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.