QUICK SHOTS: Ninja Master #2: Mountain of Fear by Wade (Ric Meyers) Barker

I'm fairly sure the 80s were just jam-packed with ninjas. It seems like they were everywhere, hiding the shadows with katanas and nun-chucks at the ready. I was a little kid then, and I was well versed in ninja, from Turtles to G.I. Joes, to little suction cup throwing stars and various B-movies on TBS or TNT. So, it makes sense that someone over at Warner Books would think that it'd be a good idea to make a ninja into a paperback hero.

Warner was always trying to have a big men's adventure titles of their own, but they seemingly always picked authors uninterested in writing men's adventure fiction. So, there line of "Men of Action" books suffered from a lack of, uh, action. Not to mention the gun-porn, the sleaze or the fun of their competitors. Ric Meyers was nearly their only writer to get it. Between his work here with Ninja Master (and later in the slightly more upscale version as The Year of the Ninja Master) and the Dirty Harry books, Meyers proved his pulp credentials.

I first encountered Meyers work in the Dirty Harry books. It was one of my first tastes of Men's Adventure paperbacks and some of the first stuff I read after moving past reading a bunch of various James Bond books. Luckily, this was back in the day when you could buy these kinds of books for a dollar at most and I ended up with a whole stack of more adventures of Harry Callahan. I took a few of them on a trip to my grandmother's house and read them quickly, mostly while my grandmother religiously watched The Lawrence Welk Show. *SHUDDDER* But even at the time I knew something was off. I didn't realize that Dane Hartman, wasn't a singular dude. One of the books would be awesome and then the next would be dull as hell. It was confusing. Tough lessons for a young reader.

Obviously, Ric Meyers wrote the good ones (the only ones you really need to read) but I figured that out later. I haven't bothered with #1 of the Ninja Master series since I heed the wisdom of those who tread the pulp-path before me, and it seems like it's a bit of a bore. I'm sticking to Meyers entries. He's a solid author who's written about everyone from The Incredible Hulk to Remo Williams to many non-fiction works on martial arts cinema. He was the right guy to call for a book about a ninja. 

Mountain of Fear is a helluva good time. Warner books were pretty slim, which is perfect for an action tale like this. The books starts out with a bang and keeps the things moving a fast clip. Brett Wallace, our titular Ninja Master is a stone cold killing machine, taking out the baddies with everything at his disposable. It's also got the classic "whole town is bad" story that works great for action stories. A Nazi-concentration camp doctor basically buys up a whole town, puts bad guys as cops and kidnaps women and children to do nasty Nazi-shit with them. There's a little too much sexual-type violence for my taste, but it was a norm then and what are Nazi's supposed to be likable? No. Fuck nazis. 

So, you get a ninja killing a bunch of Nazi assholes in gory detail. Meyers has a love of cinema, and it shows, he writes very movie-like books, everything is clear and the action moves fast but is still well-described. The book builds to a wonderful siege of the bad guy's compound that's just chock full of blood, ninjaing and guts. All that makes for a good time with a book in your hand.

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

QUICK SHOTS: Coltray #2: Pay the Devil by David Alexander

I've been tackling a lot of David Alexanders work over at Fathom Press where I've been going through Alexander's Pheonix series, if you ever read or even just heard about that series, you know that it's a wild ride. It's really become a cornerstone of an era of Men's Adventure fiction, often whispered about and now commanding high prices on the secondary market. I've been enjoying the hell out of them. It's storytelling cranked to 11 and 100% pure pulp. 

So, I began to wonder about Alexander's other work. And being that vigilante fiction is one of my jams, his Coltray came calling. I've had the books for a while. Like always I seemed to have collected a large chunk of Alexander's work before I read a word of his. Lucky me, as like I said the prices are going up. The Coltray books are sorta lost in the shuffle of his series work on stuff like Z-Comm, Nomad or C.A.D.S. and probably seem a little pedestrian compared to his other sci-fi-tingled work. But they are just as wild as anything he ever typed out.

Stosh Coltray is the Lethalist. You can guess what he does. I guarantee The Lethalist was the original series title. He's a famous vigilante who has enough notoriety to appear on daytime talk shows. Seems like a nice gig. Anyway, he's on the TV show when he runs up against the evil Lavender who is a cult-leader with an "army of zombies" i.e. drugged up followers. Soon Lavender kidnaps a cult-deprogrammer named Dekker's daughter and Coltray and Dekker join forces to smash up some satanic cult worshipers who are protected by a deadly team of mercenary's led by The Coronel. To help they get the coolest character out of prison to help bust the cult up, a hulking man named Sister John who kicks just as much ass (maybe a little more) as Coltray, but does it with style. I'd have read a whole book about Sister John. 

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I have the first two volumes of Coltray and chose this one based on the cult angle: it's one of my favorite pulp plots. When properly used it gives you a touch of horror with your action and those two things are like peanut butter and chocolate to me. Alexander wastes no time with getting the plot in gear. Everything is popping quick and Coltray, Dekker and Sister John are busy shooting (in gory detail) wave after wave of the Colonel's men as they rush to save Dekker's daughter. There's a lot of gunplay and fighting, some evil women for Coltray to bang and some gnarly cult ceremonies chock full of human sacrifice and orgies. Alexander is a writer whose natural instinct is to push the envelope and deliver on the shock and action. And he does, the books hit some surprising marks, including one scene that made me say "holy shit" out loud and with enough force to scare the cat sleeping in my lap. 

This is the ultimate 80s action TV show episode in book form, like if HBO made a version of The Equalizer and put a lot of boobs and blood in it. It was formulaic as all get out, but I found comfort in that. Coming on the heels of reading Chet Cunningham's Avenger and Norman Winski's Hitman felt I was reading about a buddy of theirs. It's easy to see them all sitting down in a bar and sharing a beer, talking about guns and ammo all while eyeballing the rest of the crooks in the place and waiting for the fight to break out so they can get down to business. 

This is some great stuff. It's top-tier 80s Men's Adventure that harkens back to the grittier 70s style. Best of both worlds. Unfortunately, this is only a three-book series and #3: Vengeance seems to be pretty hard to track down. Which is even more of a shame since this one sorta ends on a little cliffhanger. I mean I figure Coltray makes it out alive to star in his next book but still. I probably should have read #1 first as Alexander really does dwell on who Coltray is or why he does what he does. But who cares? He's the guy on the paperback cover with the gun so he's the hero and he's out doing hero things. What more do you want?

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