QUICK SHOTS: Nick Carter Killmaster #1: Run, Spy, Run by Nick (Michael Avallone) Carter

I'm back on my side-quest to read the number #1's in various long running series with the first Nick Carter Killmaster. I have never reviewed a Nick Carter on the blog. I have like a whole bookshelf full of them, a lot of them purchased cheap from a thrift store next to the local Airforce base. I guess Nick had fans there. But I rarely read a Nick Carter, in fact a lot of the time I sorta forget of the series as a whole when thinking of Men's adventure books, when the series was one of the longest running. Am I not a fan?

The books were a Lyle Kenyon Engel produced joint, and he seemingly tried to recreate the success of these with a dozen other series like Aquanauts, Hot Line, The Baroness, Chopper Cop, etc. etc. but Nick Carter was his biggest action series. The whole thing was a throwback to begin with, a "reboot" of Nick Carter, Detective from the pulps, movies and radio. Seems like we've always recycled ideas. Here, Nick is switched from a gumshoe to a secret agent to keep up with Mr. Bond. He works for an agency called AXE and packs a Luger and a dagger along with other gadgets. I think this is one of the reasons I rarely think about 'ol Nick. I love the ideas behind a lot of Engel's produced series. An underwater troubleshooter with his own submarine? An undercover 70s cop on a motorcycle? A spy who poses as a race car driver? All those sounds awesome, but since it's all for hire work through a middleman to the publisher, it all sort feels a little bland a lot of the time. Too many of the edges have been sanded off. 

Engel hired one of my favorite writers ever Michael Avallone to pen the first couple adventures of this new Nick Carter. Avallone had written a fair number of mysteries in his Ed Noon series by then and would go on to write a lot of swinging spy stories with The Man from UNCLE, The Girl from UNCLE, The Coxeman, The Butcher, and even Ed Noon soon took spy missions from the president. I've covered one of his own super spy characters (that I wish got a series) David Seven here and a bunch of his other work on the site before. I'm a fan.

And this is one of the few #1's I have read before, but it was so long ago that I remembered nothing of it. Run, Spy, Run is the well-designed #1 for a series. It introduces the new set-up and the side-characters. Nick's gear and the swinging spy vibe that the series would carry on. Avallone is tamped down here (more on that later) and playing it fairly "straight." He's a kooky writer, full of exuberance that flowed onto the page. Here we have a competent piece of genre fiction that does what it sets out to do: sell more books. 

Engel didn't seem to like Avallone's draft of the book and in Avallone's own words, said it was "heavily edited," by Valrie Moolman and that's clear. Occasionally a Avallone line will appear, and I do think all the stuff with Nick Carter's pistol, knife, and gadgets all having nicknames was probably Avallone's idea. That's a major throwback to the pulps. Something like The Avenger's "Mike and Ike" gun and knife. Avallone loved the pulps. 

Run, Spy, Run isn't a bad book, it's just not super remarkable. Even #13 or #19 of the Ed Noon books are remarkable, so I blame it on the editing. Avallone couldn't help writing like Avallone, take a look the review for his novelization of Friday the 13th: 3-D and see how he could make most anything come out like his. 

Here in #1, we set up Nick's Blofeld, Judas with his plot to blow up planes with politicians on it. The rest is the trappings of the Bond-era of spy fiction, with secret bases, sexy ladies, travel and action. Though the action isn't dwelled upon and seems a little lifeless. It's almost like it was rewritten too much...hmm...weird, right? The whole thing just makes me want to take an Ed Noon of the shelf and get a proper jolt of Avallone's style.

My copy of Run, Spy, Run is a bundle-up with Nick Cater #100 packaged with, well, #100: Dr. Death and The Preposterous Theft, a pulp Nick Carter tale. It's a dandy little package. This wasn't my favorite Nick Carter, that would be John Messman's Sea Trap or Manning Lee Stokes's Spy Castle. Theses used to haunt used bookstores, but I see less and less in the wild anymore which is a shame, but they can still be found pretty cheap online in big lots. 

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

QUICK SHOTS: Mike Hammer #10: The Body Lovers by Mickey Spillane

I came to Mickey early. I had read some Joe Lansdale, some James Crumley, then some Hammett and finally some Chandler. I've said it before that Chandler and I'll say it again. Marlowe doesn't always do much for me. I guess I'm not romantic enough. And Hammett could write circles around him. So, after my Chandler I found a stack of Spillane's at a book sale, but none of the ones the internet was telling to read to start. It was a pile of his short story collections, The Tough Guys and Me, Hood plus a Tiger Mann or two and some late-period Hammer's like The Snake and Survival...Zero. The last one in the pile was The Erection Set. 

I started with The Erection Set. Taking it along to a trip to grandma's and getting the full reading it under the cover experience (since it had Spillane's naked wife on the cover and didn't want to scandalize grandma) and it was an eye-opener. I quickly made it a mission to track down more Spillane. He was sorta a nuclear bomb going off in my head. It was the tough guy private eye stuff I was liking, but action (and sex) filled. He was a guy for me, for sure. I went through most of the Hammers and my personal favorite Spillane, The Deep in short order. I've had a lot of fun experiences reading Spillane novels. I was reading a Hammer in a bar one time before someone took a swing at me over me talking to a lady. I listened to Dead Street with a .40 Cal Glock on my hip in the front of an armored car as I drove too much money around. I took a Spillane on my honeymoon...I don't think I read much of it though. 

SIDE-NOTE, one of my treasured possessions is an autographed first edition of The Deep scored for $1 from a thrift store. I didn't realize it was sign until AFTER I read the thing either. 

Luckily, it's been long enough since I've read a lot of his books that if I reread them, they will be mostly new experiences. It had been too long since I read one, and the other day at this warehouse that sells books, Blu-ray's and DVDs for around a buck I ended up with an extra copy of The Body Lovers. This one a later Signet edition from the 80s/90s with some nice clean retro artwork. The best thing is that it has some bigger font. The old Signet editions that I read originally have SUPER small font and my eyes aren't getting any younger. Makes you crave a Lancer Easy Eye.

So, The Body Lovers is probably no-ones favorite Mike Hammer, it's not mine but I had a lot of fun with it. This is one is sorta towards the end of the "second run" Hammers when Spillane came back after his Jehovah's Witness conversion, after this one and Survival...Zero, everyone had to wait until 1989 to get a new Mike Hammer. Mike and Mickey are both older here, a little more mellow but still free with a wisecrack, a fist or a shot from a smokin' .45 and not to mention everyone's favorite gal Velda is still by his side. 

You can come home again, cause I had a helluva time visiting. Spillane could write a page turner. His way with words was commendable, it's clear why he was as popular he was. Every line makes you wanna jump to the next. He called his readers "customers," and I'm a tried-and-true customer. Mickey's style is at once wonderfully old fashioned and strikingly fresh, he swings some of the same punches as Agatha Christie and yet is the hardest of the hard-boiled. And make no mistake Mike Hammer is a detective. He puts in the time; he's got receipts for all his legwork and all his jawing with characters. Sure, there's some easy "conclusions" and some random "coincidences," but he's gotten a bad rap for this kind of writing. 

So, if you're popular ya gotta be bad right? That's the way the reviewers treated Mickey. There're some reviews that hurt my writer's heart to this day. Which is no small feat. I'm here to say Mickey was FRAMED. Mickey wrote like Lays makes potato chips. I think both are grand and I know professional chefs who like potato chips and a lot reviewers rarely see the forest for the trees. Can ya tell Mickey's a favorite?

But what about The Body Lovers? Well, Mike is driving around and guess what? He runs into a nude woman in lingerie. We're off and running. Along the way he tangles with sadistic pimps, international crime-dude rings, ladies throw themselves at him, he gets a client in prison via a hidden note, gets to shoot his .45 caliber best friend and gets to dish out hot justice for the little guys of the world. Mike's an avenger character. He's tough enough and brave enough to take on the nasty people in power and he serves his purpose here. 

Like I said this is probably no-ones favorite Hammer, but it's a rollicking read, a trip though the nasty parts of town with you pal Mike. Spillane never lost his pure readability. You pick this one (or hell any of them) and you'll find yourself happily flipping the pages until its done. The Body Lover's might not reach the fevered pitch of an I, the Jury or a One Lonely Night, but it's got more than enough gas in the tank to drive to a good time. 

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

QUICK SHOTS: The Penetrator #1: The Target is H by Lionel (Mark Roberts) Derrick

It's hard to believe it's taken me this long to get around to reviewing a Penetrator novel here. Before the blog, I read a two-fistfuls in pretty quick succession and it as a series is high on my list of favorite Men's Adventure series. Then promptly didn't read one for years. Too much Hardin in my life. Wait.

It's a funky bunch of books that sometimes feel like a Roger Moore Bond film, sometimes an episode of Baretta or Banacek or Lookwell. Wait. and other times it's a bloody orgy of death and destruction. It's got a lot of the buzzword-trappings of the 70s. The interest in Native American history, "computers," obviously the mafia, and Mark Hardin aka The Penetrator's hideout really feels like it's the playset to a very violent series of G.I. Joe-knockoffs. (Go to YouTube and watch the Lookwell pilot starring Adam West. You'll thank me)

But I hadn't read the first Penetrator, in fact I rarely read the first installment of series like these. I guess I'm afraid of dull set-ups. But as of this review, I'm VERY close to finishing the first novel in a series that's very much a throwback to the heroes of 70s. It's the first, full-length novel that I'll publish. My first book, Gunpowder Breath, didn't really get to the full word count; it'd be a novella or a novelette if it had ever got the chance to be published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. This one, *TITLE REDACTED* is the length of a Gold Medal paperback or a Gold Eagle adventure, so it's good and I might even try to find a real publisher for it (let me know if you got any suggestions, ha!) so I have bragging rights. 

All that to say, writing the first in a series got me to think about all the first installments I had avoided. So, as I finish the first draft and go into the second I thought I might see how others did their first installments. So, I dug out the Butcher #1, Death Merchant #1, Executioner #1, etc. etc. some of which I have read, but it was ages ago to take a look at again. So, keep an eye out of this unofficial series of #1s here on the site. 

All that to get to Penetrator #1: The Target is H. This one it's an odd-numbered book in the series so it's written by Mark K. Roberts (Chet Cunningham handled the evens) who wrote a lot in the Men's Adventure field, writing the Liberty Corps and Solider for Hire books as well as westerns and, you know, anything that made him a buck. Respect. He's a pretty solid action writer, with a real meat 'n' potatoes style. I think I generally prefer Chet Cunningham though. I've read a bunch of the adventures of Mark Hardin, but I don't really remember if I'd ever really read one of his. I must have but there's been a lot of books ran through my brain over the years.

Obviously, this is a set-up novel for a long-running series. Mark Hardin is a 'Nam vet who comes home battered from his work overseas. Hardin doesn't know what he's doing...for like three pages and then he's on his quest to kill the mafia for killing the love of his life. It's an incredibly swift set-up, so swift that I had to re-read to double check if some pages weren't missing. It gets through with his backstory (most of which is provided for in with faux-record and stats at the beginning of the book) in ten pages before they introduce his secondary characters and his secret lair. Then bingo-bango he's off a-murdering bad guys. 

Mark Hardin is super similar to the rest of our buddies, Mack Bolan, Bucher the Butcher, Johnny Rock, Philip Magellan, etc. etc. He's got a little more fantasy/pulp hero vibes going on with his sidekicks the mad scientist and Native American buddy and gadgets. It'd be easy to make an illusion to The Spider or Doc Savage, but maybe he's just a little more like John Eagle, Expeditor. Either way he's a cool dude. I think I dig this series because of this exact flavor. Hardin doesn't mull of his mission to take down the mafia; he hangs up in a desert lair with his buddies and then goes out and fucks shit up. Seems like a fine life. 

The Target is H has Hardin taking down a heroin ring on his quest to rid the world of mafia scum. These books are a little wilder/gorier than the usual Executioner but never hit Destroyer levels of funny. There's plenty of shoot-outs, mafia goons, fightin' and particular gruesome bit with sticky firebombs that's pretty gnarly. Here everything is a little loose and Roberts/Cunningham hadn't fully locked in the character or the world which is some of the charm of reading early series books. They are wild and the beginning, get "standard" in the middle and usually devolve into some wild again toward the end. 

These used to haunt nearly every used books store I went too; I got a couple volumes in "blind bag" mystery piles of books when I was a teenager. I remember snickering at the obvious Mark Hardin-Penetrator-Joke. I still laugh a little. Nowadays they are a little scarcer and a bit pricier (which seems to be EVERY Men's Adventure book now) I got most of mine in a couple big lots off eBay, giving me a lot of cheap entertainment. Which is exactly what this series is. 

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