Showing posts with label David H. Jacobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David H. Jacobs. Show all posts

Thursday, October 29, 2020

The Devil’s Night (Universal Monsters Trilogy #3)


The Devil’s Night, by David Jacobs
 
February, 2001 Berkley Boulevard 

I’ve meant to read this concluding volume of the Universal Monsters trilogy for a few years now; I read the second volume for Halloween in 2016, and meant to get to this one sooner. But I haven’t really been on a horror kick in a while, so I just never got around to it. Anyway I kind of wish I’d gotten to The Devil’s Night sooner, as David Jacobs picks up events immediately after the conclusion of the previous book; despite the title, for the most part The Devil’s Night takes place the day after The Devil’s Brood, and someone new to the trilogy would have a hard time figuring out what’s going on. 

But while everything takes place immediately after the events of the previous volume, there have been some curious changes to both the personalities of the characters as well as to the narrative style itself. While for the most part we have new characters this time, the returning ones seem to have completely changed, like for example Dorian, the medium/witch who served black magician Uncle Basil in The Devil’s Brood. Dorian started a relationship with Mafia bigwig Steve Soto in that book, but in this volume she’s pretty much a cold fish, bitter and angry. She says she hated Basil, also drops the implication that he’d been molesting her since he took her on as his assistant (when she was 12!), and further says she has absolutely no feelings for Soto – who’s dead, anyway. But folks mark your calendars, because I was actually wrong last time; I figured Soto wouldn’t return to the series, but “zombie Soto” is indeed in this book…bearing none of the personality of his previous self. While he can think, talk, fight, and even make lame one-liners, he lacks any emotion or personality. 

Stranger still is the curious change to the narrative style itself. While The Devil’s Brood did an admirable job of capturing the vibe of classic horror movies with a bit of a Fangoria overlay, for the most part playing things straight, this time there’s a sardonic tone to Jacobs’s narrative. Characters often make lame jokes or comments about the nightmarish situations they’re in, which jibes with the otherwise-horrific vibe Jacobs tries to create. Even worse is that the narrative itself pokes fun at things – at one point Visaria, the fictional Eastern European fiefdom which is ruled by Dracula’s daughter, Countess Marya Zaleka, is referred to as “a Monaco for monsters,” given how so many of them congregate there. And whereas last time Jacobs correctly referred to Frankenstein’s monster as “the Monster,” this time for some unfathomable reason he keeps incorrectly referring to him as “Frankenstein.” You would think that an editor would’ve at least caught that. I mean that’s just basic Universal Monster knowledge – the creator was named Frankenstein, not the monster. It’s fine for the characters to make this mistake, but not the author. 

Otherwise Jacobs loses that “Aurora model” vibe from the previous book, with its glow-in-the-dark Dracula Blob and assorted zombies, and goes for more of an action-horror hybrid; the novel is for the most part padded out with overlong action scenes that ultimately go nowhere or overlong sequences of new characters trying to find the monsters. At the very least I’m happy that, unlike Jeff Rovin’s overly fan-fictionish Return Of The Wolf Man, all the characters here are aware that monsters exist and etc; I mean there’s no point where some dim-witted disbeliever has to learn the hard way that Dracula, the Monster, werewolves, and other assorted creatures actually exist. The “heroes” for the most part are all members of Marya’s Satanic coven, which is run out of Visaria, and they’ve come to Isla Morgana – the fictional Caribbean island from White Zombie which has featured in the trilogy from the beginning – to collect Dracula and the Monster and take them back to Visaria. 

Now Jacobs was a contract author, and as we know he had his hand in some men’s adventure series, like Tracker and Psycho Squad. Given this he was able to meet a deadline quickly for the publisher – and also given this it means he would often result to inordinate padding to fill up the word quota and meet the deadline. While The Devil’s Brood seemed like a well-thought-out novel, The Devil’s Night seems downright rushed. I mean consider this: the previous book ended with Marya capturing Winfred Glendon the Third, the grandson of the original Werewolf of London, whose ghost Marya conjured in a Satanic ritual. The ghost told Marya the secret of the Moon-Ray technology, a clever creation of Jacobs’s which tied together The Werewolf of London and The Bride Of Frankenstein; the ghost of Glendon the First revealed that it was the Moon-Ray which Frankenstein and Dr. Petronius used to bring the Bride to life, which is why all other succeeding attempts to revive her have failed. Now with the secret in her posession, Marya was poised to awaken the Bride from her century-long slumber and use her in some unspecified means of “propagating a new race” or somesuch. 

So that’s how The Devil’s Brood ended. Promises some cool shit, doesn’t it? Well get this. Jacobs ignores all of it until page 229 of this book…which only runs 252 pages! The vast majority of The Devil’s Night is composed of padded-out action scenes or lame “sarcastic” exchanges among the cult members as they try to collect the various creatures and take them back to Visaria. Even more damning is that the Bride is finally woken at the end of this book…but Jacobs blows the opportunity in a major way. In fact, and not to spoil things too soon, he pretty much rewrites the finale of The Bride of Frankenstein, with a lovestruck Monster chasing the Bride around a dungeon and the Bride shrieking at him. I mean Jacobs could’ve done something with the Bride, actually brought her to life (not just reviving her), as Elizabeth Hand did in her own Universal-approved sequel. But it’s as if Jacobs is only good at assembling all his various pieces and doesn’t know what exactly to do with them once they’re together. 

At any rate, Marya is the force that brings all this together, and Jacobs should’ve spent more narrative time with her. The majority of this book takes place the very day after the previous one, most of it occuring just a few hours later – and indeed the entire novel takes place over the course of this single day. Despite having the knowledge of how to revive the Bride, Marya basically rests during the day – after putting the captured Glendon the Third through a few tests. This being the last night of a full moon, she wants to test out his werewolf powers or something. Like all the other characters, Marya has nothing in common with her filmic ancestor: this Marya is a sleek beauty with some sadistic tendencies. Whereas the Marya of Dracula’s Daughter struggled with her vampiric condition, this one revels in it. She’s also presented as a much more, shall we say, hot babe, given to waltzing around her domain in “knee-length red-leather high-heeled boots.” She enjoys taunting the captured Glendon the Third with how he will become her loyal servant; curiously Glendon shows nothing but revulsion for the hot vampire queen, whereas I’d at least try to hit on her a little if I were in his position. I mean when it comes to hot evil babes, vampire chicks are at the top of the heap. The one thing I wanted from this trilogy was monsters having sex with each other, but dammit it’s the one thing we don’t get! 

This opening sequence gives us a taste of what we’re in for: an overlong action scene that doesn’t go anywhere, and ultimately comes off as pointless. Marya, instead of reviving the Bride immediately, instead taunts Glendon a bit, then has her various scientist underlings test him as he turns into a werewolf. Then she sets him loose on a captive local babe. But a big difference between Glendon’s “werewolf” and Larry Talbot’s “wolfman” is that Glendon is a thinking creature, not just a blood-driven beast. Jacobs again capably relays this from Glendon’s point of view; he thinks of himself as “Glendon,” remembers things from his human life and retains all his human knowledge – it’s just that he is no longer burdened with Glendon’s moral fiber and thus can kill whatever he wants and eat whatever he wants (the monsters are very fond of eating people, this time around). He’s able to escape, after mauling a few of Marya’s kevlar-suited guards; he even captures Marya herself, using her as a shield, but she turns herself into a giant bat-woman and flies away. Jacobs continues to make novel refinements to the Universal monsters; Glendon is also capable of shape-shifting, elongating his forearm to escape a pair of manacles. 

But here’s the thing – Glendon escapes, and the last we see of him he’s set fire to an orphanage to cause a distraction. However, the next time we see him…it’s the next morning, he’s back in human form, and he’s once again a captive of Marya. It’s like that throughout The Devil’s Night: elongated sequences that bear little impact on events. This sequence alone goes on for like 50 pages, with absolutely no plot-relevant outcome. Instead of doing something with all his assembled monsters – I mean for once in the trilogy, Jacobs has Dracula, the Monster, the Bride, Dracula’s Daughter, and a friggin’ werewolf, all together in the same location at the same time – our author doesn’t even deliver on the promise until like the last couple pages. And blows the opportunity once again when he does. It’s maddening in a way. Though still not as maddening as Rovin’s tiresome first installment, which wasted pages on incidental stuff, like about what happened to the characters Abbott and Costello played. 

Meanwhile on Isla Morgana it’s the morning after the zombie massacre which climaxed The Devil’s Brood. Jacobs here introduces a group of new characters who will take up the brunt of the narrative, all of them members of Marya’s cult: Jax Breen, foppish but merciless leader of the group; Julia Evans, “full-bodied Amazon” who serves as the muscle; and Kearney, “skull-faced” sadist whose most memorable moment has him happily gunning down some rioting natives with a .50 caliber machine gun. Breen gets the most narrative focus; his mission is to collect the “corpses” of the Monster and Dracula and transport them immediately to Visaria – indeed, to get them there that very night. That Jacobs chooses to focus more on these characters than Marya or Glendon – not to mention Dracula or the Monster – tells you all you need to know about his narrative approach to the trilogy. But still I say again: I enjoyed both his novels more than Rovin’s. 

The initial portion of this has Breen et al gunning down the restless natives, who understandably are a little freaked given the zombies, giant vampire bat, and giant monster that ran roughshod over the populace the night before. Julie blows away a few of the rioters, and as mentioned Kearney guns down more, but it’s all just so pointless given the denoument of the previous book: readers don’t want this, they want the revived Bride that was promised at the climax of the previous book, not to mention all the assembled Universal Monsters. But we get lots of stuff with Breen plotting with Obregon, leader of Isla Morgana’s “paramilitary” police force, as they get down beneath the ruins of Baron Latos’s castle to find the Monster and Dracula – as we’ll recall, the castle collapsed over the two at the climax of The Devil’s Brood. It takes quite a while to get there, though, but when it happens we have some memorable stuff, like Breen goading a local Christian into placing his cross on Dracula’s coffin to imprison him, and Breen’s men pouring noxious “plastigoo” onto the Monster, which forms into a huge block of plastic the creature can’t break out of. 

Dorian and Soto only feature a little in the narrative; Dorian just shows up, captured lurking around the grounds, and Breen sneers at her for Uncle Basil’s failure, previous volume, and says he’s now taking her back to Visaria for Marya to deal with. But as mentioned Dorian is a pale reflection of the character from the previous book. As is Soto, who only appears over a few pages. He’s a zombie, seems pretty unfazed about it, and while directionless initially he starts to feel pulled in various directions. This is because one of the characters is using him as an undead vassal, which is a pretty cool and subtly-developed subplot from Jacobs. Soto’s sudden penchant for one-liners only furthers the strange, sardonic tone of The Devil’s Night. Soto engages in a few battles, getting parts of him shot off, including one of his eyes; late in the book he commandeers a jeep from some horrified soldiers and tells them, “Zombie squad, official business.” That said, there’s a cool, gore-strong bit where Soto takes on Obregon’s military cops. 

I forgot to mention the part where the Monster is captured; before the “plastigoo” is dumped on him, the Monster is freed from beneath the collapsed castle and goes wild on Breen’s forces. As stated the monsters are particularly violent this time around, especially the Monster, who as we’ll recall is now fueled by black magic, courtesy Uncle Basil’s witchcraft last volume. In fact it’s hypothesized by Breen (the characters all spend most of their time talking about the monsters, by the way) that a demon might even posses the Monster. Well anyway this sequence, while good so far as the monster action goes, is another indication of the repetitive nature of the novel; the Monster raises hell, breaks free, escapes into Isla Morgana…then turns around and heads back for the castle…where he’s promptly captured by Breen’s men. Again, an overlong action bit that has no outcome on the plot – the Monster is still captured, regardless of the havoc. 

As for Dracula, he really gets narrative short shrift. After his Blob-to-Mothra transformation last time, wherein he regained his full vampire form at novel’s end (just in time for Latos’s castle to fall on him), he’s now in his coffin resting – and stays that way until page 209, when Jacobs finally returns to him. Throughout Dracula’s been stuck in the coffin, due to the cross Breen used to trap him there. Breen also devises outrageous means to subdue Dracula on the flight to Visaria: massive banks of high-power ultra-violet lights, which are so strong that humans break into a sweat mere seconds after stepping beneath them. But Breen is a moron, as he’s also placed the Monster, in his massive plastic square of a prison, in the same chamber…and the heat begins to melt the plastic. This leads to a suitably nightmarish scenario, as both Dracula and the Monster free themselves as the plane comes in for a landing in Visaria. Jacobs here proves how easily he’ll dispatch major characters, at least doling out memorable sendoffs: Dracula melts the cross with his own hand and shoves the molten metal down one character’s throat. 

And so now here they all are. Dracula and the Monster call off their battle as the plane lands; Dracula flies off as a bat and the Monster charges through the streets of Visaria after him. Meanwhile Marya is finally ready to bring the Bride to life. And here it all happens…like five pages before the book ends. Rather than reap any of the opportunities he has created for himself, Jacobs instead rushes through everything like a true contract writer with a deadline fast approaching. Dracula and his daughter meet and engage in casual conversation, despite this being the first time they’ve been together in the entire trilogy. But again, these characters bear little resemblance to their film counterparts; one could not see Bela Lugosi as this particular Dracula, who has none of Lugosi’s suave mannerisms. He’s a bloodlusting fiend, as is his daughter. Oh and by the way Glendon is here, the friggin Werewolf of London – but for some inexplicable reason Jacobs sets all this the night after the last full moon of the month, so he’s stuck in human form! 

The reviving of the Bride is pretty cool, but again seems lifted from The Bride of Frankenstein, save for the fact that the Bride is nude here. Plus we’re told in no uncertain terms she’s got a helluva body, though one that’s ruined by all those pesky surgical scars. But curiously the one thing these monsters lack is a libido; the Monster is about the only one who seems to want something more than just blood and death, and when he shows up on the scene he starts chasing the Bride around…again, all just like the ’35 film. But as a laughing Glendon – who’s a scientist, of course – relates, now that the Monster and the Bride share the same charge, they can’t attract, as only opposites extract. So as the Monster tries to touch the Bride, electricity shocks him. Dracula gets a good laugh out of this, making some of his own sarcastic comments, spoofing the situation – another indication of how no one takes anything seriously in the novel, which sort of ruins it for the reader. 

It gets worse. Spoiler alert for this paragraph. The Monster knocks the Moon-Ray device down, and it hits Glendon, who promptly turns into a werewolf. And folks, get this…it’s like a page and a half before the end of the book. So instead of having the giant monster fight we’d expect – I mean all the monsters are here, right now, in full force – Jacobs instead dispenses with everything in the most rushed manner possible. Werewolf Glendon hops over to the Moon-Ray device and starts shooting its beam across the dungeon, killing everyone. Dracula and Marya turn into bats to escape, but the ray hits them, turning them into “moon dust.” Soto even jumps into the ray to dispose of himself. As for the Monster and the Bride, Jacobs is so half-assed he doesn’t even mention what happens to them! Last we see of them the Monster’s chasing after her, and this is before Glendon gets hold of the Moon-Ray. The implication is that they all go up in the Moon-Ray…I mean all of them just disposed of in less than a full page. The end. Talk about one hell of an anticlimactic finale.  

In a way though, this rushed, piss-poor finale harkens back to those Universal classics, which also saved the monster fights for the final few minutes. But that’s no excuse for Jacobs to do the same thing! Just so much potential, squandered. Jacobs does try to incorporate a theme, baldly exposited in the final paragraph: that the monsters are really just reflections of the evil nature in the hearts of humans, only taken to ludicrous extremes. The theme comes off as lame, though, given that Jacobs has only presented human characters who are either warlocks, witches, Mafia thugs, or sadists. Even Glendon seems rather comfortable with his werewolf alter ego, which eats people. 

Regardless, this was it for the Universal Monsters Trilogy, and what a sad end it was. Actually, The Devil’s Brood and The Devil’s Night could’ve just been edited into one novel, making for a better read. So much of this one was padding, and it took way too long to pick up on the events that concluded the previous book. Again, Jacobs’s contract writer roots show strongly here. Perhaps the publisher should’ve just gone with yet another writer for this third book. Personally I would’ve done a sort of “Harold Robbins take on the Universal Monsters” thing, with coke-snorting, high-libido versions of Dracula, the Wolfman, and Dracula’s Daughter engaging in some Satanic depravity. Hell, maybe I’ll just write the book anyway.

Monday, October 31, 2016

The Devil's Brood (Universal Monsters Trilogy #2)


The Devil's Brood, by David Jacobs
June, 2000  Berkley Boulevard

Two years after Jeff Rovin* published Return Of The Wolf Man, the Universal Monsters trilogy continued with this sequel courtesy David Jacobs, which takes its title from the original script treatment that eventually became the 1944 film House Of Frankenstein. Providing perfect Halloween reading, Jacobs accomplishes in The Devil’s Brood what Rovin did not – be drags the Universal monsters kicking, screaming, and clawing into modern pulp horror, with all the mandatory gore and sadism one could want.

Not that I hated Rovin’s novel; I just didn’t enjoy it. It was a little too hamstrung by Rovin’s clear enthusiasm for the monsters, and also by his fan fictionish penchant for chasing various “who cares?” leads from old Universal movies. I mean when you have pages and pages devoted to what happened to the characters Abbott and Costello played, you know you’re in trouble…not to mention that 30 or so-page sequence devoted to the inspection of the haunted castle the novel’s irritating heroine inherited.

Speaking of that irritating heroine, Jacobs must’ve disliked her, too, as she’s gone without a trace in The Devil’s Brood, and so much the better. In fact, none of the characters from Return Of The Wolf Man are here! I’ve seen reviews from fans who raved about Rovin’s novel complaining that in this sequel Jacobs only delivered “second stringer” Universal monsters. This is ironic, given that Rovin killed off all the main monsters in his novel!!

So Jacobs, showing true creativity, goes for the less famous Universal monsters, and to tell the truth that’s fine with me. To be noted, though, the (amateurish) cover art is very misleading: the Mummy does not appear in this novel, sad to say, and neither does the Wolf Man. The Frankenstein Monster eventually shows up, and as for Dracula…Jacobs does some truly novel things with the character, turning him into a sort-of vampiric Blob! Otherwise, the monsters in The Devil’s Brood are Dracula’s Daughter, The Bride of Frankenstein (who spends the entire novel comatose), and the grandson of the Werewolf of London, not to mention a ton of zombies from the non-Universal picture White Zombie. There are also tie-ins to ‘30s Universal horror films like The Invisible Ray and The Black Cat, but never once does it come off like the connect-the-unrelated-dots fan fiction of Rovin’s novel.

Dracula’s Daughter is for the most part the protagonist of the novel, while at the same time serving as the main villain. Jacobs’s version of the character is a bit more evil than the character in the understated ’36 film, not to mention described as being sexier (though she does retain her preference for female victims, as in the film). She’s also much more comfortable with her vampire nature and indeed is looking to assert herself as the queen of the underworld, now that daddy Dracula is dead – the novel opens with this crazy Satanic rite where Dracula’s Daughter, aka Countess Marya Zaleka, leads her coven of cultists in an art deco chamber somewhere in Eastern Europe, where they channel the blood of sacrificed virgins into an orb that turns into a veritable supernatural television. Here Jacobs relays the climactic moments of Rovin’s novel, and Marya learns that Dracula is dead. 

This stellar sequence is just the first instance where Jacobs capably captures a horror vibe, with the red glow of the orb, the deep black shadows of the chamber, and even with Marya pulling on a robe and hood like in the famous expressionist sequence in Dracula’s Daughter where she attempted to cast off the spirit of Dracula. It also proves posthaste that this isn’t Rovin’s book, which was married a little too faithfully to those Universal classics. Marya here is openly Satanic, her followers are too, and theirs is a nightmarish world of blood and death.

As this is occurring on the same day that Return of the Wolf Man ended, Jacobs jumps over to Isla Morgana, the Caribbean isle upon which White Zombie took place and, per Rovin’s novel, was eventually taken over by Dracula (another of Rovin’s incessant in-jokes, Bela Lugosi having played both Dracula and Baron Latos, ie the villain of White Zombie). Here Jacobs delivers a regular zombie massacre, with hordes of the creatures, freed from their bondage to “Baron Latos” now that Dracula is dead, setting upon their tormentors. It’s very much in the EC Comics mode with the zombies getting revenge on the sadists who tortured, raped, and/or killed them – Baron Latos’s men, we learn, also ran a lucrative sex-slave trade, turning some of their female victims into zombies when they were done with them.

Jacobs also quickly proves he won’t be bound by tradition. This is nowhere more evident than in what he does with Dracula, who as we’ll recall was staked by the Wolf Man at the end of Rovin’s novel. He’s dead for sure when The Devil’s Brood opens, but a “hate cloud” of the vampire lord’s spirit remains behind. Retaining its vampiric tendencies, the cloud eats the green blood of the Frankenstein Monster’s corpse (which itself was gutted by wolves in Rovin’s novel), becoming a “blood-slug.” Jacobs captures an Aurora model feel here (and throughout the book, really), going on about the greenish luminescence of the creature, which to my mind brought forth images of glow-in-the-dark toys and models.

The blood-slug, which Jacobs dubs “Drakon” (Jacobs by the way has a sometimes-annoying tendency to lecture the reader via an omniscient narrative tone), is the Blob-like entity mentioned above. Sounding truly gross, it slithers across Isla Morgana, seeking out human prey – and it ingests humans directly into its luminescent, translucent skin, so witnesses can see the bodies quickly digesting within; Drakon sheds the slimy bones and undigestable innards, and it’s growing larger and larger with each human it eats.

In the other novels I’ve read by Jacobs, he generally proves himself more of a “dialog and characters” writer and not so much a “plot” writer. Which is to say, the books of his I’ve read have started off promising but quickly derailed with new character after new character popping up out of the woodwork and clouding the overall story. This doesn’t happen quite so much in The Devil’s Brood, proving that Jacobs became a more skilled craftsman in time. However, that isn’t to say a reader new to Jacobs’s work might not get a little annoyed with the seeming lack of a main character, particularly given the almost-endless tide of one-off characters in the opening half who become zombie or Drakon victims. But compared to the other Jacobs books I’ve read, this one is downright streamlined.

With the presence of Steve Soto, an American underworld type on Isla Morgana on “business,” the reader thinks he has finally come upon the protagonist. But Soto will come and go in the narrative. I was fine with this, as he seems to have stepped out of a ‘30s Warner Bros. crime movie, and he gets to be annoying; despite the movie occurring in the “present day” of the time of publication, Soto talks like it’s 1939. He’s apparently a Mafia bigwig, though still young, and has a torpedo and an underling with him. He happens to be in Isla Morga when the zombies begin attacking; during this Soto befriends Basil Lodge, an old lush with arcane knowledge, and Dorian, Lodge’s hotstuff young niece with “high breasts.”

The two main plots gradually coalasce as we learn that both Marya and Basil Lodge are seeking the Frankenstein Monster, which is now anyone’s for the taking given that Dracula is dead. Lodge hires Soto to serve as a strongarm on a looting expedition to the ruined plantation which was owned by “Baron Latos,” while meanwhile Marya astrally connects with Wilford Glendon III, the grandson of the Werewolf of London. Another character who could lay claim to the “main protagonist” tag, Glendon is a wealthy London-based professor who has a way with women (his intro opens with a good-looking babe in his bed, though the novel has no sex scenes). He doesn’t realize that he has inherited his grandfather’s curse of lycanthropy.

Jacobs indulges in his own bit of Wold Newtonism by linking Werewolf of London with The Invisible Ray, The Black Cat, and even The Bride of Frankenstein. Glendon’s grandfather, the hero of Werewolf of London, was colleagues with Bela’s and Boris’s characters from the first two films, and Dr. Petronius from the third film; Marya has learned by strange means (namely, slicing off the head of a dying mad scientist servant and then bringing the brain to life via dark magic!) that the Bride can only be resuscitated via the “moon-ray,” ie artificial moonlight.

Glendon’s grandfather created a device which replicated moonlight, the Moon-Ray Projector, something which we’re informed Dr. Petronius employed when he helped Henry Frankenstein create the Bride. This is why no one has ever been able to bring the Bride back to life – and who those other would-be Bride revivers were, Jacobs doesn’t elaborate. At any rate the Bride, despite being blown up at the end of her film, is whole in one piece, and spends the majority of the narrative lying asleep in a glass coffin in Marya’s massive headquarters – Jacobs again delivering on the lurid horror with the tidbit that the Bride is fully nude, her otherwise-lovely body horrifically scarred from its patchwork construction.

Marya’s goal is to use the Bride and the Monster to propagate a new super-slave species or somesuch, so first she needs to awaken the Bride, and for that she needs Glendon. By visiting him in his dreams, she subconsciously prompts Glendon to travel to Visaria, the fictional Bavarian country in which the Frankenstein movies took place. Glendon as mentioned doesn’t know he’s a werewolf – there are times throughout where he changes, and Jacobs skillfully writes the scenes from Glendon’s perspective, with him chasing after people (even killing some would-be robbers in one memorable sequence) and not realizing anything strange is going on…and then not remembering anything when he wakes up the next day.

In the final quarter Basil Lodge raids the Baron Latos plantation, taking along Soto, his underlings, and some dirty Isla Morgana cops, as well as Dorian and a mother-son pair of “witches.” (Oh and meanwhile Soto’s scored with Dorian, but Jacobs keeps it all off page, dammit.) This sequence features Dracula’s three undead brides (like Dracula’s daughter, given sexier makeovers in this modern novel, down to the detail that they wear lingerie!), his wolves, and his bats, not to mention more of those damn zombies. Jacobs gets wild again with Lodge using black magic to resuscitate the Frankenstein Monster – his goal by the way is to make the Monster a zombie! – capped off with the memorable image of Lodge shoving a still-beating human heart into the Monster’s mouth.

In fact, there’s a lot of good horror stuff throughout. The zombie massacre in the opening is so “EC Comics” it could’ve been illustrated by Johnny Craig or Graham Engel. There’s a nice part where Marya and her mad scientists try to bring the Bride back to life while a supernatural thunderstorm rages, and Marya’s salvaging of one underling’s brain – turning him into a sort of oracular severed head – is very cool. Throughout Jacobs does his best to capture the Universal feel, greatly setting up each and every scene, as if this were the novelization of a real film (if only!). That being said, some of it can be overdescription at times, with Jacobs occasionally being guilty of dragging scenes on past the breaking point.

Jacobs takes unexpected directions with the final quarter. For one, the fate of Steve Soto, which isn’t anything like I expected. Skip the paragraph if you want to avoid spoilers. Anyway, during the raid on the plantation, Soto is killed – shot several times by his own lieutenant, who lusts for Soto’s power in the Mafia. But Soto somehow keeps walking and talking, despite being dead. Turns out Lodge’s spell affected him, as well, bringing life not only to the Monster but Soto. He helps Dorian escape; no idea if she appears in the sequel. However I have a feeling that’ll be it for Soto.

In the final several pages we get a return of Dracula – Drakon it turns out wasn’t just a Blob riff, it was also a Mothra riff, as the “blood-slug” has secreted itself into one of Dracula’s hidden coffins, beneath his castle on Isla Morgana…and that very night the coffin bursts open and Dracula comes out, “more powerful than ever.” Jacobs again demonstrates how his monsters are more cruel than the versions in the original films, with Dracula, in giant bat form, spending the entire night feasting on humans, killing scores of them, usually for no other reason than the sport of it.

Jacobs pays tribute to the climax of Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, with Dracula running into the reborn Monster, which has now broken free of Dracula’s decades-long mental control. The Monster by the way is apparently possessed by demons now, or something, Lodge having broken the “magic circle” that surrounded the Monster during the rite, thus resulting in a blood-crazy, demonic Monster, one who even rips off human heads (including the spinal columns!). It’s a brief fight between the two main Universal monsters, ending with them both buried in the rubble of Dracula’s collapsing castle, but there of course will be little surprise when they each return next volume.

Marya again proves herself as the main character in the finale, chaining the captured Glendon to several corpses and performing yet another black magic rite. She summons the ghost of Glendon the first, ie the original Werwolf of London, and badgers him into providing the secret to his Moon-Ray Projector, which Marya needs to reawaken the Bride, and thus “spawn a race of super-slaves.” And here The Devil’s Brood ends, with Glendon III the unwilling colleague of Marya, and a reborn Dracula over on Isla Morgana looking to reclaim his title of Lord of the Underworld.

As yet another too-long review will attest, I really enjoyed The Devil’s Brood, and I eagerly look forward to reading Jacobs’s sequel, The Devil’s Night, which was published a few months later and wrapped up the trilogy.

*Imagine my surprise when, shortly after I finished reading this novel, Jeff Rovin himself popped up in the news, as yet another footnote in the crazed story that is the 2016 Presidential Election; turns out Jeff Rovin claims he worked as a media “fixer” for Bill and Hillary Clinton!  I haven't read too much about this story (and admittedly it’s only the right-aligned news outlets that have even reported on it, which in itself isn’t surprising), but still I thought it was a crazy little bit of synchronicity.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Tracker #8: Dynasty Of Evil


Tracker #8: Dynasty Of Evil, by Ron Stillman
October, 1992  Charter-Diamond Books

The worst series in men’s adventure fiction limps to a close in this final volume of Tracker. Once again a big thanks to Martin O’Hearn and S. Michael Wilson, who each posted comments on my review of #7: Shock Treatment, informing us that David H. Jacobs wrote these final two volumes of the series. But whereas Shock Treatment, while padded and ultimately dull, at least had some sort of spark to it, Dynasty Of Evil is a snoozefest of the first order, and almost (almost!!) makes one miss the moronic but action-packed installments of series creator Don Bendell.

Jacobs continues with his retconning of series protagonist Nat Tracker, here referred to as “Uncle Sam’s most unusual sleuth.” As with the previous volume, Jacobs has recreated the character, likely not even having read Bendell’s first six installments. Tracker is now a shady government spook, a freelance agent, and Six Million Dollar Man style he was biomechanically augmented by the government after his horrific Air Force crash. While Jacobs’s version of the character is still smart and tech-savvy, he is not the godlike figure of Bendell’s books, and almost comes off more as a pawn of the government after the high-tech surgery he endured to become the “radar warrior” (per the cover).

Also thanks to Martin and S. Michael for confirming my suspicion that the author of Shock Treatment was also the author of the short-lived Psycho Squad series. Indeed, my suspicion is that Dynasty Of Evil started life as a potential plot for that earlier series. For this time Tracker doesn’t go up against a terrorist plot or anything of the sort; instead he finds himself confronted by voodoo and other strange, bloodthirsty religions in an island republic very much like Haiti. Action is sparse for the most part, but when it happens it’s pretty big if chaotic, with legions of henchmen blasting submachine guns at Tracker and comrades.

Jacobs isn’t kidding about the “sleuth” tag. Tracker is no longer the high-tech lone wolf of previous books; he does the bidding of the US government, which this time has sent him to the fictional island of Tambour in the Caribbean. US notables have been murdered across the US and now here in paradise, usually in “random” shootings or such, but this time a family has been massacred in gory style. When we meet him Tracker is investigating the murder house, working with local police captain Martel, a native who speaks with a French accent and keeps calling him “M. Tracker.”

My friends, this investigation of the murder site goes on for 50 or 60 pages. It is mind-bogglingly tedious as Tracker, hiding his high-tech hardware eyes (which look like Ray-Bans or something), bickers with Martel while roaming about the palatial villa and looking at all the blood and hearing all the details of how this or that person was killed. This incredible deluge of padding is the first indication that Tracker is not headed for the most spectacular of finales. Things slightly pick up when Tracker, using his tracking video components, finds a previously-overlooked piece of evidence: an iron claw.

Tracker is not on the best terms with Martel and his cops, all of whom resent Tracker for his presence here. But Tracker figures there might be a connection between this slaughter and the random deaths back in the US, and he gets more verification when they are attacked, while still investigating the murder house, by a group of armed men with “tiger-striped” painted faces. Jacobs is not the best action writer, with the ensuing melee more chaotic than thrilling, and also he doesn’t dwell much on the violence and gore. It’s more along the lines of “Tracker stitched the man across the chest and he fell into the bushes.”

The guerrilla fighters each wear medallions fashioned after that iron claw Tracker found. Turns out this is a mystical symbol of the “egobo” religion, a sort of pre-voodoo cult that’s like darker than plain ol’ voodoo or somesuch. By this point we’re almost 90 pages into the book and Tracker still hasn’t left the villa in which the murders occurred; when they head out, they’re attacked yet again, leading to another firefight and car chase. Part of the problem with Dynasty Of Evil however is that Tracker disappears for long stretches, so that for the most part these action scenes star Captain Martel and his bungling police force.

This I’ve found is typical of David Jacobs’ work; his protagonists get lost in the swelter of minor, one-off characters, many of whom are introduced in the eleventh hour. As is the case here, where an infamous crime kingpin, thought dead for ten years, turns out to be behind the plot in Tambour and is only introduced like twenty pages from the end. But Tracker really is a shadow warrior this time out, with only a few lines of dialog, more so using his brains and his fancy gear. Once again he is not the superwarrior of Bendell’s books, though he does gun down a few thugs. Indeed Tracker fears for his safety quite often, another big difference from the superhuman character of the first six books.

There’s one single female in the book, a pretty doctor’s assistant, who shows up like on page 110, says a line or two, and promptly disappears. Later it’s discovered she’s left a bomb in Martel’s office, and she’s, uh, working for the bad guys or something. Tracker defuses the bomb and chases after her, but again Jacobs denies us a big climax; the gal is gunned down by the crime kingpin, who himself is summarily blown away by Tracker without any big buildup. But that’s the case throughout; despite the back cover hyperbole, Dynasty Of Evil just drifts along.

The book is so convoluted and padded, friends, that the last several pages are comprised of exposition courtesy Tracker as he explains what all has happened! And if that isn’t enough padding for you, before that we get another several pages of exposition as Martel tells how he thinks the massacre went down and who was behind it – all of it moot, because he turns out to be wrong. I’m talking pages of exposition!

So yeah, David Jacobs is a classic ghostwriter who is prone to padding to meet his word count. I try not to be hard on these guys, I mean they were just doing their job, but sometimes you wish for a bit more spark and pizzaz. For god’s sake, have fun with it! But anyway, the novel ends “months later,” as Tracker sort of blackmails the father of that doctor’s assistant, who himself is a fallen politician, into carrying a bomb into the White House and killing off two powerful senators who have been behind a lot of bloodshed and misery(!?). So in other words, the cover image happens in the book – and it’s caused by Tracker himself!

Jacobs does get some things right…I like how he employs Tracker’s fancy gear, something which always seemed so unbelievable in the Bendell installments. Tracker also gets a few good one-liners. But the book is just so padded and uneventful – there’s even a part where the natives grow restless in true cliched fashion, setting fires and killing the prisoners falsely accused of the villa massacre, and it too happens off-page – that you breathe a sigh of relief when you come to the last page.

Now maybe one of these days I’ll go back and check out the two Bendell volumes I skipped (#5 and 6). But not anytime soon.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Tracker #7: Shock Treatment


Tracker #7: Shock Treatment, by Ron Stillman
April, 1992  Charter-Diamond Books

According to Brad Mengel’s Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction, Don Bendell wrote the first six volumes of the awful Tracker series, but was fired by publisher Charter-Diamond when he requested to be credited under his own name, rather than the “Ron Stillman” house name. Why anyone would want to put their actual name on such an execrable series is beyond me, but still, that’s one dickheaded move for Charter-Diamond to pull.

And yet, you won’t be surprised to learn that this seventh volume of the series, penned by some still-unknown writer, is one whole hell of a lot better than Bendell’s contributions. I’m not saying Shock Treatment is great or anything, but it didn’t make me want to go out and kick a few puppies, like Bendell’s novels did. In fact, the very reason that I couldn’t take anymore of his novels is what lead me to skip ahead to this installment, just to see how another author handled Natty “Asshole” Tracker.

In true “freelance author” spirit, this “Ron Stillman” quite clearly has never read one of the earlier Tracker novels and treats Shock Treatment as if it’s the first volume of the series. Tracker is much less of a dickhead, finally, and Stillman even makes him friggin’ human, if you can believe that. While Tracker’s still a one-man army with a tech-savy background (and a fighter pilot to boot), we learn here that, unlike in Bendell’s Tracker #1, Tracker was just part of a team that came up with his high-tech optical gadgets. 

Tracker’s godlike status is thankfully toned down; once again he’s truly blind, and uses his overly-described sci-fi sunglasses to see via SONAR and video inputs and other stuff. Stillman must’ve read a few issues of Popular Science, because the novel is filled with lots of incidental detail on Tracker’s software and how it operates. One neat addition is an “ATR” feature Tracker can activate, where the artificial eyes will constantly scan his surroundings for whatever it is Tracker is searching for. 

Another big change is the tone of the series. Gone is the stupid, sophomoric nature of the previous books, replaced with what at times comes off like a Hard Case Crime-esque vibe. Seriously! Tracker here isn’t an unstoppable commando who counts even the US President as a fan; he’s more of a shadow warrior, a covert operations type who prefers to stay in the shadows and only launches into action when necessary. Even the plot is more down-to-earth, with Tracker in Mountain City, Colorado, to try to prevent an old friend named Jeff Purdy from committing murder.

The first 30 or so pages are quite slow-moving, with Tracker sort of lurking around and stalking the citizens of Mountain City with his high-tech eyes. While this Ron Stillman is actually a pretty good author, he does tend to page-fill and wheel-spin, giving unnecessarily detailed background on various places, people, and things.  It gradually develops that Mountain City is a hardscrabble town, recently brought to its knees by a white collar embezzlement scheme which has left the citizens ready to riot. The local police appear to be nothing more than hired goons, bought off by the shucksters who committed the fraud, and Tracker’s come here at the request of Mrs. Purdy, who claims her husband, ruined due to the fraud, might attempt to murder one of the shucksters.

It’s all very mystery-suspense, with Tracker witnessing the assassination as it happens, but due to his fancy eyewear he sees that Jeff Purdy didn’t even pull the trigger. This is one element this version of Ron Stillman greatly excels at, something which always evaded Bendell – how exactly Tracker would benefit from his optical enhancements. Here he can see in infra-red to know that his friend’s pistol never even fired, and also he can detect another body in the next room. Not that this will help Jeff Purdy, who Lee Harvey Oswald-style has been immediately blown away (by the crooked cops, of course), so as to keep his mouth shut.

The action scenes are also more believeable. Tracker uses his martial arts skills to escape certain death, but instead of laying hordes of fighters to waste like in the Bendell books, this fight comes off as very realistic, with the murderous cops impeded by the enclosed space and Tracker using his wits more than his muscles. And Tracker’s escape is a taut sequence which sees him nearly blown away by the actual gunman, who escapes in a getaway car – which is then destroyed by a mysterious van that fires ball lightning!

Tracker himself is almost killed by the occupant of the mysterious van (whom we readers know is the James Bond-esque villain Doctor Shock), and after his own car is destroyed an even more taut sequence ensues in which Tracker has to scale across a canyon wall while the cops are shooting at him. It’s all very First Blood. But these cops are really just thugs, lead by the corrupt Lt. Boyd, whose mountain-sized underling Maggard now wants Tracker’s head on a platter, given that Tracker knocked out a few of Maggard’s teeth with a side kick. This elicits one of the novel’s many humorous moments, when Tracker later discovers one of Maggard’s teeth embedded in his boot.

Whereas the previous Tracker novels tried to be funny but just came off as dumb, there’s actually some genuine humor in Shock Treatment, like Tracker’s infrequent run-ins with a hot dog vendor named Gene. Stillman also delivers some nice, movie-esque banter between Tracker and an apparent femme fatale named Anne, dialog which to me has a bit of a Raymond Obstfeld ring to it. And speaking of that Anne – Tracker believe it or not isn’t a demigod here, and women don’t fall down at his feet! Stillman builds up a nice chemistry between the two, one that’s fueled by barbed insults and mocking put-downs, but utimately goes nowhere, as Anne, the only female in the novel, has just a few lines.

The crime fiction vibe continues as Gene, who turns out to be a smalltime crook who works for a guy named Mitch, takes Tracker to see his boss. Mitch heads up an organization that’s opposed to Lt. Boyd and his goons, and Mitch promises Tracker that he can help him uncover what’s really gone down in Mountain City. Stillman seems pretty adept at bringing the small-town underwold to life, and there follows more dark humor where Mitch and his goons place bets on Tracker and some goon as they fight in Mitch’s bar. But unfortunately this sort of thing gradually takes precedence in the narrative, so that more interesting aspects like Doctor Shock are given short shrift.

In fact, the latter half plays out anticlimatically; developed bad guys like Lt. Boyd and Maggard are perfunctorily disposed of (and not even by Tracker), and more time is spent on a group of inbreeds who attack Mitch’s bar at Boyd’s command. After all this is dealt with, Doctor Shock finally appears, and you wish he had shown up sooner – he turns out to be an egomaniac named Professor Moxon who has a group of “worshippers” who follow him around (Anne one of them), listening enraptured to his outpourings of wisdom. Here we learn the details of the Mountain City fiasco, which all turns out to have been the doings of a Howard Hughes-type named Clayton, whom Shock is gaining vengeance upon, Shock himself having suffered from Clayton's financial plottings.

Tracker’s even given the brush-off in the climax, reduced to sitting under armed guard while Shock fires up a massive lightning generator and destroys Clayton’s far-off retreat, Ultima. But rather than Tracker doing anything, it’s Shock’s own arrogance that does him in, and the lightning generator backfires and everything goes to hell. Shock and his cult fall to their doom, while Tracker gets involved in a protracted fistfight with some random thug. To say it’s all sort of unsatisfying would be an understatement – but still, good grief is it better than the earlier novels in the series.

It’s the same thing I said about Psycho Squad, but I wonder if this “Ron Stillman” was actually Simon Hawke, who wrote the Steele series, which was also published by Charter. Shock Treatment has the same focus on plot and character over action, the same “real-world” vibe, the same tech-savy details, and the same snappy dialog from its underworld characters. Another thing that leads me to think it might be Hawke is that the final few pages of Shock Treatment feature an excerpt from the novel Sons Of Glory, a Simon Hawke paperback original from Charter Books.

Whether or not it was Hawke, I’m pretty certain whoever wrote Shock Treatment is the same person who wrote Psycho Squad #2, as the two books are similar in many respects. I’ll be curious to see if this same author wrote the next volume of Tracker, which turned out to be the last.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Psycho Squad #2: The Torturer


Psycho Squad #2: The Torturer, by Rick Dade
March, 1989  Berkley Books

If anything this second and final volume of Psycho Squad proves why the series was so short lived. Whereas the first volume spent way too many pages introducing one crazy cult member after another, this second installment at least focuses a bit more on its protagonists…that is, when it isn’t barraging the reader with an army of minor characters and unrelated subplots.

I still haven’t figured out who “Rick Dade” was, but it would appear The Torturer was written by the same person as Execution Night. I mean, it seems so for the most part, with the same mostly-good writing that nevertheless POV-hops, even occasionally lapsing into omniscient perspective (ie, “Someone fired at Flint. Flint didn’t know it, but the man shooting at him was one of Smokey’s thugs.”) But then there seems to be a lack of knowledge of what came in that first volume..the author only vaguely mentioning how the Squad got together, and not following up on any characters or events from Execution Night. Even worse, Flint never once uses his Eliminator “rocket gun,” and in fact never even mentions it!

But anyway, I can just imagine Dade, whoever he was, breaking out in a flop sweat as he tries to figure out how to put a novel together. “I’ll just keep introducing characters and situations! Th-that’s how you write a novel, isn’t it??” I honestly had to jot down notes to keep up with the swarm of characters and subplots. There’s no pickup from the previous novel, and indeed we never learn how much time has passed since Execution Night. We’re just tossed right in, and have to try to keep up.

At any rate Psycho Squad leader Jack Flint has upheld his vow on the final page of that previous volume to hunt down serial killers across the nation, using the unlimited funding of his boss, Anton Vraczek (who doesn’t even appear this time around). Thus Flint heads down to Miami, certain that the recently-discovered, mutilated corpse of a young woman named Linda Duquesne is the work of the Torturer, a serial killer Flint’s been tracking.

One of the few things that is picked up from the previous novel is the brush-off Psycho Squad member JJ Santiago is given; as in Execution Night he has a mere cameo role, not even appearing in the narrative until the final quarter. So rather than the titular trio heading down to Miami, it’s just Flint and Dr. Larry Mace, who despite suffering the horrific loss of his pregnant wife last time out is pretty much back to normal, though we learn he’s taken to packing a gun these days.

Immediately upon Flint and Mace’s arrival in Miami, Dade begins to hammer us with newly-introduced characters, and he won’t stop until the very last page. So first off Flint meets up with redheaded reporter Gloria Quarles, who of course is suitably gorgeous, though as with the previous volume there isn’t even a hint of sex in the narrative. She’s researching the Torturer case as well, and Flint trades info with her, as well as banter. Gloria acts moreso as Flint’s partner during the novel than Mace or Santiago do; strangely, Dade rarely gives us a scene feautring the Squad all together, as if he’s uncomfortable with the series concept.

Meanwhile Mace buddies up with an old colleague who now works as a Dade County medical examiner, looking over the corpse of a cop who tried to research the Linda Duquesne case. But instead of being the taut serial killer tale all of this introductory material makes you expect, The Torturer actually becomes a conspiracy/blackmail deal about rogue federal agents running guns into Central America, and the titular murderer turns out to be superfluous to the entire novel! And since Dade only gradually builds up this storyline, the novel is rather slow-going.

Action scenes sporadically liven things up here and there, to more of an extent than in Execution Night. For one Flint and Gloria are taken captive by goons who work for Rollo Prouty, a modeling agency owner who, we eventually learn, is blackmailing various Miami notables with a storehouse of files containing private and exploitable info. But Dade ruins all tension with Flint and Gloria being rescued at the last second by some guy in an orange Checker – a grubby private eye named Chub Odell who serves to take up more pages, with his own go-nowhere subplot.

Gradually (and I do mean gradually) all roads lead to Major Nordlinger, a shady military man who is trying to supply guns to Central America. Colonel North, I mean Major Nordlinger, employs two rogue Vice cops named Weems and Yates, merciless and humorless goons who have made a veritable kingdom for themselves in Miami. Cue many scenes of these guys harrassing Flint and Mace and then reporting back to North, I mean Nordlinger. Oh, and there’s a dude named Smokey Powers who operates out of the Florida wetlands, a guy who leads his own redneck army and is trying to get into the gunrunning business himself.

And I haven’t even mentioned Delgado, partner of the cop who was killed when trying to investigate Linda Duquesne’s murder. He plays a large role in early pages before being uncerimoniously brushed off toward the end. There’s also the infamous Borja, a sadist who ran a Nicaraguan death squad years ago but now lives in Miami, and who is enemies with Smokey Powers. When JJ Santiago finally shows up on page 142, it’s to go undercover as one of Borja’s thugs – and even here Dade introduces yet another half-assed subplot, revealing in the span of a page that Santiago has an old enemy here in Miami and so blows the dude away in a club to get Borja’s attention!

Hey, remember the Torturer? You might, but Dade has forgotten all about his titular villain; whereas Execution Night at least stayed true to its “men’s adventure meets horror” vibe, The Torturer forgets all about the horror stuff and focuses instead on a barely-there plot about gunrunning and displaced Nicaraguan rulers. What’s worse is the action scenes, when they go down, are dispensed with quickly, save that is for a climatic assault on Borja’s fortress compound, a chaotic scene which sees Smokey Powers’s goons attacking just as Flint and Mace have been captured.

Dade likely didn’t write any other men’s adventure novels in the ‘80s, as there’s none of the gun-porn the decade demanded. Guns are “guns,” and that’s it. Flint still uses his .44 Bulldog from the previous book, but other than a mention of Santiago picking up a dropped Uzi and using it to “ventilate” a few Borja thugs, this sequence is underwhelming from an action-series standpoint. It even skirts unintentional comedy, as Dade kills off swarms of characters he’s either just introduced or barely developed.

Anyway the Torturer appears on maybe two or three pages of the entire book, and not till the very end does Flint announce that he’s “figured out” who the killer is – not that there was a trail of clues for us readers to follow. In fact the book ends on the lamest of Scooby Doo cop-outs, with a “surprise reveal” that’s very hard to buy, followed by a quick wrap-up.

And that was it – there were no more adventures for the Psycho Squad. It’s too bad, because the series had potential, but it would appear this potential was squandered a mere two volumes in. And I’m probably reading more into it than intended, but it seemed to me that seeds were even planted for future volumes, namely due to a mid-novel mention that the murderer of Anton Vraczek’s wife and child ten years ago was never caught. Seems only natural that a future installment of Psycho Squad would’ve featured the trio hunting this killer down, but it was not to be.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Psycho Squad #1: Execution Night


Psycho Squad #1: Execution Night, by Rick Dade
October, 1988  Berkley Books

Thanks to Mike Madonna for letting me know about this forgotten, two-volume series. Credited to “Rick Dade” but copyright Berkley Books, Psycho Squad capitalizes on the late ‘80s serial killer/satanic panic fad and melds it with the men’s adventure genre. But while this first volume has an interesting concept, it’s lost amid the plethora of characters and the lack of action scenes.

My bet is the author was inspired by Maury Terry’s awesome 1987 book The Ultimate Evil, a true crime publication which contested, with convincing evidence, that the Son of Sam murders were actually committed by a satanic cult which operated around Yonkers, New York and stretched all the way back to the Manson massacre. Whether Terry was correct or not, the fact remains that The Ultimate Evil features a fascinating concept, that of a sort of “satanic mafia” which operates in the underworld, and one of these days I’ll probably get around to reviewing the book itself.

Anyway, Dade (whoever he was) peppers Execution Night with enough clues to let one know he’s read Terry’s book. He too presents a satanic cult for the villains, one with criminal leanings…it just takes forever for him to get them all together. Sadly, rather than being a slam-bang action-meets-horror affair, the novel instead hopscotches all over the place, introducing one new character after another until there are way too many cultists in the kitchen – and worse yet, there are so many of them that the author loses control and is unable to present them as a viable threat.

The heroes suffer too; the back of the cover has it that Jack Flint, Larry Mace, and JJ Santiago are the titular Psycho Squad, but Flint takes up all of the “good guy” narrative, with Mace getting a very small portion of the text and Santiago relegated to what’s basically a cameo appearance. In fact the group doesn’t even become a group until the final page; like most other first volumes of a late-era men’s adventure series, Execution Night is heavily focused on story-building. If this book had been published in the ‘70s, the Squad would already be formed by page 1 and they’d be gorily blowing away a faux-Manson by page 2. But since it was published when the genre was attempting to be a bit more “respectable,” it’s all about plot and story development.

Flint then is the star, but even he is lost amid the author’s constant shuffling from one newly-introduced psychotic villain to the next. A sergeant in the NYPD’s Homicide department, Flint we learn has gotten a rep for bringing down serial killers. When we meet him he’s in the act of taking on the infamous Doctor Blood, a serial killer dentist(!). Flint blows him away in what will prove to be one of the novel’s scant action scenes; as he dies Blood warns Flint that the killings “are just beginning.”

Meanwhile the author begins to unveil the endless parade of psychos who make up the threat in this opening volume; lead by the bald and creepy Myron Nemo, it develops at great length that they are members of the Tribe, a Manson Family-esque cult which got together in the late ‘60s and hasn’t been seen since. Their Manson is a freak named Dean Bishop, aka The Source, who has been in an insane asylum for 15 years but is now, due to dimwitted psychiatrists, about to be released.

There are way too many members of the Tribe to get into in this review (honestly, the novel is mostly comprised of introducing each of them in various one-off scenarios as they leave the real world to return to the cultish fold), however one of the main members bears mentioning: Erwin Roth, a massive biker who leads the Wheels of Death, yet another satanic cult, this one made up of bikers who do jobs for organized crime; in addition to leading the Wheels Roth also serves as Myron and Bishop’s top enforcer.

Pissed off over the political red tape which allowed Doctor Blood to run amok for so long, Flint ends up punching out his captain and quitting the force. But when a “copycat killer” murders the woman Blood was after in the opening pages (the killer being Roth, who’s finishing Blood’s job), Flint vows to bring the killer in on his own. Humorously enough he illegally portrays himself as a cop throughout the book; having kept his badge Flint goes around showing it to people so they’ll let him in on crime scenes and whatnot.

Flint visits a gun store operated by an old friend to decide upon his new hardware. Interestingly, he settles upon a Charter Arms .44 Bulldog revolver, the same gun that was used in the Son of Sam murders. I take it this is yet another Ultimate Evil reference by the author, but still, wouldn’t it have made more sense to give this gun to one of the villains?? Anyway this scene also serves to introduce JJ Santiago, a pencil-moustached “dandy” who too was once an NYPD cop, one known for his sharpshooting skills, but who was kicked off the force five years ago. I figured from here Flint would form the titular squad, but Santiago disappears until the final pages of the novel.

Larry Mace serves as the NYPD Deputy Medical Examiner, and thus has an acquaintance with both Flint and Santiago. (The cover artist by the way provides accurate illustrations of the three heroes, Mace being the blonde, Santiago the moustached “dandy,” and Flint the gruff one who looks like he’s posing for, well, the cover of an action novel, even though he’s in the middle of what appears to be an insanely close-quarters firefight.) Neither Mace nor Santiago are given much depth or personality, and the author further shames them by delivering Mace a serious blow in the final pages, one that despite its viciousness lacks much impact. (Long story short, Roth blows away Mace’s pregnant wife – shocking and unsettling enough – but the hell of the thing is Dade doesn’t even bother informing us she exits until a page before she’s killed!)

The series concept is introduced very late in the game with the appearance of Anton Vraczek, a Donal Trump-like tycoon whose family was murdered by nutjobs years before; Vraczek uses his massive funds to aid police in catching criminals, and asks the now-unemployed Flint if he’d like to work for him. Flint tells Vraczek he’ll head up a force that goes after serial killers, using Vraczek’s vast resources. Bizarrely enough, this is Vraczek’s only appearance, the author immediately going back to his one-off introductions of various Tribe members.

As mentioned the Tribe is getting back together; we gradually learn that years ago they perpetrated the Montauk Massacre, where a few of Bishop’s followers killed a slew of people. As Nemo puts the old gang together again he intimates that “Execution Night” is coming again, prepping the reader for an apocalyptic finale. Strangely though Dade delivers an eleventh-hour reveal where Nemo and another Tribe leader are really putting everyone back together as a land-buying scheme! It’s their plan to have Bishop et al murder a whole bunch of people in a certain developing area so Nemo’s company can buy the land for cheap, their logical assumption being that no one will want to buy land where a massacre has occurred. Makes sense, but why sully up a pulpy plot with such a “real world” concept?

There are only a two real action scenes: one toward the end in which Flint and Santiago take on the Wheels of Death, and Flint and Santiago’s climatic attack on the docked ship in which the Tribe is hiding. Though the book is violent, at least so far as how many people are murdered by the Tribe, when it comes to the action Dade brushes over the gore for the most part, just writing that people get shot and fall down. On the plus side there isn’t much gun-porn, though. The characters mostly use pistols, save for Santiago, who goes for a Mac-10. Elements of sci-fi, or at least the old GI Joe cartoon, are introduced via the Eliminator Mark IV Ballistic Launcher, a “rocket gun” that’s the size of a machine pistol and fires miniature tail-finned rockets; Flint uses it in the finale to blow up a few people real good.

The novel runs at a dense 234 pages of small print, and what’s odd is how rushed the finale is. As mentioned Mace is dealt a crippling blow in the final pages, but this too is glossed over for the most part, the author quickly dispensing of the villains he’s been building up throughout the entire course of the novel. In other words, the conclusion is not very satisfying. I was expecting something more massive or tense; instead the Tribe begins to turn upon one another, and the three protagonists basically show up and blow the remaining ones away.

There was only one more volume in the series, The Torturer, which appears to be a bit more action-centric. No matter of searching has revealed who wrote this first volume, but “Rick Dade” was likely a house name. I’m also not sure yet if the same author wrote the second volume. Given the book’s focus on story and character, to the detriment of the violent action scenes, makes me suspect that Execution Night might’ve been the work of Simon Hawke, who wrote the similarly-structured Steele #1, which coincidentally or not was published around the same time.