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!