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: Dead Ringer: A Hank Bradford Mystery by Mike Warden

 

A while back I went down a major paperback rabbit hole and started tracking down books published by Carousel Books, a division of American Art Enterprises a, uh, porn publisher trying to go "legit." To do this they hired some up-and-comers and some seasoned pros to (it seems) write whatever the hell they wanted. How else could you account for Irwin Zacharia's Protector books or his Vendetta books. Not to mention his Landshark series (which is recently FINALLY tracked down and need to read and review) which features no actual sharks. Chet Cunningham did some work for them, with a couple of Team Three books and some westerns. Mike Newtown also wrote Terror at Boulder Dam for them, an awesome slice of private eye action, again with some westerns and an action series called Intersect File as John Cannon among others. 

I ended up buying a wide variety of books published by Carousel. Westerns, Gothics, Horror, Science Fiction, Action, and Mystery books by random authors probably working under pseudonyms. It's a stack of books that I will eventually read because publishers have a certain flavor all their own. Pinnacle is sorta one thing, Paperback Library is another thing. Leisure is yet another looser thing and publishers like Carousel are so looser they're falling apart. It's clear that there was little in the way of editorial supervision, so a lot of the books are, well, technically BAD. Sloppily written, wrapped up in a hurry once the word count is met, and very much rough first drafts. That's stuff I love for some reason. Don't blame me for bad taste, I came by it honestly.

One of their longest series is the Hank Bradford mystery series, he's sometimes referred to as a "supersleuth," which coincidentally I want on my tombstone with no explanation. Mike Warden either had a few books in his sock drawer waiting for an eager publisher or wrote them all in a blindly white heat over a couple of years. I haven't been able to track down anything on Warden, if that's his real name. So, drop a line if you know anything about this paperback writer. There's precious little information about Carousel books out there in general. 

So, I have several of the Hank Bradford books and figured it was time to try on. Hank's an ex-cop turned part-time criminology professor. He sorta left the force under a cloud after his partner went on a bust by himself instead of waiting for Hank. Hank stuck around long enough to bust the guys who killed his buddy and then turned in his badge. Now, he's sorta broke living in an apartment, looking to get laid, avoiding his crazy landlady and taking it easy mostly. He's far from a hardboiled character; he doesn't pull out a .38 from his cookie jar or slug a baddie anywhere in the book. Mostly he hangs out and talks up his liberated upstairs neighbor and tries to sleep with her. 

But wouldn't you know it, suddenly his lady friend is getting obscene phone calls with death threats. 'Ol Hank sees this as a great time to try and get into her pants, not that she isn't interested either. Hank must be studly. Anyways, toward the end of the Hank finds a dead body of a guy who he saw in another neighbor's apartment, then that neighbor turns up dead after Hank calls his police nemesis, Oscar. And wouldn't ya know it; Hank's lady friend is the prime suspect. So, Hank plays detective for about two chapters and then the obvious conclusion happens. 

This is a pretty half-baked book. The first have of this (luckily) slim novel is all about Hank dealing with his landlady who sneaks into everyone's apartment, getting sick, then hanging out with his lady friend while she's afraid of the phone calls. Then it's like Warden remembered that it was a murder mystery book and killed a couple of people, only to breeze on past any sort of "investigation" on Hank's part. We hardly ever even leave the apartment building. It kind of feels like Warden was describing one lazy weekend he had but threw in some thriller elements to spice it up.

But you know what? I sorta liked it. It was like an hour read all-in-all, the pages flew by and Hank's a pretty okay protagonist, in a regular joe sort of way. It makes me wonder if the temperature every goes up in the series or if they are all "hang-out jams" like this one. Good thing I have more of them.

HANK BRADFORD BOOKS: 

(I think this is a complete list, correct me if I'm wrong)

Wasp in the Woodpile (1980)

Kill F-M (1980)

Death Beat (1980)

Bitter Homicide (1980)

Dead Ringer (1980)

Model for Death (1981)

The Topless Corpse (1981)

Twins in Trouble (198?)

The Condominium Killings (198?)

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

QUICK SHOTS: The Protector #1: The Brotherhood of Evil by Irwin Zacharia

My obsession with the little paperback publisher (and possible Mob-front) Carousel continues. There's just something so sleazy/charming about their books. The cartoony covers, the "first books" vibe of authors learning their craft and the scarcity of books themselves is all incredibly appealing to the weirdo me. Irwin Zacharia is my favorite of their stable (sorry Chet Cunningham and Mike Newton) simply because of the enthusiasm that pours off the page. I know nothing about Zacharia (if you know anything PLEASE COMMENT!) other then he wrote some slim paperbacks for Carousel and one about baseball for Major. But he certainly had a wild style all his own and plenty of kooky ideas that really set his books apart from their brethren. This is pure pulp, people, straight up and winking. 

The Protector series is a wild one. I.M. Reddy is the Protector (although so far in the books he's never called/or calls himself The Protector) is a big gutted, Sumo wrestling, low-rent private eye whose cases always run into the supernatural. Throughout the book it was hard for me not to imagine John Candy in the 80's as Reddy raining blows down on cult members, making it with chicks and enjoying some nice meals. "The Brotherhood of Evil" deals with a Voodoo scheme to buy up businesses and take over Haiti to build a totalitarian version of Las Vegas that is patrolled by a Zombie Army. THAT OLD STORY, HUH? Along the way there's plenty of voodoo dolls, drugged cult orgies, punks with knives, wisecracks, hotel hijinks, and pizza. Reddy is a lot of fun as a narrator, reminding me a little of "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and Roger L. Simon's Moses Wine in a blender. He takes all the supernatural stuff in stride and just treats it as another day in the office but acknowledges the oddness of it all. It's also pretty refreshing to have an overweight hero who is totally fine with is body and uses his bulk to his advantage. Plus, he still gets the ladies! 

The first Zacharia I read "Reddy or Not" has a rundown on the three series he wrote for Carousel (I'm looking for The Landshark books, the final Protector and the first Vendetta. If you have 'em for sale let me know!) and he put out a lot of material in a short period of time and then just vanished. That is unless he started writing under a different name, he was already writing as Sarita Irwin, so who knows. With today's market for supernatural detectives, it would be great to see these get reprinted, even if it was a Wildside Press kindle Megapack. The books have a wonderful shaggy-dog 70s version of a "Weird Tales" series. Again, let me know if you got books or information, I'd love both.

QUICK SHOTS: "Silent Murder: A Team Three Case" by Chet Cunningham

My recent discovery of Irwin Zacharia's books got me to buy a big stack of other novels put out by the low-rent and possible money-laundering scheme that was Carousel. Most of the authors that wrote for Carousel didn't have much of a career after their short stint (at least as far as I know, which isn't much) save writers like Mike Newton and Chet Cunningham. If you've been knocking around the world of Men's Adventure books for any length of time you've probably ran into a book by Chet Cunningham, whether or not it was under his name. He wrote about everything, from western series like Jim Steel and Brad Spear to YA post-apocalyptic series like Turbo Cowboys to more traditional M.A. stuff like writing Mack Bolan and The Avenger series. Plus, with Mark Roberts her wrote half of The Penetrator books which are really some of my favorite Men's Adventure books, having the right balance of craziness and action. So, when I came across Cunningham's name in the Carousel back pages, I eagerly bought up the two books that comprise the "Team Three Case" series. 

I accidently read the 2nd book before the 1st one by grabbing it for waiting to get a Covid test with nothing else to read I just dove in. The basic Mod Squad-esque setup is that there's a white private eye named Ted, a Latinx ex-cop named Carmen and a black ex-cop named Barry. All together they are Team Three, get it? Together they solve mysteries. That's about it, it's a nice, uncluttered set-up. In "Silent Murder" Barry is visiting an old buddy in a small California town to see him perform at an art show where he is bizarrely murdered in front of everyone i.e., the titular silent murder. So, Barry starts poking his nose and even gets deputized to track down the killer. Carmen and Ted come up to help otherwise it'd be a Team One Case. There are attempted murders, speargun attacks, orgies, blackmail, nude modeling, a KKK douchebag, .38s, pocket .22's, firebombs, CB radios, and weirdo artists. Barry gets the most screen-time here, but that's not to say they any of them are fleshed out characters. This is a seriously short book, big print at around 150 pages and it moves lightning fast. It's really more of a mystery (though the solution is kinda easy to spot if you're old-hat at these type of things) so don't expect Cunningham in action mode. 

I enjoyed the book; it had a sleazy Cinemax does an 80's detective show vibe and I like the set-up. I'm sure they didn't pay enough for Cunningham to flesh anything out past a nice first draft so that's what he seemed to lay down. The defects are easy enough to overlook and Cunningham's no-frills style makes for fast enjoyment. He's a total pro. I'm glad I have another Team Three Case to tackle, I wonder if one of the other of the Three take front stage. A rotating lead would make sense with the set up. The Carousel books are hard and kind of pricey, I got good deal on mine, but I don't know if I'd recommend dropping too much on them. After all the cover price is $1.75, its certainly more than that in terms of thrills but not upwards of $20.

QUICK SHOTS: Vendetta #2: Vendetta by Irwin Zacharia

Well, my previous adventure into the small-time publisher Carousel got me to buy a fistful of slightly overpriced paperbacks. Not that I'm complaining. Money's just money but books can be priceless. So, I got some books with titles like "Mafia Rock and Roll," "The Silent Murder," "Twins in Trouble," "After the Kill," and "Mozambique Agent" headed toward my house. Surely a stack of trashy good reading. Irwin Zacharia's "Reddy or Not" was a total blast, a genre-bending tale of a sumo-wrestling Jewish private eye fighting energy vampires. I have another one "Princess of Darkness" on deck, but I wanted to check out one of his other Carousel series first before I dipped back into the Reddy series.

Okay, so this one's got the laziest title I've ever seen. The SERIES name is Vendetta, the first book in the series is named "The Murder Club," and the second entry is just named Vendetta. I've never seen the 2nd book have the series title before. Just a nice example of the slap-dash nature of low-rent publishers. Zacharia must have had an affinity for puns and puny named. I.M. Reddy or in Vendetta Will Powers. I wonder what Landsharks real name is. Will Powers is pretty standard paperback hero in the wake of Mack Bolan. He's a 'nam vet with anger issues and a slightly unsustainable lust for killin' who worked as a private eye after he got home. But now he's a "street mercenary" working for the "little guy" against the mob or other baddies. He works for money not just ideals though. He's a bit like a one man "A-Team" as played by Mike Hammer.

Anyway, "Vendetta" is about Powers taking down some mobsters on behave of a widow whose husband was unjustly murdered. After bloodily armed robbing a mob-money drop and starting a war between a few rival gangs Powers gets wrapped up in one sectaries quest to avenge her sister after a brutal attack by her mob-lawyer boss. What follows is a lot of bits of action, scenes of worried Mafioso's, gun fights, murders, Power's endless supply of silenced (nice trick) .44 Magnums blasting people away, and an explosion or two. It's clearly the second novel, as the first is referenced and there's plenty of set-up for the next (didn't happen) instalment. The biggest problem is that you don't get to spend enough time with Will Powers himself, we bounce between sets of characters and Powers swoops in every now and then to bust a cap. It's not the best way to sell a series character.

It's a "fine" book. Nothing really too exciting or interesting, it feels like Zacharia playing it straight. Keeping his wildness (as shown in the Reddy) to a minimum. Probably for marketing reasons. It's much easier to sell a book that's right down the middle as opposed to left field. There's still sparks of goofiness and tongue in cheek sprinkled throughout enough to make it entertaining. I'd still like to read the No. 1: "The Murder Club" and the rest of Zacharia's catalog, but it'll be a long hunt since I already bought a copy of all of the ones I could find. So, if you have any you want to part with I'm sure I'll buy 'em. On a side note, this particular copy has handwritten notes indicting what time a previous reader read to before they went to bed and marking exactly where the stopped. They usually went to bed around 10:45 and sometimes stopped in the middle of a sentence to get some ZZZZZ's. It might be the oddest thing I've ever seen written in a book and it's surely the work of some psycho.  

QUICK SHOTS: The Protector #3: Reddy or Not by Irwin Zacharia

Carousel books was a little publisher back in the late 70's/early 80's. A low rent-outfit that may or may not have been a money laundering scheme (that's the rumor anyway) who tried their hand at the popular paperback genres of the day. Noted Mack Bolan author Mike Newton published a few books with them, one of which "Terror at Boulder Dam" I covered a while ago. Plus, some westerns as Mark Kozlow and the Intersect "team-mission" series as John Cannon. These a slim, quickly written and quickly published books but offer a fair amount of fun. I get the feeling with these smaller publishers there was freer range for writers. No one's looking over their shoulders and they're working so cheap they might as well entertain themselves. Or sometimes they'd just pound out wave upon wave of pure crap. Irwin Zacharia certainly seemed to be entertaining himself. He certainly entertained me. I couldn't find much out about Zacharia on the internet, so if you got in info hit me up!

"The Protector" series stars Irwin Martin Reddy, or I.M. Reddy (get it?) a 300-pound Jewish private eye who practice Sumo wrestling, is diabetic, drives a sweet Barracuda, has an eye for the ladies and packs a Louisville Slugger. Oh, and he's not really bothered by anything that goes bump in the night, demons, vampires what have you. Mack Bolan, he is not. But he's a fun, wild character to hang around with and Zacharia (as Reddy) narrates this tale of his ques to save a woman from a pack energy vampires. In standard P.I. fashion, Reddy is hired to track down the missing woman and this being #3 in the series, he's unfazed when it turns out she's been turned into odd-kind of vampire. Two fights against the supernatural will do that to you. So, Reddy tackles a bunch of near superhuman creatures (they call themselves Hellions) who live in a specifically fitted hotel to meet their quasi-vampiric needs. The Hellions basically suck out people's energy with little suction cups that appear on their body, they can shape-shift and a booger to kill. They are a neat little touch and steer the book away from the standard blood-sucker tale. The whole thing is real tongue-in-cheek, Reddy is a goofy guy who happens to be a tough SOB when he needs to be but would rather sit at home and watch a movie with a refreshing TAB cola than fight monsters. The breezy narrative style made the book fly by and I'm eagerly watching my mailbox for the other couple of Zacharia's I managed to track down. It's a wild mix of Martin Meyers Hardy books, Jory Sherman's Chill novels with a dash of Kolchak the Night Stalker.

Books like these are why I delve deep into the weird and wild world of low-rent publishers. A lot of the time I don't even finish the books but every now then I come across the gem, an uncut gem but a gem, nonetheless. Like most of these types of books, the print run was low, and the prices are kinda high, which is a shame. I pieced together this list of Zacharia's work as Zacharia anyway, there might be pseudonym work. It may or may not be complete so let me know if I'm missing anything. 

IRWIN ZACHARIA (For Carousel)

VENDETTA SERIES:

(A Mob-Avenger series about a guy named Will Powers)

#1 “The Murder Club”

#2 “Vendetta!”

PROTECTOR SERIES: 

(I.M. Reddy's fight against the supernatural)

#1 “Brotherhood of Evil” 

#2 “Princess of Darkness”

#3 “Reddy or Not”

#4 “Three to Get Reddy”

THE SHARK SERIES: 

(As far as I can tell it maybe be about a Tarzan-turned-Mack Bolan)

#1: “Landshark”

#2: “Piranha, Piranha”

Quick Shots: Terror at Boulder Dam by Vince Robinson (Mike Newton)

Carousel Books was a short-lived publisher of which I heard it was imprint of a porn publisher, details are few and far between in my internet detecting. Please fill me in if you know any more.  The books a generally the same size of a mass market paperback but feel weird in the hand. The binding is sharper. It's like the first time you hold a Pan paperback or New English Library vs. a Gold Medal or a Pyramid Paperback. I don't know what that has to do with anything but I figured I should note it for the future generations to log in the history of the cosmos.

Anywho, Vince Robinson wrote a few books for Carousel and sometimes he was Mike Newton, sometimes it seems he wasn't. Newton is a prolific author of books just in the Men's Adventure realm he wrote "The Executioner," "MIA Hunter," and "VICAP" to name a few. That leaves out tons of Westerns, true crime and other books. Check out his website to see everything he wrote. The short lived "Intersect File" series was a Newton/Carousel joint and I got an example of that series coming after burning through "Terror at Boulder Dam." Good pulp fun awaits me, I'm sure.

"Terror at Boulder Dam" starts off going 90 miles an hour and never lets up. I haven't read a a novel that moves this fast in a long while. Brad Kendall a Las Vegas private eye who name checks Dan Tana and Mike Hammer is beyond broke which is a warm safety blanket of a welcome for a P.I. fan when a beautiful show-girl saunters into his office with a missing brother. Brad is on the case and immediately gets into hot water and a warm bed with the showgirl. The trouble is a racist rich nut-job out to pull explosive high-jinks on the Boulder Dam. Along the Brad is an accessory to nasty brutal murder, gets into bar fights, accidentally joins The Sons of Paul Revere; the racist-nutjobs private army and since he's not a racist-ass-hat gets his private's tortured with electricity. This builds into a action-packed finale with Armalite's, .45's, Uzi's, flame-throwers, and a helicopter assault on a yacht. My kind of P.I.

Seriously this book is just plain simple fun, Newton seems to  slyly wink at the genre conventions and handles action with aplomb. I goes down like it was written as fast as it reads and there's obviously some loose-logic in there, but it's part of the charm.  It's a total B-movie of a book, check your brain at the cover and roll with the punches. The paperback is hard to come-by like a lot of the Carousel books, but Newton has put it up as an E-Book that's cheap and easy to obtain. I did and then stumbled onto the actual book, at a highway truck-stops used book shelves in one of the weird twists of fate.