Showing posts with label MIA Hunter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MIA Hunter. Show all posts

Monday, May 8, 2023

MIA Hunter #12: Desert Death Raid


MIA Hunter #12: Desert Death Raid, by Jack Buchanan
June, 1989  Jove Books

Bill Crider returns to MIA Hunter with another installment that finds Mark Stone and his team venturing out of their old ‘Nam stomping grounds and opertating in a never-named country in North Africa. Parts of Desert Death Raid reminded me of ‘70s adventure-pulp novel Valley Of The Assassins, in fact, and given that Bill Crider himself was an admirer of that novel, I’m going to suspect that any such similarities are intentional. 

One thing I’m happy to report is that Stone’s girlfriend, Carol Jenner, does not appear and is not even mentioned in this one; in the previous volume, which was by Arthur Moore, Carol had been retconned into a shrill nag who bossed Stone and the others around like she was the series protagonist. So I was happy to see she was gone without a trace this time around; and hell, for that matter, Stone this time is propositioned by two lovely women, and while our hero does not give either of them the goods, he also never once thinks about his girlfriend back home. 

That though is still the line of demarcation between ‘70s men’s adventure and ‘80s men’s adventure. That’s right, friends, Stone is offered sex by two lovely babes and turns ‘em both down, like several times. Imagine John Eagle doing such a thing! It’s all about the mission in the ‘80s, all about the action and the guns and stuff, with none of the sleazier indulgences of ‘70s men’s adventure. It’s curious, because Crider seems to be catering to that earlier aesthtetic, with both women propositioning Stone at the oddest of times – I mean like “during a sandstorm in the middle of the desert” oddest of times – but then he’ll have Stone turn the women down. So it’s like Crider is at least going through the motions of catering to the earlier demand for sleaze in the genre, but it actually comes off even worse that Stone constantly spurns the attention. It would’ve come across better if none of it even ever came up. 

Well anyway. Crider even further delivers a vibe similar to the ‘70s with a “sweats” opening in which some poor nameless woman is the prisoner of some Arabic jackals in a fortress in the desert. The author capably brings this woman’s plight to life, with her desperate attempt to escape…only to be rounded up by the jackals, who have kept her here for nearly a year. Similar to the openings of earlier installments – only in those cases it was usually an American male prisoner who’d been stuck in a ‘Nam hellhole for decades – this sequence will not be returned to until late in the novel. 

There’s no elaborate setup for Stone and team, either: we meet them as they’re already on location in this country in North Africa, and even Hog Wiley and Terence Loughlin aren’t privy to all the details of the mission. As we’ll recall, Stone’s team now officially works for the US government, and Stone has taken this last-second job from the CIA, to rescue the embattled president of this country from his own people, who are rioting against him. There’s also a Russian defector here for Stone to bring back to America. This new government backing for Stone leads to the occasional deus ex machina, like when Stone and team are saved by the somewhat random appearance of a helicopter in the Sahara near novel’s end. 

Bill Crider continues to be one of the few authors who served as “Jack Buchanan” who manages to give Loughlin any personality, with the Britisher mostly being the dry-wit straight man for wild Texan Hog Wiley. And Crider also gives Hog some memorable dialog, again having him refer often to his homestate of Texas – which makes sense, as Crider himself was a Texan. The only character who does not much come to life is Stone himself, who comes off as rather cipherlike here. He also has a penchant to “growl” his dialog, to such a humorous extent that you get the impression the guy’s more animal than man. If I’m not mistaken, Michael Newton poked fun at this in his How To Write Action-Adventure Novels. Or wait, maybe Newton was poking fun at how Stone’s full name, “Mark Stone,” was repeatedly stated in both the dialog and the narrative in one particular volume of the series…I think it might have been standalone volume Stone: MIA Hunter. But it’s been over ten years since I read Newton’s How-To book. 

Crider isn’t much for the bloody violence, though. There seems to be less action in Desert Death Raid than previous volumes of MIA Hunter, with only a few pitched battles. One of the first occurs right after Stone and team arrive on location; this is a somewhat humorous scene as they watch a battle being fought, the rebels against the president’s men, and then “improvise” a way to get around them. But it’s very much a “get shot and fall down” sort of affair, with none of the arterial-jetting bloodshed I demand in my men’s adventure. Crider does come up with the memorable phrase “blasted his head to flinders,” which he likes so much that he actually uses it twice in the book. I don’t even know what flinders are, but the line sure sounds cool. 

There’s a fair bit of coutroom intrigue as the embattled president is surrounded by enemies, some of them in his own entourage. There’s also his sexy daughter, Helene, and “Al,” aka Alyonya, a super-sexy Russian defector. “The woman virtually radiated sex,” Crider informs us, as if taunting us with the potential for the ensuing boinkery that would have been expected if Desert Death Raid had been published in 1973 instead of 1989. Instead, Stone often muses on the “spark” that exists between Alyonya and himself, not that he does anything about it. And as mentioned, Helene even makes a pass at Stone, only to be shot down; she ends up engaging one of her father’s men in some off-page screwing…screwing which Stone interrupts and prevents from resuming, as it occurs during a trek through the desert and might attract enemy forces, or some other such buzzkilling shit. 

For the most part Desert Death Raid is comrpised of a trek across the Sahara; first via an armored limo (one stocked with booze, much to Hog’s delight), then via helicopter, and finally on camel. Periodically the group will be attacked by the rebel forces, or Touregs in another sequence. Crider captures the desolate setting and the heat of the desert sun, and again it all made me think of Valley Of The Assassins. There’s also a bit of plotting here, as Stone learns that Alyonya has some secrets – a bit that plays out unexpectedly for sure, and does remind the reader of something the more brutal heroes of ‘70s men’s adventure might do. Indeed, the playout of this subplot is so unexpected that the last chapter of Desert Death Raid is focused on Stone coming to terms with what he himself did and why he did it; I almost got the impression that this last chapter could’ve been written by series editor Stephen Mertz, so as to keep readers from thinking “hero” Mark Stone was a total bastard. 

As mentioned the opening sequence of the imprisoned woman comes back up at novel’s end; turns out she is the president’s wife, kept here by certain traitorous members of his cabinet, and Stone decides to go save her. This is even more along the lines of Valley Of The Assassins, with Stone and team infiltrating a fortress deep in the Sahara. It’s pretty cool, not to mention a nice way to cater to the (former) series template of Stone and team serving in a “prisoner rescue” capacity. 

Overall Desert Death Raid was one of the better volumes of MIA Hunter. Crider returned for one more volume, and I’m sure it will also be a good one.

Monday, February 15, 2021

MIA Hunter #11: Crossfire Kill


MIA Hunter #11: Crossfire Kill, by Jack Buchanan
February, 1989  Jove Books

Unforunately this eleventh volume of MIA Hunter is a definite low point for the series; it seems to have been written by an author who has no knowledge of the previous volumes and just wants to do a Robert Ludlum style Cold War thriller. The editorial hand of Stephen Mertz is only occasionally present, usually just adding clarifying points about the changing nature of Stone’s mission. This disconnect from previous books is odd, given that Arthur Moore wrote Crossfire Kill, and he wrote two earlier volumes, #8: Escape From Nicaragua and #9: Invasion U.S.S.R. Checking my reviews of those two previous books, it looks like I wasn’t very fond of either of them…but Crossfire Kill is real patience testing, and definitely my least favorite volume of the series. 

For one, some revisionism seems to have taken place; Carol Jenner, hotstuff blonde who much earlier in the series was nothing more than “Mark Stone’s girlfriend,” now comes off like the boss of the team! We’re informed that she’s “on assignment from Fort Bragg,” with the official capacity of overseeing the taskforce that is Mark Stone, Hog Wiley, and Terrence Loughlin. There’s absolutely no indication here that she is (or was?) Stone’s woman, and what’s more she now seems to have an antagonistic relationship with Hog, easily frustrated with his one-liners and ever-randy attitude. Now we know that a few volumes ago the series overall changed, with Stone and team now working directly for the US government; Carol’s role changed as well, acting mostly as “the computer girl,” giving intel and whatnot on each mission. But this time she’s not only giving intel but basically dictating what Stone and team does. She also seems to have lost the ability to use contractions when she speaks. All very, very strange, and not exactly welcomed. 

But then, the change in the series itself isn’t much welcomed. Capturing POWs was the gimmick of MIA Hunter, and with the gimmick removed the series is struggling. Particularly here, as Crossfire Kill is really just a sluggish thriller with “action scenes” that seem to be huriedly grafted on to meet a series mandate. In fact, Stone and team pretty much disappear for long portions of the narrative, Moore focusing instead on the one-off Eurotrash villains. In this regard the novel most reminded me of S-Com #1: Terror In Turin (which curiously also had a main character named Stone), another slow-moving “men’s adventure novel” that kept its heroes on the sidelines so as to focus on the annoying bickering and bantering of its too-many villains. But at least Terror In Turin had some sleazy sex to keep things interesting; we don’t even get that in Crossfire Kill. The genre has been neutered of such stuff by 1989, anyway; I mean there’s even a hooker in the book, but she’s just there to add more pseudo-suspense to the tale. In a men’s adventure novel from the ‘70s her role would’ve been entirely different. That’s progress, I guess. 

So Stone and team are now tasked with saving kidnapped people all over the world, at the behest of the US government; this time though their role is pretty muddled. The opening chapter lets us know what we’re in for: an overlong sequence in which one of the villains of the piece carries out his hit, assassinating a German official. The assassin is a “potato-faced” little man named Danzig(!). He’s just one of the many villains we have to keep up with…there’s also Neff, a terrorist leader initially presented as the main villain of the novel, until we ultimately meet Von Schiller, a former SS officer who truly runs things. But man. The majority of Crossfire Kill is comprised of these dudes fighting each other, with long portions of the narrative devoted to Danzig trying to kill Neff, or Neff trying to kill Von Schiller, or whatever. And every once in a while we’ll cut over to Stone and team in their Frankfurt apartment, where Carol Jenner bosses them around a little more. 

After this opening assassination, Stone’s team is called to Frankfurt…for something. Even Hog questions why they should give a damn if some German official has been killed. (Of course Carol doesn’t take kindly to this.) The explanation is that the murdered official was organizing a visit from the US Secretary of State or somesuch, so Stone’s here to ensure everything goes smoothly – but wait, an American General has just been adbucted right off the Army base here in Germany, so Stone’s team will indeed have someone to rescue after all. When Stone rescues the General we get our first indication that Crossfire Kill won’t have near the action quotient of previous books; as we’ll recall, some of the early volumes of MIA Hunter were nothing but long-running action scenes. Here it’s over and done with in a few pages, Stone, Hog, and Loughlin making a few bloodless kills as they storm a Euroterrorist compound and rescue the General. 

Here also we get the bizarre revelation that some chick Loughlin once had a thing with is now with Neff; we’ll eventually learn she’s a hardbitten SAS agent, thus her shocked yelp of “Terry!” when she sees Loughlin comes as a bit hard to buy. But whatever, this is the absolute most focus the cipher known as Terrence Loughlin has ever received. I mean I honestly thought the dude was gay (“not that there’s anything wrong with that”), but here we have an ex-girlfriend for him and everything. And hell, later in the book Loughlin even gets in some casual gay-bashing, putting down some dude who appears to hit on Stone in a German bar. Well anyway, the girl is named Eva Ullman, and once he gets over his shock Loughlin tells Stone and Hog that he had an affair with her many years before, when he was still with the SAS, and this is the first time he’s seen her in all these years, etc. 

But for veteran commandos, the Stone group seems easily fooled. Eva just happened to be standing right beside terrorist leader Neff when she saw Loughlin, and the two then ran away – Loughlin unable to tell if Neff was pulling Eva, like she was a captive or something, or if she was willingly running off with him. Shortly after this Loughlin receives a message at their apartment complex, presumably from Eva, asking to meet “Terry” at a certain location – a location which the team’s German contact tells them just happens to be in the middle of the friggin’ forest. “Well, let’s just go see how it plays out,” our heroes basically decide. Of course, it turns out to be a trap, leading to another bloodless action scene as Stone and Hog, lying in cover while Loughlin drives around on a dirt bike, cut down the assassins who unsurprisingly show up. 

There is such a focus on the one-off characters that we even have sections from Eva’s point of view, with the intent that we’ll be afraid that Neff will have her killed. She’s on assignment from SAS, you see, which makes her shocked yelp of “Terry!” even harder to believe. Not that she should worry about Eva’s wellbeing, as Neff is such a lame villain that he actually forgets to do anything about Eva, who might, you know, be familiar with at least one of those mysterious commandos who keep killing Neff’s men. She’s eventually taken to some countryside retreat to be interrogated, but manages to escape on her own, Stone and team luckily coming upon her before she can indeed be killed. After this though she basically disappears from the narrative; about the most we learn is that she needs to take a nap to calm her nerves and she’s determined that this will be her last SAS assignment! 

But yeah, most of the last third is composed of Von Schiller hiring Danzig to kill Neff, due to all Neff’s screwups, and then Neff trying to get the better of Danzig, and then Neff trying to get revenge on Von Schiller, and on and on. And meanwhile Stone and team stand around and try to put together the clues to figure out who is funding Neff. Occasionally we will have a super-brief action scene, Stone and his crew cutting down Neff’s seemingly endless supply of Eurotash terrorists in spectacularly bloodless fashion. Hog will occasionally make a quip or two; he has a strange fetish for talking about “tits” this time, sometimes in the most unsettling of ways, like implying that Neff is going to torture Eva by beating on her boobs. To the extent that even Loughlin and Stone wonder what the hell’s going on with Hog. That being said, there’s one goofy part where Hog merely backhands a guy and kills him! 

Even the climax is pretty unspectacular, with Stone and team racing around Germany and Holland and then back to Germany to put the hammer down on Von Schiller. Who by the way has a great track record, despite all the internal squabbling; he and his men manage to kill several more European officials during the novel. Stone seems to be especially driven to take out Von Schiller, once he learns of the man’s Nazi past, but even here the final battle is pretty quick and anticlimactic. I mean it features an exploding car, like an episode of Knight Rider or something. 

I think here in the very final pages is the only part where Stephen Mertz contributes to the tale; we get a sudden glimpse into Stone’s perspective. His was the most common perspective in earlier books, but it’s hardly present this time. He muses over “the shifting role of his team.” Here we also learn that Stone’s “main” objective is still rescuing POWs in Vietnam, but there’s been no recent “hard intel” of any. I know eventually Mertz delivers an installment which returns Stone and team to ‘Nam, and I have to say I’m looking forward to it. Like I wrote above, saving POWs was the gimmick of this series; these guys should be in the jungle, hitting Charlie in long-running action scenes. That’s their thing. Taking them out of their element hasn’t really been working out, at least not for me, so I’ll be looking forward to this eventual return to the original series template.

Monday, August 31, 2020

MIA Hunter #10: Miami War Zone


MIA Hunter #10: Miami War Zone, by Jack Buchanan
July, 1988  Jove Books

Bill Crider turns in his first installment of MIA Hunter which sees the series reboot in full effect; at this point there isn’t much difference between MIA Hunter and pretty much any other ‘80s men’s adventure series, like The Hard Corps or whatnot. I’m really on the fence so far as this reboot goes, because even though the early “save POWs in ‘Nam” plotlines got to be a little repetitive, the angle did give the series its own unique vibe, one that’s lost in these later volumes.

Whereas the early vibe might be lost, one thing that’s remained consistent about MIA Hunter is the narrative style. As I’ve said before, series creator and editor Stephen Mertz did a great job of assembling a group of ghostwriters who all wrote in a similar style – or Stephen just did some great editing to make all the styles seem consistent. What I’m trying to say is, one could easily be fooled into believing “Jack Buchanan” is a real author. Given this, I can’t notice anything “new” Crider has brought to the table; Miami War Zone has the same tone and style as previous books, with goodly portions of firearms detail, impromptu karate battles, “back in East Texas” tall tales from Hog Wiley, and action movie-esque friendly banter between Hog and British ciper Terrance Loughlin. Well, one new thing is that Carol Jenner, main protagonist Mark Stone’s girlfriend since the earliest volumes, has now become the computer specialist of the team, and we’re also informed she’s “a fighter to equal nearly anyone.” I don’t believe this has been stated before. 

While the Southeast Asian locales might have changed, the series is also consistent in that Stone, Hog, and Loughlin still operate as rescuers of captured personnel. This time though, as the cliché goes, “it’s personal;” Stone’s old ‘Nam buddy Jack Wofford, now an undercover DEA agent in Miami, has been taken captive. In a humorous disregard of reality, Stone – who is called by Jack’s worried wife – decides to head on down and save him, even though he and his team operate out of Fort Bragg and are supposedly there at the behest of the US Government. In other words, Stone just decides to take the law into his own hands, using the full resources of Fort Bragg to operate on US soil, going against not only the FBI but the local police. But I just point this out due to the ridiculousness of the situation, and I applaud Crider for saying to hell with realism, because it’s not what most readers want from the genre.

From the get-go Stone and team get in bad with the FBI agents in Miami, in particular Washington tool Williams. Crider displays his Gold Eagle background with a lot of running subplots involving all these one-off secondary characters: many pages devoted to the FBI guys, to a pair of Homicide cops, to Mafia chieftan Crazy Tony, and to drug baron Enrique Feliz. And there’s a lot of narrative devoted to Jack Wufford, who is shuttled around from one captor to another, constantly being drugged into oblivion; Crider nicely works this somewhat egregious stuff into the series’ past concept, with Wofford so drug-deluded that he thinks he’s back in ‘Nam, once again a POW. He saved Stone back in the war, as we learn in another flashback, so our hero is damn determined to find his old buddy and get him to safety.

Carol learns via the computer that the Feds are down here because there’s a drug war brewing between Feliz and Crazy Charlie, a nutcase who is infamous for feeding people to his pet alligators. Unfortunately this angle doesn’t pan out the way I expected to; Charlie is developed as such a psychotic you can’t wait to see Stone and team go up against him. But instead Charlie will be dealt with by Feliz, and Stone et al will concern themselves more with Crazy Charlie’s old father, Don Vito. This entails a nicely-done sequence where they perform a soft probe of the don’s villa, sneaking into the old man’s room while he’s being orally pleasured by a hooker. This is the closest we get to anything lurid in Miami War Zone -- Stone and Carol’s relationship basically seems to just involve discussing the mission – and Crider further adds a humorous element in that Hog recognizes the poor hooker; it’s a dancer he lusted after in a local strip joint.

Our author also understands the difference between the men’s adventure genre and your average mystery thriller; when one of the don’s hapless stooges comes upstairs to check on the boss, Loughlin grabs him by the throat from behind and strangles him. It just seemed pretty sadistic to me, as our heroes are really just here to get intel on Wofford, and Loughlin could’ve just as easily knocked the dude out, like a private eye or somesuch would. Anyway this sequence of course escalates into an action scene, with the don pulling a secret gun and Stone almost casually dispensing of him with a chop to the throat. This running action sequence builds to the memorable moment where Hog “wallows in shit” as he battles a Mafia goon nearly as big as himself in a sewer tunnel.

As ever Hog has more spark than any of the other characters; Crider gets a lot of mileage out of some dark humor concerning a new plastic knife Hog has acquired. It’s especially memorable in this part with Don Vito; first Hog threatens to castrate the old man with the knife, even Stone getting in on the act to make the old man talk, then again he uses it in the fight with the massive goon in the sewer tunnel. Loughlin as ever doesn’t resonate much with the reader; we learn – or we’re reminded, more likely – that he has red hair. Dude’s such a cipher I hadn’t known that, or had forgot. As for Stone, he too is in cipher mode this time, mostly just driven to save his old ‘Nam pal. When they aren’t out driving around Miami looking for Wofford, Stone’s pacing around their rented house, fretting over the situation.

But as mentioned our heroes are off-page for a lot of the narrative. The most egregious example of this is when Crazy Charlie is dealt with by Enrique Feliz; we readers (or at least this reader) keep waiting for Stone and team to take on the psychotic Charlie and his pet alligators. And indeed the narrative is building to this, with Stone’s team getting intel that Wofford is being held by Crazy Charlie, and getting in their car to head on over there (another recurring joke being the small white Toyota Stone has rented, which Hog hates). But while they’re driving there Feliz converges on Crazy Charlie’s place with his soldiers, and a major battle ensues, with Charlie dealt some fitting comeuppance, given his past proclivities for feeding people to gators – but unfortunately it’s Feliz who takes care of this, not our heroes. By the time Stone et al show up, the firefight’s over and they’re left wondering what happened.

Feliz thus becomes the main villain by default; Wofford is passed around like a hot potato, unconscious or drugged out most of the time, and Feliz takes him to a drug lab deep in the Everglades to use as a bargaining chip with some manufacturers for a deal or somesuch. This is where the action climax plays out; again saying to hell with reality, our heroes get hold of a helicopter and hit the place hard. Crider gives us the automatic hellfire we want from the genre, but isn’t as extreme with the gore. He works in some nigh-magic realism when Wofford, almost supernaturally empowered, gets hold of a gun and walks around the burning lab grounds, blowing away goons and somehow avoiding all the bullets that are fired at him.

Curiously though this isn’t the end of the book. Instead, Stone happens to read a newspaper in the airport and sees a story in there which clues him in that there’s a traitor in the FBI, one that’s been helping out the drug barons. It of course turns out to be one of the suits he’s been arguing with throughout the book, leading to a chase in the terminal as Stone tries to bring him to justice. It’s okay but seems to come from a different book; more fitting is the sendoff Stone delivers Enrique Feliz in the earlier action sequence, which involes the spinning blades of an air boat.

Crider definitely has the “feel” of the series down pat – as mentioned you could read this book and think it was written by the same guy who did the previous ten – but at the same time I’m still not as crazy about this new direction. Crider returned for two more volumes, one which apparently sees Stone and team heading back to ‘Nam, so that one I look forward to, just to see if it retains the vibe of the earliest books.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

MIA Hunter #9: Invasion U.S.S.R.


MIA Hunter #9: Invasion U.S.S.R., by Jack Buchanan
April, 1988  Jove Books

MIA Hunter ventures into uncharted territory with this ninth installment, which sees a return of the same authors from the previous volume: Arthur Moore and Stephen Mertz. But in many ways Invasion U.S.S.R. seems to be from another series entirely, replacing the Southeast Asian POW-rescuing adventures of the earlier volumes with a sort of sub-Ludlum Cold War thriller. I found the results decidedly mixed.

For one, there is a bit of continuity, which makes me assume series editor Stephen Mertz was taking a firmer hand; the early volumes rarely if ever referred to each other. Here we have a reminder that Stone and team (Texan Hog Wiley and Brit Terrence Loughlin) are now employed by the government, thanks to the efforts of Senator Harler. Rather than illegally going into ‘Nam and neighborhood to rescue American POWs, they now go around the world to rescue captured American notables. Not technically MIAs, then, which makes Hog’s announcement, “We’re the MIA hunters” late in the novel sound a bit forced.

This time an American journalist who moonlights for the CIA is captured in Moscow. His name is Lee Daniels and the authors pad some of the pages with cutovers to his plight; this is another hallmark of previous volumes but Daniels seems to get a lot more attention. Unfortunately I found his story, which has him shuffled around this or that Russian sanitarium and grilled by this or that Russian flunkie, to be a bit tiresome.

I wanted action, baby – and shockingly, for a series known for big action scenes – Invasion U.S.S.R. is a bit lackluster in that department. It is for the most part a slow-moving thriller in which Stone and team are relegated to using pistols instead of their customary assault rifles. That being said, the author(s) do a better job of bringing the main characters to life, especially Loughlin; whereas he was a terse cipher previously, now he has a gift for sarcastic retorts. (And I still think there’s buried subtext that the dude’s gay – just sayin.’)

Stone, Hog, and Loughlin are called in by Harler to accompany him as “security” on a trip to Moscow. Their real goal will be to secretly find Daniels and exfiltrate him from whatever secret location the damn commies have him stashed away in. We get a bit of humor here with wily Hog (clever pun alert) chafing at the attempts to make him look respectable, complete with haircut, suit, and tie. The result, per Stone, “looks like a wrestler on his day off.” After this though, other than the occasional Hog-Loughlin banter, it’s a mostly humorless and dry affair.

It’s all very, uh, different, as Stone is suddenly meeting with embassy personnel and in-country CIA agents. As stated it just seems like a completely different series. The random action scenes still appear, a little less frequently, but they aren’t as overdone as the ones in the ‘Nam adventures. In fact it seems like Loughlin is forever stealing a car and the trio are sneaking away on the darkened streets after some random firefight with their appropriated pistols. It’s like the author(s) wanted to do a fairly realistic Cold War spy story while at the same time accomodating the action quotient required by the men’s adventure genre. For example, soon enough Hog is shooting helicopters out of the sky, something we’re told he’s quite good at.

The team gets in action posthaste, going off to meet with their CIA contact but walking into an ambush. This is just the first of many following sequences in which the boys get in a firefight, Loughlin hotwires a car, and they get away from the encroaching KGB. This happens so many times I started to suspect it was a subtle attempt at humor, and possibly it was. Stone and team don’t really integrate well into the shadow war mindset; they make cursory attempts at maintaining secrecy but keep getting in brief skirmishes with roving KGB patrols, making their getaway in stolen cars. Strangely neither Senator Harler nor the embassy folks get much frustrated by this, and just meet the team’s frequent requests for info, contacts, or more guns.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the lack of sexual material – in the men’s adventure of the ‘80s, only the protagonists of  post-nuke pulps got laid. The protagonists of regular men’s adventure were too busy checking their guns and stuff to mess around with womenfolk. But we at least get the promise of it – first Stone’s put in contact with a pretty female agent based in Moscow named Rima…who doesn’t do anything but cook for them. Later when the action moves to Moscow they’re put in line with Anna, a hotstuff Swedish agent whose ample charms are much admired by Stone and team…but there’s absolutely nothing in the way of sexual hijinks. The idea is so remote that it isn’t even mentioned.

For the most part Invasion U.S.S.R. concerns “the MIA hunters” going around Moscow, trying to find leads on Daniels, and always being one step behind the KGB force that has him. Late in the game the action moves to Leningrad, but even here it continues in the same pace as the Moscow material: they meet up with some local CIA agents, sneak around the city, get in brief skirmishes, hotwire a car, and make their getaway. The action promises to expand when the team is captured by the cunning KGB officer who has Daniels, Stone and team walking into yet another ambush, but Anna manages to free them within a few pages.

The big fireworks are saved for the finale, in which Daniels is finally located inside a sanitarium-fortress near Leningrad. But whereas the previous books would feature Stone and team hitting the base with some native soldiers backing them up, this time they follow a goofy, pseudo-Mission: Impossible scenario: they let themselves get arrested so that they’re put in the sanitarium’s jail, and then they try to figure out a way to break both themselves and Daniels out. What’s worse, there isn’t even a final comeuppance for the KGB officer who has taken up so much of the narrative.

Despite being 180-some pages, Invasion U.S.S.R. seems to be longer. Even though the writing is fine, with a clear attempt at conveying suspense and tension, the book just seems sluggish at times. I’m assuming this one was just a misfire and the series will get back on track, but I do feel that this new angle with Stone’s team being a rescue unit isn’t panning out very well. I mean there has to be at least a few POWs they could look for in ‘Nam…

Monday, May 28, 2018

MIA Hunter #8: Escape From Nicaragua


MIA Hunter #8: Escape From Nicaragua, by Jack Buchanan
November, 1987  Jove Books

The MIA Hunter series undergoes a bit of a change with this eigth volume (actually ninth when you count the unnumbered installment Stone: MIA Hunter); now MIA Hunter Mark Stone will venture around the globe at the behest of the US government to free prisoners of the Cold War, not just into Southeast Asia to free ‘Nam-era POWs. But while the setup might be slightly changed, the series template is firmly intact. 

A couple years ago Stephen Mertz sent me a list of the writers who worked on MIA Hunter. Basically, Mertz edited the series and wrote each volume, with a lineup of co-writers occasionally helping out. For this volume his co-writer was Arthur Moore. I’m not familiar with Moore, but per Mertz he also co-wrote MIA Hunter volumes 9 and 11. As ever though this series really does seem to be the work of the same writer, ie “Jack Buchanan,” so doubtless this is Mertz’s behind-the-scenes hand. But I’m pretty sure I can detect what Arthur Moore has written.

For the first time in the series, I think, Stone is usually referred to as “Mark” in the narrative, save for occasional scenes where he abruptly is referred to as “Stone.” Given that these latter parts are often arbitrary action scenes, my assumption is that this is Mertz filling in Moore’s manuscript. (Escape From Nicaragua comes in at an unwieldy 198 pages of small print.) Not that there’s anything wrong with action scenes, but in many instances they clearly seem to be filling up a void – like, “Mark” will scope out a truck he needs to acquire to get to his destination, and then a page or two later “Stone” will be blowing away scads of Sandanistan soldiers before proceeding on his way. In other words, the “Stone” stuff could be cut out of the narrative and one would never know the difference.

Anyway, the changed setup. For once, unbelievably, we get a bit of continuity – events clearly refer to Stone: MIA Hunter and the fiance Stone was reunited with therein; we’re informed that Stone is giving Rosalyn “time” to get over her decades-long captivity in ‘Nam. Translation: We’ll never see nor hear from the broad again. Otherwise, Stone and his colleagues Hog Wiley and Terrence Loughlin have now been hired by the government, working out of Fort Bragg, their objective to find and retrieve various prisoners. Stone’s girlfriend April is also on the scene, but will stay in Fort Bragg and handle all the paperwork, what with her being a girl and all. Oh, and given that it’s related up front that Stone has a girlfriend, this means that, as usual, there won’t be any funny business on the mission. This, the team’s first mission, has them going to Nicaragua to rescue a pair of CIA agents who have been captured by the Sandanistas.

It's humorous because for the most part Escape From Nicaragua plays out identically to the preceding volumes; only the locale has been changed. Stone and team venture into South America, meet a few native freefighters, get in countless skirmishes, finally find the prisoners (on the very last pages), free them, and escape. It’s practically the eighth variation of the story that was first told in MIA Hunter #1. This time the difference is that the natives speak Spanish, and the villains are Russian-backed Sandanistas instead of Russian-backed NVA.

Other than Stone becoming “Mark,” subtle changes include Hog Wiley speaking more like an “East Texan” than previously, and also there’s a bit more of an attempt to give cipher Terrence Loughlin some personality, mostly through his endless bantering with Hog. Some of this dialog is funny, and there are recurring jokes throughout, like Hog designating helpful natives as “Honorary Texans.” Stone is presented more as the straight man, always caught in the middle of the bickering and bringing the two back to the matter at hand. But other than the bit early on about Rosalyn, his old fiance, there really isn’t much personality for Stone this time; “Mark” just goes about his job to rescue the CIA agents, and it’s not like this time he’s even driven by the same personal demons that had him rescuing MIA soldiers in ‘Nam.

From Honduras the trio slip into Nicaragua, and the festivities begin posthaste. No joke, it seems llike every other page these guys are getting chased and shot at. If they aren’t getting chased by guys in trucks, they’re hiding from ‘copters that patrol from the skies. If anything I began to respect the apparently-vast army resources of the Sandanistas. I mean they have their country guarded down to the last blade of grass. But the action is constant and at the usual level of the series, which is to say lacking the brain-spurting, gut-busting gore I prefer in this genre; people just get shot and fall down. But make no mistake, a lot of people get shot, and sometimes knived…there’s a grim scene showing the coldblooded nature of our heroes as Stone slits the throats of a few dozing guards at a Sandanistan air base.

The team goes through a sequence of local guides, which also robs the narrative of what little emotional impact there could’ve been; some new guy is introduced, makes an impression, then takes the team to some backwoods Nicaraguan village, introduces the next guide, and says so long. One of them turns out to be a turncoat, setting our heroes up in yet another action scene, and one of them’s a hotstuff Latina babe who isn’t exploited at all, in complete disregard of what I feel should be written-in-stone rules of the men’s adventure genre. I mean her breasts aren’t even mentioned! But our heroes do trade lines about how pretty she is, at least – and she’s even more cold-blooded than they, at one point casually blowing away a pair of cops.

Action is as mentioned frequent and at times exhausting – and also as mentioned sometimes arbitrary. There’s a bit midway through where “Mark” decides the team needs an armored truck, then “Stone” and comrades get in a positvely endless firefight to attain it. Then just a scant few pages later they deem the truck is more trouble than it’s worth and burn it!! So much time is consumed with this sort of thing – not to mention a lot of sequences from the point of view of the various Sandanista soldiers – that the actual rescue of the CIA agents comes off as anticlimactic and rushed, occurring over just a few pages at the very end.

All told I have to rate Escape From Nicaragua as my least favorite MIA Hunter. Hopefully Moore’s next contributions will be better, and I’m really looking forward to the ones by Bill Crider.

Oh and Stone’s gotten a makeover on the cover…dude doesn’t look like a psycho at all.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

MIA Hunter #7: Saigon Slaughter


MIA Hunter #7: Saigon Slaughter, by Jack Buchanan
August, 1987  Jove Books

Stephen Mertz and Joe Lansdale team for up a third and final time on the MIA Hunter series, which now features series protagonist’s name “Stone” as part of the title. Mertz and Lansdale last collaborated on #4: Mountain Massacre, and like that one Saigon Slaughter is for the most part about 80% action with around 20% of character and plot development. It’s enjoyable but lacks the charm of their first collaboration, #3: Hanoi Deathgrip, which is still my favorite volume.

Hero Mark Stone is already in the ‘Nam when the novel opens, accompanied as ever by erstwhile companions Hog Wiley and Terrance Loughlin. A new character is introduced this volume, though it’s doubtful he’ll become a regular (MIA Hunter lacks much continuity): United States Senator Jerome Harber, who has come to Ho Chi Minh City as part of a delegation looking into the truth behind reported American POWs still in Vietnam. Harber is a believer and has made contact with Stone; as the novel opens Stone sneaks into Harber’s hotel room to tell him he’s going to prove his case that POWs exist.

Stone’s here for three American POWs in particular, though the novel features an arbitrary bit from Stone’s perspective where he reflects on the limited lifespan of his MIA-hunting duties. Once again Stone suspects that eventually he will have to pan out into other aspects of global ass-kicking, no doubt sign from editor Mertz that the series will gradually lose focus on the MIA angle and become more of a typical ‘80s action pulp. I’m looking forward to these later books as the concept behind this series is pretty limited, especially when as with the case with Saigon Slaughter the “plots” are mostly comprised of endless battle sequences.

We also get a rare moment of continuity; Stone briefly reflects on the aftermath of the previous volume, in particular the onetime-fiance he rescued in the course of that novel, and how her presence has thrown his love life into chaos. But nothing else is made of this and indeed the fiance isn’t even named. As usual though much more focus is placed on the mission at hand; when we meet Stone he’s already in ‘Nam and he stays here for the duration, dodging bullets and blowing away Vietnamese soldiers. There’s no time for romance, though Saigon Slaughter features the presence of the best female character in the series yet: Mai, “a fine specimen of Oriental womanhood” who is “small but big-breasted” and a kick-ass commando to boot.

Mai, only in her twenties but a veteran freedomfighter in her native Vietnam, serves as Stone’s main contact in the novel. She meets him in the jungle in a sequence of course reminiscent of Rambo: First Blood Part II and proves her worth on the battlefied…again and again, that is, given the crushing onlsaught of action in Saigon Slaughter. Unlike Co in Rambo, Mai actually survives the tale, and the authors capably build a growing rapport between her and Stone, to the point that by novel’s end Stone figures he and Mai will be getting busy posthaste, even though he knows he’ll never see her again. Why not? Mai is a welcome addition and should have become a series regular.

Mertz went on to pen the two-part series Tunnel Rats, which makes it interesting that Stone’s brief tunnel rat background in the war is given a lot of focus here. When Stone and comrades aren’t blitzing VC they’re burrowing beneath the ground in close-quarter tunnels, one of the few things that Hog Wiley fears. Once again the big Texan is given the spotlight, and no doubt these sequences are written by fellow Texan Lansdale, with Hog’s wild background in East Texas often commented upon. And, as in the previous volumes these two co-wrote, the bickering and banter between Hog and cipher-like Loughlin comes fast and furious. Some of it is funny, but some of it gets to be grating.

But really the endless action is the star of the show. Immediately after meeting Mai (who initially shows up in a “Ninja-type mask”) in the jungle night and hooking up with her branch of freedom fighters, Stone et al are caught up in an ambush that is just the first of many, many such action scenes to follow. The gore is also more prevalent this time out, with copious descriptions of heads juicily exploding and guts bursting out. I think Stone and team kill about a zillion Vietnamese soldiers in this one, and once again you have to wonder why they weren’t so lethal in the actual war itself! Wait, I know – it was those goddamn politicians who kept holding them back!!

Mai is the lone survivor of her team of insurgents after this opening battle (which goes on for about 40 pages), and her dead leader was the only one who knew where the camp with the American POWs is located. But there’s another option: depraved General Le, a Vietnamese official who is meeting with Senator Harber’s delegation. Le knows exactly where the camp is, and given his penchant for a new woman every night, Mai dresses herself up in Western clothing with lots of makeup, just like Le likes ‘em. With General Le the MIA Hunter gets its first taste of sleaze, even if it’s relatively brief and also nondescript – there isn’t a single sex scene in the novel. But Le likes to suffocate women while he screws them, we learn, and indeed plans to do this to sexy Mai.

Here’s where we learn about Mai’s “big breasts,” as she goes to Le’s fortress dressed like a veritable Asian Daisy Duke. Stone, using “Ninja suction cups,” scales the fortress and slips in, stopping the festivities before they can start; Le scrawls down the camp location and Stone promptly blows him away. After this we get, you’ll be surprised to know, yet another action scene. This one too keeps going like a regular Duracell Bunny. But now they know that the camp is near Saigon, aka Ho chi Minh, and the team heads deep into the jungle. We get another long and arbitary action scene as they encounter enemy forces, a scene which sees Hog hiding up in a tree at one point and gunning men down. Once again Hog is practically a force of nature, loving the blood and chaos of constant battle. 

The tunnel rat stuff continues when the anti-communist leader of the village near the POW camp reveals that old tunnels run beneath the place, but the one beneath the actual prison needs to be finished. Stone has him draft a ton of “University aged” kids to help in the all-night dig, which leads us into the homestretch battle, another one that goes on for around 30 or so pages. Stone frees the three bedraggled American POWs without much fuss, and then gets back to the task of killing hordes of Vietnamese. The authors inject a bit more variety in this one, from bulldozers used as battering rams to an escape via chopper, Loughlin piloting it and Hog blasting away with an M-60. We even get a ‘copter chase, with Loughlin successfully psyching out the pursuer so that he flies into a truck.

Saigon Slaughter culminates in a scene suspiciously similar to the finale of Missing In Action, as Stone et al fly their appropriated helicopter right to the building in Laos where Senator Harber’s delegation is meeting with the Vietnamese. Stone pulls out the three corpse-like American prisoners and hands them over to Harber in view of God and everyone so there can no longer be any question that the Vietnamese are indeed still harboring American prisoners.

And that’s that – a weary Stone hops back in the helicopter and they take off before there can be anymore fireworks. As mentioned, here Stone puts his arms around the lovely Mai and figures he and she are about to get close, but really he’s more concerned with how he’s going to sneak out of the country. Not that it much matters, as I assume by the next volume Stone will already be on his next mission when we meet him and the events of Saigon Slaughter will be completely forgotten.

I think I can spot the line of demarcation between the two authors: Lansdale perhaps is responsible for the sardonic vibe and the venmous Hog-Loughlin banter, with Mertz mostly responsible for the action and definitely responsible for the Don Pendleton-esque narratorial asides about Stone’s bad-assery. One can clearly see Mertz’s background with Pendleton thanks to lines like “Yeah, Stone was something.” Much of it is so similar to material in Pendleton’s Executioner novels that it could be an excerpt. But the Pendleton vibe is strong, especially in random moments where Mertz will describe the green hell of the jungle, or when he will focus on Stone’s deadfast resolve to see his mission through, even if he dies in the attempt.

Monday, June 30, 2014

Stone: MIA Hunter


Stone: MIA Hunter, by Jack Buchanan
February, 1987  Jove Books

Some online booksellers mistakenly list this installment of the MIA Hunter series as the first volume, but in fact it falls between the sixth and seventh volumes. Also, this is a double-length tale, coming in at 261 pages, all courtesy our old friend Chet Cunningham, who here turns in his second and final contribution to the series. Rather than filling all those pages with one epic plot, Cunningham instead tells four separate storylines, but even so Stone: MIA Hunter happens to be one of my favorite volumes yet.

The first storyline opens with Mark Stone and his companions Hog Wiley and Terrance Loughlin busting a few POWs out of a camp in ‘Nam; this is a taut, action-packed sequence. Cunningham (who names one of the POWs after himself) gives most narrative time to Commander Farley Anderson, who can’t believe he’s finally free, let alone that it’s 1987. As the group struggles across jungle terrain, desperate to get over the border, they are attacked by unseen gunmen, who mercilessly take out Stone’s Laotian guides. This turns out to be minions of CIA goon Alan Coleman, the series’ recurring villain; he arrives via helicopter and demands Stone and the POWs get onboard.

This leads to the second storyline, as Stone, Hog, and Loughlin are arraigned in Federal court in Los Angeles on trumped-up charges. As a result Stone’s private investigator license is stripped (bet you forgot that’s his day job, didn’t you??) and it looks like the three of them may do some serious time. Hog and Louglin heed Stone’s advice and take off. Stone meanwhile spends some quality time with his girlfriend, Carol Jenner, who we are informed now lives in DC, working for the Defense Department. Funny, because the last we saw her, back in #3: Hanoi Deathgrip, she was on the run from various government agencies!

Stone is informed that this court deal could take a few weeks. Do you think he just takes it easy for a while? Hell, no – Mark Stone is a Man Of Action. Responding to a letter he receives from the widow of an old ‘Nam buddy, Stone checks out the man’s son, Jose Ortega, Jr, and learns all about the Chicano gangs in this area and the drug-running Mexican mob that employs them. In a sequence that comes off like a flashback to Cunningham’s earlier Penetrator work, Stone suits up in black and launches a hard probe on a PCP factory in the desert outside LA.

This whole part is like nothing before in the series, and in fact seems to point in the direction the series would eventually go, with Stone even realizing that someday he might need to branch out from his MIA rescuing efforts and focus on situations closer to home. Anyway he kills a whole bunch of Mexican goons, and takes on El Lobo, the leader of the gang. Here in El Lobo’s hidden crypt Stone discovers hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug money, and he gnashes his teeth over what to do with all of that cash. But before he can decide, the next storyline comes along.

Going home, Stone finds a dying man in his garage. The dude mutters something about a “Rosalyn” still being alive, and then croaks. Stone meanwhile experiences a lengthy flashback to early 1974. We learn here that Stone, in the final days of the Vietnam War, was in love with an Army nurse named Rosalyn James and that the two planned to get married. (It goes without saying of course that we’ve never heard of her before!) Strangely, Cunningham writes this whole sequence like it’s occuring in 1968 or something, with the war raging in full force, but in reality 1974 was in the waning days, as the US was slowly pulling out its forces. 

Anyway, Rosalyn was a medevac nurse, and one night while Stone was on some in-country mission, she took a last-second job for some other nurse, and her helicopter came under heavy fire. Rosalyn ended up falling out of the ‘copter, which later crashed, everyone onboard burnt to a crisp; Rosalyn was listed as KIA. However she survived her fall, and was found by a Vietnamese soldier who ended up selling her to a sadist who goes by the name “the General;” a powerful Laotian warlord who rules a clifftop fortress on the China-Laos border.

Stone only eventually pieces this together. Using his girlfriend Carol’s government resources he discovers that the dead man in his garage was a CIA agent who worked the Southeast Asia field. Also, given that Stone has only ever known one “Rosalyn,” he quickly deduces that she must be the woman the dying man said was still alive! From this leap of logic Stone, who discovers the charges against him have been thrown out of court, jumps right back into MIA Hunter mode; now he just has to track down Hog and Loughlin, who he discovers have taken a job in El Salvador.

This is the next storyline – Cunningham here delivers a sequence reminiscent of a war novel, as Stone ventures down to South America and hooks up with his two pals, who have been training government soldiers to fight against the insurrectionists. This bit is a little plodding and really has nothing to do with anything, but it does lead up to a climax in which Stone, in pure ‘80s action hero mode, hops on a dirt bike and fires LAW rockets while driving it. And judging from the series cover paintings, Stone even wears an ‘80s-mandatory headband, so the picture is complete.

Finally we get to the last storyline, which happens to be the one promised on the back cover. Stone and pals head for Thailand, where they learn more about the General’s fortress. It’s on a 500-foot cliff which can only be scaled by “bucket elevators,” and it’s guarded by a few hundred elite guards. Also, the General makes his money through the poppy fields beneath his fortress, from which he produces heroin. After a lot of worry over how few supplies they can carry, they find an American merc who flies a helicopter that can fly them and all their gear the few hundred miles to the China-Laos border.

Cunningham occasionally cuts over to Rosalyn’s viewpoint, so we can see how her life has gone over the past thirteen years. She runs a clinic in the fortress, where she lives in a “gilded cage” of three opulent rooms. The General has treated her kindly, except for the time she discovered he was a heroin manufacturer; the General escorted her down to the dungeon for a view of his torture chamber, and Rosalyn complained no more. However the General only occasionally “visits” her now, and Rosalyn has taken a lover, a young soldier named Lu Fang who is part of a group that plans to overthrow the General.

Weaving the various plots together in a taut finale, Cunningham delivers an ongoing action scene in which Stone and companions raid the fortress shortly after the doomed rebellion. He even stays true to the pulpy tone with Rosalyn hooked up to the rack in the General’s dungeon and Stone coming to her rescue in the nick of time. The fight with the General plays more on the villain’s weasely nature, so there’s none of the superhuman figtihng of say #4: Mountain Massacre, however Cunningham does drop the ball here because toward the beginning we’re informed that the General likes to dress in ancient Chinese armor and carry around ancient weapons, but our author apparently forgets all of that when the General finally appears.

The MIA Hunter series has never had much continuity, but I’m hoping this installment has repercussions on later volumes. For after a memorable final confrontation with the General in his torture chamber, Stone and Rosalyn (who survives, much to my surprise) spend some quality time together, and the next day escape the fortress. Here though they are attacked by ground forces – only to be saved by the last-second appearance of a Huey helicopter, with Carol Jenner manning a machine gun and blowing everyone away. At first I thought she was going to turn out to be some deep-cover operative, but Cunningham instead has it that Stone’s girlfriend used her smarts to figure out where Stone would be, and hired a helicopter to come rescue him and etc.

Anyway, Stone: MIA Hunter ends with Mark stone in the center of a veritable love triangle, choppering out of Laos with his one-time fiance, having been saved by his current girlfriend. Cunningham doesn’t provide a clue which way it might go, though he does seem to indicate that Stone decides Rosayln is the one for him. I’d love to say we’ll find out in the next volume, but I’m not holding my breath.

Monday, October 21, 2013

An Interview with Stephen Mertz


A big thanks to Stephen Mertz for doing this interview – Stephen should need no introduction, as he’s had a huge impact on the men’s adventure genre over the years. In this interview he discusses his early days working with Don Pendleton, his years with Gold Eagle, the creation of the MIA Hunter series and others…and the promising tidbit that there might be more Mark Stone adventures on the way!


Tell us about yourself – how did you get into writing, and what were you doing before?

I was born a writer. Started scribbling stories when I was 13 and never stopped. Broke away from the 9-to-5 day job world 40 years ago and have been living by my wits on back roads ever since. I’m a musician, so I’ve fronted blues bands. Managed a resort for a summer, owned a secondhand bookshop in a small mountain town and ran a used record shop in a big city. Spent much of the ‘70s and ‘80s on the road just to see what was around the next bend. Settled in Arizona. Always writing.

What was your first published work?

First pro sale was a short story in 1975. First novel was Some Die Hard, four years later. A private eye story. Rock Dugan's first and only appearance. Funny how many writers of my generation (Reasoner, Lansdale, Randisi, Shiner, etc) first emerged as private eye writers in the tradition handed down from Hammett, Chandler and Spillane. There's just something about that sort of poetic hardboiled stuff that got us, I guess. If you've never read Spillane, you must sample One Lonely Night; the first chapter of that one makes for a brilliant noir short story, and the novel itself vividly shows the literary (?!) roots of action/adventure.

How did you become involved with working with Don Pendleton?

I wrote Don a fan letter out of the blue after discovering the Executioner series in 1973. I received in return a most gracious and down to earth letter that invited a response. I revealed that I was an aspiring writer and Don offered to read the manuscript I was working on, which became Some Die Hard. He kept it for about a month, and then sent back a 6-page single-spaced critique, pointing out trouble areas in character, plot and pacing, and suggestions on how to remedy its considerable shortcomings. When the book appeared, I dedicated it to Don and in fact used a couple of his “suggestions” word-for-word.

What was the working relationship like with Don – what was an average day like working with him?

At first, not long after we connected, Don was looking for someone to help him with his 4-book-per year production schedule, which he found daunting. Don was a craftsman, not a human word machine, and in retrospect there seems in his career to be periods of high productivity and then times when he had to cool down and step back; of course, contractual deadlines have no respect for such artistic foibles. Don paid me to write a draft of Colorado Kill Zone to the best of my then-ability. I was still living in Denver at the time. When the job was done, he dutifully paid me, and then threw away everything I’d written and rewrote an entirely new novel, which is the one that was published, naturally. My only contribution to that book is its first sentence.

A few years later I was on one of my open-ended road trips and took Don up on his invitation to visit and hang out for a spell at Pendle Hill, his home in the rolling hills of Brown Country, Indiana. We got to know each other and became friends. That trip also later took me to Bakersfield, California (I did say those trips were open-ended), where Don had requested that I meet up with Mike Newton, another Bolan fan who had made contact with Don. Mike and I hit it off and not long after that, Don invited us both to resettle in Brown County where the plan was to produce Executioner novels as a team for Pinnacle. Mike and I plotted and wrote a draft of Cleveland Pipeline. We’d have weekly story conferences with Don, then Mike would go and write these scenes and I’d go write those scenes. Don then took what we’d written for the Cleveland book, used it as an outline, holed up in the A-frame he used for an office on Pendle Hill and rewrote the book word-for-word in about a week.

That was the coldest winter in Indiana since God was born, so come the first sign of spring, Mertz hightailed it back out west. Mike stayed on to write Arizona Ambush and Tennessee Smash, after which Don regained his stride and, on his own, wrote the remainder of the Pinnacle Executioner series.

What can you tell us about Don Pendleton the man? I’ve often read that he would “act out” scenes from his manuscripts in an effort to ensure realism; is this true?

Naw, that’s PR guff. He might have paced off positions to block out an action scene now and then, but most writers do that. I’ve heard the term Renaissance man bandied about often but hands down, Don Pendleton is the only true Renaissance man I ever knew. He was my mentor. A warm Arkansas drawl and chuckle offset eyes that glinted with steely Bolan resolve. A thinker of the first magnitude; a dynamic man, embodying all that word implies. A disciplined free spirit who could discuss Copernicus or the craft of writing and marketing commercial fiction with equal ease and enthusiasm. WWII and Korean War veteran, musician, philosopher, metaphysician, lover of life in all its many manifestations, and a gifted writer who created a genre, Don Pendleton was one hell of a guy. Anyone interested in Don or in his work will learn much about both from his book on writing, The Metaphysics of the Novel.

How did you become involved with Gold Eagle?

Don hooked me up with Harlequin’s Bolan program on the ground floor. I wrote 12 Bolan novels and one Mack Bolan short story.

What was it like, working with Gold Eagle?

It was fun at first. In the beginning Gold Eagle was concerned with sustaining the readership Don had built up to that time and so I saw myself in a sort of caretaker status, trying to preserve what Don had created. I worked hard on those Bolan books and one of them, Day of Mourning, is still ranked by the hardcore fans at mackbolan.com as one of the top ten Bolan novels ever written (over the hundreds of other titles), thirty years after I wrote it.

It’s my understanding that Sylvester Stallone bought the rights to The Executioner #43: Return to Vietnam (July, 1982), which you wrote. Three years later, Rambo: First Blood Part II came out, bearing a similar storyline of Rambo freeing American POWs in Vietnam, yet you and Gold Eagle were not credited. Do you have anymore information on this situation, and did you ever hear what drew Stallone to this particular volume of the series?

Ahem, its quality, I would presume. At the time, Stallone owned screen rights to the entire series. At first everyone thought it was because he was going to make a Bolan movie but as it turned out, he just didn’t want anyone else making a Bolan movie that would compete with his Rambo interpretation; screen rights also allowed him to dip into the GE novels for source material. Given my respect for the guy, and especially that second Rambo film which I feel is the best of the movies, I’ve always been proud that they chose one of my novels to draw from.

I’ve heard that when Don Pendleton was having trouble with Gold Eagle, you came to his defense. Could you shed some light on this situation, and what all was going on?

I’m no lawyer and you’re talking 30 years ago but off the top of my head, it went like this. When Don sold the Bolan franchise to Gold Eagle, apparently the contract included a non-competition clause; i.e., Don could not write action adventure novels for anyone else. Well, Don was a writer and writers write, so sometime in the mid 1980s, his agent placed the Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective series with a competing publisher. The pinheads at Harlequin decided this was a breech of the non-competition clause and took Don to court. In truth, for anyone out there who hasn’t read one, the Ashton Ford novels are paranormal New Age allegories involving flying saucers, time travel, metaphysics, and stuff like that. There aren’t even action scenes in the books! But as I recall it, GE’s position was that there are only two types of fiction, romance and adventure, and since the Ford books weren’t romance novels, they were obviously adventure novels and therefore violated the terms of the contract. It was a greedy, nasty thing for a publisher to do. They were basically trying to keep Don from ever writing and selling again. Anyway, he needed a wingman and I was privileged to join the team. I flew back to NYC and testified in court as to the specific elements of action adventure, which clearly did not apply to the Ashton Ford books. Long story short, Don won what was essentially a nuisance suit. Naturally, my participation lowered the curtain on my work for GE but I was glad to go. I’m a restless sort. I’d gone into the program promising myself that I’d write no more than ten of the things and I ended up writing twelve because the money was good. In those days, Mack Bolan authors received a cut of the royalties, unlike today. But I’d grown bored being someone else’s product.

Please share some insight into the origins of the MIA Hunter series. It was always my assumption that it was intended to capitalize on the “POW-rescue” aspect of First Blood Part II, but it would seem that the series was already planned and being written a year or so before that film even came out.

That Bolan novel, Return to Vietnam, pretty much knocked people out when it first appeared. The book was a tremendous success and made several trade bestseller lists. An editor at Berkley saw the potential and asked me to sketch the MIA concept as the basis for a series. They liked Mark Stone, Terrance Loughlin and Hog Wiley, and so The MIA Hunter was born. By the way, those books ended up resonating with a broad audience of readers beyond the general men’s series readership. In the 1980s, there was a genuine concern among many that there were living American MIA/POWs left behind after the end of the Vietnam War. Anecdotal evidence kept filtering out that we’d left men behind who were still alive, though nothing ever materialized to the best of my knowledge. You can still see the black MIA/POW flags flying.

MIA Hunter wrapped up right around the time the genre was dying so ignobly, so I'm curious if Mark Stone's adventures ended or if you got word from the publisher that the series was over and thus never wrote a final volume?

It was the ever-changing marketplace what done in the original MIA Hunter series. This is why I’m so jazzed about the whole ebook revival of Mark Stone. He will remain at the age when he’s in his physical prime, in the time honored tradition of Mack Bolan, Mike Shayne, etc.

While The MIA Hunter was being published you were also writing the Cody’s Army series, correct? What was the background on that series?

That would be John Cody, honcho of a badass commando unit operating with White House sanction; Cody’s men are Richard Caine the Brit and big Rufe Murphy. Those boys kicked it for several books but they never did catch on like The MIA Hunter. I wrote the Cody books as “Jim Case,” and they’re all available under that name as ebooks. Cody’s my second string guy; good, but he’s no Mark Stone. With both series, I brought in co-writers to help when the deadline grind got to be, well, too much of a grind; pretty much for the same reason that Don had originally brought me into the fold. I’ve always admired, and sometimes envied, those prolific writers who seem to effortlessly turn out a dozen or more books every year, but I’ve never been able to do that. For a couple of years there I was as much a book packager as I was a writer. I was buying time, using income from the series work to subsidize development of my first “real” novel, Blood Red Sun (i.e., the first hardcover published under my own name).

What other series fiction did you work on in the ‘80s and ‘90s?

There was a two-book Vietnam deal called The Tunnel Rats, a couple of westerns in the Trailsman series, some ghost work that I can’t cop to. Contract writing paid the bills and, as I say, subsidized more ambitious, less formula-bound work efforts.

What led you to make the decision to leave series fiction/ghostwriting and to write and publish under your own name?

I hooked up with Writers Digest Magazine as an instructor in their on-line writers’ workshop program, which has really been rewarding at several levels. I’m able to share what I know about the craft with new writers, and the income that provides freed me up to get off the series treadmill. I now write mostly without those looming deadlines. This strategy has hardly made me a brand name author, but I have managed to sell everything I’ve written and for the most part I’ve been published to good reviews, so I’ll take that. Not that I’ve in any way lost my affection for pulp fiction. Since leaving the series field I’ve written a couple of short stories that are pure pulp. I mean, does it get any pulpier than “The Lizard Men of Blood River?” With my own work, the intent is to retain the vigor and immediacy of pulp fiction while delivering more than formula cliché in terms of character and plot.

Which of your own novels, both standalone and series, stand out in your own mind, and why?

The Castro Directive, my latest, is available from Crossroad Press in paper and ebook format. I suspect most writers of my generation have a Kennedy book in them and this is mine. It’s about the Bay of Pigs. A reviewer called it, “a kick-ass history lesson.” I like the sound of that. Of the others, Hank & Muddy comes straight from the heart: Hank Williams and Muddy Waters bump into each other one August night in Shreveport in 1952. Misadventures ensue. I guess that’s my favorite so far. Two others that did pretty much what I wanted them to would be Blood Red Sun, a WWII thriller, and Night Wind, a novel of dark suspense. Of the series work, an MIA Hunter novel, L.A. Gang War, is the best.

What projects are you currently working on?

Writing-wise, I’ve just finished a novel about Jimi Hendrix. As for the writing business, I’m busy promoting The Castro Directive and the resurgence of interest in the MIA Hunter, thanks to Crossroad Press republishing the series as ebooks (except for the three I wrote with Joe R. Lansdale, which will be published together as an omnibus from Subterranean Press). I’m enthused about the vibrancy of the ebook market and if the current demand keeps up, there will be new Mark Stone adventures to come. Stay tuned for details…

Thursday, April 11, 2013

MIA Hunter #6: Blood Storm


MIA Hunter #6: Blood Storm, by Jack Buchanan
October, 1986  Jove Books

I’m really taking a trip down memory lane this time – I remember reading this installment of the MIA Hunter series shortly after it was published. In fact I have a vivid memory of watching my Commando VHS and, still in need of an action fix, heading into my bedroom to read this book! Other than that I have no memory of Blood Storm, whether I enjoyed it or not, but I can say with this reading I thought it was very good, definitely on par with the rest of the series.

But the biggest news here is that recently I’ve gotten in touch with Stephen Mertz, a genuinely great guy who edited the MIA Hunter series and wrote most of the later installments. Stephen has informed me who wrote each volume of this series, something I don’t believe has previously been known…in fact Stephen told me he had to dig through his files to find out, as even he wasn’t sure!

Thanks to Stephen we now know that William Fieldhouse wrote this installment. And an even bigger thanks to Stephen for letting me know that it was actually Fieldhouse himself who wrote the letter from Gar Wilson I received so long ago – Stephen told me that he recently spoke to Fieldhouse about it, and Fieldhouse remembered writing the letter to me!

William Fieldhouse is most known for writing the majority of the Phoenix Force series, and as “Gar Wilson” he was my favorite writer when I was a kid. But I hadn’t read a Fieldhouse novel since then, so I was anxious to see how I’d enjoy Blood Storm this time around. But then, Fieldhouse was the guy who got me into the men’s adventure genre in the first place, thanks to the 18th Phoenix Force novel, Night of the Thuggee, which I discovered sometime in late October 1985 at a Waldenbooks store. So I knew I’d at least find something here to enjoy.

I’m not sure if it’s due to Stephen Mertz’s behind the scenes editing, but Fieldhouse’s novel actually reads almost exactly like the previous installments. I’ve read six of these MIA Hunter novels so far, and one could easily be fooled into believing there was a real “Jack Buchanan” behind the work, as none of the volumes have been much different from one another so far as the narrative goes. Only in the minor details can you notice a difference: for one, there’s a bit more gun-porn here, likely thanks to Fieldhouse’s long tenure at Gold Eagle, and for another Fieldhouse is the first of any of these “Jack Buchanans” to give Terrance Loughlin a personality!

The plot of course follows the series template: Mark “MIA Hunter” Stone gets wind of yet another group of American soldiers held prisoner, this time in Laos. Stone gets his information from a group of Laotian freedom fighters and quickly puts together a team. In the first instance of continuity yet in this series, we learn that Hog Wiley was so injured in the previous volume that he’s unable to go on this mission. Stone settles upon an unruly replacement named Leo Gorman, an American merc who allegedly once had ties with an opium kingpin here in Laos – an opium kingpin who supposedly wants Gorman dead.

Gorman is a very entertaining character, foul-mouthed and prone to violent outbursts. He basically steals the novel from Stone and Loughlin, but the problem arises that Stone would have to be out of his mind to hire such an unstable character. Stone keeps giving the lame reasoning that they need a seasoned soldier on this mission and Gorman, despite his rampages, can keep a cool head in a firefight. This is proven when the trio are attacked by masked gunmen mere moments after their first meeting with Gorman, Fieldhouse providing a running battle that is only the first of many. But when Gorman and Loughlin get in a huge fistfight themselves, you’d think Stone would wise up and find some other merc for the job.

Blood Storm has a lot more going on than previous volumes. Fieldhouse runs two subplots in addition to the main one, gradually bringing them all together. In the first subplot a Thailand-based detachment of CIA operatives determine to finally track down Stone and bring him to justice. And in the second Gorman’s old opium kingpin boss discovers that Gorman is coming into Thailand – Gorman’s plan is to sell out Stone so as to get back in the kingpin’s good graces – and plans to kill Gorman and then capture Stone and his team, to ransom them to the government. In fact this last subplot takes up most of the novel, with the actual POW rescue occurring midway through and being a fairly easy task for Stone et al.

The majority of the second half of Blood Storm sees Stone himself captured – Gorman’s old kingpin boss ambushes them in the jungle and takes them all prisoner. Here the novel appropriates a sort of tortune porn vibe, with several unsettling scenes of the kingpin taking sick pleasure in torturing a bound Stone, beating his back with bamboo sticks, burning his toes and fingers, etc. Meanwhile an old friend comes for Stone, resulting in a total deus ex machina rescue, an action scene that ends with yet another martial arts battle, this one between Stone and the kingpin. It really goes on for quite a while.

As mentioned Fieldhouse brings more gun-porn to the series; a variety of firearms are named off, with manufacture and ballistics detail provided. Also there’s a huge amount of martial arts included – there’s almost as much kung-fu fighting in Blood Storm as the average volume of Mace. Stephen Mertz has told me that Fieldhouse was part of a “Rosenberger circle” of writers, and I can easily see that here, as the amount of hand-to-hand fighting is almost as overwhelming as the amount of gun fights. Luckily Fieldhouse's action scenes are a whole lot more entertaining than Rosenberger's. And he doesn’t shy on the gore, with plenty of exploding guts and brains.

In fact I was impressed with how much story Fieldhouse was able to put in here despite the wealth of action sequences. He brings to life the many characters and gives each of them colorful dialog – the reader will note that the heroes have developed a sudden tendency to curse this time around. (Speaking of profanity, there’s a profane amount of spelling and grammatical errors in this book!) Fieldhouse also delivers a few reversals and surprises, in particular the appearance of a particular character just in the nick of time.

But despite the plethora of action scenes, Blood Storm somehow doesn’t come off like an endless battle sequence, and overall the novel is an enjoyable read. In fact this turned out to be my favorite volume of the series since #3: Hanoi Deathgrip, but unfortunately this was the only installment Fieldhouse wrote.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

MIA Hunter #5: Exodus From Hell


MIA Hunter #5: Exodus From Hell, by Jack Buchanan
February, 1986 Jove books

The MIA Hunter series gets another shot in the arm with its latest version of “Jack Buchanan,” who turns out to be none other than our old friend Chet Cunningham of the Penetrator series. Cunningham’s prose here is a little more polished than that earlier series, but make no mistake there’s still his patented sadism and characters who do bizarre things with little explanation.

As I’ve mentioned before this series is very repetitive. Each novel is basically the same as the one that came before, only the minor details are different. And what with the repetitive story angle and the revolving cast of journeyman ghostwriters (most of whom only stuck around for two novels or so), there’s no continuity or any sense of a building narrative. It’s just Mark “MIA Hunter” Stone once again sneaking into ‘Nam to break out some prisoners of war, along with a team of natives and his ersthwhile partners Hog Wiley and Terrance McLoughlin.

Actually that’s not fully true. This time Stone goes into Cambodia, not Vietnam. Already then the novel is worlds different from its predecessors. Okay, enough sarcasm. The country-change doesn’t make much difference at all. What’s funny though is that Stone and his team have freed the POWs within the first forty pages of the novel; Exodus From Hell is really about Stone and his team’s long journey back through Cambodia as they try to avoid enemy patrols, pick up a missionary (who is of course gorgeous) and her flock of orphans, and even encounter pygmies.

The reason they have to hoof it through Cambodia is because Stone’s helicopter is destroyed after they free the POWs. Speaking of which it’s here that Cunningham gets to unleash his trademark sadism, as one of the prisoners, Patterson, relishes the opportunity to mess up the camp commander pretty royally, basically butchering the guy. But after this pretty great opening scene the novel settles into more of an adventure-fiction flair, with the team trying to survive the elements.

Cunningham also indulges in his other trademark, the infrequent stream-of-consciousness material where he can jump into a character’s mind and go from topics A to Z in the course of a single sentence. He does so here with Patterson, who as we meet him is strung up in the camp for some minor infraction; he does so again later in the novel with Hillburton, the other freed POW, one who is close to losing his sanity.

Another constant with this series is the endless onslaught of action. Exodus From Hell is no exception. It starts off pretty well, with the expected skirmish as Stone frees the prisoners and then makes his escape, but gradually the book wears you down with nonstop scenes of Stone et al bumping into some Camodian (or Vietnamese) patrol and getting into yet another firefight. Stone by the way uses an SPAS-12 combat shotgun this time, newly introduced by Cunningham, as in the past Stone basically stuck with a CAR-15. However Cunningham plays it conservative with the many action scenes, not dwelling on the violence and gore as he did in say Bloody Boston.

One of the many goofy charms of Cunningham’s entries in the Penetrator series was hero Mark Hardin’s frequent encounters with nubile women, most of whom would throw themselves into his arms with almost a reckless abandon. It actually happens here as well, with Stone scoring with that missionary gal, an actual virgin named Mary Eve who has taught orphans in Cambodia for the past decade. The scene where she gives herself to Stone – while the rest of the team is apparently just a few feet away – is especially chuckle-inducing, mostly because it’s just so hamfisted and hard to believe. But at least Cunningham put some sex in the book, a rarity in the sterile, gung-ho world of ‘80s men’s adventure novels.

There’s a definite air of desperation as Stone and his men realize they’re up shit creek without a paddle. Cunningham works some tension into the narrative as they begin the dangerous journey back the way they came, and along the way they take a lot of damage. Loughlin gets hurt early on, but since he’s more cipher than man you quickly forget about it. But Hog really gets hurt, to such a point that they have to construct a rig to carry his massive frame – all of which adds to the futility of their plight.

The action scenes, while too frequent, are nevertheless well done, with Stone and team using their better equipment and training to take on much larger forces. Cunningham also jumps often into the POVs of the native guides, in particular Sen, a Cambodian woman who serves as interpreter before Mary Eve arrives on the scene. (Another hallmark of Cunningham’s is the sudden dropping of characters with no warning or reunion, as if he forgets about them before finishing the manuscript; Sen just drops out of the tale and we keep waiting for her to return but she never does.)

I think Cunningham also wrote Stone: MIA Hunter, ie the unnumbered volume of the series that was published after volume #6, but I’m not sure. Who all served as “Jack Buchanan” is something of a mystery, and it would be great if series honcho Stephen Mertz could someday shed light on it.