Quick Shots: Dachau Treasure by Anthony DeStefano

Here's a short and to the point review (as short and to the point as long-winded me can provide) of "Dachau Treasure" by Anthony DeStefano who wrote the short-lived Mondo martial arts series. I have #3 in that series but haven't read it so this is my first taste of DeStefano's work a stand-alone Manor paperback riddled with so many typos I actually noticed and that's saying something cause I usually don't care.

"Dachau Treasure" opens up with Stosh Jacobs cleaning his .44 Magnum. BOOM. It got me there, probably. Stosh is the eye-patched bald guy on the cover. He got his eye-patch in the Dachau concentration camp as a boy. Now he hunts down and kills Nazi for they bounty on them. He's aided by his super 70's-brand "intellectual college boy" Eric, who acts like his nagging wife about how he should retire his life of badass Nazi-hunting, but is a good decoder and helper or something. Also along for the ride is the much more fun Alexoya a general thief and crafty/fun character. Anyway Stosh really wants the Nazi-jerkoff who took his eye and he gets a line on him and uncovers a bigger plot and starts hunting the stolen "treasure" of the Jewish people from Dachau to return it to the rightful people.

The first half of the book is rock solid Men's adventure with plus shag carpeting Stosh and his silenced-Webley revolver and his hot-rod Jaguar scream around beating and shooting information of of Nazi dicks. With brief intervals of  Eric whining about how killing Nazi's isn't the right thing to do. Stosh goes down to Mexico with Alexoya, tries some pot with some sweet ladies and with his buddy and some knock-off Smith and Wesson revolvers kills the man who took his eye. That part was a little rushed and it's a sign of what's to come. Seems like Stosh would have made a bigger deal about killing the dude he's been hunting for years, but hey, okay, I'm rolling along with the book enough.

Then the narrative slides into something else. There's a Nazi conspiracy. Stosh begins to wonder if he doesn't enjoy getting high and laid more then Nazi killing and it moves into the 70's conspiracy thriller novel: with Eric at the front. Eric is followed by mysterious Nazi agents through New York, runs one of them over with his car, hides out with his girlfriend and they have a couple good-long talks about how he shouldn't pick up one of Stosh's gun and protect himself if the Nazi's find him. They also smoke a lot of pot.  Stosh swoops in at the end to quickly save the day as DeStefano was rapidly reaching his minimum word count and the patented "Men's Adventure Rapid Ending" is in place.

I probably liked the book more then it sounds like. The first part was super-solid, nice fast well written action with heavy dollops of 70's grooviness and Stosh is a colorful character compared to the usual "Square-jawed hero" of these paperbacks. The book looses it's way but then wraps up in a pretty good action sequence. Its the Jekyll and Hyde of 70's Nazi-Hunting Men's Adevnture Paperbacks.

"All Kinds of Ugly" The Long-Lost Final Hardman Novel by Ralph Dennis

Can you tell it's my favorite?

My memory is fuzzy. Jim Hardman and Hump Evans either found their way onto my bookshelf with a blind purchase of a gaudy paperback or I might have stumbled onto them via Thrilling Detective either one is possible. I was a teenager and reading private eye novels which I had developed a Jones for after getting hooked on Joe R. Lansdale's Hap Collins and Leonard Pines novels through his horror fiction. Hap and Leonard pressed their world views into my brain, they became a personal thing, tough guys who stood up for things and bantered like an old married couple. Hap and Leonard sent me looking for more and more and suddenly I was in a flame red El Camino between Montana and Texas with a Vietnam Vet named C.W. Sughrue ("Sug as in sugar and rue as in 'rue the goddamned day'") and the road was full of dirty wit, shocking  violence and deep sadness. I knew I wanted to be a writer then. I have a lot of writers that I like, some mean a whole hell of a lot including the oft quoted "Holy Trinity" of mystery writers: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross MacDonald (though Mickey Spillane is much higher on my list then MacDonald) but they weren't my personal "Holy Trinity." The three guys I'd pick are Lansdale, Crumley and Ralph Dennis.

Ralph Dennis didn't have the luck the other two and some of everything is luck. Dennis wrote his Hardman books with Popular Library a mid-level publishing outfit. Not Pinnacle or Gold Medal, but usually a bit above some of the other paperback places. They didn't set the world on fire but he must have burned through type writers cause he wrote 12 of them in three years or so. More importantly they are each a hard bitten little diamond in the Atlanta rough.  Dennis knew he was writing pulp, there's enough ass-kicking and gun-fights to keep anyone interested but the characters are a lot deeper then their kinda silly named suggests. Hardman and Hump always makes my wife giggle. Hump and Hardman's relationship; a white pudgy ex-cop and a black former NFL player in the South in the 70's was certainly not the norm. Dennis was ahead of the curve and there's less of the usual racist and sexist stuff in the books then the average Men's Adventure tales. Partly cause they aren't Men's Adventure, they are simply crime tales with a lot of action and thrills. Hump and Hardman grow closer and become the only family either of them has that fully understands. Not that they'd say that to each other. They show it to each other in their actions and these a hard-drinkin' 70's men who wear their emotions buried deep in their heart.

After 12 Hardman's Dennis wanted to break away from the character. That's understandable, that's a lot of writing and he wanted that hardback life and some respect that he deserved. He didn't really make it. He wrote other books and the world remained unlit, so flame-less that they stopped getting published. The years passed and Hardman and Hump seemed to be forgotten. I never thought anyone else really loved them the way I did. Boy, I was wrong.

Lee Goldberg, a hell of a writer his-own-self did the Paperback God's good work and did that long play to get Hardman republished by his Brash Books, who reprint a lot of the good stuff. Eventually there was the unpublished books, a sequel to "Deadman's Game," a ultra-hard-boiled spy novel, another espionage tale "The Spy in the Box," and a standalone mystery called "Dust in the Heart." And in a twisting mystery tale of it's own (I won't spoil it, buy the damned book and read the afterword when you're done) a book called "The Polish Wife," which became "All Kinds of Ugly," the damned-near lost final Hardman novel.

It was a long work week. A week of shiftless reading, the kind where you pick up books and they don't grab you. Honestly I had bee avoiding the final Hardman, that'd be a special occasion, like a expensive bottle of whisky. Though, I had finally gotten around to buying the paperback so it was in my house lurking and calling my name from the shelf. It found it's way to my armchair and there was a bottle of beer on the upturned plastic wooden barrel I keep beside it for remotes. Then BOOM! I'm halfway through the book and two beers in.

Hardman goes to London to find a rich kid and escape his romantic problems. Marcy one of the only reoccurring characters in the books has left him and multiple beers at George's Deli haven't helped. Maybe a little work will and change of local. That's the jumping off point and Hardman meets the Polish wife of the would be title and gets buried neck-deep into a rich families problems. There's murders and tough-guy scenes, a lot of local color and a man who's growing older and sadder and doesn't think things are going to work out the way he wanted. The action starts in Atlanta and then moves to London. I didn't know what I'd think about Hardman in a different locale, so much of Hardman IS Atlanta, but my doubts all faded away. Hardman just drank in pubs instead of bars and his nose still got stuck in places it shouldn't. Hardman quickly finds the missing guy dead and is back in Atlanta with the Polish Wife in tow. There's echos of Ross MacDonald's Archer in the probing of the family but it's ultimately not about the rich family and a dash of classical "locked room" mystery even if it's in a horse stable instead of the parlor. It's about Hardman and the Polish Wife both brutally scrambling for what they want and knowing its the last shot they will ever have. The Polish Wife herself is a interesting and fairly likeable and relatable real human version of the "femme fatale."  You understand exactly why she does what she does and falls the way she falls. That's the beauty of Dennis's writing: pulp with real people. Everybody is someone you know, know of or don't want to know.

And in one evening, barely moving from my chair with four beers drank; the book was done. The last Hardman was read and that sure is something. 

Maybe it wouldn't mean as much without the benefit of the previous twelve books but it's an ending and you should probably read it last. It's not as action-orientated as some of the other books and there's a little bit too little Hump (isn't there always?) but it's a full-blown miracle that it exists. So, Lee Goldberg will have my eternal thanks, all of Ralph Dennis's library is easily purchased in paperback or ebook from Brash Books. The Hardman books are some of the finest examples of crime fiction in the 70's and finally some light it getting shown on them and it's about good-god-damned time.

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.

Triple-Shot of 70's Men's Adventure: Radcliff, The Liquidator, Shannon!

Paperback racks had a bit of a swell for the influx of "Blaxploitation" cinema in the early 70's with the likes of "Shaft," "Coffy," and "Superfly."  The good folks at Holloway House seemed to want to get in on Pinnacles "Executioner" action and brought out a couple of contenders. One being Joseph Nazel's "Iceman," a high-class pimp vigilante and Roosevelt Mallory's "Radcliff," a stone cold mafia hit-man who shouldn't be fucked with. Roosevelt Mallory should be counted along with the great work of Donald Goines and "Iceberg" Slim in the Holloway House line, or any publisher for that matter.

Reading an Iceman is a fun way to spend an afternoon, but reading a Radcliff is closer to looking down the barrel of a sawed-off double barrel, tension ratchets up and Radcliff is a whole lot of damned trouble and it don't seem to matter to him. Radcliff lives in the same type world that Richard (Donald Westlake) Stark's Parker lives a noir wasteland of thugs, dirty cops, evil men and women. "Double Trouble" is the third book in the series it's suitably gritty, a wild blast of funky 70s Men's Adventure. Radcliff is a badass assassin on the run after being set-up by the mob for killing several cops. It was a fast read that really hits all the right buttons. If you like the idea of slightly seat-of-the-pants writing writing for fast money, quick moving, very violent action and the feeling of being surrounded by shag carpet and wood paneling while reading it, then it's a book for you. It wasn't a perfect book it suffered a common problem with a lot of these books: too much build up and a rushed resolution plus some hyped stuff on the cover that didn't amount to much but it was entertaining enough to be forgiven, plus a little too much focus on the other characters when all I really wanted was Radcliff using his dual .38's to gets some payback. I got one more Radcliff and it's a shame that they are so hard to find because this was a fun hard hitting book.


Larry Powell was R.L. Brent for this medium length series called "The Liquidator," I picked up the
whole series almost accidentally before reading a single word of it, then to top it off I started with the second book cause I'm a weirdo. The good thing about most serialized 70's fiction is that they are made for you to have missed a book or two, so they explain everything you need to know in most of the volumes. "Contract for a Killing," told me Jake Brand was an honest cop who's brother is killed and he takes it personally (of course) and decides to take on the mob single-highhandedly. The Penetrator, The Executioner, The Liquidator, Lone Wolf,  Death Merchant and the like might have got the job done quicker if they had just teamed up to face the mob, but what do I know?

Brand is out of jail and looking for the hitman-dude who iced his brother and gets mixed up with the paid killers next hit, a woman who Brand wants to warn and basically use as bait to snag his killer. Brand spends the time on the run, gathering guns and whooping information out of people. Also sexing ladies. This is all standard stuff but Powell writes well and it unfolds at a nice pace, never bogging down with any filler-bullshit. Brand is a likeable enough version of the mob-killer archetype, the ex-cop/ex-con thing is a nice touch cause he's truly alone no cops or crooks would trust him. It builds to a nice ending that's a bit of a cop-out but it's that way to keep the series going. There's just enough of a ending to the volume for it to feel like a full book. Powell is now on my radar, I have a couple of Nick Carter: Killmasters he wrote and I'll have to move them up to the To-Be-Read pile. This is solid B-level stuff; it's not going to change your life but it's certainly better written then some.

Finally Shannon #1: The Undertaker is the TECHNICALLY the worst book of the three but I probably had the best time reading it. This is a utterly ridiculous book in the best ways. I think it belongs to the the unsung-genre of Men's Adventure Fiction: The Inaction Adventure book, right there with Hardy by Martin Meyers and Decoy by Jim Dean. Patrick Shannon our "hero" doesn't do much action stuff. In fact he mostly drinks, boinks ladies and fucks up until he defeats the baddies with I dunno, luck?

Jake Quinn was J.C. Conaway who wrote a bit of this type of stuff two female P.I. series that seem to be the same character roving around under different names, i.e. Janna Blake and Nookie, er, um. Also horror books, gothics, stand alones and this three book series, some under names like Jim Conaway and Ross Webb. I'll tell you I had enough fun with it that I bought a large sample of his work half way through. Why you ask? Because I'm certifiable. So, Shannon works for a top-secret spy agency, has a butler named Joe-Dad who's racial insensitive to two demographics, a penthouse, a Porsche, a untraceable Beretta and a stocked bar. Someone is kidnapping beautiful blondes of the street, starlets, figure skaters, models, that type of blonde. Shannon looses a girlfriend, snoops around, gets an old blind woman killed, looses more women, adopts a cat and plays with a god-damned Seal over the course of this novel. Also has sex with EVERY female character, including a lesbian because its the 70's and a pulp novel. Eventually (like the last 20 pages or so) he fucks up enough to get kidnapped and shipped in a coffin to a bad-guy island in a coffin and almost inadvertently saves the day tangling against a deformed villain/henchman combo and literally saving his penis. Also then has some more sex. All in all this is the stupidity, violence and twisted fun I want in a funky 70's paperback. Conaway seemed like he was "in" on the joke to me, which makes it worthwhile as pure entertainment.

The Camp by Jonathan Trask but Actually Peter McCurtin and Len Levinson

One of my first reviews on here was "The Sundance Murders" by stalwart writer of ass-kickers Peter McCurtin. The book introduced Berger a hard-boiled reporter like they don't make anymore. A drunken cut-down Walther P-38 muckraker who travels to the desert and kicks up shit and ass. It was a novel after my own heart. I noted that it very much seemed like a first in a series or an installment in a series but sadly Peter McCurtin was a busy writer and editor at the time churning out his own work, ghost-written work, and editing great series like John (Ben Haas) Benteen's Fargo and everything in-between. So, I guess poor Berger got lost in the shuffle.

Jonathan Trask was Peter McCurtin, but he was mostly Len Levinson for this book. Len Levinson is a fantastic author with paperback-cred longer then your arm, working on series like "The Sharpshooter," "Ryker," "Joe Blaze" and creating  super-spy "Butler" and kick-ass W.W.II tales of "The Sargent" and "The Rat Bastards." Not to mention westerns and stand-alones of all genres. He like McCurtin is an author you can trust to give you a good time. They both seem to understand what their audience wants, their books are lean and fit with no filler and colorful characters. They do have completely different styles and voice, its fairly easy to point out either of their work even if their name isn't on the cover.

So, here's the rub. I think "The Camp" started out as a Berger novel. McCurtin wrote the first chapter, it's really clear that it's his work, it's got a lot of his ticks, old movies on TV, being more morose, heavy drinking etc. etc. The hero is now named Phil Gordon but it it starts roughly the same way with out narrator talking to us about himself. Gordon/Berger explains that he's a roving reporter who packs a Walther and ain't afraid to use it, that they work for a tabloid paper etc. etc. It's nearly word-for-word for a paragraph. I got totally deja-vu. Was this my long lost 2nd Berger novel? Well, yeah I sorta of think it is. It's a Frankenstein book with the two authors narrative styles being quickly bolted together, because after the McCurtin chapter Levinson's behind the wheel and it's his free-wheeling action/adventure with wiseacre humor peppered in. Gordon stops being McCurtin's character and becomes the slightly unhinged, slightly necrotic Levinson character. He's a happening guy with a sweet Porsche, he's good at his job, ex-army and always on the look out for trouble and women. The kind of guy you want to read about.

The Camp's long lost brother?

The plot is real nice I can see why it was saved from either being unfinished or forgotten by McCurtin and handed to Levinson who was producing some of the best work in the Belmont-Tower line. Basically Gordon goes to hang out with his old Native-American buddy in the Maine woods and finds out that there's a mysterious army installation who may or may not be responsible for the disappearance of his nephews. They look into and find the remains of tortured hippies in the camp and then nearly get killed. Gordon's now all in, he goes back home, makes some friends in high places and boinks with a attractive women within a few hours of meeting her and sets up his mission to get the story and hopefully find his friends nephews. It's got some heavy 70's political thriller vibes in the middle, a little "Parallax View," and "All The President's Men" mixed with man-on-a-mission pulp. Gordon gets help from a friendly general and sneaks into the ultra-right-wing-death-to-all-that-disagrees-with-us-murder-camp and gets a guided tour by a randomly gay army officer. Here's the only minor problem I had with the book: Gordon's in the camp for a day, sees what he's going to see  (torture chambers, murdering hippies for sport, etc. etc.) and then raises hell with grenades, rifles and the prisoners of the camp and gets the hell out. Some more time inside the camp with some build up might have been nice but then the result is the same. The ending is total awesome 70's (probably still now) paranoia with a real nice button on the end.

All in all its a fine little paperback thriller, full-tilt and lean with enough character and surprises to spend a pleasant few hours with. McCurtin and Levinson are some top-shelf guys at writing this stuff, buy anything with their names or pseudonyms on it.  There's a lot of hack-work in this genre/type of book (mostly on the best-seller list) and I long for the days of sub-200 page roller-coaster rides. Looking around after reading the book I was mildly surprised to see the price on the second hand market. It must have had a short-print run and Belemont books always seem to be pricey anyway. I got mine in a lot of books on ebay chock full of expensive McCurtin creations. It was a good chunk of change until you worked out how much the books cost individually. I guess the moral of the story is to buy books like things at Costco: IN BULK.

Baron (Bad Guy) Sinister by Joseph Milton

Going into this slim Lancer paperback I was fairly sure that the title character Baron Sinister was the bad guy. Spoiler, he was. Though sadly he was never identified as such which is a damned shame. The Baron-book is number five in a series of eight staring bored rich-guy turned super-spy Bart Gould which is a little lacking when it comes to super-spy names but Tiger Mann was taken I suppose.  Aside from the less then awesome handling of the names the book is all anyone would want from a 60's Spy-fi paperback.

Joseph Milton was Joseph Hilton Smyth and he started the series with one book "The President's Agent" in 1963 and Joseph Hilton after that Lancer had ghostwriters including the prolific Don Rico and the husband and wife team of Hal Jason Calin and Anne Calin (and possibly others) write the rest of the series under the Milton handle. But Hilton came back once and wrote under the Milton name because paperback publishing of the era was a screwy place. Apparently (if the internet is to be trusted AND its the same guy) in the 40's Hilton Smyth was arrested for being "unregistered agents of the Japanese government" by publishing a pro-Japanese stories in a magazine. So maybe spy-craft was in his veins. He also wrote some novelizations, some stand alone's, including "That French Girl" which got published by Gold Medal, Crest and a some other publishers along the way PLUS some book called "The Sex Probers," which makes me laugh.

Anywho. Bart Gould is a Bruce Wayne type only he doesn't wear the pointy ears instead he spies for the Prez. He gets roped into going to Germany to investigate the disappearances of mild-mannered government employees who hold no vital information, so they know it isn't the Ruskies. Gould was just palying with his grandfather's collection of Derringers so on a whim he packs up his suitcase and loads his trick-sleeve holster with a Williamson .41 single shot Derringer and flies to Vienna. Once there he meets up vile baddies, old flames, ropes in the tried and true reporter friend on the case, drinks, sexes, rents funky European cars, meets a slinky Nazi Femme-Fatale, shoots some dudes, gets his friend killed and goes on a mission of vengeance against a old Nazi dick-head. The climax builds and is particularly nice as it involves a snowed in castle high mountains with a dark history of witchcraft, dungeon escapes, sword fights and derring-doo. The whole package is a slim-wallop of adventure thrills that hearkens back to the classics of the Ruritanian genre like "Prisoner of Zenda"or other swashbucklers and at the same time being 60's modern. A pleasant mixture of Dumas and Fleming.

Gould comes off better then some of the heroes of the day. He's going through the spy-mill for the fun of it and is flippant in the face of  grave danger. No dour reflections on the nasty business of spying or dull inter-office politics of intelligence agencies, just plan old rock'em sock'em cliffhanger thrills. The books assumes you have read earlier entries which I had not, Gould's backstory wasn't filled out thoroughly but, eh, I didn't need it. Rich guy = spy is good enough. Gould not being a true agent gives the narrative a lot of wiggle room, the secondary characters aren't secret agents, mostly made up of his friends accumulated over years rich play-boying and he has to act more like a private eye to get his information with no government contacts abroad.  It's a nice mix of a lot of pulpy-genres.

This is pretty much what I want when I pick up a spy-fi book. It's not the absolute best iteration of
this genre, not as high as a Malko or a Man from W.A.R. book by Michael Kurland, those sorta of stand lone from the pack. "Baron Sinister" lagged a bit in the early pages but cranked up the juice rather quickly and could have had a bit more of the main villain and made him a bit more dastardly. But those are small quibbles in a book that can be read in a couple of hours. As a guy who's been buying secret agent books since he was a teenager, I think I've had this particular book for like fifteen-years and never read it until now which I can say about WAY too many books. I amassed several other of the series and I look forward to reading more Bart Gould adventures and of course buying the rest of the books. The thrill of the hunt.

French Wold Newton Vol. 1: "So Late, Monseiur Calone" by Alain Page

Fleuve Noir, the French publisher of cheap crime novels has been around since 1949 producing the kind of quick, tough reads Gold Medal did in the U.S. in fact it reprinted a fair share of them along with producing it's own home-grown version of gritty crime stories. The tidal wave of James Bond hit them early, so early that Jean Bruce's OSS-117 globe-traveling super-spy beat Bond to the punch. So, OO7 and OSS-117 were hits and they floodgates opened. Some where along the way, I think there was a specific imprint denoting Espionage books with the line. I'm not too clear as I don't speak French and the on-line info is sketchy. I'd be grateful to anyone with more knowledge on the subject to speak up. Book-nerds UNITE!

Years ago I found a shelf full of Gerard de Villier's Malko novels for cheap while on a road trip. I didn't buy all of them because I had never heard of it before. That decisions haunts me as it took a lot of time and money to track down the rest of the books. It also explains why I'm a book pack-rat, "when in doubt, buy it" that's my motto. Well, Malko led me to to The French Wold Newton a tantalizing glimpse at a whole world of unknown Pulp to me. Spies, adventures and detectives abound. But to my dismay (and hours upon hours of internet searching) I had found the precious few had ever been translated. It was a search I would dive into every now and then and it would inevitably yield no results.  Sure, a couple of OSS-117's made it to America, a handful more seem to be published in the England, Malko tried to make a big splash with Pinnacle in the 70's but not enough were published for my taste buds. M.G. Braun's super-spy Al Glenne got 4 books in the 60's. Not quiet a spy but a groovy Indiana Jones-type named Bob Morane got some English translations, Frederic Dard's super-cop San-Antonio got some too. If you want to count Germany in too, Mr. Dynamite by C.H. Guenter and Jerry Cotton both got too few translations. But sadly the righteous Kommassar X seems to not have.

But there was more with awesome names like Mr. Suzuki, Nick Jordan, Coplan (who I knew from so Eurospy films) Angel Face, The Monocle, The Lone Wolf, TTX-75 and the list goes on. M.G. Braun who wrote the fun Al Glenne series also wrote a series about a husband and wife team of detectives and one day I stumbled upon an online listing for a double-novel with an Alain Page crime book on the flip side. The money just flew out of my wallet and I had it coming from England. Once I got the book I dived deep trying to find out if there was more. The publisher "Two in One International Publishers, London" did indeed publish more then the single volume. Soon I had two in Crime Thriller category and FOUR in the Spy Thriller category. All of them are translated volumes of Fleuve Noir books from the 50's and 60's. They were published in seemingly small numbers in England in odd sized little double novels like Ace used to do, only bigger. The cover art is swipes from the original artwork and they feature a "who's who" of French spies and tough guys. As I can tell I have all the published books, but who knows? Again let me know I always have money for books burning a hole in my pocket.

BUT now, are the books any good? I spent a fair amount on my little French-Spy-Fever kick...without reading any of them. That's how I roll, dive head first and they took a while to come to me from across the globe and my interested would up getting tied up else where and they sat on my shelve for a few months. Fickle, I am. I watched on of the OSS-117 Eurospy flicks on Blu-ray the other night and my appetite was whetted for cheap espionage thrills. I random selected a Calone novel by Alain Page to start my expedition and what did I find? A lot of fun.

Colane is a French secret Service ace assigned to figure just who keeps killing regional directors of the service. Colane gets the job after his boss dismisses the notion asking the Americans or the British the aid of Matt Helm or James Bond and the French born heroes Matt (by F. Chabrey) and Coplan are busy. Luckily Colane just wrapped up an assignment and is available, they also mention Napoleon Solo and Colane kids that he might join U.N.C.L.E. some day.  The book had me right there, I was a long for the ride. After that their were plenty of derring-doo and the threat of another Russian revolution that kept the ball up in the air. Alain Page was very prolific as a novelist besides Calone he created a Raffles or Lupin type gentlemen thief Terence Lane, alias L'Ombre and wrote for the movies and even eventually directed. Also a bunch of stand-alones in the Fleuve Noir line.


It moves lighting fast and is over in a sub-200 page count, it moves a little too quickly sometimes and I had to really concentrate to get the names connected to characters who run from one bloody attack to a secret rendezvous to a hide-out to send some coded messages. Translated work depends a lot on the translation so some of my problem might have been a result of that. But it wasn't too distracting. Colane himself seems like the classic Eurospy film lead, i.e. he's a right bastard who smiles all the way through while doing terrible things. His treatment of a female enemy agent is beyond harsh and cruel. Top it off he doesn't think twice about it, actually he's very casual about everyone's terrible deaths, what a nice guy. Thought you probably want a rat-bastard as your secret agent. I decided I thought Calone was completely unlikable dick-hole right as the last page got flipped, the book was over faster then my mind could make itself up. As much as I didn't like Calone as a guy he certainly worked as a bad-ass through out the narrative and it was enjoyable see what he's be up to next. This is all conjuncture but I get the feeling that Calone is 2nd-trier French-Pulp secret agent, more a stock character then an actual character.  If I was able to read another Calone, I MAY think twice but I'd probably read it anyway just to see how much of an ass he can be.Would I recommend it? Meh. It would be a hard sell to most people, if the history behind the book interests you enough and you've had your fill of Nick Carter and want a taste of something similar but slightly different, then yeah I would.

This is an on-going deep-dive on this super obscure characters (in the U.S. anyway) and it's been fun so far to compare to compare to their American and British compatriots. So stay-tuned.