QUICK SHOTS: Gannon #1: Blood for Breakfast by Dean Ballenger

 

The Gannon books are fairly legendary in Men's Adventure/Trash fiction circles. Hard to come by, absolutely insane and balls-to-the-wall entertaining. There's nothing quite like a Gannon book. Dean Ballenger only wrote a handful of novels, three of which are about this little "tiger" of a man with his revolver and spiked-knucks taking a bite of the rich folks for the common man. A blue-collar avenger. They are the sleaziest, most violent, batshit B-Movie that never made it to the grindhouses on 42nd street. They are Gannon. 

Either Ballenger was putting us on, or he was a dude you probably didn't actually want to meet. Little to nothing is known about him (that I can find, as always let me know what you know) other than he wrote some westerns and some stuff in the sweat mags of the day. In #1 Gannon is on a quest to skrag everyone involved in a brutal attack on his sister. He's got a quick and vague background as a Marine, cop and present security chef for a shipping yard. Other then he likes steaks and need to boink women at regular intervals you learn pretty much nothing about him. He does come from the Mike Hammer school of maim or kill and call the cops as opposed to the Johnny Rock school of kill everyone and split. He doesn't consider himself a psychopath, but that there is open to debate. The novel moves real fast, hoping from beatings, shootings, explosions, hit-and-runs, blood, sexing, and shaving and showers. It's almost episodic in a way, Gannon gets in a scrape and then extricates himself in the most violent way possible. The guts-and-gore is cranked up to ELEVEN in the books. That and the odd, 30's-40's (or just plain made up) slang adds to the fantasy quality to the novel. It just seems like a whiskey and uppers fever dream pounded out into a book for a couple of bucks. That being said it's a masterpiece in that sub-genre. Now, it's not for the faint of heart of the easily offended. I read the trashiest stuff and some of the sentences in "Blood for Breakfast" were hard to take in. Sometimes nastiness oozes out from the binding. Plus, personally I have toast for breakfast.

A lot of these type of vigilante books are made of two-camps. You got the straight knockoffs of "The Executioner" like "The Marksman" or "Soldato" or "The Liquidator" or you got the ones that are really aping Brian Garfield's "Death Wish," like "The Vigilante," or "The Revenger" doing a more 'serious' approach. They both usually tackle the mob. Gannon isn't really in either camp. Ballenger's opinion is that white-collar crooks are the ones who really need to be taught a lesson. The Mafia? Eh. It's all out class warfare. It's a kinda half-ass communist manifesto. And in terms of brutal action only Russell Smith's entries in "The Sharpshooter" and "The Marksman" are close. Barry Malzberg's "Lone Wolf" books may get fairly crazy, but I'm only one in so far. They are for a small handful of wild-book-people whose taste has long since gotten washed away by mountains of questionable fiction. That or the violent, criminally insane maybe. 

It's easy to see why some many people talk about the Gannon books, from James Reasoner on his blog, to the Glorious Trash or even the awesome filmmaker S. Craig Zahler on his Goodreads page. It's a notable book that's so off-the-wall that it would not be written today and will probably never be republished making it an enticing package. Like having the Ferrari trash fiction. They are ridiculously hard to come by. I lucked into the 2nd entry and felt compelled to finish off the series. It took me so penitence and doing but I got them all for a fairly reasonable price but well-more then I usually pay for an old paperback. Like a drug, I don't know if I'd recommend the Gannon books to someone without a cheap taste, cause they are not for everyone. I love that I have them and I'm sad there's only one more to read but mileage varies. 

A Quintuple Blast of 70's Action

SO, I moved, I dunno, several thousand books last month from one house to another, plus all my other shit. It's as pleasant as it sounds. To break up the monotony and save my back, I read three slim paperbacks. Sorry about they super late reviews but sorting, organizing and cataloging has been quite the chore. But here's a bunch of reviews.

I started with "The Big Needle," after reading about on Paperback Warrior (a vastly more put together and comprehensive collection of entertaining reviews) I was intrigued because it was an early work of Ken Follett. The early pulpy works of authors who later became well-known can sometiems be excellent and other can be just a tepid and boring as most mainstream fiction. Paperback Warrior didn't care for this book, as I am VERY easy to please I came away from it wishing the final two chapters in the "Apples" Carstairs trilogy weren't so hard to find. I'd read them in a heartbeat.

Ken Follett as Symon Myles here creates "Apples" a swinging London building contractor out for revenge with his two girlfriends in tow. The book rolled over my eyes like a wonderful 70's Eurocrime movie, probably made with Italian and British money and probably staring Richard Harris, or maybe Michael Caine. Anyway Apples is a rough sort in a higher pay bracket, with a background in crime reporter and the military and most likely anything else the story might need at that point races off (literally) after finding out his daughter is in hospital after ODing. Not a lot of this book makes sense, I get that right out there in the open. Apples flip-flops from being pissed about drugs and drug dealers to banging any chick he can and the ideas about lesbian/bisexual are very back-asswards, but surprisingly Apples girlfriends are some of the better characters in the book. The story plays fast and loose with Apples trying to set up a drug buy to trap his prey, along the way he pulls a "French Connection" with a car packed full of heroin, drives in his super-cool Jaguar, does some businessman stuff, drinks and smokes weed. I think I like him because he's a lot hipper then the usual "drug-buster" character and Follett's tongue seems to be creeping through his teeth into his cheek throughout.

"The Big Needle" was a slim book, but "The Syndicate" by my friend and yours Peter McCurtin is practically a novella. The cover promises "Godfather" like insight into the inter workings of the dreaded Mafia, luckily that's just Belemont-Tower pulling your leg. James Broderick is a badass Mafia killer sent out by an aging Don to kill a dick-ass Nazi in ancient Irish castle built up like a fortress. Yeah, now that's a plot synopsis.

Broderick is a lot like most McCurtin's protagonists, kind of a wise-ass mixed with utter badass. That's about all you get or need to know. It's a wallop of a fun plot that probably could have used a second draft with a little bit more book injected into it. Maybe it was written in a booze-fueled weekend to catch a deadline by the balls. Yeah, that might be it. So, there's a Neo-Nazi bent on doing what Nazi's do best: fuck shit up and it's going to get in the way of the Mafia's operation. This is a nice idea and twist on the initial set-up. The fist bit plays like a spy story with a lone agent going to pick up his latest assignment from his boss, only the boss is the Don and instead of national interests its pure finical interests. Sooner or later this Nazi is going to cost he mob money and they aren't going to like that. Enter Broderick. So, tangles with goons, a Nazi-She-Devil or the Doctor Nazi-She-Devil variety, breaks out of a castle and kills who's gots to get kills. It's all over before you know it, which is a shame. Nothing is used to it's full potential but ts written in the McCurtin style which is professional action writing, it's okay but pales in comparison to his other work. It might have worked better within one of McCurtin's series works like as a Marksman, Sharpshooter or a Soldier of Fortune book.

The next book I read had some meat on it's bones "Lone Wolf #1: Night Raider," by Mike Barry or
Barry Maltzberg as it says on his taxes. I've been wanting to dip my toe into the pool of this particular series for a while but was informed that they HAVE to be read in order as it builds and builds over the series. So, I finally picked up a copy of #1 let it sit on a shelf for months, remember I wanted to read it and picked it up. That's how I roll.

Easily this is the best book of the five, it's a rock solid example of Men's Adventure Fiction. It's going up there in the hall of fame. Burt Wulf (get it?) is a Narc who's lady-friend is found dead by him after ODing. Basically his mind goes POP! and he decides to do the long road to revenge thing. It's not an original plot but Malzberg is a damned fine writer and continuously ratchets up the tension and lets Wulf's sanity slowly slip away. All the side characters are unique and interesting, with nary a stock character in the mix, like a mobster on a tear with a wife glued to the TV who doesn't pay attention to the world around her and the love he feels for his 10 year old Buick and Wulf's old partner, a African-American rookie who became a cop because people have to take notice of him when he's in uniform. Malzberg creates whole characters in little bits. The story is simple enough Wulf follows the trail of baddies, whooping their ass until he can move on the next one, much like a super bloody Mario Bros. Wulf's a dick and psycho but he's a thinker too and his solution to killing this episodes bad-guy is pretty clever compared to the simple "shoot-everyone" climax often used, but is also still satisfactory. It'll be interesting to see how Wulff gets crazier and crazier as the books progress. I also like that Wulf looks like Mr. Fantastic with a .45 on the cover.

Like a lot of fans of Men's adventure I'm an avid reader of Glorious Trash as it's practically the bible of the kinds of novels. It's a blog that has cost me a lot of money and much more joy. The review of Dean Ballenger's Gannon series has made my mouth water for a couple of years but I never held out much hope for tracking any of them down cause it's the same sad story, too few copies and too high of prices. With a coupon and a little (okay a lot) of cash I ended up with #2 "Blood Fix" and #3 "Blood Beast" and my tiny heart grew six whole inches. I dove head first in the insane world of the "little tiger" Gannon with his spiked brass knuckles, his .357, sweet Mercedes and a thirst for murdering the rich and evil. The rich is key word, the Gannon landscape has Depression-Era vibes, class warfare and out-dated slang fill the book. It's a book out of time simultaneously feeling, 20's, 70's and no time that has ever existed. It's a trippy R-rated comic book landscape with Gannon has a Batman/Punisher who boinks all the ladies and beats people to a pulp and shoots people to a pulp, ya know to help the downtrodden. IT'S AMAZING.


A small town gas station owner is set-up with a false rape-charge by an insidious rich guy out to buy the land the gas station sits on cause a highway is coming right by it. The gas station owner calls Gannon who's pretty famous for ass-kicking to come help him. Gannon likes ass-kicking so he rolls into town and faces off with a nasty killer and all sorts of goons. People die in horrible ways, people act like no humans ever have and Gannon is near superhuman in his ability to murder folk. The women  have it the worse in the book and none of them are particularly believable, so if you have a problem with that you might want to skip it. I prefer authors with distinct voices and Ballenger had that in aplomb. More then anything it reminded me of a 70's version of Carroll John Daly's Race Williams and Robert Leslie Bellem's Dan Turner stories. All three writers liked lighting fast-paced stories, their own vernacular and tough guy heroes. I'll be shelling out the cash of Gannon #1 fairly quickly. It's a shame Ballenger seemingly didn't produce more then a handful of novels but he wrote a lot for the sweat mags. I suppose he wouldn't be everyone's taste but if you like you mayhem with a little knowing humor you could do worse.

Frank Scarpetta was a lot of different guys, "Slaughter-House" Scarpetta was Russell Smith, who wrote a fair number of Marksman/Sharpshooter novels. This was my first Smith novel and it won't be my last. This was a bloody, goofy seat-of-the-pants affair that through logic out the window and replaced it was brains on the floor, fishing line used a grappling hooks and .38's, .45s, .357s, and .44's blowing Mafia's hoods heads, chest, and necks apart. Philip Magellan is the Marksman when he's not Johnny Rock The Sharpshooter. They are the same guy, plus they are also Robert Briganti AKA "The Assassin." Go to Lynn Monroe Books for the full-scoop on the ins and outs of The Marksman/Sharpshooter/Assassin series and a lot of the work that Peter McCurtin did as a writer and as an editor.

Magellan goes back to a carnival where he was a trick-shooter and since his new occupation is mafia buster the mafia is pulling strong arm moves and wanting protection money from said carnival. Magellan is pissed off by this and shoots a bunch of goons and starts an all-out war between carnies and the mob (I wish, that'd been cool) but he does get a lot of carnies killed in the process including the woman owner who's son is along for the ride, as Robin to Magellan's Batman. He comes in pretty handy as he casually owns a sloppily deactivated mortar that comes in handy when they want to blow a mob-honcho's house to pieces. Also luckily Magellan knows a place where the mortar shells are kept and also has a key for the building. That's some good luck. The book moves a fast clip of shootings told in grizzly detail. Magellan doesn't get laid which is a change of pace from the usual paperback hero, he seems to get his rocks off with the mafia-murdering he does. Really the book didn't make a whole lot of sense but the characters were wonderfully colorful and the plot is simply "death to bad guys." As a potato chip, the book rates very high. Russell Smith has made me a fan, I'm glad I have more of his work in the series and one of his stand alone's "Montego" as Robert Dupont.