QUICK SHOTS: Hitman #4: They're Coming to Kill You, Jane by Kirby (Kin Platt) Carr

 

You know a book is going to be good when the title is so long it has a comma in it. All these Hitman books by Kin Platt have ridiculous titles. Like You Die Next, Jill Baby or Don't Bet on Living, Alice. Commas too. I assume to let you know that Platt's tongue planted firmly in his cheek. If I'd have to bet these books were written fast (like too fast) and straight for the money. He was writing for Major and Manor books and Platt had some pedigree (mostly in children's books) so I'm sure he viewed these books as a place to play around.

I've written about Platt before; he's an interesting writer who wrote pretty much everything. Pulps, comics, animated TV, mysteries, children's books and, of course, smut. At the same time, he was cranking out The Hitman books, he also was writing a pretty fun private eye series starring Max Roper, that would be of interest to people who read my ramblings. 

Mike "Hitman" Ross is back...for like half the book as per usual and with the rest of the book we hang out with the weirdos and the bad guys. A mobster named Scorpio (not Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons, sadly) who is blackmailing rich dicks with a youth potion that he got in exotic Asia. Ross is lurking around and killing as many dudes as he can to avenge the death of...Betty. There's a Jane in the book though I swear. Ross is a Batman/Punisher hybrid with a black nylon suit with a cowl, tons of guns and a cool combat van. I don't think we wears a hockey mask like he is portrayed on the covers, but the writing is sorta sloppy enough I could have missed it. In this one there's some light brainwashing, tons of goofy "tough guy talk," plenty of shootin' and a-fightin' and some terrible racial stereotypes. It's also clear that as some point Platt realized he had written too much back-story and stuff that he was rapidly approaching his word count that he wraps it all up rather abruptly and Hitman sorta sits out his big action climax. Bummer, I know Hitman likes murdering. 

All that makes it sound like I didn't care of this book. I did. For some reason this series is one of my favorite Men's Adventure series, its simply too far out and messy for me not to like. I also LOVE the whole comic booky-set-up and all the ripped from the tabloid-kooky directions its takes. There also have a couple of covers that are just pure awesomeness. And Platt can write and there's always really good stuff in these books, which makes it a shame that they are so hard to track down these days and I'm sure no-one is clamoring to put them out as eBooks.

...speaking of eBooks my first novel, Gunpowder Breath is officially available here on Amazon. It's an action packed (actually its ALL ACTION) tale of a mercenary trying live through a weekend packed full of gunfights.  

QUICK SHOTS: Max Roper #1: The Pushbutton Butterfly by Kin Platt

Whoa, I dipped right back into Kin Platt territory. I recently read and reviews one of his Hitman series and I guess his work was still on my brain when I put on my helmet and went down to the book mine that is my library to dig out something to read. I sorta forgot I had finally tracked down the Pyramid paperback edition of the first in his Max Roper series. The Roper books were hardcovers originally, so they are a little classier with more effort and thought put into them his rush-job Hitman books. Not that I'm not a fan of rush-job novels. Stream-of-consciousness can produce some wild shit. The Roper's where the first Platt books I ever read, though it's been about 15 years since I read one. Yikes. Time. 

The later Roper mysteries have a sports gimmick. They each revolve around a different sport, baseball, horse-racing, basketball etc. etc. I'm not too much into sports other than baseball, so that's what probably kept me from diving back into the series. The first two are devoid of any athletics, besides fisticuffs that is, so I was interested in trying #1. Max Roper is one of those private eye/spy-types, an agent for a big national security firm called EPT. A little more high-tech than your average gumshoe but still very much a hard-boiled-school guy. He's appropriately tough, appropriately fond of women and booze, appropriately dumb when the plot calls for it and appropriately sarcastic. My kinda guy. 

I have a real fondness for the 70's era detective novel, you get the hippie angle, a lot of cult/spiritual communes, drugs and just a general shmear of grooviness. This one's got all that. Roper is assigned to find a missing rich-man's daughter (classic) and what follows is a twisting tale of murder, drugs, hippies, communes, stolen cars, switchblades, moider and quite a bit of Roper getting drugged. Platt is a good writer, he's got a fun, slightly tongue-in-cheek style that doesn't take itself too seriously. Probably a hold out from his comic book days. This novel reads like it was a newspaper detective comic strip. Roper could hang out with Rip Kirby or Secret Agent X-9 without skipping a beat.

These kinds of novels are comfort food for my soul at this point. When they are done slickly it's just page after page of feeling at home on those mean streets. This one's "light" hardboiled mystery, not quite as loopy as a Shell Scott but nowhere as tough as a Mike Hammer, its somewhere along the lines of one of M.E. Chaber's Milo March books. I had a good 'ol time with this one, though it's a little longer than it needed to be. This is a 170-page mystery in a 240-page package. Roper and Platt spin their wheels a bit too much in the middle, but they are both pleasant enough to pal around with, so I didn't mind too much. 

All the Roper books have been eBooked by Prologue and that's pretty sweet. Pick one of them up if you're a fan of Mike Shayne or Carter Brown and I'll probably enjoy yourself. Platt had a nice, clean style of writing. He could spin a good version of the standard mystery/adventure story with wit and style and make it look simple.

QUICK SHOTS: Hitman #3: The Girls Who Came to Murder by Kirby (Kin Platt) Carr

I took me a bit to get back to The Hitman series by Kin Platt writing as Kirby Carr. I read the first two fairly close together and they are some of my first blog reviews. Ah, memories. Kin Platt was an interesting guy, noted YA author, comic book writer and artist and novelist of this series, a couple of standalones and the Max Roper mysteries. Other than the cold hard cash, I often wondered while reading this one why exactly he was writing the Hitman books. The publisher Canyon was pretty low on the totem pole, and he was publishing the Roper books and his YA work at the same time at nicer publishers. It seems odd that he couldn't get a Men's Adventure series off the ground at a better joint like Pinnacle or Popular or even Curtis. Ah, mysteries. 

Platt had a sense of humor though, that's what really shines through in the Hitman books. They whole thing is SO over-the-top its wild, not to mention totally depraved and oozing with a thick layer of sleaze. Mike Ross is the Hitman, a 'Nam vet who is a super-badass with an ancient martial arts teacher as his only real buddy. He comes back from 'Nam and sets up as a Pulp Hero from the 30's basically. Imagine Norvell Page's The Spider in an avocado and wood paneled world and you have a taste of what The Hitman is. Ross wears an all-black "Commando" suit, drives around in a custom action-van with his MAB 9mm and his little Erma Luger .22 he shoots anyone he deems to be an evil doer. He does have a little crisis of faith in this book when he has to kill a bunch of teenage/college-age woman. But he quickly gets over that.

This is one of the Manson/Cult plots that are pretty prevalent in M.A. fiction of the time. A guy name Harvey barely has to utter a word or lift a finger and a score of teenagers go out and kill for him. Which is far-out to him since he really didn't even ask them too. But he's really just a douche who wants women and cash. All the while there's a sub-plot about Raj Bab, a young Indian who hit his head and who was sold by his parents to be taken to America by a conman to become a guru, basically. This plot here goes nowhere, disregard. So, Ross investigates both by going to a show and just basically shooting every hippie he comes across. Once the book is done, you realize that nothing much happened and what has happened just barely had the dots connected enough to make sense. Platt either had a deadline or an upcoming vacation to get to while pounding this one out on the keys. 

All that sounds like a dig, and it is. But hell, I still enjoyed the book. Platt's writing is always pretty interesting, the satire and humor helped me move right through the pages. I wish there was more Ross in the book, he's easily the third lead in the story and it suffers from that. But these aren't long or challenging books to tackle. I will say this is the weakest of the Hitman's I've read, I missed the slightly supernatural angle of the first couple and the full-blown action. This one has a more private-eye/detective feel then a Spider adventure. I think I'll try "The Impossible Spy, the stand-alone Platt did as Carr next which is about psychic espionage. And sleaze, I bet it's also about sleaze. 

Hitman #2: They Me Kill You, Sweetheart by Kirby (Kin Platt) Carr

Kin Platt was an interesting individual, a cartoonist and writer who produced work in a most mediums, comic books, YA novels, advertising, kids books, radio, film, adult novels, "adult" novels (wink) and TV. Most of the work I've read by him has a definite satirical bend to it. He's most well known for his children's novels, which tackled a lot of "mature" topics for kid's books, divorce, drugs, mental issues and such. He also wrote a pretty fun adult mystery series about Max Roper. While looking into Platt I stumbled upon his YA novel "The Blue Man," and had a long-forgotten memory of the book nudged out into the open in my brain. I think I read it many years ago, I'll have to track it down (cause I need more books?) to double check.

But his entry into the world of Men's Adventure fiction is what I'm talking about today (or whenever you read this) and that is Mike Ross a.k.a. The Hitman who packs heat and dresses in all black complete with cowl with "slit eye openings" to hunt down criminals. It's a series that's on one hand very much in the Pulp Hero mold, he operates very much like The Spider or The Shadow and on the other owing to Platt's comic book history. It's a world where spooky things, (vampires, witches etc. etc.) can exist? Maybe? Sometimes they seem to and it comes out of nowhere and then some are "Scooby-Doo" villains who get their rubber mask pulled off. It's probably owes more to the "one draft" novel approach of some of these lower-class publishers then a straight artistic choice. But who knows, I enjoy them for their seat-of-the-pants-kitchen-sink style. Platt was probably having fun writing them; just letting them pour out. 

SIDE- BAR: I often find myself on pdf's of archival material that authors have donated to universities. Their full of little tidbits of information and "lost" work type stuff. You have to get used to how their laid out but it's a interesting rabbit-hole to fall down into. I've done it with Michael Avallone and the Kansas author L.V. Roper. When this Covid-19 loosens it's death-grip on the U.S. (seriously where's The Spider to blast it into submission with his blazin' .45s?) I might make a pilgrimage to Roper's collection which seems to house unpublished novels in his "Renegade Roe" series.  Platt's is at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and pouring through the stuff in the collection I've found the original titles to some in the series. As follows: 

1. "The Vampire People Eater Caper"

2. "The Big Blue Kill" or "Cop Killers"

3. "The Young Deceivers" 

4. "The Scorpion Contract"

5. "The Tough Kill" or "The Hard Kill" 

He seems like he might have given up on naming them once we figured out that Canyon Books was going to name them whatever the hell they wanted. But there's a nice little nugget of usless information for you.

Platt does seem to have a firmer grip on what he wants the character and the world to be in the second novel, the first is a bit looser and free-wheelin' but Platt has all his character stuff set it seems and the world built and is now just playing around. His mentor Lo doesn't play much of a part in this episode, but his other secondary characters i.e. his S&W Model 29 .44 Magnum, the Baby Erma .22 Luger, and his "burpgun" have a lot to do. The action comes often and nice a gory, but is over fairly quickly. There's obvious humor scenes and colorful character names which make the books really stand out among the rest of "The Executioner" clones. The plot is convoluted as hell and fantastic. Cops are being killed all over the country and The Hitman wants to stop it. The mob is involved, also a cult, also witches and a home-grown terrorist outfit. The final big-bad reveal is a bit of a stretch is wrapped up so quickly Platt must have know he was close to his word count. There's a lot of goofy stuff that will turn people off, odd scenes and asides about occult matters that really don't go anywhere. But if you in the right mind-set its a helluva ride. 

The books are too hard to get and pricey to boot, it'd be a fun series to see reprinted but I don't know if it'll happen. Platt's Max Roper books are available as ebooks so that's something. If you dig 30's-40's pulp heroes or their modern counterparts it's fun to see what the forefathers of the pulp-revival were doing in the 70s. Watch out on the blog for more Hitman reviews and even a review of "The Impossible Spy" by Kirby Carr, the only non-Hitman book Platt did as Carr which promises psychic spies.

The Hitman #1 "Who Killed You, Cindy Castle?"

I stumbled onto a good chunk of Kirby Carr's Hitman books and they followed me home where I quickly devoured the first in the series "Who Killed You, Cindy Castle?" It was an incredibly fast read, big type in a fairly slim paperback and a engaging over-the-top story about harvest human blood. 

Hitman owes a lot to the pulps, The Spider in particular but with more then a healthy dollop of The Executioner mixed in and told in a quasi-tongue-in-cheek manner. For example he wears a mask and strikes fear into the hearts of the mob but packs a lot of various lovingly described pistols with a little Ninja-type gear in thrown in as well. The Hitman (he has a real name but it's fairly forgettable) is in the trail of a string of murder where all the bloody is drained from the bodies. The Hitman immediately is convinced that it's vampires. There's very little question in his mind which is just FANTASTIC. So basically the mob (who should know better) is stealing and smuggling blood for a cult of "Vampires." This pisses off our Hitman hero because that's the kind of thing that does. He's just generally made at the mob like so many Men's Adventure heroes but add vampires? Really ticks him off. To help with his anger he dons his mask, loads up his holsters with various pistols and starts busting heads and asking questions.

Kirby Carr was really Kin Platt a noted author of children's novels, comic books, mystery novels, TV, about anything that involved putting words on paper. He handles the whole thing expertly, but you can tell he was hammering these sentences out.  It's also fairly obvious that he was having a lot of fun with the book. The comic book influence is there, it was easy for my to think about Mike Grell's utterly fantastic "Sable" comic or Max Allan Collins "Wild Dog," not that Platt was ripping any on off, it just rides that super-hero/Men's Adventure line, much like "The Punisher."

I enjoyed it on the whole, but it had problems. Platt spends too much time with the ultimately unimportant mob characters, though a lot of that was pretty amusing and it has the repeated problem that plagues so many of these type of books: a lot of build up to a rushed finale. You get full chapters about various mobsters taking about how scared they are of The Hitman, but also about how much they like to have sex and do criminal shit. Then The Hitman pulling a private eye moving around asking questions, finding out people are dead and then alternatively shooting them himself.  I might have missed the a few things, cause I could never really pin down if it was a "Scooby-Doo," type horror thing, i.e. humans are the playing vampires or if they really were a cult of Dracula's. But when it boils down to it I didn't care. It's a Kitchen Sink book; it was funny, it had horror elements, it had men's adventure derring-do and it was brutal as well. What more could you ask for?

Oh, man all that I forgot to mention The Hitman's badass Old-Man Ninja best friend? Good thing there's more in this series.