like me.