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!