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!