Showing posts with label Marksman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marksman. Show all posts

Monday, November 7, 2022

New Book Listed At Tocsin Press

 
FYI a new book’s been listed at Tocsin Press – The Triggerman: Brains For Brunch, by one Bruno Scarpetta. Fans of The Sharpshooter will revel in this action and sex-packed tale in which The Triggerman, Johnny LaRock, blasts his way through 1970s New York in his never-ending quest to shed Mafia blood. 

Curiously, “The Triggerman” was the name of the pseudo-Sharpshooter in Len Levinson’s The Last Buffoon. Even more curiously, Len’s Triggerman character was named Johnny Ripelli, and we’re informed in Brains For Brunch that Johnny LaRock’s real name is…Johnny Ripelli. Very curious indeed! 

(Just to clarify, Brains For Brunch was not written by Len Levinson!!) 

So if you like The SharpshooterThe Marksman, or even Bronson: Blind Rage, I think you’ll really dig The Triggerman: Brains For Brunch

And let’s not forget the other books currently available at Tocsin Press… 


The Undertaker #1: Death Transition, one of the best books I read this year – and with its funeral parlor shenanigans, the perfect post-Halloween reading. 


The Undertaker #2: Black Lives Murder, which was another of the best books I read this year – I mean if you get the first one you should get this one, too! 


The most sleazy and grimy book at Tocsin (so far!), Super Cop Joe Blitz: The Psycho Killers is also great Halloween-time reading, what with its rapist-freak zombies… 


And hey, if you like thigh-boot wearing Nazi She-Devil vixens, and you like John Eagle Expeditor, then you’ll certainly enjoy John Falcon Infiltrator: The Hollow Earth

And like the old Pinnacle house ads said, there’s more to come…

Thursday, July 28, 2022

Murder Machine (The Marksman #20)


Murder Machine, by Frank Scarpetta
No month stated, 1975  Belmont Tower 

Russell Smith turns in another volume of The Marksman that’s just as crazed as his others, with the added bonus that Murder Machine features what I’m sure is some intentional in-jokery, as well as a self-awareness that’s very unique for the series. My assumption is by this point the manuscripts Smith had written the year before were coming out in paperback, and he saw how editor Peter McCurtin was butchering them, changing them wily-nily into Sharpshooter novels, and for this book Smith decided to hell with it – he was just going to have some fun. 

Lynn Munroe apty summarizes Murder Machine as a “a schizoid read,” but he also detects the hand of fellow series ghostwriter George Harmon Smith in the work. I personally didn’t detect Harmon Smith’s style at all – to me his style is very noticeable, a sort of sub-John Gardner, with very literate prose but a tendency to overdescribe the most mundane of actions. See for example #18: Icepick In The Spine, which was certainly the work of George Harmon Smith. Murder Machine on the other hand has the stamp of the other Smith on the series: Russell, with the same loosey-goosey approach to plot, a bunch of lowlife loudmouth Mafioso who talk like rejected Jerky Boys characters, and a “hero” who comes off like a monster. I mean Russell Smith’s unique style is evident throughout the book, like for example: 


This excerpt, while displaying Russell Smith’s distinctive style, also demonstrates another new element with this volume: a constant reminder that Philip “The Marksman” Magellan will keep killing Mafia until he himself is dead. Again, I get the impression that, given that we’re already on the twentieth volume of the series, someone at Belmont Tower must’ve felt a reinforcement of Magellan’s motive was in order. There are frequent parts in Murder Machine where Magellan will resolve himself to the destruction of the Mafia, given their murder of his wife and son – an event which happened, of course, in the first volume of a different series: The Assassin

But speaking of how Philip Magellan started life as Robert Briganti in another series, and then turned into “Johnny Rock” for the Marksman manuscripts McCurtin arbitrarily turned into Sharpshooter installments, this brings us to the intentional in-jokery I mentioned above. I strongly suspect that, by the time he was writing Murder Machine, Russell Smith saw that McCurtin was publishing his Marksman manuscripts as a completely different series – see for example The Sharpshooter #2 and The Sharpshooter #3. I say this due to nothing more than an otherwise random comment early in the book. When the mobsters in New York start freaking out that Magellan’s in town, one of them says, “You remember that Sharpshooter guy from last year? Magellan’s his name?” 

Now, never in a Marksman novel has Philip Magellan ever been incorrectly identified as “Johnny Rock.” It’s only in The Sharpshooter where the “Magellan” goofs appear, or where Rock, the Sharpshooter, is incorrectly referred to as “The Marksman.” Because, of course, those novels started life as Marksman manuscripts, and poor copyediting resulted in a mish-mash of protagonist names. But after this early “Sharpshooter” mention, Magellan is consistently referred to as “The Marksman,” even in the narrative. Magellan also frequently thinks of himself as “The Marksman,” ie “the luck of The Marksman was with him” and etc, as if Smith were doubling down on the fact that he was writing a Marksman novel, but with that sole “Sharpshooter guy” bit he was acknowledging his awareness of the situation. 

There’s even more subtle in-jokery in Murder Machine: there are characters named Frank and Peter, ie “Frank Scarpetta” and “Peter McCurtin.” But I think the biggest indication here that Russell Smith was in on the whole twisted joke is that Murder Machine shows the first signs of self-awareness in the series. Another minor Mafia stooge later in the book goes over Magellan’s modus operandi, noting how the Marksman generally just shows up in a city, with no particular purpose, but somehow gets involved with the Mafia – usually due to their own stupidity – and then Magellan doesn’t leave town until he’s killed everyone. In other words, the “plot” of every single Russell Smith installment. The stooge basically implies that Magellan is a supernatural force who gets by on luck, something Magellan himself realizes. Bonus note – the stooge apparently tangled with Magellan “a year ago” (and lost an eye in the fight), in “New Brunswick,” a reference to the earlier Russell Smith entry #14: Kill!

Another new element in Murder Machine is the sudden focus on sleazy sex. Russell Smith has turned in some sleaze in prior installments, but this time it’s really over the top. Lynn Munroe speculates that this material is “grafted in from some porn novel,” but again it is similar to the sleaze material in previous Smith installments. Personally I just thought it was a quick (and dirty) way Smith figured he could meet his word count. Because of all the Smith books I’ve read, Murder Machine most comes off like a first draft that was cranked out over a single weekend, the author fueled by a steady stream of booze and amphetimines. Again this could be more indication of a “who gives a shit?” sentiment, given Smith’s recent awareness that his manuscripts were being butchered during publication. 

And just to clarify, this is all my impression – Lynn Munroe could be entirely correct that Murder Machine is a collaboration between the two Smiths, and the sleaze stuff is indeed grafted in from a different novel. Lynn performed a herculean task of figuring out the development of this series, and who wrote what volumes. To me though it just seemed like every other volume of Russell Smith’s I’ve read, with none of the literary flourishes of GH Smith. 

Well anyway, there’s of course no pickup from the previous volume, which was written by a different author. Curiously there seems to be a pickup from an earlier Smith installment, possibly #15: Die Killer Die!, as when we meet Magellan he’s flying back to the US, returning from a trip to France. That was the most recent volume of the series Russell Smith wrote, so it seems likely that Murder Machine picks up after it. As I’ve written before, Russell Smith’s books – from both series – could be excised into their own separate series, with even a bit of continuity linking them. Otherwise though there’s no plot per se, and Murder Machine is a lift of every other Russell Smith installment, following that same setup mentioned above: Magellan goes to New York, literally bumps into a Mafia thug on the street, and then starts killing them all off, ultimately wiping out a heroin pipeline. 

But Magellan’s practically a supporting character. As with most Russell Smith installments, there’s a big focus on one-off characters, all of them mobsters. There’s also a convoluted subplot about a triple-cross involving a bank robbery, heroin, and bombs. It’s hard to keep up with all this because these characters all talk the same and there’s a lot of flashbacks that jumble up the forward momentum. Also it soon becomes clear that the author himself is not paying attention to his own plot. As usual though Magellan has nothing to do with any of this, but he acts almost like a divine force in how he just screws up all the carefully-laid plans…without even expressly planning to. 

The central characters here would be Frank Savago, Manny Weintraub, and Leah Castellano – who per Lynn’s note is abruptly referred to as "Lily” for several pages later in the book, demonstrating how sloppily it was written and edited. There are a ton of run-on sentences and typos throughout, but there’s also an undeniable energy; I mean just look at the excerpt above. Oh and we learn this time that Magellan has spent “years” searching for a mysterious figure in the Mafia – indeed, a figure whose legend almost matches that of the Marskman’s: a shadowy figure called “Mister Lee.” But Smith doesn’t even bother to play out the mystery because it’s quickly clear who “Mister” Lee really is. 

Now let’s take a look at the sleaze. It runs rampant in the novel, and again could be evidence of some in-jokery. For one, there’s Manny Weintraub, aka “Manny Wein,” an apparently older and heavyset Jewish mobster who has a young hotstuff wife…who, in every scene, is giving Manny a blowjob. Even in the parts where Manny is with other characters, he’ll be thinking about his wife’s blowjobs. Oh and meanwhile we’re informed that while she is performing her oral duties, the wife herself is being orally pleased by some naked woman. All of them sitting on a big round motorized leather couch Manny has specifically purchased for sex. Actually oral sex is the most frequently mentioned topic here, particularly on the female end of the spectrum; there’s a several-page sequence where Leah has hot lesbian sex with her live-in “winsome Negress” maid (who in true ‘70s fashion smokes a joint before the festivities). 

Russell Smith takes us into a whole different world of sleaze when Leah indulges in a bit of necrophilia. Per that triple-cross mentioned above, Leah finds herself in possession of a ton of money and heroin, and she buries it all in the cellar of a desolate mansion upstate. Then she murders the brawny stooge she’s used to do all the labor…ahd has sex with his corpse: 



Magellan himself even gets laid this time, a rare event to be sure, but it happens off-page. It’s courtesy an Asian hooker Magellan gets in his hotel (as with every other Russell Smith installment, the majority of the tale features Magellan checking into and out of various hotels)…who, apropos of nothing, tries to lift Magellan’s wallet the next morning. But Magellan is only pretending to sleep, and catches her in the act. He drugs her with his usual assortment of syringes, shaves her head and “pubic mound,” and then even more randomly tapes her “from ankles to thighs” with adhesive tape, “like a mummy,” and tosses her uncoscious form in the elevator and sends it to the lobby! Just another ultra-bizarre scene of random sadism, but that’s what we expect from Russell Smith. Oh and Magellan secretly watches the lez action with Leah later in the book, getting super turned on: “It was an incredible orgy scene Magellan would not soon forget. He’d not seen anything like it in his life!” 

As ever Magellan totes around his “artilery case.” For the first time ever (I believe), we’re given a list of its contents: 



In addition to this we’re informed that a photo of Magellan’s wife and son are on the inside lid of the case, as if “guarding” his weapons. As stated there is a big focus in Murder Machine on the loss that made Philip Magellan become The Marksman in the first place. This I assume is there to explain away his sadism, but as the drugging and shaving of the hooker would indicate, the guy’s just nuts – I mean the hooker has absolutely nothing to do with the Mafia. 

As expected, everything “climaxes” exactly how every previous Russell Smith installment has: all the villains do Magellan the courtesy of conveniently gathering in one location so he can blitz them from afar. Smith shows no mercy in his rushed finale – no mercy for the reader, either, telling us almost in passing of the bloody deaths of his various one-off characters. The most notable bit here is the “eerie calm” Magellan always feels after one of his massacres, which fills him with a sort of profundity. 

Man, what a crazy one this was – almost like a “greatest hits” of Russell Smith’s work on the series. It went through absolutely zero editing and you get the sense that they just printed everything straight off of his typewritten manuscript. But for that reason alone it was pretty entertaining. Oh and finally, Ken Barr’s cover illustration actually (sort of) illustrates a moment in the book; during an action bit where Magellan finds out that a private eye force is closing in on him, he goes up on a rooftop and knocks out a would-be sniper. Russell Smith pointedly mentions the “door” on the roof, which makes me figure we have here another instance of editor Peter McCurtin directing his author to include a specific scene, so there would be a part in the book to match the already-commissioned cover art – a la McCurtin giving Len Levinson a similar direction for Night Of The Assassins, in a bit Len later spoofed in The Last Buffoon.

Thursday, May 26, 2022

The Torture Contract (The Marksman #19)


The Torture Contract, by Frank Scarpetta
No month stated, 1975  Belmont Tower

There’s no volume number on the cover, but this was the 19th installment of The Marksman. The first page of the book mistakenly states that it’s “volume #18,” but no doubt editor Peter McCurtin realized the 18th volume was the previous one, so at least he kept the goof off of the cover. From here on McCurtin or whoever else at Belmont Tower just decided to play it safe and put no further volume numbers on the books. They must’ve been really confused, because there weren’t just 19 volumes of The Marksman, there were actually more – let’s not forget all those earlier installments by Russell Smith that got turned into Sharpshooter novels. But all of these books were published in the span of like two years, so no doubt the hectic pace – and arbitrary transitioning of manuscripts into a different series – caused a lot of behind-the-scenes confusion. 

According to the Catalog Of Copyright Entries, The Torture Contract was written by series newcomer Steve Sherman. This would be his only contribution to the series. I can’t find much info about him; I can only find one novel he published under his own name, a 1977 Western PBO titled The Hangtree that was published by low-rent Major Books. I’ll say one thing about Sherman: he wasn’t afraid to experiment. In fact I’m tempted to say that The Torture Contract is the Sicilian Slaughter of the Marksman series, in that it’s such an anomaly. But then it’s not like there’s much continuity in this series to begin with, so in a sense every volume of The Marksman is an anomaly. But still, The Torture Contract is just plain weird. As Lynn Munroe aptly put it, “This is a bizarre entry, not much like any other Marksman book.” How bizarre is it? Well, Philip “The Marksman” Magellan kills someone with a laser rifle in it. And also Magellan’s female companion is put into a sex research clinic straight out of The Sex Surrogates, complete with the scientists attempting to make a sex “machine” out of her. 

How Sherman came onto the series and how editor McCurtin allowed him such freedom will have to be a mystery. My assumption is that it was that aforementioned hectic publishing schedule. When you’ve published 19 volumes of a series in less than two years, thoroughness and exactitude probably aren’t your top concerns. McCurtin was probably just happy he received Sherman’s manuscript on time. And Sherman isn’t a bad writer at all; his style is very humdrum, very meat and potatoes a la Ralph Hayes…but man he scuzzes things up. There’s just a grimy vibe to the book, like one of the grindhouse/drive-in flicks of the era. To be sure, it’s not overly explicit; Magellan only makes a few kills, and they aren’t nearly as gory as in the other books, and the majority of the sex occurs off-page, with the one sex scene toward the end over and done with in a few sentences. But Sherman pulls no punches with some of his dialog and narrative, as I’ll demonstrate in the excerpts below. Sherman also knows a lot about different subjects, baldly expositing about various arcane research subjects via this volume’s villain, the Professor – who himself seems as if he’s stepped out of some other series. He’s a brainiac megavillian with his own fortress, one that’s secured by deadly traps, and not much like any previous character in the series. 

As Lynn Munroe also notes, Magellan here “has suddenly turned into a different kind of character, a private detective.” I totally agree with Lynn on the first half of that statement, but I don’t think it’s so much that Magellan acts like a private eye in The Torture Contract…it’s more so that he becomes totally under the thrall of the Professor. As in, reporting to him as if Magellan were just another of the Professor’s lackeys. Hell, there are parts where Magellan is straight-up afraid of the Professor. This so goes against the grain of the character that I’m surprised editor McCurtin let it slip. What’s weird though is that in the first quarter of the novel, before the Professor appears, Magellan is his usual bad-ass self, not giving a shit about anyone and eager to taste Mafia blood. This is certainly McCurtin’s influence; Len Levinson has told me that Peter McCurtin’s editorial insight on The Sharpshooter (which McCurtin also edited) was that protagonist Johnny Rock “killed in cold hate.” I would imagine this same editorial direction extended to Philip Magellan in The Marksman

We meet Magellan just as he’s arrived in New York, beckoned by “society page female” Angela Peabody. We’re informed that “two years ago” Magellan helped Angela’s father, wealthy businessman Johnathon Peabody, with a Mafia problem. Now Angela has called on Magellan to help her, and even though Magellan has “never liked” the attractive young woman he meets with her in her art store in Manhattan. In an opening sequence we’ve read as two hoods, one named Johnny Sin and the other named Logosa, heisted a Renoir from a museum. Now Angela has bought a sketch of this Renoir, but has learned it’s a fake. She bought it from Johnny Sin for $5,000 and she wants her money back. So this setup is already unlike any other in the series. However the novel itself will only proceed to become more unusual. 

As mentioned Magellan is very much in typical form here, busting heads and checking leads in the dingy areas of the city. He gets a tip from a guy who runs a whorehouse that Johnny Sin might be in Los Angeles. So Magellan gets an American Airlines flight (Sherman mentions the airline so many times you wonder if he was getting a kickback) and heads over to California – with Angela in disguise following. When Magellan learns that Johnny Sin, a former Mafioso, is now working for the Professor, the book begins to really get outside the series template. Magellan and Angela head to Palos Verdes, where the mysterious Professor lives in his fortress in the woods. Magellan and Angela watch as a guard dog rips a man to shreds on the grounds. All of this is a game for the Professor, who comes out to jovially greet his guests. He’s an older man with silver hair, and he’s a “billionaire,” operating an underground “laboratory of forgerers.” 

The fake Renoir Angela got was produced in these underground labs, and she and Magellan are given a grand tour of the place, with the Professor expositing on the various projects – people recreating Stradivarius violins, finishing an incomplete Elizabeth Browning poem, even working on mummification in the exact style of the ancient Egyptians. A vast enterprise of specialists in their various glass-walled chambers, working on counterfeits so exact that even experts would be fooled. Angela, who is almost more of the protagonist than Magellan is, really takes to it all. Except for the sex research part: the Professor also has three scientists working on “simultaneous orgasms” with a lifelike female sex doll, all of course with the help of some local whores. I mean it’s all really like a James Bond film, only with that grimy grindhouse vibe; the Professor is totally in the Bond villain mold, an evil supervillain with arrogance to spare. 

Which begs the question why Magellan decides to work for him. The Professor propositions our supposed hero; the Professor says that the Mafia is trying to horn in on his operation, and he needs help killing them off. He knows with his omniscience who Magellan is, and offers him several times the amount Angela is paying him: all Magellan has to do is kill Mafia for the Professor. Magellan eagerly accepts, but from this point on he’s working for the Professor. It leaves a bad taste in the reader’s mouth. Magellan is a lone wolf mob-buster…he works for no one! And what’s worse is he’ll never push back against the Professor; indeed, Angela Peabody acts more like the hero in this regard, as she begins to resent – and fear – the clearly insane Professor. As Lynn Munroe notes, a lot of the novel takes place in the Professor’s fortress, with a lot of exposition on the various counterfeit schemes. Through it all Magellan is a silent bystander as the Professor blabs away; Magellan’s almost a supporting character in his own book. 

What’s worse is that Sherman tries to work an action scene into the novel midway through, and it just demonstrates how weak his version of Magellan actually is. The Professor orders Angela to head back to New York and steal a valuable coin from her socialite friend. And Magellan, Johnny Sin, and Logosa are to go along. They pull the heist easily, but afterwards they find themselves tailed by four mobsters. In any other Marksman novel, Magellan would waste these guys with no problem. Here, though, he’s barely able to take on just one of them. That’s one lesson Sherman failed to take from McCurtin. Another thing Len told me was that in his first two Sharpshooter novels, The Worst Way To Die and Night Of The Assassins, he inadvertently made his Johnny Rock “too neurotic” and too concerned. This is when McCurtin stepped in and told him the “kill with cold hate concept,” that Johnny Rock wouldn’t survive long if he was worried all the time. But Philip Magellan comes off as too concerned here…which is strange, given how he came off like a badass in the first quarter of the book. 

Things get even weirder when the Mafia stages an attack on the Professor’s fortress later on. But still, one wonders why the Professor even needs Magellan; he takes Magellan and Angela up to a room at the top of the fortress and gleefully goes about cornering and killing the Mafia team that has infiltrated the grounds, employing a host of remote-controlled hidden weapons. One of the weapons you can control up here is a laser gun, and as mentioned Magellan gets to fire it: 


Meanwhile the Professor kills off other Mafioso with an electric fence, and even more crazily he has a trapdoor that drops a few of them into acid. And he laughs and laughs like a madman throughout, Sherman doling out the lurid weirdness in that bland style of his, just blunt declrarative statements, which only makes things even weirder. But anyone can plainly see the Professor is nuts. I mean he literally rolls on the floor in laughter when mobsters are killed, and later on he forces one of his lackeys into becoming a live subject of vivisection – the corpse to be mummified by resident expert Penword Suite. But the novel proceeds to get even weirder. Angela has taken it upon herself to propose to the Professor that she, Magellan, and Johnny Sin should become “partners” with the madman. Angela was very excited during the Park Avenue heist (indeed, we’re even bluntly informed that she, uh, got wet during it – again, the grimy vibe predominates), and now she wants to work permanently with the Professor…only as an equal. This has unexpected repercussions, and Angela finds herself forced into those sex experiments in the Professor’s lab. As she later relates to Magellan: 


Yeah, crazy shit for sure. “They’re making a machine out of me,” Angela tells Magellan, and the reader can’t help but wonder if Angela means this in the figurative sense, ie the three scientists are, per the dialog above, screwing her constantly like a veritable sex machine, or if she means it literally – that the artificial female the Professor hopes to create and sell is actually being based on Angela. Unfortunately we will get no resolution on this. Instead, Angela is desperate to escape…and Magellan, who has somehow become emasculated in the Professor’s employ, cagily seems to want to help her escape, though he too as mentioned is now scared of the Professor, so Magellan doesn’t want to rock the boat. The guy who in previous volumes would cut off Mafioso heads and carry them around is now afraid of a ranting old psychotic! But our lame hero does manage to propose to the Professor – over dinner! – that Angela be sent out of the fortress on some errand, and the Professor agrees.  

This takes us into the climax, though we don’t even realize it’s the climax: the Professor has it that a Hollywood-based Mafia don named Fiori was behind the attack on his fortress, and he wants Magellan to kill him. But Angela will be used as bait, and apparently if she does well she can go free. So Magellan and Angela leave the fortress, and only here does Magellan notice what a sexy broad Angela is, now that she’s dressed all slutty to catch the sleazy Fiori’s eye. But Angela herself has realized how hot she is…and take a gander at this bit of ‘70s-style female empowerment: 


I’ll refrain from spoilers here, but even in this sequence Magellan is emasculated. Angela is to lure Don Fiori off to some secluded spot for sex, and Magellan is to swoop in for the kill. And yet Magellan, for reasons never explained, just disappears while Angela rides off with the don, still not even showing up while Angela’s having sex with Fiori on the beach – the sole sex scene in the novel, and not even that explicit. When Magellan finally shows up, even here it takes him forever to take out of Fiori and his men, and the Mexican Standoff with Don Fiori at the climax is insulting to anyone who claims the title “The Marksman;” Magellan literally just holds his Beretta on Don Fiori and keeps telling the mobster to drop his gun, “The Marksman” apparently unable to get a clear shot. This whole bit seems to go on forever. 

Now we’re going to get into some spoilers, so skip this paragraph and the next if you don’t want to know. Sherman again shows how fearless he is in his approach to the series. When Magellan learns via a panicked Angela that she offered Don Fiori a deal (ie for Don Fiori to give Angela protection if she gave him information on the Professor in exchange), Magellan solves the problem of not being able to get a clear shot at the don: he shoots Angela, I mean shoots her dead, and then blows away Fiori. So this is acceptable because we readers already know Philip Magellan himself is insane, and Sherman has worked up the angle that our sadistic hero hates anyone who has anything to do with the Mafia…even for something as relatively minor as offering to make a deal with the Mafia. Okay, whatever. But we readers are still waiting to see the Professor get his own comeuppance, or at least to see what happens next in the Magellan-Professor relationship. Instead, the novel just ends! 

Now this has happened before, both in The Marksman and The Sharpshooter. Abrupt, “what the hell just happened?” finales are pretty much standard for this series, so I shouldn’t have been too put out this time. But dammit! I mean I wanted to see Magellan finally confront the Professor…maybe even brave his torture-trap fortress to show the old madman who the real top dog was. But it doesn’t happen, and the book literally ends right as Magellan blows Don Fiori away. And since this was the sole volume written by Steve Sherman, I’ll hazard a guess that the Professor will never be mentioned again. This is what I meant by the Sicilian Slaughter comparison; that Executioner novel too featured a main villain who was never seen or mentioned again, leaving readers to forever wonder what was supposed to happen next. And I mean so much is not explained, like for example the Professor’s omniscience – not only does he already know who Magellan is, but there’s also a bit where he’s managed to swipe a Beretta Magellan keeps hidden in the Los Angeles airport. How did the Professor even know it was there? 

Well, I went into all this detail because I have to say one thing about The Torture Contract: it kept me wondering what would happen next. Sherman certainly puts the reader as on edge as Angela Peabody, sticking his characters in a remote fortress with an insane madman. The setup was so outside the series template that I actually enjoyed it all – to the extent that I wish there had been more of it. But as mentioned this was, for whatever reason, Steve Sherman’s only novel for the series. Who knows, though…maybe someday someone might write a pastiche sequel that finally tells the rest of the story.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

A Dirty Way To Die (The Sharpshooter #15)


A Dirty Way To Die, by Bruno Rossi
No month stated, 1975

How in the world have I gone over two years without reading a Sharpshooter? Maybe I’ve been putting it off because, as hard as it is to believe, there’s only one more volume after this one. It’s taken me over ten years to get this far, which only again reinforces how quickly this series was written and published – all these books came out within the span of two years. 

Once again a big thanks to Lynn Munroe, who revealed that A Dirty Way To Die is a sort of collaboration between series editor Peter McCurtin and series mainstay Russell Smith. As Lynn notes, “McCurtin only wrote the first chapter. The rest of the book has different characters and is actually a different story, changed ever so slightly to tie it to Chapter One.” We might be in a similar situation to another McCurtin venture, The Camp, for which McCurtin wrote the first chapter and Len Levinson wrote the rest. But whereas Len at least hewed a little closely to McCurtin’s opening chapter, Smith seems to turn in an entirely unrelated book, so I guess another possibility is that McCurtin welded a chapter of his own to Smith’s manuscript, so as to set up the storyline. Because as ever Russell Smith turns in a “plot” that requires the reader to do some very heavy lifting in order to make sense of anything. 

So in chapter one, which clearly seems to be by McCurtin, a New York Don talks to a dirty New York cop about that perennial problem, Johnny Rock. The cop’s novel suggestion is to kill a kid and pin it on Rock; there’s mention here, finally, that Rock has gunned down women and hookers and whatnot in his past exploits, but the public at large, we’re told, has sort of brushed off these kills given that the women were involved with the Mafia anyway. Thus Rock’s folkloric heroism is strong as ever. But if a kid were to be killed – especially a “problem” kid – and Rock was blamed for that, the situation would change. The cop even has a kid in mind – the retarded eleven year-old son of a Mafia floozy whose husband was killed years before by Rock; she beats the kid anyway, so they’d be doing him a favor. The Don likes the idea and gives the go ahead. The cop says he didn’t come up with the idea alone, that he hired a “one man think tank” psychologist “in California” named Dr. Dorelli to come up with a way to finally bring down Rock – and thus the idea was Dorelli’s. 

So there’s the setup. Next chapter opens, and we’re thrust without preamble into the typical surrealism of a Russell Smith novel. We meet Rock as he’s in Palo Alto, California, scoping out VAPA, the Veteran’s Association of Palo Alto. This hospital for vets is where Dr. Mario Dorelli serves as chief psychologist, and Rock’s here to settle a score. So then, the killing of the kid has already happened…but what’s curious is that we learn so little about it that one gets the impression Smith himself doesn’t even know what happened. All we’re told is that Rock is furious because “every cop in New York” is out to get him, and he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to get the heat off. But even more curiously this concern is never brought up again, nor is whatever brought Rock out to Palo Alto…for the most part, he just seems to be stalking Dr. Dorelli, whom Rock only suspects of being involved with the mob. 

Whereas McCurtin’s chapter vaguely set Dorelli up as a “one man think tank,” in Smith’s narrative Dorelli is a Mafia bigwig who was previously known as Joseph Reitano, and who worked with the CIA in ‘Nam and ran a dirty black ops squad that was known for sadism. For reasons never really disclosed, Rock is the only person in the entire world to figure out that Reitano and Dorelli are one and the same, and Rock decides to jolt the doctor by leaving a message in his office at VAPA under the name of “Joseph Reitano.” Rock gives the message to Dorelli’s lovely assistant, Eleanor Wood, a Jamaican woman “as black as a moonless Jamaican night and equally as romantic.” This sets off a strange cat and mouse game between Rock and Dorelli, with Rock at one point disguised as a doctor and spying on Dorelli inside VAPA, then later asking the always-horny Eleanor on a date to get info out of her on his prey. Meanwhile Dorelli – who as typical for a Smith novel gets way too much narrative space of his own – frets over who could know that he was once Joseph Reitano, or if it’s just some cosmic fluke that this guy has the exact same name that he once did. 

Smith serves up what have become staples of any of his Sharpshooter or Marksman manuscripts; Rock gets a room in an old hotel, murders a few thugs in cold blood, captures and interrogates a few people, and ultimately ends up on a boat. Smith also refers back to many of his previous manuscripts, in particular Vendetta, given that Rock ventures over to Sausalito, “well remember[ing] his last trip there.” Of course Smith’s narratives have been published as both Sharpshooters and Marksmans, even though they all clearly feature the same protagonist (Vendetta for example being a Marksman installment), which yields an extra metafictional layer to it all. There’s also curious mention here of a supposedly-recurring minor character named “Frank,” a short-statured Mafia flunky who has run into “Rock” three times in the past and has just managed to escape death each time. I have no recollection of this character, but presumably he must’ve appeared in previous Smith novels (in either series). 

One interesting “new” element in this one is that Rock actually gets in a firefight; in most other Smith yarns, Rock (or Magellan) just shoots down his prey in cold blood, usually while their backs are turned. He does that here, of course, gunning down some thugs who have shown up to ambush him in a bar, but later on he gets in a protracted gunfight with more thugs in yet another bar. This is in another of those surreal Smith sequences where Rock just goes into this dive with zero explanation or setup, talks to one of the Asian hookers who work the joint, then figures out the place is a Mafia front. Some thugs come in to get him and Rock blasts away with a pistol in each fist: the customary Beretta 9MM (which has appeared in every Smith manuscript, despite the series) in his right and a Colt .38 revolver in his left. The gore factor is very pronounced in this one, with characters puking at the sight of the shattered, brain-spewing skulls left in the wake of Rock’s bullets. 

But as mentioned, regardless of the series, Smith has always and ever been writing about the same protagonist, and since Philip Magellan came first then that ultimately means that A Dirty Way To Die is just another Smith installment of The Marksman. As the novel proceeds it only becomes more apparent. “Rock” wears a “nylon cord” around his waist, lugs an artillery case, wields the same 9mm Beretta, has a penchant for disguises, and drugs up a few random women before interrogating them in sadistic fashion. These are all hallmarks of Philip Magellan. Anyway I’ve beaten this dead horse enough in past reviews so it’s safe to say that by this point we all understand that, for the most part, Johnny Rock and Philip Magellan are one and the same, at least when the book is written by Russell Smith. 

I would say that all the Smith novels from both series could be gathered together and a running narrative might be found within them, but that sure as hell isn’t the case. Smith’s “plotting” is just as nuts as his protagonist. Things happen for absolutely no reason throughout A Dirty Way To Die, with no setup or explanation for most of it. This is why I suspect that McCurtin’s introductory chapter might’ve been added after Smith submitted his manuscript. Otherwise Rock just arrives in Palo Alto, stalks Dorelli, kills a few thugs, captures, drugs and interrogates two women, blows away a few more thugs in a rushed finale, and only at the very end are we even given a hazy explanation of why Rock’s here: In ‘Nam, when Dorelli was a CIA spook named Reitano, he would murder servicemen about to return home and then sell their IDs to other soldiers who were desperate to get out of the war. But Smith still forgets to inform us how Rock figured out that Reitano became Dorelli, or even how Rock became personally involved in the situation, save for a vague but compelling mention that one of Dorelli/Reitano’s affairs in ‘Nam “involved Rock.” 

So there’s no mention throughout of the “special kid” whose fate was determined in the first chapter, and it’s possible that the line early in chapter two that “every cop in New York” is out to get Rock could’ve been a McCurtin amendment to Smith’s manuscript. But without McCurtin’s opening chapter the novel takes on an even more surreal vibe, as Rock stalks and strikes Dorelli even though he’s not certain until the very end that Dorelli is really in the mob and is trafficking cocaine. Smith really drags this out past the breaking point, clearly trying to fill pages – we know from the get-go that Dorelli’s in the mob, given the parts of the narrative devoted to him, and we also know that Rock is in town trying to figure out how dirty Dorelli is. Yet the characters themselves don’t learn the truth about one another until toward the end of the novel. Dorelli’s realization that the young doctor calling himself “Dr. Joseph Reitano,” who just arrived in town is indeed Johnny Rock is especially ridiculous, given all the thug-killings that follow in the wake of “Dr. Reitano’s” presence…not to mention the little fact that “Reitano” has the same exact name as Dorelli’s original one! 

As Lynn Munroe notes, Smith also worked in the sleaze market, and if what he serves up late in A Dirty Way To Die is any indication of the kind of books he wrote for that market, then you’re well advised to steer clear, as it’s grimy and gross to the max. So out of nowhere, really absolutely nowhere, we suddenly learn that Dorelli has a sadistic self-punishment streak. For one, kind young Eleanor Wood, that “moonless Jamaican night” babe, turns out to be his private “slave owner,” torturing Dorelli in the office between patient visits. There’s some real sleazeball stuff here, like how Eleanor enjoys using her panties to give Dorelli a “rubdown,” and how Dorelli later must do something rather unseemly with the “soiled panties.” This part alone might have the less hardy reader racing for the restroom to spew his guts. 

Even more outrageous is the later off-the-cuff revelation that Dorelli has a live-in Filipino maid named Alicia who is hooked on coke and thus will do any sort of depraved sex act for him; we don’t see one happen, but witness the disgusting aftermath of a particularly depraved orgy, in which the stench of “shit” and “vomit” fills the room in which Dorelli and others “gang-banged” Alicia, who by the way spends the entire novel in a drugged stupor. Rock later comes upon her comatose form in the aftermath of the orgy, Rock having broken into Dorelli’s house, and wakes her up, sickened at the sight of her “chewed-up vagina” (!!). He is taken aback how casual the girl is about everything; she says she’s in no pain and instead just wants to take a bath; Rock figures she must be “used to being gang-banged!” 

Here there’s also promise that Rock himself might get in on the dirty festivities; a Mafia stooge shows up at Dorelli’s house with a hotstuff floozy in tow, assumes Rock is Dorelli, and tells him that the hotstuff babe is the latest scheme to rope in the Sharpshooter. Rock, pretending to be Dorelli, listens patiently and then excuses himself; he rushes outside, blows off the head of the Mafia stooge’s driver, and leaves! And not much else is made of the proposed floozy entrapment. But this is just how Smith rolls; it’s one wild sequence after another, usually followed by lots of page-filling where characters sit around and reflect over recent bizarre circumstances. It’s like they’ve all been plunged into a surreal nightmare in which nothing makes sense, which pretty much sums up ever Smith novel I’ve yet read. 

The helluva it is, Smith shows that he can deliver memorable characters: Eleanor Wood, despite the eleventh hour revelation of her sadomasochistic impulses, is a likeable character with a gift for sarcastic comments. Rock takes her on a “date” in which he first mows down several Mafia thugs and then threatens to kill Eleanor if she doesn’t get on a Chris-Craft boat he steals in Sausalito (the same boat he – as Magellan – stole in Vendetta), and throughout Eleanor keeps joking about when they’re going to get around to eating dinner. Of course Rock ultimately drugs her up (this after copious description of her vomitting due to sea sickness) and, when she won’t talk, terrorizes her with water snakes in what is clearly a shoutout to when Rock terrorized his captives with rats back in #3: Blood Bath (another Russell Smith joint, and another that clearly started life as a Marksman manuscript). 

Oh and Rock also captures another woman, just out of the blue; after the gunfight at the dive, Rock jumps in a car and beats the woman behind the wheel silly. He appropriates the car, taking the comatose woman along with him, and then tosses her, naked, into the hold with Eleanor. Absolutely no explanation is given of who this woman is…Smith seems to imply she’s a “driver” for the Mafia, but she’s presented as yet another innocent caught up in the sadistic sway of “Rock.” She too will be drugged, but Rock doesn’t even interrogate her, thus her entire presence is as baffling as anything else that happens in the novel. And another thing – after all this cruelty, Eleanor’s interrogation is mostly off-page! We are informed she’s privy to all of Dorelli’s mob dealings, but after Rock spends “ten minutes” explaining to her the dangers of narcotics and how they damage the “society he still believes in,” Eleanor’s suddenly on Rock’s side…despite all the torture with the snakes, some of which tried to crawl between her legs, we’re informed. 

Meanwhile Dorelli gets a lot of his own text, as does a Mafia executioner named Zanicchi who is fond of “hanging a man on a meat hook, drenching him in urine and shit and watching him die slowly.” Zanicchi we’re informed will get a $90K bonus for killing the Sharpshooter, but what the actual bounty is we’re not informed. Regardless this particular plot, which promises so much, goes nowhere – as is typical for any Smith venture. Zanicchi’s goons are the ones mowed down by Rock while on his “date” with Eleanor, after which Smith seems to forget about Zanicchi…until the final three pages, in which Rock dispenses justice in customarily rushed fashion, wiping out sundry villains who as ever have all gotten together in one spot so he can conviently kill them all at once with his Uzi. 

Sometimes these books give a peek into the disturbed mentality of their authors, and A Dirty Way To Die is a definite case in point. Lazy plotting, go-nowhere digressions, random acts of depraved sex, and torture with water snakes. Smith is so focused on all this that he, as typical, races through the last pages with such abandon that you can almost feel his joy at finally meeting his word count. In fact the finale makes as little sense as anything else in the book. So we’re informed, again in the very final pages, that Dorelli would kill ‘Nam soldiers about to return home and sell their IDs, with the compelling hint that one of his “atrocities” over there “involved Rock.” So Rock gets Dorelli, blows apart his guts with the Uzi so he’s near death, and then straps him onto a gurney in the Chris-Craft…and apparently sets the controls for Vietnam, over the horizon? After this he calls Eleanor, who asks him to “hurry” over to her place because she “wants” him! The end! WTF?! 

By all accounts the next volume, Mafia Death Watch, is just as depraved, if not more so. That one was written by series newcomer Dan Reardon, and I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. While this was it for Smith on The Sharpshooter, he was still churning them out over on The Marksman, so we’ll be seeing more of him in future reviews. Oh and Bob Larkin’s (uncredited) cover for A Dirty Way To Die is one of the best in the entire series, and not just because of the cleavage! Okay, so maybe the cleavage has something to do with it, but still!

Monday, July 27, 2020

The Marksman #18: Icepick In The Spine


The Marksman #18: Icepick In The Spine, by Frank Scarpetta
No month stated, 1975  Belmont Tower

“The reason I write under a pseudonym is because I don’t want to be remembered as the author of Icepick In The Spine.” 

-- George Harmon Smith

A big thanks to Lynn Munroe for the above quote; as I mention in most all of my Marksman and Sharpshooter reviews, Lynn is owed a huge debt of gratitude for the research he did on these series. It’s due to him that we even know who George Harmon Smith was; a sort of fix-it author for series editor Peter McCurtin, who eventually went on to authoring his own installments, this being one of them. While Icepick In The Spine was one of the few Marksman volumes to have an attribution in the Catalog Of Copyright Entries, where Aaron Fletcher is credited as “Frank Scarpetta” (the book was also later reprinted under Fletcher’s own name), as Lynn successfully argues this was probably due to some mistake or behind-the-scenes nonsense. Icepick In The Spine is clearly the work of George Harmon Smith. And, as Lynn also points out, there’s that quote of Smith’s, above; it comes from Smith’s nephew, who specifically recalled this title as being one his uncle talked about.

As I think I’ve written in all my other reviews of his novels, George Harmon Smith was a great writer, very literary, delivering strong characters – particularly very strong, fully-realized female characters. But in many ways he was too good for the genre. By that I don’t mean he was a better writer than others in this genre, I just mean that he didn’t understand when to reign in the literary flourishes. Like all the other Smith Marksmans, Icepick In The Spine is just too damn long; 204 pages of small, dense print, most of it comprised of excessive topical details or description of menial actions. It’s hard to convey exactly what I mean other than there’s a lot of “baggage” in Smith’s work…you mentally slash entire paragraphs of abritrary, unnecessary (but very well written) material so as to keep the pace moving. These kinds of books should not have excessive baggage; also, as I’ve written before, Smith was basically the men’s adventure version of John Gardner, ie the American author of Sunlight Dialogs and such. Their narrative styles are very similar, even down to the excessive wordiness.

And as I’ve also mentioned in just about every George Harmon Smith review I’ve done, I am becoming more and more certain that he was the author who delivered the almighty Bronson: Blind Rage. There are too many parallels with the other books of his I’ve read; Icepick In The Spine in particular has a lot of similarities, from the insane “hero” to the strong female accomplice, not to mention the periodic detours into extreme sadism and torture. As with Blind Rage, and the other Smith novels I’ve read, there’s also an almost surreal vibe of dark humor, like real dark humor – for example, in this one Philip “The Marksman” Magellan briefly encounters a 16 year-old girl who sells herself for heroin money. She tries to spark up conversation with Magellan in a diner, questioning the purpose of life. Magellan gives her ten bucks and she leaves – only to immediately be run over and killed by a car. Magellan meanwhile can’t even be bothered to get up from his table and keeps right on eating. 

There’s also a sleazy dose of torture porn straight out of the sweat mags of the day; late in the novel Magellan stages an assault on a Mafia-controlled “school” in Arizona which is used as a training facility for girls smuggled into the country from Mexico. Here they are apparently trained to become good whores or somesuch, but really the place as presented is a nightmarish facility of torture and punishment, complete with about two hundred fresh graves outside the place of previous girls who didn’t properly buckle under authority. Smith pulls no punches throughout the horrific sequence, which starts off with a mob “turkey doctor” torturing a poor bound girl and ends with the freed girls running roughshod on their former captors, tearing them to pieces with their bare hands. Even here though Magellan displays he’s not your typical hero, or even a “hero” in any sense – when the freed Mexican girls ask him what they’re supposed to do now, where they should go, Magellan’s curt response is, “I don’t give a fuck,” and he just leaves them to their own devices.

George Harmon Smith is like another series author, Russell Smith, in that he knows without question that Magellan is a psychopath. As Lynn has pointed out, Harmon Smith likely edited many of Russell Smith’s manuscripts, so perhaps he was inspired by them; series creator and editor Peter McCurtin never presented Magellan as nuts as either of the two Smiths do. But a big difference is that Harmon Smith at least attempts to convey a sense of loss and desperation driving his version of Magellan; Russell Smith’s is just plain crazy, and hardly ever does he reflect on the events that put him on the path to becoming the Marksman. Harmon Smith occasionally does, bluntly informing people that his course was set when his “son’s brains were blasted out” and his wife was killed. But also Harmon Smith makes it clear that none of this justifies Magellan’s descent into sadism; he’s such a natural murderer (and he really does murder in this one, not just kill) that you wonder if this dude was ever “good” to begin with. Again, very much like – in fact, identical to – Bronson in Blind Rage.

There’s of course no pickup from previous volumes, nor any indication how long Magellan’s been at it. There are seeming repercussions for future volumes; Icepick In The Spine ends with the intimation that the heads of the Mafia have banded together to finally do something about the Marksman, and also Magellan has himself a female accomplice at novel’s end, one who wishes to help him wage his war. Judging from previous volumes, I’m gonna bet we’ll never hear of either of these things again. But for what it’s worth this one is a very entertaining read, giving you all you could want from sleazy ‘70s crime pulp, with the caveat that as usual Smith’s excessive wordiness kind of kills the enthusiasm factor. Sort of like my reviews! But man this one’s really overwritten, another hallmark of Smith’s work; every menial or trivial action is described ad naseum. Small stuff to be sure, but it piles up over the course of the 200+ small-print pages. To get back to that other Smith, ie Russell – his installments might’ve been messy, barely even “plotted,” but they certainly moved.

The back cover has it that in this one Magellan goes up against a capo who retains a squad of ‘Nam vets. This sounds promising but unfortunately there’s nothing like it in the book. In the early pages Magellan gets word that Bello, a sadistic young Mafia capo who served in ‘Nam, has gotten into sex slavery south of the border; we’re told Bello has a group of commando vets at his disposal, but we never get to meet them. And Bello himself doesn’t even appear until like the last three pages. He’s more of a white wale that Magellan hunts throughout the novel; the narrative is more focused on the sex-slave angle, with multiple detours…not to mention Magellan sort of falling in love not once, but twice! Another thing that separates George Harmon Smith from his fellow men’s adventure authors is his strong female characters – I don’t mean “strong” in the modern cliched meaning, like they can do backflips while firing 9mm pistols with each hand, but “strong” in that they are fully-developed, believable women who seem to exist outside the boundaries of the novels. That being said, the second female character in this one probably could do backflips while shooting guns; she’s presented as a serious asskicker.

After venturing down to Mexico to research the situation – and to beat up and murder a crippled guy at the Texas border – Magellan briefly holes up in El Paso to figure out Bello’s operation. He’s bringing in beautiful girls from Mexico and dispersing them across the US; eventually we’ll learn they’re smuggled around the country in big vans, and the soldiers carrying them around have orders to kill them if anything goes wrong with the job. This happens in the course of the novel, while Magellan’s tailing a “shipment,” and honestly Magellan’s “sickness” over the massacre is hard to buy given his sadism this time around. I wonder if Smith’s Goldfinger allusion is intentional; while checking out one of the Mafia staging areas in the woods Magellan runs into a hot young thing with a rifle, here to get a little vengeance of her own. Magellan’s response is typical; he beats the shit out of her, slapping her around and almost breaking her nose. All to keep her quiet.

As expected, the girl, a Latina named Anna, falls in love with Magellan soon enough. Anna is the first of two strong female characters we’ll get. There follows a domestic scene where Anna takes Magellan back to her apartment – after wiping the blood off her nose and stuff – and makes him burgers and fries, leading to one of Smith’s typical off-page sex scenes. He’s not one to much exploit his female characters, either…we’ll get like one or two mentions of nice breasts and that’s it. Anna’s cousin was abducted by the sex-slavers and she wants to find out what happened to her and get revenge (a subplot that is never resolved). She proves to have just as sadistic streak as Magellan; our lovable hero captures a Mafia goon and tortures him, setting his hair and feet on fire. The “fire torture” being another similarity to Bronson: Blind Rage, by the way. After this he blows the guy’s head off. Anna acts distant on the way home, not talking…only to later reveal that she was so turned on by the whole thing that she was afraid she’d jump Magellan’s bones right there if he’d said anything to her!

The problem with Icepick In The Spine is that it seems to be two manuscripts stuck together; perhaps this explains the “Aaron Fletcher” misattribution for the novel. Maybe he turned something in and Smith almost wholly rewrote it. At least Magellan’s characterization stays consistent throughout – he’s nuts from beginning to end. I also enjoyed his recurring penchant for calling all mobsters “motherfuckers” and all women “chicks.” Speaking of which, we don’t get to see Anna for the entire novel; I don’t want to spoil anything but she leaves the narrative shortly after telling Magellan she loves him. But after her departure we get to that seeming second manuscript – for the first half Magellan’s tracing Bello’s sex-slave ring, and it culminates with a shootout with the guys running the latest van filled with women. But after this we’re suddenly in Phoenix, it’s nine days later, and Magellan is posing as a bum on Skid Row, living in filth and squalor so as to fully hide from society and make Bello think everything’s clear so he can get back to his sex-slavin’ stuff.

Now the plot becomes something else entirely; Magellan reads in the paper about an old doctor being abducted, and he immediately deduces that this guy was probably kidnapped by Bello’s mobsters to look after the latest shipment of Mexican girls(!?). So he goes to the guy’s address…only to find a hotstuff statuesque babe (also described as Amazonian). This will be our second strong female character and she’s very memorable, very much in line with the action-prone female protagonists of today. Her name’s Julia, she’s in her 20s, and she’s unfazed when Magellan slips into the apartment, holding a gun on her. She’s not even afraid of the gun, and Magellan feels as if he’s lost control of the situation. It turns out that her father’s been returned secretly, but Julia’s not to tell anyone for a few days. And yes, the Mafia took him, apparently to inspect the anatomies of some women.

Eventually Julia will become Magellan’s latest partner in action and in bed. And she also falls in love with him, with Magellan feeling the same, despite his early protestation that “Not two weeks ago another girl with me was killed.” When Magellan hesitates about taking Julia with him, because she’s a girl and all, Julia responds, “The only thing a woman can’t do is catch clap from some whore.” She’s basically a female Magellan, anyway: an expert archer, she ends up nailing mobster scum with a bow and arrows later in the book. Unfortunately though the early parts with Julia come off like a carbon copy of the initial parts with Anna; she cooks him a meal, gives him some beer, they watch TV and then have some off-page sex. To the extent that you wonder why Smith didn’t just combine the two female characters into one.

Anyway I’m going on way too much again. The finale as mentioned piles on the sick sleaze; Bello’s “school” is in the woods and Magellan and Julia infiltrate the place, watching in disgust as a turkey doctor abuses a bound girl (Julia begs to be the one to kill this guy) and soon freeing all the women. It’s more lurid than action-packed, and indeed the climax itself is rushed; Magellan and Julia fly to San Diego, where Magellan intercepts Bello’s limo as it’s leaving his fortress. Magellan’s delivery of justice is rendered almost anticlimactic given how rushed it all seems – however the finale is memorable because Magellan flat-out murders Bello’s blonde floozy. I mean usually the “hero” will let the villain’s girl go, but not our Magellan. He says “Sorry, chick,” and shoots her in the throat! 

Also as mentioned, the novel ends with promises of future developments – Bello sneers that the Mafia has “plans” for Magellan, and Julia tells Magellan she’s coming along with him whether he likes it or not. They decide to head for Florida, for the hell of it; Magellan knows he’ll find Mafia business no matter where he goes. Here’s guessing if this plot thread ever picks up, but I’m not holding my breath. At least if past installments are any indication. At any rate, Icepick In The Spine is a fun if overlong slice of lurid ‘70s crime action, probably one of the best volumes in the series yet. However I have to tell you – there isn’t a single “icepick in the spine” in the entire novel!

Monday, August 5, 2019

The Assassin #3: Boston Bust-Out


The Assassin #3: Boston Bust-Out, by Peter McCurtin
December, 1973  Dell Books

The Assassin comes to a close with a final chapter penned by Peter McCurtin himself. At this point there doesn’t seem to be any effort to make this a “class” crime novel a la the first volume was; Boston Bust-Out is just as rough and wild as the books McCurtin, Russell Smith, and others churned out for The Marksman and The Sharpshooter.                             

Even the schtick of Robert “The Assassin” Briganti making tape recordings and sending them to the FBI has been dropped. Briganti at this point really is Magellan; the climax of the novel even has him working out marksman trajectories, so “Marksman” was certainly a better handle for the character than “The Assassin.” But as I mentioned before, several volumes of The Marksman had already been published before this original series even hit the shelves; it seems clear that Belmont-Tower and Leisure got their product out more quickly than Dell Books (as evidenced by the plentiful typos and grammatical errors in those B-T and Leisure publications!).

I’ll tell you one thing McCurtin whittled down when he took Briganti over to Belmont Tower and changed his name to Magellan: the references to Briganti’s “dead son.” While The Marksman never had an origin story (because it was contained in the first Assassin volume), the authors who worked on the series would occasionally remind us that Magellan’s family had been killed by the Mafia. It seems to me, looking back on the blur of the volumes I’ve read, that most often it was Magellan’s wife they referred to, with his young son only seldom mentioned. I would imagine this is because a murdered child is a helluva lot more impacting than a murdered wife, comparatively speaking, and in a way adds too much “emotional content” to what is intended to be just a cheap revenge thriller series.

At least that’s my interpretation. And McCurtin would seem to agree, as in this final volume Briganti often thinks of his murdered son and these parts have more emotional resonance than anything else in the Assassin/Marksman/Sharpshooter mythos. But also Briganti reflects that he’s been able to get a handle on his wife’s murder, given that she was in her early 30s when she was killed and had been married, “borne a son,” etc. An abruptly-ended life to be sure, but at least a mostly full life. The same could not be said for Brigainti’s son. And for this reason, we learn, Briganti is often so “tortured” by memories of his son that he has to drink himself to slumber.

This is heavy stuff, and wisely was cut from the series when Briganti became Magellan (and occasionally “Johnny Rock”). In those grungier Belmont and Leisure books Magellan/Rock was more of a human killing machine, impersonal as a robot – something else McCurtin dwells on here, seemingly paving the way for the work of Russell Smith, who delivered a completely psychotic Magellan. Boston Bust-Out occasionally dwells on Briganti’s lack of emotions, how in the past year since his family was murdered he himself has killed so many mobsters he no longer keeps count, how he can so easily go into a killing frenzy with no emotional fallout afterward. He even bluntly – and truthfully – tells a beautiful young “Mafia whore” that he’ll kill her in cold blood and sleep soundly that night.

Another reason these morbid musings were likely cut was because Dell required a bigger word count, or so I’m suspecting; as with the previous two volumes, Boston Bust-Out comes in at an unwieldy 192 pages, compared to the shorter BT and Leisure publications (which had bigger print as well). But despite the extra emotional baggage, this final installment really does come off more like one of those Marksman books, as there’s no concern with realism and Briganti is occasionally so unhinged in his quest to quash “Mafia pigs” that he might as well just be referred to as “Magellan” in the text. He even takes the opportunity to tie up and drug that “Mafia whore,” just like Magellan does in so many of the Russell Smith Marksman novels.

Okay, time to rein in the review a little. We meet Briganti with no pickup from the previous volume; he’s just barrelling through Boston when some state cops come after him. Briganti reflects that he’s yet to kill a cop but likely will if he’s pushed to it. Regardless he avoids them, ditches his car (and his arsenal), and catches a bus to Maine. He spends a few months on the farm of old Lem Perkins as a hired hand. Lem’s an even better shot than Briganti and shows him a thing or two. Then one day while shooting at squirrels Lem himself is blown away – by a pair of Mafia snipers who have somehow trailed Briganti up here. Our hero dispatches them quickly, then vows to return to Boston to wipe out the only person who could’ve sent the killers: Don Franco Toriello. 

So begins Briganti’s war of attrition. One thing I found interesting is this time Briganti has to rebuild his arsenal, which comes pretty easily – he just kills a few mobsters and picks up their dropped guns. His main weapons this time are a pair of Magnum revolvers, a .44 and a .357. He also gets a machine pistol of German manufacture (don’t believe the model is specified). McCurtin is more liberal with the gore than I recall previous volumes being; we get copious detail of bullet-riddled bodies leaking blood, guts, and brains. And Briganti’s pure hardcore this time around; he hates “Mafia pigs” with such vehemence that he’s almost granted superpowers; during a hit on a Toriello whorehouse Briganti gets so pissed when two torpedos blow away an innocent girl that Briganti steps out of cover and calmly walks forward, guns raised – and neither mobster is able to hit him, their aim apparently thrown off by his heavy vibes.

Briganti’s here at the whorehouse thanks to a tip from lovely “Mafia whore” Louisa Fioretti, a redheaded beauty who is Toriello’s kept woman. She comes into the text via an assault Briganti stages on an apartment complex in a running battle that’s very well done, complete with Briganti swinging Tarzan style between buildings on a television antenna cord. Louisa is perhaps the most memorable character here, a cool beauty who trades banter with Briganti despite the corpses strewn about the place. But I’d advise against getting a copy of this book for your feminist pals, because Louisa is raked over the coals, and in a major way.

First Briganti casually tells her he’ll kill her without a second thought, all while calling her a whore and whatnot. Then he ends up giving in to her wiles, screwing her in somewhat-explicit fashion. After this he drugs her to sleep, ties her up, and later squeezes her and hits her when she won’t give him the info he wants. He even threatens to throw scalding coffee in her face, which he says will permanently disfigure her beauty. Then he lets her escape, intending to use her to set up some in-fighting in Toriello’s camp. When she reunites with Toriello things get even more extreme. The mob boss is certain she “fucked Briganti,” that she wasn’t even raped by him but wanted it. Toriello strips her and starts slapping her around in front of his underlings, all while she keeps pleading that she loves him. Then Toriello blows her away with a .38 before revealing to a stooge that he too loved her!

This and the material about Briganti’s murdered family is really the only stuff that sets Boston Bust-Out apart from the average Marksman installment, in that this material has an extra dimension of depth. In particular when Briganti, hiding out, goes to a John Wayne movie and reflects how his son was such a fan of John Wayne. McCurtin drops some unexpected emotion into this scene and it’s very refreshing after the various brutalisms Briganti has perpetrated in the previous pages, like his merciless setup of Louisa. Here we are reminded that the people he’s up against actually murder children and thus do not deserve any mercy, even the “otherwise innocent” women who sleep with the murderous scumbags.

And as mentioned the finale is fitting because it points the way to the ensuing Marksman novels, if for no other reason than, for one, the term “marksman” is actually employed, but also more importantly because Briganti goes to elaborate lengths to plot out sniper trajectories. Even down to doing math equations in the mud with his finger; he lures Toriello and a few others into the mountains of Maine, painstakingly ensuring he’ll be able to shoot accurately with his rifle. This part though goes on a little too long, with Briganti climbing the mountain, the others struggling to follow, and Briganti picking them off one by one.

And that’s it for The Assassin, so far as the original series goes, but as mentioned (way too many times now) this volume, with its focus on violence, sadism, and cold-blooded brutality, already has more in common with Briganti’s further adventures over at Belmont-Tower.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

The Marksman #17: Killer On The Prowl


The Marksman #17: Killer On The Prowl, by Frank Scarpetta
No month stated, 1975  Belmont Tower

This volume of The Marksman seems to have been written by a committee, one that couldn’t agree on anything except that the book should be written in English. In one plot Philip “The Marksman” Magellan is in New York to take out a notorious Mafioso, and in another plot a trio of smalltime crooks kidnap that very same Mafioso for ransom. In a third plot the Mafioso’s “family” engage in internecine warfare to determine the new leader. And seldom do these three plots meet.

Once again a big thanks to Lynn Munroe, who revealed that Killer On The Prowl started life as a manuscript by Paul Hofrichter but was rewritten, perhaps by George Harmon Smith, a writer often used by series editor Peter McCurtin to fix up manuscripts. Harmon Smith’s presence is a guess on Lynn’s part, but the writing doesn’t seem to me the same as that in supposed Harmon Smith offerings, like Savage Slaughter.

Whereas Harmon Smith was given to almost literary flourishes, especially when compared to the genre average, the writing in Killer On the Prowl is stilted and bland, given over mostly to flat, declarative sentences. Lynn spoke with Hofrichter, and had him look over the novel. What’s strange is that Hofrichter remembered some of the stuff in Killer On The Prowl as things that had interested him at the time – rocket launchers, one of the settings, and such – but he didn’t recognize much in the book as being his own writing. So one wonders why his manuscript was even used…for example, the novel opens with Magellan in California and hating it; he wants to get back to action. Then he sees in the paper that infamous Mafia boss Vito Narducci is about to make a deal with the army on some new rocket launchers.

And yet, this is never mentioned again in the narrative; Magellan recognizes Narducci’s name and decides to head back East and kill him. First though he mails his guns to himself so he doesn’t have to worry about getting busted carrying them. The front and back cover copy refer to Narducci as “The Animal,” and have it that he’s been sicced on Magellan to finally take him down. But in the novel, Narducci comes off more like a businessman, running his empire from behind a desk. The author(s) clumsily inserts a reference to him being called “The Animal” by other mobsters, but this comes off as editorial emendation.

Narducci’s given an elaborate background overview first courtesy Magellan, who does his research on his target, and then in the section featuring the three punks who have decided to kidnap him. All this stuff seems to have come out of Mario Puzo and perhaps might be the work of some other writer other than Hofrichter or Harmon Smith; it’s certainly not the former. We also get inordinate backgrounds on the kidnappers, one of whom is a jockey – cue more page-filling stuff about one of his races.

Magellan is at his most cipher-like here, going about his motions in a matter-of-fact, almost robotic nature. Surely the intent is to make his actions appear even more savage, because this time Magellan does some crazy stuff, perhaps even more so than in the average Russell Smith installment…for even Russell Smith never had Magellan gun down defenseless women in cold blood. He also literally “fondles” his guns in the comfort of his hotel room. In other words he’s a deranged freak, and this author doesn’t even waste our time by introducing a female companion for him…this version of Magellan is more Terminator than human.

We learn Magellan’s been fighting the mob for two years. He doesn’t have the usual “artillery case” this time, but he’s got a ton of goodies, from pistols to submachine guns. He’s also got a “knee mortar,” one of the things Hofrichter told Lynn Munroe he was studying at the time; this is a WWII mortar that got its name because some soldiers mistakenly thought they could prop it on their knees or thighs when firing. Later Magellan gets some explosives from a dealer who operates out of a grocery store. There’s a lot of gun-talk and info on plastic explosives, as well as lots of detail on the scuba gear Magellan buys at a sports store for an underwater raid. 

However it must be said that Magellan rarely appears in the book; it’s really given over to Narducci, the kidnappers, and various one-off characters. The trio of losers who kidnap Narducci are given the most narrative, followed by the underlings in Narducci’s family who vie for power. When Magellan appears, he’s in total robot mode, planning hits and buying the supplies needed for them. The author(s) studiously avoids giving Magellan any personality; we’re given modicum details about when or where he eats, or what he’s thinking. But we’re with him step by step as he haggles for plastic explosives or buys scuba gear for his hit on one of Narducci’s boats.

And as mentioned, Magellan is more ruthless than ever in this one. He starts assaulting Narducci’s places and possessions, not aware that the man himself has been kidnapped…blowing up those boats, shotgunning one of Narducci’s lieutenants in a drive-by, starting a fire in one of his sleazy hotels (though at least here Magellan gives the innocents a fighting chance for survival). It’s still surprising though when Magellan blows away a gaggle of hookers in Narducci’s employ as they walk across the street:

When [the hookers] were passing a group of darkened stores in the middle of the block, [Magellan] swung directly across the street towards them, lifted the machinegun and aimed it at them, as he used one hand to steer the car along. 

The girls looked at him in amusement, thinking him to be a john, until they saw his submachinegun and screamed and began to scatter. 

He fired in short bursts, watched them twist and turn and fall as the bullets chewed into their perfumed flesh. The girls fell down on the sidewalk and turned it red. He continuted to fire until his clip was empty. Then the car swung away from the lane in which it was in and went back into the lane in which Magellan had been driving. As he sped off, he looked into his rearview mirror. At least half a dozen bleeding forms lay on the sidewalk. He smiled. 

When news of this got around no more dirty, little whores would be coming around to work for Vito Narducci.

Those poor hookers!! But seriously I think this is the most vile thing Magellan’s done in the series, which is really saying something. And of course note how he fires until he has an empty clip and then smiles…you don’t have to be Dr. Phil to realize the guy’s a fucking nutcase. And he’s the hero of the series! It’s for reasons like this that I’ll always prefer ‘70s men’s adventure novels to the ones from the ‘80s…they’re just so much crazier and more lurid.

Everything proceeds in the usual Marksman template, with unthrilling “action scenes” that entail Magellan shooting unarmed mobsters or blowing places up. This includes the “climax,” in which he takes care of a ton of guys with that knee mortar. But it’s all rendered so blandly that you could yawn and miss important events. Here’s a late action sequence, which demonstrates the meat and potatoes, “see Spot run” vibe of the prose – not to mention how “important characters” are so anticlimactically killed:

They saw Magellan and fired at him. He fired back. They sought cover. The two Mafioso saw them and assumed they were with Magellan and offering supporting fire. They turned and began to fire at the police. 

Dunn lifted his pistol and fired two shots at them. Royden lifted his gun and fired. A lucky shot struck Dunn in the chest. He fell. Stemmer was at his side, pulling him towards the bushes as Wimark crouched and fired at the other men. 

But Dunn never made it, he expired before they reached the bushes. Stemmer dropped him, shouted the news to Wimark and they ran into the bushes and up the street to take up a more favorable position.

And on it goes, with no dramatic thrust or impact upon the reader. This same sort of lifeless, juvenile prose marred Roadblaster, which makes me assume Hofrichter was responsible for a lot of the book, or at least the Magellan parts. And finally, any action series author who uses the word “expired” to describe a bad guy’s death needs to be sent to men’s adventure remedial school.