QUICK SHOTS: Landshark #1 by Irwin Zacharia

One of my little paperback obsessions is books published by the fly-by-night publisher Carousel (a division of American Art Enterprises, the porn publisher) and the crown jewel of their output is the work by Irwin Zacharia. In my humble opinion anyway. I've covered his The Protector series about the sumo-wrestling private eye who fights supernatural menaces and one of his Vendetta books about Will Power, vigilante for hire. It took a long time, but I finally tracked down both books in his Landshark series about Salamander Shark. As you can see 'ol Irwin had a thing with goofy names. 

Irwin certainly had a thing for other names if the general consensus is correct that Irwin Zacharia is actually Paul Little who supposedly wrote something like 700 novels (whew) under a ton of names. Obviously, the supposedly mafia-adjacent Carousel Books records aren't around now, so we might never know who Irwin actually is. I do have some other novels that are known to be Little's work and I'll have to read them to compare the writing. I DO think that it was singular man writing as "Irwin Zacharia," the goofy names, some distinct odd turns of phrase and some preoccupations shine throughout all the books. 

So, this was after the SNL skit's where Chevy Chase played a landshark so I'm just going to assume that was the germ of the idea. But here the titular "landshark" is Salamander Shark, a man of Native and Asian descent who is part Tarzan, part Robin Hood, part Bruce Lee and all paperback hero. He lives in the desert with his family and steals to improve the lives of native Americans. He's also basically superhuman. He can move without sound, climb up anything, expel poison with thought and even CHOP MOTHER FUCKER'S HEADS OFF WITH HIS HANDS.

Yeah. He's a cool 70s macho dude. Here he robs a cabal of rich douchebags to build a hospital. This gets him tangled up in a government investigation of said douchebags. The G-Men are onto the bad guys, but they need a Superman to take them out and Shark is reluctantly drawn into a dastardly plot to overthrow a whole country with a drug-fueled army. Along the way there's plenty of night raids, sexual shenanigans, ass-kicking and chopping off of body parts with bare hands, vaginal contraceptive foam used as a weapon, scaling tall buildings in loincloths (yes, Virginia, the book's cover actually happens) and all-around Men's Adventure fun. 

The whole set-up is vaguely familiar to fans of Men's Adventure, owing a little to John Eagle, Expeditor and a whole lot to Tarzan and Doc Savage and the like. This is a slim book, and it was clearly written in a couple of sittings (maybe with some help from some uppers, smokes and a little whiskey to taste, but it was fun for what it is. It's pretty modern in some ways, the treatment of the Native American characters (though total stereotypes) is pretty favorable, and it's got a strong distrust of rich people (always appreciated) and a lot of the books at the time weren't even that progressive. 

These are the books I really enjoy. The weird outliers, the rush jobs. Stuff like Kirby Carr's Hitman or Norman Conway's Clown-covered Hunter or Andrew Sugar's Enforcer. The stuff that was really playing with the conventions of the genre and taking it to some odd places. I'm glad I have the awesomely named second book (and last) book in the series: Landshark #2: Piranha, Piranha to enjoy, I'll savor it as a treat. 

QUICK SHOTS: The Executioner #68: Prairie Fire by Don (Mike Newton) Pendleton

It had been a while since I dug into a Mack Bolan, and I figured as the year closed (I read this last week) I might as well ring it out with something I'd been meaning to read for a while. Prairie Fire has a good reputation within the series. Plus, it takes place in my home state of Kansas so, I've always been hankering to check it out. But I don't buy Executioner books online. They are plentiful around my book-buying parts and are often under a dollar, so I scrounge around and eventually come up with the ones I want. 

So, I've had this one on my TBR pile for six months after paying a quarter for it at my local's clearance rack with a stack of other Mack's. I usually just go to the copyright page and check out who actually wrote them and go by that. Picking up mostly the ones by Mike Newton, Stephen Mertz, Chet Cunningham and the like. I knew this one was my next Mack Bolan, but it was just a matter of time. 

I've dug Mike Newton's work in the field for a while, in both fiction and his awesome non-fiction book, How to Write Action Adventure Novels. I got into his stuff from his early work Terror at Boulder Dam from Carousel Books. Newton's a very solid writer of men's adventure and westerns; his stuff is meat and potatoes. Delicious tales that go down easy with some substance to them. This was the first Bolan I've read from him, and it won't be my last. 

Prairie Fire picks up in medias res with Bolan escaping the clutches of this book's evildoers. I haven't read #67 so I don't really know if it's a continuation of that book, but you don't really need to know. Bolan explains that he's on the run again, from the mob, the feds and anyone else evil. Here, the evil dick is The Cowboy, a mercenary who grew up watching westerns and decided to model is whole vibe off it. So, hat, mirrored shades, western clothes and a shiny Smith and Wesson M29 .44 Magnum. He's a worthy opponent to our buddy Mack and a real slimy bastard you want to see get his componence. 

Mack finds himself in an isolated farmhouse with a crotchety old WWII vet, his nice lady wife and their conveniently widowed (and hot) daughter-in-law. Gee, I wonder what happens with her and Mack. Besides some random henchmen that's our whole cast of characters, which is pretty refreshing since a lot of Men's Adventure can get bogged down in side characters and extra plots. This one's a straight-ahead siege tale, like Mack Bolan starring in Assault on Precinct 13. Mack doesn't have all his gear, making do with a pump-action .22 and some MacGyver'd grenades. It's a real quick tale that barrels to its finish with a little humor and a lot of action.

In a lot of ways this feels like a modern action tale with its stripped-down feeling, you could easily see this being a DTV action film starring Michael Jai White or Scott Adkins. It might have been a great place to start a film series for Bolan back in the 80s, certainly would have been cheap enough to film. I think I like these early Gold Eagle's before it became such a factory set up and the early authors like Newton and Mertz actually knew Pendleton and made some effort to mold his style into the house style. But they're a little looser too with great ideas like this one and Mertz's Return to Vietnam.  

I'm far from a Bolan expert, but I always enjoy dipping my toe into the waters occasionally. This might be my favorite Executioner novel I've read, even more so than some of Pendleton's own work. It's exactly what I want when I pick up this kind of novel. It moved, the characters were well-defined within the story, and action ruled. This copy had an ad to join and get the "Live Large" bumper sticker in it and if the offer was still valid, I'd send away for it for sure. 

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