Showing posts with label Depth Force. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Depth Force. Show all posts

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Depth Force #8: Suicide Run


Depth Force #8: Suicide Run, by Irving Greenfield
March, 1987  Zebra Books

I’m missing the seventh volume of Depth Force, but for once we get a little bit of backstory in this eighth volume; Irving Greenfield usually doesn’t tell us much about what came before, but at least this time we find out it’s “several months” after #6: Sea Of Flames and there have been a few soap-operatic changes to the characters and story. For one, hero Admiral Jack Boxer apparently suffered some sort of breakdown in the previous volume, but he’s doing fine now and he’s about to marry some lady named Francine, who made her first appearance last time. 

Boxer’s also now in charge of a sub called the Barracuda, so presumably the Shark was destroyed by the nutjob who hijacked it toward the end of the sixth volume. Boxer’s also got new commanders: Tysin, his direct commander (inexplicably referred to by the nickname “Chi-Chi”), and Mason, the new director of the Navy. Humorously, not only do these guys hate Boxer but they’re actively plotting his death!! Apparently Boxer embarrassed the US last time by insisting that a bravery award be given to best bud-archenemy Borodine, the other series protagonist – and Borodine has his own continuing “As The Periscope Turns” subplot, with a new wife and his own skirmishes with commanding officers. I usually skim his parts because they bore me.

Actually the whole series is pretty boring. A weird thing about Greenfield’s style is that he always foregoes any opportunity for excitement; seriously, main characters will be killed off and it’s relayed so casually, in a humdrum narrative style, that you have to go back and re-read the section to be sure you understand what’s happened. It’s almost as if the series were catered to invalids, or people with nervous conditions – “I want a yarn about submarine commanders in some near-future Cold War setting, but for god’s sake no action or suspense – my heart couldn’t take it!”

Per series template, we meet Boxer just as he’s wrapping up the events of the previous volume; as mentioned before, every volume of Depth Force follows the same path. We’ll have the first quarter-plus devoted to wrapping up the previous book, then we’ll have the meat of the tale, which is comprised of plotting and counterplotting and other soap opera stuff, and then we’ll get to the “main” plot (ie the plot described on the back cover)…and this “main plot” will only take up about twenty pages of the book. Indeed, the back covers of Depth Force usually are more accurate at describing the next volume. So then Suicide Run (the title a perfect summation of how the reader feels when undertaking one of these books) doesn’t get to this promised plot – the Russkies attacking a section of Alaska – until page 200, and the book only runs 220+ pages.

As usual we meet Boxer while he’s dealing with Borodine and other Russian forces, fighting them and then coming to their aid, or vice versa. So this time Boxer’s just prevented the Russians from assaulting Yemen or somesuch, and he’s making off in his sub with the actual raiding party, looking to reunite them with their countrymen. Of course, his commanding officers demand that he bring them all back to the US as prisoners of war, but Boxer refuses and shuts off communication. He runs right into a trap, as Borodine’s sub has been positioned as bait by the Russians – Boxer’s objective is to drop the men off with Borodine and then head home. He manages to evade the trap and drop off the men, but unexpectedly encounters a more devastating attack in the waters outside Virginia, where the Barracuda is hit by some mysterious object. Here Boxer’s first mate, Cowley, is killed in the action…but again the reader has to go back and make sure this is what’s happened, as it isn’t much elaborated upon.

At this point the plot settles into the usual soap opera dynamic; Boxer reports to Tysin and Mason, who immediately begin plotting his death – in particular, Tysin plans to use Sanchez, Boxer’s former best buddy, to kill him. Sanchez appeared in the earlier volumes and had a falling out with Boxer, presumably in the previous volume. However this won’t pan out until the very end of the novel, when Tysin meets with Sanchez, asks if he’d be interested, and Sanchez says he won’t kill Boxer but he will abduct Boxer’s fiance Francine and hand her over to his “friends in Arabia,” who I guess must run a sex-slave ring.

Now I know what you’re thinking – it might be boring and all, but at least we can expect some random explicit sex in Depth Force right? Well friends brace yourself for this one: there’s no sex in Suicide Run! I mean the one thing that at least keeps you turning the pages, in the hopes you’ll come across some Harold Robbins-esque filth, and it’s not even there! Francine serves more in the capacity of Boxer’s confidant, more so than any previous female character, there for a shoulder to lean on and to come to his aid in unexpected moments – there’s another vague subplot about Boxer trying to get custody of some kid (I presume his son, last mentioned a few volumes ago), and the lawyer’s trying to pull a fast one on Boxer, until Francine reveals she’s got info about the lawyer’s gay frolics, which will make for a sensational news story.

It just goes on and on, with only occasional action. Boxer scuba dives with another shipmate where Barracuda was mysteriously attacked; he comes to the conclusion it was a missile, and we readers already know Tysin was behind it. Boxer gets in a skirmish with some enemy frogmen, sent here by Tysin to plant evidence so it looks like Barracuda hit a motorboat. Boxer uses an “underwater rifle” and takes them both out, but of course his friend is killed. This leads to another action scene as Boxer, a local cop, and Stark (Boxer’s former commanding officer, now retired and living with Boxer and Francine) get in a brief firefight with some men – a sequence that could’ve been much more exploited.

The “main plot” as mentioned comes up very late in the book, and has to do with the Russians closing in on some “newly-discovered oil fields” in Alaska. Boxer is put in charge of a new sub, Tiny Tim, and heads off with another assault team he’s supposed to drop off. And once again all the action happens off-page while Boxer stands in the control room, watching monitors. This time a nuke is even set off, with the last image of Suicide Run being particularly apocalyptic; a mushroom cloud in the distance, the entire assault team and Russian invading force wiped out, and, once again, Borodine and Boxer trapped in quickly-failing submarines, about to go to one another’s rescue. I’ve got the next one, at least, so will see how some of these plot threads play out.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Depth Force #6: Sea Of Flames


Depth Force #6: Sea Of Flames, by Irving Greenfield
June, 1986  Zebra Books

The Periscope Turns as Irving Greenfield delivers another soapy installment of Depth Force, per series template picking up immediately after the previous volume. And as ever you’re just S.O.L. if you haven’t read that one, because Greenfield throws the reader right in with little backstory or setup. But also per series template this part is quickly wrapped up, with the majority of Sea Of Flames more so about the melodramatic lives of its many characters…before the plot promised on the back cover kicks in for the final quarter.

But having read that previous volume I was at least prepared for this cold open – Captain Jack Boxer had commanded an experimental sea/land vessel called the Turtle into Libya, where he was to drop an assault party which was expected to endure mass casualties in a pitched battle against Muslim extremists. The novel ended with Boxer learning pretty much everyone was dead but Boxer’s pal Vargas, the CIA spook, and Boxer decided to send the Turtle in to save him. Thus Sea Of Flames opens with an action scene – a quite boring action scene, mostly relayed, again per series template, via dialog, as Boxer shouts out orders on the Turtle’s bridge and info is relayed back to him. This series certainly lacks the typical immediacy of the genre.

Boxer manages to extract Vargas and another of the landing party, a fellow spook named Morell who turns out to be the bastard who set up the landing party. Later we’ll be given vague reasons for this sellout by chief spook Kincade, Boxer’s archenemy and boss – not to mention grandfather of Boxer’s latest bedmate Trish, who made her debut in #4: Battle Stations. The Morell subplot seems to promise things (none of which pan out in this installment, naturally), with him trading intel on how the Turtle can avoid hidden mines in exchange for safe passage off the ship. Last we see of him he jumps off a boat on the way to Sicily, evading Boxer’s orders for his death; Kincade later claims that Morell was following orders, or something, and also that he has Mob connections, so Boxer better watch out if he ever tracks him down to mete out revenge.

The Turtle gets destroyed anyway; this after Boxer has sent it back into the depths and has been busy dealing with Captain Bush, the psychopath who went nuts on the bridge and tried to rape Cynthia Downs, another of Boxer’s many previous conquests. Bush pleads to be returned to command and Boxer grapples with whether he should be kept locked up or not(?!). The Turtle is attacked or something – I kind of lost the thread at this point – and Boxer has to abandon ship. He’s the last off, along with an injured Vargas, and the CIA agent dies on the way to the surface. Boxer mourns him for a couple pages – so distraught in fact that he turns down an offer for sex from Vargas’s sister, after the funeral in New York!

Boxer actually turns down a bit of sex in this one; on the flight from Italy to New York, he finds himself sitting beside a hot redhead lawyer, Francine, who apparently debuted in the previous volume…as we’ll recall, in one of the arbitrary subplots Depth Force is known for, Boxer was contacted to handle the estate of a dead pal, in particular ensuring that the dead pal’s son got this and that. Well, Francine was the lawyer working the estate, I guess – I have to admit I’ve forgotten – and the two chat away on the flight, with it all clearly leading to another of Greenfield’s sex scenes. But Boxer, despite his interest in the lady, never goes through with it, even when later in the novel he enjoys a homecooked meal at Francine’s place. This is mostly because Boxer has fallen in love with Trish and plans to ask her to marry him.

But before all that – As The Periscope Turns! Folks I kid you not, the captain comes on the plane’s PA and announces that he’s just been informed there’s a bomb onboard(!). And mind you this is a commercial flight, Boxer and his remaining crew getting a ride on it for hazy reasons. We’re vaguely informed that the Libyans Boxer was fighting at the start of the book planted the bomb in revenge, somehow knowing Boxer et al were onboard…whatever. It gets super-goofy as Boxer goes into the cockpit and helps out, but meanwhile a Libyan fighter plane is dogging them and ends up shooting the plane out of the sky. This entire sequence is written in the lifeless prose of the series: “The plane crashed down into the water and quickly began to settle.” That’s how the plane crash is written, folks – no immediacy, no impact.

Boxer also turns down the promise of sex courtesy his ex-wife, Gwen, a soap opera star (how telling, given the bent of this series). Did any of you know that Boxer has a prepubescent son? I sure as hell didn’t, but maybe we were informed back in the first volume, which I don’t have – and as we know, you only get one chance with Irving Greenfield. The dude isn’t one for reminding his readers of anything from previous books. Well anyway this arbitrary plot is almost hilarious in how half-assed it is; Boxer in that plane crash realized he hadn’t seen his son in two years(!) and vowed to visit him. The boy, John, is “seven or eight,” per Boxer, who truly doesn’t remember. All this is relayed to “Chuck,” this rebel-type young man Boxer abruptly meets up with in Staten Island…no setup or anything, naturally, but apparently this guy was the son of “Rugger,” one of Boxer’s many dead friends. Perhaps it’s the same kid who came into that inheritance brokered by Francine in the previous book. Folks I really don’t the hell know at this point.

Well anyway, all this stuff with Chuck is just goofy as can be; Boxer runs afoul of the rough types in the neighborhood, and to prove he’s a big man in the Navy he radios in a “Code Ten.” This brings in a squad of marines who close down the street, with helicopters flying around. Seeing he’s proved his point to the dumbass locals, Boxer tells the marines “all clear,” and they leave. They just leave! And later Boxer chuckles about the situation with his commander! But anyway by the time we finally get to John, aka Boxer’s “seven or eight” year-old son, Greenfield has become bored with the whole thing and gives the kid like two lines (“Daddy! I missed you!”), and ends the scene – apparently Boxer’s plan is to have Chuck hang out with John; Boxer himself clearly has no plans to. And yet the next day as he’s flying home to DC, looking forward to screwing Trish silly, Boxer “feels good about himself.”

Boxer’s devotion to Trish is ironic given that she’s in the midst of a hot and heavy affair with Borodine, aka Boxer’s Russian archenemy/best friend. Trish doesn’t come off particularly well this time, wantonly screwing Borodine (for once, mostly off-page) and openly lying to Boxer, sometimes savoring to herself the fact that she’s just had sex with two dudes within hours of each other. While she keeps the affair secret from Boxer, Borodine is aware of it. I mentioned back in my review of the third volume that, when I discovered a few volumes of Depth Force on the shelf of a used bookstore some years ago, I opened one of them up right on a random hardcore sex scene, as arbitrary as could be. Well, this book was the one – Trish graphically fondling herself as she imagines being double-teamed by Boxer and Borodine and screaming as she climaxes, “They’ll never do it! They’ll never fuck me together!” We also get a few XXX bits with Boxer and Trish, but none of it’s as explict as prevoius volumes – at least, the word “bung hole” doesn’t appear this time around.

But while the series is soapy, one must never forget how cruelly its characters are treated, in particular the female characters. While we know from the scenes in her perspective that Trish has guessed Boxer is going to propose to her – but plans to tell him no – it’s still a bit of a shock when, during dinner with Boxer and Borodine (Trish again relishing that she’s sitting down with both her conquests, and also relishing Boxer’s ignorance of this fact), Trish’s ex-husband walks in and shoots Trish in the head! We’re soon informed she’ll “never wake up,” in other words she’s now a vegetable. But by novel’s end Greenfield has decided to hell with this and has Kincade radioing Boxer (in the middle of a battle!) and informing him that Trish has died(!). Meanwhile Boxer’s already decided to move on…it’s really humorous in a way, friends. Occasoinally he’ll think about her, but within pages he’s like, “I’ll be okay.”

Trish’s ex-husband by the way is our segue into the plot promised on the back cover; his name is William McEllroy (he also first appeared in the fourth volume) and he’s a “former congressman” who now leads a sort of hard-right army dedicated to starting war with Russia (still communist in Greenfield’s fictional 1997). This group, which brings to mind the rebel government in Greenfield’s earlier Waters Of Death, plans to take over the world in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. They’re a pretty resourceful bunch, managing to free psychopath Captain Bush from the funny farm (where Bush kills a couple people “accidentally”) so that he can captain the Shark, ie the top secret nuclear sub normally commanded by Boxer. They even manage to steal the Shark, leading us into the “tense” climax.

Almost immediately after Trish’s assault – McEllroy humorously escaping without much fuss – Boxer is informed the Shark has been stolen. He’s put in charge of another vessel, the Neptune, and gives chase before the Shark can launch nukes on Moscow, thus ushering in WWIII. Russia is alerted, and none other than Borodine commands his own nuclear sub as both countries join to find and stop the Shark. Once again it’s all relayed via dialog; there are more scenes of Boxer and his chief mate Cowly “sipping coffee” on the bridge than the sort of bloody violence you’d expect from a book labelled as “men’s adventure” on its spine.

As expected, Captain Bush goes nuts, killing off everyone but McEllroy, then taking off to incredible depths and changing route, his plan to nuke Paris and other European countries instead of Russia. The two men get in a fight and McEllroy knocks out Bush, but he can’t pilot the Shark and they’re further beneath the sea than any other vessel can go, so McEllroy is kind of screwed. At any rate this is where Sea Of Flames ends, but we can predict how the next one will go down: quick wrapup of this plot in the opening pages, followed by some long-simmer soap.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Depth Force #5: Torpedo Tomb


Depth Force #5: Torpedo Tomb, by Irving A. Greenfield
February, 1986  Zebra Books

The Depth Force series continues to come off like a soap opera in novel form; this series could’ve just as easily been titled “As The Periscope Turns.” For once again “action” is for the most part nonexistant and author Irving Greenfield is more focused on detailing the potboiler lives of his main characters. I mentioned in my review of the previous volume that I didn’t have this instalment, but the men’s adventure gods intervened and I recently came across a copy for a pittance.

However, as I’ve found with the other installments I’ve read, I could’ve indeed skipped Torpedo Tomb without missing anything pertinent. Per the usual template this one picks up from the previous volume’s cliffhanger finale, without a shred of background detail to catch up readers new to the series. Hero Captain Jack Boxer and his crew of the Shark are introduced en media res, and lord help you if you don’t know who any of them are or don’t know what happened in the previous book; Greenfield certainly doesn’t remind you. Having read that previous installment I knew that it ended with the Russian sub squad of Captain Igor Borodine, briefly housed on the Shark after their own sub’s destruction, attempting to take over the Shark – while two more Russian subs were attacking it. 

Greenfield brushes off the mutinying Russians subplot, with the riot already quelled when Torpedo Tomb opens. Rather, it’s all about the attacking Russian subs, which fire “killer darts” that almost destroy the Shark. Apparently these are like heat-seeker torpedos or something. Again the “action” is for the most part relegated to dialog as Boxer stands on the bridge and shouts orders to his crew. This time the only two Shark characters who rise out of the anonymous backdrop are Vargas, aka “The Spic,” who leads the ground assault forces, and Cowly, Boxer’s EXO who outs himself as gay in the first half of the book. Otherwise they’re all nonentities save for Boxer himself.

Borodine is also onboard; the Depth Force series is built around the dynamic between Boxer and Borodine, with the rival sub commanders respecting each other despite the Cold War (which still rages in this fictional 1997). Greenfield doesn’t spend as much time with the Russians this volume, with the sexy female Russian scientist who propositioned Boxer in the last pages of Battle Stations given short narrative shrift and Borodine himself relegated to mourning – in the usual heartless vibe of this series, he finds out via a radio dispatch from his comrades that the woman he was going to marry – plus her unborn child – has been been killed in a car wreck! By novel’s end Borodine has been promoted to Rear Admiral and is sent to D.C. on some sort of ambassadorial mission, which will certainly guarantee more soap operatic stuff in future books.

When the Shark returns to port Boxer takes care of priorities – having sex with his girlfriend Trish in one of Greenfield’s patented explicit sequences. Sadly though, Torpedo Tomb features less dirty stuff than previous books. However Trish delivers one of the greatest lines of all time, cozying up with Boxer in his quarters on the Shark for some illicit shenanigans: “Finger me, my darling.” But after the whopping mutual climaxes Boxer and Trish realize they have an audience – a shocked Cowly watching from the door. Trish freaks out, questioning Cowly’s manhood in dialog that’s hilariously un-PC in today’s world, but meanwhile Cowly does later admit to Boxer that he, Cowly, is gay, and was in fact enjoying the view while he watched ol’ Boxer hump away!!

Methinks the Boxer-Trish romance will gradually go the way of all the other Boxer romances so far; the dude’s had like four girlfriends in the three books I’ve read. But Trish is getting increasingly pissed with how Boxer is so devoted to his work and how he keeps leaving her, etc. And as for that soapy Borodine angle mentioned above; Torpedo Tomb ends with Borodine and Trish on a date in DC, kissing, announcing they want to have sex with each other(!?), and then sort of wondering what to do. At any rate Trish is Boxer’s sole bedmate this volume, with another explicit featuring the two later in the book – which is it so far as the hardcore stuff goes, this time.

Instead, Greenfield spends more time on dialog, much of it either banal or just regurgitation of stuff we’ve already read about. The novel runs to the usual exorbitant Zebra length, but it’s got big print and lots of white space; I feel bad for Greenfield, because it’s clear he was handed an unwieldy word count for this series. So as ever he takes the plot in all sorts of directions. Once he’s back in his home (and Greenfield by the way rarely if ever describes any of the surroundings – or characters, for that matter), Boxer is contacted by Sanchez, shadowy CIA dude who has offered to find the muggers who inadvertently killed Boxer’s mother in the previous volume. Here follows an arbitrary bit where Boxer heads to New York and, armed with “a .357 with silencer,” he blows the kneecaps off the three men who beat his mother into a fatal coma.

Gradually the main plot bears its head. Responding to a distress call from a monster sub called the Tecumseh, Boxer is unable to find the ship and eventually deduces that someone has hijacked the ship itself. When the corpses of the Tecumseh’s crew begin to wash up on New Jersey’s shores, Boxer’s hunch is proven correct – and here follows another very arbitrary bit where Boxer finds out he’s been willed two million or so bucks by the dead Tecumseh captain(!?), and Boxer goes into the slums of the Bronx to find the guy’s bastard son and tells him that, if he can get his shit together, the kid stands to become a millionaire when he’s 18. Again, it’s all like something off Days Of Our Lives.

It gets even more soapy when Boxer and a few of the Shark crew are placed on the experimental vehicle The Sea Turtle, which is a submarine/tank combo; it can go beneath the water, then sprout tank treads and travel overland. But also placed onboard the Turtle in an overseer capacity is none other than sexy Cynthia, Boxer’s on-again, off-again girlfriend from previous books – again, we aren’t reminded of specifics, and Cynthia’s just introduced as if we remember her as well as Boxer does. At any rate this causes a bit of friction on the bridge, with Boxer struggling to deal with the woman after their hot n’ heavy romance of yore.

And if that wasn’t soapy enough for you, the Turtle soon responds to a crashed airplane in the Atlantic, which went down in a thunderstorm. Boxer has the survivors pulled out of the stormy sea and put onboard the Turtle, and it develops that one of the passengers is eight months pregnant and has just went into labor from shock. Coincidence be damned, it turns out to be Louise, Boxer’s black girlfriend who was forced (by Boxer’s CIA boss Kincade) to break up with Boxer in the previous book (because she was black!). After delivering the baby Louise has a heart-to-heart with Boxer where she reveals that the “Dear John” letter she wrote him wasn’t her idea, and anyway she’s happy now, married to a doctor who treats her well, and etc. As The Periscope Turns!

More soapy stuff ensues with the fractional presence of Captain Bush, who apparently appeared in volumes 1 or 2, neither of which I have. Per Kincade, Bush is put in co-command of the Sea Turtle, and whereas before he was apparently “tight,” now he’s acting “loose.” In particular, Cynthia claims that he’s been sexually harrassing her. This leads to a short but bizarro section where Bush goes nuts, takes over the Turtle’s bridge and announces himself on the PA as “Captain Bligh,” and orders Cynthia onto the bridge so all the men can gang-bang her! After sending Cynthia to the bridge(?!?), Boxer gases the room and puts Bush in custody.

In the final quarter the plot promised on the back cover takes place. Again proving how small this soap opera world is, the Turtle is to pick up none other than Sanchez, ie the dude from the New York section, who will be leading Vargas and an Agency assault team on a strike upon a prison camp in Libya in which some Americans are held. Boxer is informed that the place is run by the Shushas, “an extremist Arab group” that is 500-man strong. The expected casualty rate for Sanchez’s assault force is seventy-five percent! Boxer drops ‘em off and Greenfield proves again that Depth Force is not an action series by any means; rather than read about the assault on the prison camp, we instead sit around with Boxer and crew on the Turtle bridge while they listen to radio updates and sip coffee! 

Things quickly and anticlimactically escalate to yet another cliffhanger ending, something for which this series is also known. Sanchez and his force is almost wiped out to a man and Boxer realizes the whole mission was a set-up, as the Shushas knew they were coming. When he discovers that Boxer is still alive, Boxer orders the Turtle to the attack, but meanwhile it’s been caught by an underwater steel net or something, and more forces are coming to attack them.

And that’s it – no resolution, no climax. As ever, the tale just sort of rolls along, and the next volume will pick up from this very moment with nary a word of background material. Luckily I’ve got that one, so I won’t be completely lost when I start reading it.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Depth Force #4: Battle Stations


Depth Force #4: Battle Stations, by Irving A. Greenfield
July, 1985  Zebra Books

Once again coming off like the men’s adventure equivalent of a soap opera, the Depth Force series continues with this fourth novel that picks up immediately after the events of the previous volume, with not one word of helpful background material to catch up the reader.

Battle Stations follows the same template as that third volume; the first quarter wraps up events that began in the final quarter of the previous volume, and then the narrative moves on to documenting the harried, soap opera-like life of hero Jack Boxer, captain of the experimental nuclear sub The Shark. And like that previous installment, the “main plot” of Battle Stations doesn’t even get started until the final quarter of this volume, with events once again unresolved, so that the fifth volume will pick up the thread and continue the cycle…

As we’ll recall, Boxer was in Russian waters in the Arctic when last we met him, having exfiltrated a group of spies while at the same time kidnapping a bunch of KGB agents, including the head of that agency. When Battle Stations opens Boxer is still in the midst of this life-or-death battle. Only through the deus ex machina crash of a US plane in the ocean is the Shark able to evade the radar of the Sea Savage, the Russian equivalent of the Shark which is captained by Borodine, a noble sort of dude who harbors much respect for Boxer, and vice versa. However they both understand that they will kill one another in open combat if the opportunity arises.

Once the Sea Savage leaves the area, Borodine mistakenly believing he’s destroyed the Shark, Boxer must navigate his ship through the hostile ice-fields of the Arctic ocean. This sequence goes on forever. As with the previous volume, “action” is mostly relayed via dialog, and boring “naval” dialog at that, with Boxer shouting orders to his sailors. Meanwhile, back in the US, Admiral Stark (Boxer’s friend and mentor) bickers with Kinkade (wily CIA chief who hates Boxer). The latter is more so concerned about the KGB abductees, and rails on and on about how Boxer refuses orders (the Shark is owned by the CIA, by the way).

When the Shark finally gets back to friendly waters, Boxer returns to DC and is reuninted with Stark. Here the soap opera vibe resumes; last volume, Boxer hooked up with a pretty nurse named Louise Collins. Kinkade we learned didn’t like this relationship – because Louise was black, and a radical black, at that. So, behind the scenes, he’s paid her lots of money to leave Boxer a “dear John” letter and hit the road. She’s done just that, and now Boxer reels at his loss, not knowing that Kinkade was behind it all. He was “in love” with Louise and etc, blah blah blah…not that this matters, as once again Boxer scores with many women in explicit detail.

In the brief action denoument of Bloody Seas, a Shark sailor named Redfern was killed (Greenfield by the way is notorious for not reminding or even informing readers who the characters are, nor what they do on the ship). Apparently Boxer was close to this dude, and thus goes to a dinner party held in the home of his father-in-law, Senator Sam Ross; also there is Sue-Ann, Redfern’s attractive widow. After getting in a fight with a McCarthy-esque senator named McElroy, Boxer repairs to his guest room…and what reader will be surprised when Sue-Ann shows up by his bed that night?

“I want to be fucked,” announces the recently-widowed woman, and after like a second of deliberation Boxer grants her wish. One of Greenfield’s typically-graphic sex scenes ensues, complete with thorough description of oral venturings and deep plungings. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy for writing stuff like this – this genre should be filled with filth. But this is just a one-time fling, announces Sue-Ann, and besides she just wishes the Russians would give back Redfern’s body, as it’s still back there on Russian soil. Boxer determines to use his “friendship” with Borodine to get the body back.

There’s no action, no thrills -- Battle Stations is really more along the lines of the trashy novels Greenfield penned in the ‘70s, with a bit of a “political suspense” overlay. This is mostly through Kinkade, who schemes against Boxer throughout, as well as Senator McHugh, who makes it his career to “destroy” Boxer publically. In this McHugh and Kinkade become allies. But the novel is mostly relegated to scenes of Boxer driving around DC and talking to various people about thing he’s done and things he plans to do. Seriously, most of the dialog throughout the novel is of an incendental nature. (Ie, “Where would you like to go for dinner tonight?” and the like.)

Plot developments from the previous book are lost – for example, General Yeotev, the KGB leader who was shot in the knees before his capture, is only given passing mention. Instead we get bizarre, out-of-nowhere stuff like Boxer’s mother dying after her home’s broken into and she’s beaten by thugs(!?). As I said, it’s all very much like a soap opera, mostly because the series seems to be more about Captain Jack Boxer’s love life. This is evidenced with the appearance of Lt. Cynthia Lowe, Admiral Stark’s secretary, and apparently a character who either last appeared in volume 1 or 2; as usual, Greenfield does nothing to fill us in.

But at any rate Cynthia and Boxer were once an item, and somehow, prior to Bloody Seas, they broke off, and on bad circumstances at that. Boxer sees that she’s back on duty when he visits Stark (why exactly she was off duty is also unexplained), and after initial hostilities on Cynthia’s part Boxer is able to get her out on a date – and, of course, back in the sack. Cue more graphic sex as they exuberantly fuck, making up for lost time. But before that can happen, Boxer is cockblocked…shot by a cop!!

Bloody Seas featured a goofy bit where Boxer got in a bar fight with some thugs who were against the fact that his date for the evening, Louise Collins, was black. Battle Stations features an early moment where Boxer blithely tells the bartender at this same bar that he’d fight those assholes again. Well, it soon happens – but after Boxer’s beaten them, pulling a gun to defend himself, some cops come in and shoot him by accident. Or something like that. While Boxer recovers, Cynthia warms up to him.

More soap opera stuff – Boxer and Cynthia go on a yacht cruise, which Sue-Ann also attends. She gets drunk and starts screaming at Boxer in front of everyone about being a horrible leader, how he got her husband killed, and also how he was so quick to jump in the bed of his husband’s widow! Seriously it’s all like Days of Our Lives or something. Then Sue-Ann’s on her knees apologizing, and then Boxer and Cynthia are back in his stateroom, once again exuberantly fucking…

Now Boxer’s in Paris, where the Russians have said they’ll hand over Redfern’s body. Meanwhile Borodine has been cornered by the KGB to set up his “friend” Boxer for death. Boxer meets Borodine’s ex-wife, Maria Dodin (aka Glena) here, where she works for the US – a completely superfluous scene, though Greenfield fools us by describing how “impossibly beautiful” Maria is; normally this would be instant grounds for another sex scene. Instead Boxer gets his booty from the most unexpected source – Trish, the gorgeous young wife of Senator McHugh, aka the dude who is trying to destroy Boxer. Oh, and Trish also happens to be the granddaughter of Kinkade!

Any nitwit would suspect something, especially after the blowup Boxer had with the McHughs early in the novel, yet when Boxer receives an invite to dinner with the McHughs while in Paris, he ends up going – only to find a sexily-dressed Trish waiting there for him alone. When Greenfield mentioned her incredible cleavage, I immediately knew where it was going. One thing he did surprise me on was that Trish McHugh actually ends up falling in love with Boxer; in other words, the backstabbing playout I suspected doesn’t happen. She is here on her own free will, not sent here by McHugh to “distract” Boxer.

Trish ends up being the most frequent bedmate of Boxer this volume, and the one who receives the most explicit scenes; like the last book, Greenfield once again graces us with a sex scene that features the word “bung hole.” We also get Trish’s memorable declaration: “I’m going to come quickly.” But hey, remember how the KGB was going to kill Boxer here in Paris? This is where that goofy “Boxer’s mom gets killed by burglars” subplot arises, and our hero is called away suddenly to attend her funeral, thus unwittingly dodging his planned assassination – and the entire “Redfern’s body being returned” element is hastily dropped.

Now the plot’s all about McHugh’s attack on Boxer, and it’s dumb because the dude is aware that his wife is screwing Boxer, but doesn’t care. However he almost succeeds in destroying Boxer anyway, only saved when someone (perhaps someone sent by Admiral Stark) shows up with photos of Boxer and Trish together in bed. McHugh drops his case in shame, less the photos be revealed, and ends up divorcing Trish, who happily announces she wants to be with Boxer. Oh and meanwhile Cynthia is long out of the picture, having gotten into another spat with Boxer, who had only been considering her for an “easy fuck,” with no intention of a relationship.

Only in the final pages does the plot announced on the back cover come into play. Basically, the crew of a Russian sub mutinies, and the Sea Savage is sent off to destroy the sub before it can reach western waters. The Shark hurries to get there first, only to find the Sea Savage nearly destroyed after a confrontation with its sister ship. Now Borodine and crew are trapped on the bottom of the ocean, their oxygen running out. Boxer ignores orders from Kinkade and vows to save them. By the way, Kincade’s had a heart attack, after a confrontation with Boxer over his granddaughter…strangely, Kincade wants Boxer to marry the girl, despite how much he hates the man.

The Shark manages to save the crew of the Sea Savage, and the Russians plan to overtake the ship, a fine way to show their gratitude. Meanwhile Boxer’s about to get laid by his fourth woman in the book, hot KGB agent Dr. Suslov, who comically enough first offers herself to Borodine while the Sea Savage is stuck on the ocean floor (they are however unable to do the deed, thanks to the Shark’s timely arrival), and then later that same day waltzes into Boxer’s stateroom and informs him that she wants some good lovin,’ pronto.

But then the klaxons go off, and Boxer sends a still-unsated Suslov back to her quarters, with orders to shoot on sight if she attempts to flee. Now Boxer must contend with Borodine and his crew, who have taken over part of the Shark. And here, the action finally growing heated in the final few pages, Battle Stations comes to an inconclusive end – to be continued next time.

Unfortunately volume 5 is one I don’t have, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

And a curious final note – whereas the previous volume was stated as taking place in the “future” year of 1997, this one is stated as taking place in 1995! In fact it’s expressly stated that the last portion of the novel occurs in October of 1995 – yet this book clearly takes place after the previous volume. Maybe the Shark is the USS Eldridge of its day, unstuck in time due to some Philadelphia Experiment…?

Not that Boxer would notice…he’d be too busy exuberantly fucking.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Depth Force #3: Bloody Seas


Depth Force #3: Bloody Seas, by Irving A. Greenfield
April, 1985  Zebra Books

Irving Greenfield started publishing novels in the 1960s; it appears he came closest to fame in the ‘70s, with a slew of trash fiction novels that featured some pretty hot and heavy sex scenes – I have two of them, 1972’s The Sexplorer and 1973’s The Pleasure Hunters, and cursory glances through them would indicate they’re pretty damn explicit and sleazy.

But in the ‘80s through the early ‘90s Greenfield apparently spent most of his time on the longrunning but now forgotten Depth Force series, which debuted in 1984 and ran for a staggering 16 volumes, plus one Super Depth Force. The series is about a top-secret, CIA-operated submarine (the Shark) as it battles against the Soviets, and seems to be influenced by Tom Clancy, only with more of a pulp fiction bent. But since naval fiction has never been my thing, I never looked into the series.

Then one day I came across a handful of Depth Force novels at a used bookstore, and cursory glances through them indicated that they were pretty damn explicit and sleazy! The books seemed to alternate between naval jargon and super-graphic sex scenes – some of them quite arbitrary, which is just how I like them. Needless to say, I bought them all. This third volume is the earliest one I have, which is unfortunate, because it would appear that the Depth Force series is a lot like Doomsday Warrior – if you’ve missed the previous volume, you’re shit out of luck.

Bloody Seas opens immediately after the events of the second volume (apparently the Shark engaged a Russian vessel during an underwater storm for a large cache of gold). Greenfield throws us right in, never once telling us who these characters or or what they’re doing. For that matter, it isn’t until page 215 that we learn that this series takes place in the “future” year of 1997! But at any rate our hero is Captain Jack Boxer, a bearded, 35 year-old ladies man who is devoted to his ship and men, and who is propositioned by practically every woman he meets. Seriously, there are moments in the novel where a woman he’s just met will bluntly inform Boxer that she intends to have sex with him.

There are a lot of sailors on the Shark, and Greenfield introduces the majority of them into the text, but for the most part doesn’t remind us who they are or what they do. I guess this would make for a great, seamless read if you caught the previous two volumes, but for a first-timer like myself it was a little overwhelming. But here’s the thing – Greenfield has such a steady command of narrative that you keep on reading. You can tell the guy had many novels under his belt by the time he got to Bloody Seas, as Greenfield keeps the action moving with lots of dialog and soap opera-type plot developments. In fact, of all the men’s adventure novels I’ve yet read, this one comes the closest to being the literary equivalent of a soap opera – no doubt due to Greenfield’s earlier days as a trash fiction author.

The book opens immediately after the events of the previous volume; the Shark leaves the scene of battle only to engage immediately in another, as a few Russian subs come after it. I found this action sequence boring as it’s just an endless sequence of Boxer relaying orders on the Shark’s bridge, his subordinates repeating his orders, and then reporting back on the ensuing damage done to the other ships. But then, that’s naval military fiction, I guess. But I miss the more personal nature of the average men’s adventure novel action sequence. Greenfield does provide a more traditional action moment, though, when Boxer, on some yacht or something (again a pickup from the previous installment with absolutely no setup material to let us know who these people on the yacht are), is attacked by pirates who are coming after the gold he got in the previous book.

Once the Shark has returned to the US, Greenfield continues with the soap opera feel; there is no more action until the very final pages of the book. Instead the focus is upon Boxer’s harried personal life; he has a casual sex thing going with Tracy, a nymphomaniacal reporter who apparently hooked up with Boxer in the previous book and is doing a feature on the Shark, despite its top secret status. Greenfield also hops over to Russia to detail the similarly soap opera-esque life of Borodin, Boxer’s Russian counterpart. The two men are not only identical but also respect one another, and Greenfield hammers it home how alike they are to the point where it’s as if we are reading the same storyline for both men.

But suddenly it’s “months later” and Boxer, removed from command of the Shark while his superiors research the gold-recovery fiasco of the previous volume, has fallen in love with Kathy Tyson, whom he plans to marry! Then Tracy returns to the fray, informing Boxer that she’s discovered Kathy is really a CIA agent, sent here by Kincade (commander of the CIA and Boxer’s boss) to monitor Boxer. Cue even more soap opera stuff as Boxer throws a tantrum and kicks Kathy out, followed by more tantrum-throwing as Boxer confronts Kincade. Greenfield even works in an arbitrary sequence in which Boxer’s father is dying – and to continue with the soap opera feel, as his father’s dying Boxer meets a sexy black nurse (Louise) whom he starts up a fling with.

The sex scenes, as mentioned, are pretty explicit, though to be sure Greenfield doesn’t go into as much detail in this volume as he does in some of the others I’ve perused. There seems to be a determined focus on oral sex, and this is also the first novel I’ve read that contains the word “bunghole” in a sex scene. Meanwhile Boxer falls in love with Louise, despite the racial insensitivy of his fellow Navy men…again, the whole book is basically just a melodrama, frameworked around a bit of naval warfare stuff. There’s even a scene where Boxer beats up some drunk in a bar who assumes that Louise is a hooker.

What little “action” that occurs during this stretch is mostly handled off-camera. Greenfield not only shows an ease with offing major characters but he also does so quite sadistically – for example Tracy, the reporter who does the story on the Shark. After finding out that Tracy informed Boxer that Kathy was a spy, Kincade, clearly a mean son of a bitch, orders that Tracy be taken care of – and we learn, some pages later, that she’s been raped and murdered! Boxer handles the news pretty much emotionlessly, and Greenfield really digs in the knife with all these characters coming out of the woodwork and informing Boxer that Tracy loved him and even said he was the best she ever had(!), etc.

The back cover has it that the plot of Bloody Seas is about the Shark venturing into Russian waters to exfiltrate a group of spies. This plot actually doesn’t show up until the final pages of the book, as Boxer is called back onto command status and takes over the Shark. During the rescue of the spies Borodin again appears, commanding the Russian version of the Shark (named the Sea Savage), and we have another mostly-boring naval battle between the two. There’s a bit of gunplay stuff though as Redfern, apparently the commander of the ground troop squad of the Shark, disembarks the sub and takes on some Russian commandos, but for the most part Greenfield glides through the action scenes with little violence or gore.

True to form, the novel ends with this climatic action scene, leaving the implication clear that the next volume will pick up immediately afterward. Luckily, the fourth volume is one of the handful I have, so I’ll be able to at least get a grasp of the continuity-heavy basis of the Depth Force series. While I can’t say Bloody Seas was great, it did flow very well, mostly due to Greenfield’s assured command of the craft…not to mention the goofy, Harold Robbins-esque sex scenes.