Showing posts with label Revenger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revenger. Show all posts

Thursday, September 10, 2020

The Revenger #6: A Promise For Death


The Revenger #6: A Promise For Death, by Jon Messmann
September, 1975  Signet Books

The Revenger series comes to a close with a sixth volume that caps off the storyline; it seems evident that Messmann knew this would be the series finale, and thus gave it an appropriate send-off. So, I can’t say I’m sorry to see The Revenger go, as Messmann delivers not only a fantastic novel but also a fitting series conclusion, paying off on elements that were introduced back in the first volume. This was by far my favorite installment of the series, with the introspection toned down and the focus more on suspense, action, and character.

It's about eight months after the previous volume, and Ben Martin (or “Ben,” as Messmann always refers to him in the narrative) has made his way back to New York, in yet another attempt to start over again. As usual he’s gotten a working-class life, driving a bakery truck for a Sicilian immigrant. But when we meet Ben he’s back to Revenger mode, Messmann again writing the sequence in present-tense. The fifteen year-old daughter of Ben’s boss was raped by a pair of young Mafia thugs, and in the following taut sequence we see Ben doling out some brutal payback with his customary .38. The action is more pronounced in A Promise For Death than it was in any of the previous volumes, most of which featured Ben sniping targets from afar. Here he’s taking down goons in pitched firefights, and this opening part packs more punch than usual because Ben’s fired up over how the Mafia has again spoiled the innocent.

Eventually Ben learns that Don Aldo Trafficante was behind the girl’s rape; Trafficante now runs the New York mob, having taken over the position vacated by Johnny Lupo in the previous book (after Ben killed Lupo, that is). Trafficante ordered the rape of a poor innocent fifteen year-old because he happens to be a distant relative of the girl – and had a hunch that the hulking new employee with the gray eyes at his cousin’s bakery might actually be Ben Martin, the Revenger. Thus the young girl’s rape was intended to draw Ben out, if indeed it was him, the rapist punks used as veritable Revenger bait. Not that Trafficante wants some revenge of his own; he’s got some problems with two rival dons, a mob war brewing with them, and he wants to retain Ben’s services as his personal executioner. In exchange Trafficante promises to give Ben insider Mafia info which could crush the entire organization.

Trafficante isn’t the only one who suspects Ben’s back in town; Captain Leo Hendricks, first introduced in the fourth volume, has also been keeping his eyes on the papers, and when he reads that some Mafia thugs have recently been gunned down he figures Ben’s back in town. Whereas Ben is against the idea of helping Trafficante, Hendricks pushes him to go for it, as the don could give Ben – and the cops – all sorts of info that would otherwise be inaccessible, and could do more damage to the mob than all of Ben’s previous kills put together. This elicits another nicely-done sequence, where Ben visits Trafficante in his townhome and Trafficante argues that Ben is always so willing to help “his people” but won’t help Trafficante himself, turning Ben’s own logic around on him. But as mentioned, Messmann doesn’t let the philosophy bog down the plot this time; during the argument, a phone call comes in that Bianca, Trafficante’s daughter, has been kidnapped by one of the rival dons. 

Ben now of course has the opportunity to do what he does best: save the innocent from the Mafia. Bianca, who you won’t be surprised to know is a smokin’-hot and stacked brunette babe, has nothing to do with her father’s life; her mother died when she was a child and Bianca was sent to Europe to attend various elite schools. Now she’s in her early 20s and back in America, living alone in her own apartment; she claims later to only have recently deduced that her father is Mafia. Ben tells Trafficante he’ll save the girl, leading to another taut and well-executed action sequence, which first has Ben posing as a firefighter to get into the building Bianca’s held in, then scaling down from the roof and breaking into the apartment with .38 blasting.

Bianca is a fully-realized character, probably the best female character in the series – which again is only fitting given that this is the series finale. And by the way, there’s no reference to the other “Bianca” Ben had a relationship with, the one who was last seen in the third volume; it’s possible Messmann himself had forgotten about her. I sure as hell had, until I recently reviewed my incredibly-overwritten reviews of the previous five volumes before writing this review. As with most any other female protagonist in a Messmann novel, Bianca is not only beautiful but capabale of deep thought and probing analyses of people she’s just met, and can also quote odd lines of poetry. Plus she’s great in the sack! Sorry, couldn’t resist. But yes, Ben and Bianca’s relationship develops in the expected direction, but it comes off as natural, not forced – Bianca feels that the two are “connected” now, given that fate has put them together – but whereas earlier volumes were fairly explicit in the sex department, Messman’s now firmly in a Burt Hirschfeld mode, where it’s all relayed via metaphor. 

Messmann doesn’t cheat us on the action, though. Ben we’ll recall was a “specialst” in ‘Nam, a “specialist in death,” per the first volume, and this installment really brings that to the fore. With Capt. Hendricks occasionally setting him up with gear, Ben pulls off a series of hits on the mob that would even impress Mack Bolan, from taking on a few cars filled with Mafia assassins in the Westchester mountains to employing one of the bakery trucks in the prevention of another potential assassination of Trafficante in Manhattan. Most of the action deals with Ben wiping out Trafficante’s opposition; per the agreement the two men have made, Trafficante vows to quit the Mafia if Ben will take out the two rival dons who are cornering his territory. Bianca herself is the one who has brokered this agreement, acting as intermediary between Ben and her father; Trafficante claims to love his daughter so much that he’s willing to quit the mob life for her. Of course, Ben doubts this, but Bianca is innocent enough to believe her father.

The action is broken up with sequences that focus on Ben and Bianca’s growing relationship. As with previous female characters in the series she sees right through Ben’s “Revenger” exterior and wants to be with him forever. But there is something about Bianca that sets her apart from previous such women. Again this is no doubt because Messmann knows he’s writing the final volume, but still, I take it we’re to understand what separates Bianca is that she’s a daughter of the very organization Ben has been warring against all this time. What I like is how Messmann doesn’t beat us over the head with the pathos; there are but a few references to Ben’s murdered son, his ex-wife not mentioned at all, but the implication is there that Ben wants to end his war and start over for real this time, making a new life with Bianca. First though he must prove to her that her father is a liar.

The last quarter is more of a suspense thriller, as Ben of course quickly deduces that Trafficante does indeed plan to kill him; we readers already know this, as Messmann this time writes several sequences focusing on other characters instead of just on Ben all the time. Thus we see Trafficante plot Ben’s death with his lieutenant, Joe Morelli. Messmann implies that the chief skill of a “specialist in death” is to always be prepared, thus Ben has staked out Trafficante’s downtown office and knows which buildings the don will put snipers on to take Ben out when he comes to meet Trafficante. This sets off a suspenseful finale in which Ben must chose whether killing Trafficante is worth losing Bianca over. However, fate intervenes in the form of a once-innocent fifteen year-old girl who was raped, at the start of the novel, and has been slowly going insane with a desire for revenge – a masterful play by Messmann, who shows that Ben Martin is not the only person who has ever owed the Mafia some payback.

Ben’s choice is taken from him, but revenge is served regardless. The novel ends with Bianca once again coming to Ben’s apartment and telling him she wants to be with him, for them to start a new life together. The last lines of the novel seem to make it clear that Messmann knew this would be it for The Revenger:

It might just work this time. Those who shared pain were so much more a part of each other than those who shared only joy. And, maybe, happiness was a revenge of its own.

It is a very affecting ending, particularly given that Messmann’s managed to give his hero a Happily Ever After without being too obvious about it. The question is whether Messmann himself chose to end the series at this point, or whether low sales were the culprit. I can’t help but notice that the second through fifth volumes were all published rather quickly, coming out between June of ’74 and February of ’75. But this sixth volume came out seven months after the fifth one, indicating that Messmann might’ve needed more time to write it…or that Signet put it on the backburner. But then, nowhere is it stated on or in the book that this is the final volume, so maybe Messmann just turned this one in and told Signet he was done.

In any event, A Promise For Death is an incredibly entertaining and well-written thriller, notable for being one of the few men’s adventure finales that acts as a legitimate conclusion to the series. I really enjoyed it, and highly recommend it – as well as the series itself.

Monday, March 18, 2019

The Revenger #5: City For Sale


The Revenger #5: City For Sale, by Jon Messmann
February, 1975  Signet Books

If you want a little philosophy with your blood and guts, The Revenger is for you – Jon Messmann doesn’t let the little fact that he’s writing the fifth installment of a mob-busting series deter him from indulging in frequent and lengthy digressions on man’s inhumanity, free will versus fate, and even the occasional quote from Ecclesiastes. And yet despite all this, I do enjoy the series, with the caveat that you really have to be in the mood for it, because if you want fast-moving action you’d better look elsewhere.

There’s no pickup from the previous volume, but hero Ben Martin is still in New York, finding himself unable to leave. Now he serves as the foreman of a construction crew, and he’s gone back to using his real name – so much for the various cover identities he was using. Ben now considers killing mobsters “as natural as breathing;” it’s not something he burns to do, as in previous installments, but something fate often places in his lap. Like for example how he’s noticed a bunch of mobsters have been spying on a lovely young women who lives across the street from Ben’s construction site; Ben knows the men are hoods and has monitored them as they’ve monitored the girl over the past week.

Meanwhile, in what will prove to be a related plot, two Mafia gunners storm into a coutroom and massacre eleven people, including the judge. (Somehow they’re able to use a “silenced Magnum revolver,” which the uncredited cover artist has gamely illustrated.) The young woman being watched will turn out to be the daughter of another judge: her name is Carola Cozzi, and her dad is a judge who is known for cracking down on the mob. Ben is spurred into action when the mobsters finally make their move and abduct Carola, throwing her in their car and driving off. Here we see that the Revenger doesn’t mess around; he bumps into their car with his own, making it look like an accidental fender bender, then guns them down with his .38 revolver.

Surprisingly, Ben’s saving of Carola doesn’t lead to the hot and heavy sex scene you might inspect. Instead Messmann goes for more of a realistic depiction, with a shocked Carola asking Ben if he’ll stay the night so she can feel safe…and then Ben leaving when he sees she’s fallen asleep. This part’s kind of funny because Ben’s certain the Mafia won’t try for Carola again that night because “it’s not their way.” Yet throughout City For Sale Ben is constantly surprised by the unexpected tactics of the Mafia as represented by its latest boss, nutcase Johnny Lupo.

As Marty McKee so accurately notes, Lupo brings to mind Henry Silva to such a degree that Messmann must have been thinking of him when writing the character. Lupo’s taken over the New York action and has grand ambitions – he wants to rule the city itself, and has put together a mysterious plan to make this mad dream a reality. The courtroom massacre and the attempted abduction of Carola Cozzi are only pieces of the puzzle. Lupo dreams big, taking only the occasional break to explicitly screw his favorite girl, a redhead with “big tits” named Linda Akins who knows a good thing when she has it, and thus does her best to stay in Lupo’s graces.

Returning from the previous volume is Captain Leo Hendricks, who now acts as Ben’s unofficial supplier of info, weapons, and whatever else he might need to quash Mafia scum. Through Hendricks Ben learns that the murdered judge was actually on the Mafia payroll, which makes Lupo’s plot all the more mysterious. And Hendricks is sure Lupo is up to something, though he’s of course unable to do anything about it. Thus he uses Ben as his one-man army, getting Ben whatever he needs and helping him out. Don’t expect any major-duty firepower, though; true to the ‘70s crime genre, Ben Martin solely uses revolvers. This time it’s a .38 and a Colt Cobra.

Messmann spends more time on the mystery of Lupo’s plot and its unraveling as caused by Ben Martin’s presence. He also builds up the Ben-Carola relationship, keeping them out of bed until well past the middle of the book. However Carola doesn’t do much to make herself rise above the other female characters in the series; she comes off as a little one-note and boring, despite a fondness for scuba diving. She of course quickly gets her hooks in Ben, falling in love with him, though she knows from the start that he’ll end up hurting her. As ever Messmann writes their eventual sex scene fairly explicitly, though it’s not as hardcore as I recall the previous volume being.

One can’t accuse Messmann of not fully exploiting the angst and thoughts of his protagonist. City For Sale is literally stuffed with Ben’s musings on this or that weighty subject. And yet sometimes there is an impact to such material, like when Ben meets Captain Hendricks at a playground to exchange info, and Ben glimpses a boy on a carousel who looks almost identical to his murdered son. Messmann handles this well, not veering into the maudlin, and thus it actually makes an impression on the reader. But as mentioned Ben Martin is no longer fueled by the quest for revenge, and he just kills mobsters because it’s what he does. There is almost a Zen sort of vibe here, not that Messmann goes into that angle – one of the few angles he doesn’t go into.

But anyway, there’s a lot of musing and pondering over Ben’s growing feelings for Carola, even though he’s found himself in this exact same scenario for four volumes now – meeting and developing feelings for some new babe, all the while telling himself he can’t get involved and whatnot. And of course there’s no mention of what happened to his previous flings, other than a random moment when he thinks of something Valery Alwyn, from back in the second volume, once told him. Messmann doesn’t even bother explaining who she was, expecting his readers to remember her.

Unlike those previous gals, Carola gets slightly involved in the action; after an aborted infiltration of Lupo’s townhouse, in which Ben doesn’t find anything to figure out what the bastard is up to, he has a flash and realizes that Lupo’s hiding something in the water somewhere. And as luck would have it, Carola is a scuba diver. Ben retains her services to dive into a lake in the Catskills at night, and down there she finds all of Lupo’s hidden blackmail material. This is a nice part in which the mobsters almost get the jump on Ben, but he and Carola are able to escape, and later figure out that Lupo has stuff on all the city’s elite. He intends to take over the city in this way.

The finale is probably one of the best in the series, so it’s nice to see Messmann hasn’t gotten burned out five volumes in. Taking place at the Statue of Liberty late at night, it plays out on a nicely-done suspense angle. There have been various reversals and turnarounds at this point, and Messmann brings everything together fittingly. We also get a nice confrontation between Ben and Lupo, with the latter trying to lure Ben up the darkened stairs in the statue. I like it that Messmann gives Lupo a proper sendoff, because at this point you want to see him dead, however I did feel that Lupo was kept off-page a bit too much.

It’s funny; like the other volumes of the series City For Sale is deceptively slim. It’s only 144 pages, but man does it have some small and dense print. So what I mean is it isn’t a fast read by any means. I’ll be sorry to see the series end with the next volume, but at the same time I can see how all the heavy pathos could get tiresome if prolonged.

Monday, October 30, 2017

The Revenger #4: The Stiletto Signature


The Revenger #4: The Stiletto Signature, by Jon Messmann
October, 1974  Signet Books

Jon Messmann continues his “Burt Hirschfeld writing The Executioner” schtick with this fourth volume of The Revenger that’s once again heavy on the introspection, usually at the expense of the action. That being said, The Stiletto Signature has more sex than the previous three volumes, with hero Ben Martin scoring with two uber-sexy babes – several times over, in extra-smutty detail, which is how I demand my sleaze.

Surprisingly, given the “sex slavery” plot promised on the back cover, we don’t really get much about it; indeed, the sex slave stuff, which serves to get Ben Martin engaged on this particular hit, is given narrative short-shrift. The villain of the piece, a Sicilian mafioso named Vito Cavallo who has taken over the family of Don Genossanto (killed in the previous volume), runs a business in which Sicilian girls are imported to the US and sold to men who keep them in their homes ostensibly as maids and whatnot, but who really use them for sex. Martin’s distant cousin Rosa has become a victim of Cavallo, having been imported from Sicily for this sexual slavery, and murdered when Ben went around looking for her; Ben, who never even knew Rosa, was requested by her family back in Sicily to find out what happened to their daughter. Little did they know they were writing The Revenger himself.

But in reality the crux of Stiletto Signature is more about Ben plotting against Cavallo and trying to get evidence of the sex slavery business and who is helping the Mafioso run it. Cavallo was brought over by old Don Genossanto a few years ago, and has now used his native savagery to get to the top of the heap. He has brought back many of the savage old Mafia ways, in particular murdering turncoats and special enemies with a stiletto; the use of this particular instrument has become Cavallo’s “signature.”

The series takes a turn expected from so many of these other ‘70s lone wolf vigilante novels; Ben is contacted by a police chief who is not only a secret supporter of Ben’s vigilante work, but who also wants to secretly endorse him. This is Captain Leo Hendricks, who has become a fan of Ben’s over the past few years. When Ben goes to see the corpse of his cousin in the morgue, Hendricks has him hauled in, having suspected that the infamous Revenger might eventually try to become involved in this latest mobland plot.

Hendricks, after getting a grudging Ben to admit he is the Ben Martin who is supposedly dead but who is really the Revenger, tells our hero all about Cavallo’s sex slavery operation. If they can figure out how Cavallo is running it, who his financers are, they can bring him down legally. Ben takes the job and sets his sights on Carter Van Rhyne, a jet-setter type who employed Ben’s murdered cousin as a “housemaid.” Ben goes to Van Rhyne’s mansion, just flat-out asking about his cousin – and then telling a nonplussed Van Rhyne that she’s dead. Ben also trades interested looks with Larel, Van Rhyne’s hot-stuff sister.

Action is minimal, as usual; the Mafia tries to put out a hit on this mysterious guy looking into Van Rhyne’s business – for of course it turns out Van Rhyne is up to his neck in the whole sex-slave operation – and Ben fools them with a handy mannequin he puts in the front seat of his car. He guns them down casually, as usual mostly sticking to a revolver or a rifle for his mob-busting. However this volume puts a bit more focus on Ben’s ‘Nam past, in particular where it comes to his preparations for his various attacks.

Laurel unsurprisingly becomes Ben’s first conquest in the novel; she is gradually drawn to his side, initially disbelieving her brother’s role in any Mafia business, but soon pledging to help Ben stop him. She has a secret apartment in the city, and there the two enjoy the first of what will ultimately be a few explicitly-rendered sex scenes; Messmann actually has ‘em go at it twice, back to back, but bear in mind the sex scenes themselves are written in the “literary” vibe Messmann employs for the series: “[Ben] touches…the calyx of ecstasy” and the like. So while the hardcore screwin’ is fairly graphic throughout, it is couched in that same sort of highfalutin style that Burt Hirschfeld would use in his own novels, to the point that the reader doesn’t know whether he should be getting hot and bothered or reaching for a dictionary.

Eventually the action transitions to Sicily, as Ben heads to Cavallo’s hometown to disrupt his plans there. But even here the sex slave stuff isn’t much explored; throughout we only learn about the financial aspects of it, or how exactly Cavallo is bringing the girls over. Rather it’s all about Ben shaming Cavallo by exploiting the overly-masculine dictates of the old world. Which is to say, Ben screws the virgin Cavallo plans to marry! Pretending to be Cavallo himself, Ben ingratiates himself into the local community, all of whom look up to Cavallo with much fear and respect. Due to various reasons, Cavallo has never actually met the girl he is to marry, nor her parents, so Ben successfully bluffs his way into their presence and makes off with the babe, claiming that he has decided to marry her earlier than expected.

Her name is Norma, and Ben takes her virginity in another explicit sequence, one that, as with the material with Laurel, actually features back-to-back banging. Turns out Norma is “built for sex” despite being a virgin…and when Ben drops the bomb that he isn’t Cavallo, thus “despoiling” the girl forever (we are informed that these old-school Sicilians would rather their daughters die than lose their virginity before marriage), she takes it placidly. Ben for his part feels “stained” for the heartless deed he’s done, but hell, you can’t call yourself “The Revenger” without ruffling a few feathers.

Once Ben has called Cavallo back in New York to blab that he just banged his bride-to-be, Norma drops a bomb of her own: she’s known from the start that Ben was not Cavallo, having managed to find some photos of the man. She went along with Ben because she sensed he would be her savior, taking her from the life she does not want with Cavallo. So Messmann gets his cake and eats it, too – Ben thus is not a liar-rapist, but a hero after all. Anyway, Norma soon takes off to hang out with a girlfriend, and we’re into the homestretch.

The finale sees Ben fighting against time as he tries to make various connecting flights and arrive in the US a few hours before Cavallo’s latest shipment of sex-slaves, which are being transported first by a Sicilian fishing boat, then to a private plane, and finally to a lumber mill truck that waits for them at Kennedy Airport. Carter Van Rhyne is so involved with Cavallo that the distribution center of Van Ryne’s lumber mill is secretly used as a sort of waystation for the imported women, who are then shipped out separately across the US. Ben wants to get there before them, set up an ambush, and end the entire affair that night.

Laurel of course manages to go along with Ben on his assault, which sees him blasting from afar Cavallo and the ten mobsters he’s brought along with him. Here Ben again uses his .38, as well as a Mossburg rifle. It’s not an action-centric finale, playing more on chaos and Laurel’s fear that her brother will be killed. And Ben for his part bizarrely enough tries to take Cavallo alive, wanting to deliver him to Captain Hendricks, who will then go about the process of legally taking down Cavallo’s operation. But seriously, what kind of “Revenger” would Ben be if he didn’t kill his man – first shooting off his kneecaps and then his ear for the desired intel, and then finally blowing him away when Cavallo lurches at him with his stiletto?

The story ends with Ben once again boffing Laurel in literary-smut fashion, with the intimation that Laurel is going to be Ben’s woman…for a time. It would appear that Messmann is giving up on the ongoing storyline of the previous three volumes; as we’ll recall, Ben was also quite serious about his leading lady in the last volume, even debating at book’s end if he was going to return to her. 

Messmann’s writing is good as ever, though – at least, if you’re looking for a little literary-style stuff with your mob-busting action. But at this point, Ben Martin is not much different from Messmann’s other series character of the time, Jefferson Boone; both are presented as more worldly and sophisticated than the average man of action, prone to brooding and introspection, well-versed in history and poetry and what-all. But so far I like this series better.

Monday, February 8, 2016

The Revenger #3: The Vendetta Contract


The Revenger #3: The Vendetta Contract, by Jon Messmann
August, 1974  Signet Books

The third volume of The Revenger is my favorite yet, Jon Messmann having figured out how to retain the “realistic” nature of his series while still keeping it all fast-moving and exciting. He’s also reigned in his somewhat-pretentious prose, with the soul-plumbing introspection of the previous two volumes whittled down. That’s not to say it’s gone entirely, though, and thus The Revenger still has more in common with a literary sort of novel than say The Executioner.

The events of the previous volume were a “short while ago,” and now hero Ben Martin lives in Morrisville, a small town south of Indianapolis. His business card identifies him as “Ben Bruzzi, Industrial Painting.” Ben has managed to pick up a new flame: a Morrisville native named Bianca Lanza whose lush, full-figured form is often mentioned. The way Messmann describes her, Bianca sounds like a Botticelli painting come to life, all soft, rounded curves. I assumed this was his way of telling us she was a little chunky, but later on another character checks her out while she sunbathes nude and offers the sterling endorsement, “Look at those tits!”

Anyway, Bianca is a waitress at a diner and her involvement with Ben has gotten serious; cue the first of several sex scenes in The Vendetta Contract. Messmann handles these scenes a little differently, this time, as they sort of meld outright explicitness with Burt Hirschfeld-style analogy and metaphor. Actually, Hirschfeld is a good comparison, as again Messmann’s writing here is very similar in style, with that same sort of sentence-concatenation Hirschfeld employs (though not to the sometimes-absurd extent of Hirschfeld).

Bianca knows Ben’s secret, that he is really Ben Martin and that he is the man who busted the Mafia in New York and Chicago. She figured this out due to a few newspapers she found in Ben’s apartment, newspapers detailing the events of the previous two volumes. Bianca instantly deduced that “Ben Bruzzi” was none other than Ben Martin, whose name she has recalled for personal reasons: Bianca’s brother Jimmy has gotten on the bad side of the Indianapolis mob, thus Bianca has always been interested in news items about the Mafia world.

Jimmy, who doesn’t even appear in the book, serves as the impetus to get Ben back into the life of mob-busting. When Bianca is accosted by some Mafia stooges who try to grill her for info on where her brother is, Ben steps in and takes them on. He tosses industrial paint in the eyes of one, bashes the other around, and breaks the arm of the third. Ben prepares himself for the retaliation that will follow. But something strange happens – no more goons come to bother either him or Bianca.

This is because wily old Don Gennosanti, the New York godfather who appeared in the previous two volumes, has been planning a campaign against Ben Martin. Mafia branches around the country are to report back to Gennosanti if they come across anyone who pushes back against them. Thus, when the Indianapolis boys report back that this character in Morrisville beat up a few of them, Gennosanti instantly sees the work of Ben Martin. The next stage of his plan is to hire a hit man. But despite what the cover copy states, Gennosanti is determined to hire a non-Mafia hit man.

Gennosanti offers the job to Corbett, an infamous assassin who has the arrogance of success. He lives in a posh penthouse in Washington, D.C., and accepts Gennosanti’s $350,000 contract on Ben. Corbett is snide and rude, treating Gennosanti with disrespect; he thinks all Mafia types are idiots. But he’s the best at what he does, and he figures taking out Ben Martin will be simple. First though he must handle the little setback of murdering his bimbo girlfriend, who has gotten suspicious of what Corbett really does for a living.

The Vendetta Contract alternates chapters focusing on Ben and Corbett, the former gradually realizing something is up and the latter arrogantly closing in for the kill. Ben knows something’s wrong when the Mafia stooges don’t come back, and he corners one of them, shooting down two of his men in the process. The dude confirms that there have been orders to look out for troublemakers, and Ben immediately deduces that a hit man is likely coming for him. He tells Bianca to sit tight and makes plans to leave Morrisville asap, which I thought was hilarious – wasn’t Ben supposed to protect her?

So begins an elaborate “game of winner-kill-all” as Ben races eastward across the country, Corbett always at his heels. As ever Messmann is at pains to keep it all realistic, meaning that there are no sequences where Ben becomes a one-man army. Once again his kills are carried out by revolvers and hunting rifles he purchases at gun stores; there are no fancy machine guns or “war wagons” as in The Executioner. While this is interesting, and capably handled, I have to admit I more enjoy the pulpier stuff of the other Mafia-busting books of the era.

Through Ohio and on into Pittsburgh Ben goes, always trying and failing to shake his pursuer. And while Corbett knows what Ben looks like and can guess every move he will make, Ben has no idea who is even after him. This adds a nice level of paranoia to the tale, which makes it all the more goofy that, on his first night in Pittsburgh, Ben picks up a hooker! Not that he has sex with her, and indeed Messmann writes a moving scene here, as the gal, Flo, is only a “part-time hustler” and is currently down on her luck. Ben gives her some money and offers her his room for the night, where the two engage in some of Messmann’s patented soap-operatic dialog.

But Flo actually provides Ben with some inspiration, courtesy an off-hand comment she makes; Ben realizes he needs to stop running and to start kicking ass. If the Mafia is chasing him, then he will make the Mafia itself run. Armed with a hunting rifle, he starts in Pittsburgh and continues on through Pennsylvannia, blowing away Mafia stooges from afar. Again, the “action scenes” in this series are mostly relegated to Ben sniping someone from a rooftop or whatnot, and it must be admitted that Messmann generally hurries through these scenes so he can get back to the introspection and brooding.

Corbett though is almost a Terminator, following after Ben and assessing his next moves like some programmed computer. He bides his time in Pittsburgh, picking up a boozing floozy for some easy sex, and takes increasingly-irate calls from Gennosanti, who demands results. But Corbett has figured Ben’s gameplan, knows he’s making his hits based off of research he’s done on the Pennsylvannia-area Mafia, and can even guess where and when he’ll strike next. In fact he’s figured Ben out so much that Corbett even sets up a trap for him that almost gets Ben caught, causing a roadblock outside of Harrisburg.

The final quarter takes place in Philadelphia, which Ben hitches a ride to after losing his car in a late-night chase with Corbett. Meanwhile the assassin is waiting for him, having canvassed all the hotels he figures Ben will consider renting a room in. His paid contacts alert him when Ben checks into one of these hotels, and Corbett sits on a nearby rooftop with his fancy rifle, ready to kill the Revenger. It’s only through luck that our hero learns his life is over if he steps out of the hotel, overhearing a conversation between two hotel employees, one of whom was Corbett’s tip-off.

The only thing Ben knows about Corbett is that he has a weakness for the ladies. During that late-night chase outside of Harrisburg, Ben briefly had access to Corbett’s car while the assassin was out roaming the woods for Ben, and there in the backseat Ben found a few girlie mags. Ben now enacts his desperate plan; he calls Bianca and asks her to fly over to Philadelphia on the earliest available flight. After another somewhat-lyrical/somewhat-explicit sex scene, Ben goes over his plan, which surprisingly enough is the event depicted on the cover.

Bianca goes up on the hotel roof in a skimpy bikini, right in the view of where Ben knows Corbett is lurking on his own rooftop. She begins a slow strip-tease, as if she’s unaware she’s in plain sight of a professional hit man, and lays nude on a beach towel. All of which proves successful in distracting Corbett long enough for Ben to run out of the hotel and not get shot. But Ben, despite having killed several Mafia soldiers by now, finds himself unable to shoot Corbett in the back when he sneaks up on him.

Despite some last-second tension – Ben, the fool, doesn’t even consider the fact that Corbett has his friggin’ gun trained on Bianca, who obliviously lies nude on the rooftop below – the outcome here is expected. And here in the final pages The Vendetta Contract gets better and better. Given the surgical scapel Ben finds in Corbett’s pocket, he realizes that Gennosanti – for Ben has long deduced that the New York don was behind this contract – demanded evidence that Ben Martin was really dead. In other words, he wanted a piece of him.

Disguising his voice, Ben calls Gennosanti, knowing the don’s personal number from the previous volume. The don sets up a meeting with “Corbett” in New York, in the business offices of one of the Mafia’s legal ventures. Messmann delivers an effective and memorable finale which has Gennosanti and two other Mafia dons first realizing the severed hand they’ve been delivered isn’t Martin’s (thanks to Martin’s fingerprint file from when he was in the army), then rushing out of the room when they hear a ticking from the package.

But there Ben stands, like a regular Mack Bolan at last, wielding an M-1 carbine. In the span of a paragraph he wipes out several high-level Mafia targets, Gennosanti among them, thus ending a sublot that’s been building since the first volume. But Ben has decided he will not return to Bianca, who meanwhile has returned to Morrisville on her own, mislead into thinking Ben will follow her. Ben first wants to ensure the Mafia has forgotten about him before he’ll allow himself to become fully involved with her.

Given the cover copy of the next volume, it looks like a new boss soon takes over Gennosanti’s role, and no doubt will in fact continue the war against Ben Martin. I have to say, this volume was so entertaining (and concisely written at a mere 158 pages) that I look forward to reading the next one. But then, Messmann is a very gifted writer, even if I much prefer the style he used in his earlier days on the Killmaster series, in particular the awesomely whacked-out The Sea Trap. Messmann’s writing in The Vendetta Contract is good, too, but less pulpy than those earlier Killmaster novels and too clearly striving to come off like a “real” novel.

And speaking of which, Messmann retains the literary trick of the previous two volumes by slipping in and out of present-tense, but it’s done very arbitarily, and at times unsuccessfully, with the tense sometimes changing in the same sentence. But he achieves perhaps one of the most important tasks of any series writer, one that is unfortunately seldom achieved by many other series writers: he makes you care about his characters.

Monday, July 28, 2014

The Revenger #2: Fire In The Streets


The Revenger #2: Fire In The Streets, by Jon Messmann
June, 1974  Signet Books

A year after the events of The Revenger, mule-headed hero Ben Martin now lives as “Ben Markham” in Chicago, denying himself memories of his former life and just trying to earn a living as a manager at a meat-processing factory. Soon enough though he’s once again going up against the Mafia, in a novel that almost comes off like a Xerox copy of its predecessor.

Just as The Revenger opened with Ben discovering mobsters lurking around his shop, so too does Fire In The Streets, with the exception that this time Ben Martin himself has nothing to lose in the bargain. It’s not his store and it’s not his family that’s put in harm’s way due to his rash actions, all of which serves to make the reader eventually harbor ill-will against this “hero.” But anyway, just as in that previous installment, Ben mauls the intruders, hanging each of them on meathooks.

The stooges work for Nick Carboni, a Chicago capo who is in the middle of a “business arrangment” with Ben’s boss, Jordon Alwyn, owner of Alwyn’s Beef Products. But Ben Martin knows how the mob operates, and knows that even though they appear to be working on the level, eventually they will make life hell for the Alywyns. I forgot to mention, Ben also has the hots for Jordon’s sexy wife Valery (yes, the couple’s really named “Jordon” and “Valery”). Whereas the previous novel traded on marriage, this one’s theme is all about infidelity, with Carboni constantly fighting with his wife and running off to his blonde mistress, Julie Egan, and Jordon and Valery fighting endlessly.

Also, Messmann takes a page from Tony DeStefano, who wrote himself out of a similar corner in Mondo #2; just like the protagonist of that series, Ben Martin clearly seemed to die in the final page of The Revenger. So for this sequel, just as DeStefano did in his own sequel, Messmann tones down the seriousness of Ben’s wounds in the previous book, having it that he was “only” shot three times in the abdomen. In a brief flashback we learn that he was fished out of the Hudson by a slightly-chubby nurse who secretly took Ben back to her apartment and tended him back to life.

Despite the expected romance (and again Messmann delivers several explicit sex scenes throughout the novel), Ben insisted he had to leave New York, and eventually came to Chicago, where he now works as a manager in an establishment similar to the one he once ran in New York. But the Mafia is here as well, and as in the previous novel Ben continues to indulge in his “obsession” with fighting them, no matter how much trouble or misery he causes for those close to him.

To wit, he refuses to back down when Jordon Alwyn confronts him about that fight in the opening pages, as a result driving a further wedge between Jordon and Valery, as Mrs. Alwyn appears to harbor certain feelings for Ben as well. She also owns sixty percent of the company, which serves for further strain for the couple. Anyway, returning home one night Ben’s ambushed by three mobsters, and ends up killing all of them, which really sets off Carboni, who demands that Alwyn fire him immediately.

Instead of packing his bags and leaving, Ben instead takes over for a close friend who also works at the company and was scheduled to drive a rig across state; Ben is certain the mobsters will try to hijack or at least wreck the rig, as a sign of its displeasure with Alwyn (again, displeasure over events Ben himself has caused). And he’s right; a car comes after him, guns blazing, and Ben ends up crashing the truck right overtop it, easly jumping out of his crashing rig without a scratch.

Now it’s war, and Ben realizes he must once again become the Revenger (not that he ever calls himself this). Meantime he has sex with Valery, who comes over to throw herself on him. Given that Ben was just fired, this makes for some pretty fitting payback, screwing the boss’s hot wife. At any rate he again does exactly as in the previous book, renting out some anonymous slums downtown and buying a few handguns and rifles from stores. Once again our protagonist doesn’t resort to fancy weaponry, expressly avoiding automatics so as not to “harm the innocent” – as if he doesn’t harm them enough on his own! I mean, would you be surprised to learn that his good friend, the one who was supposed to drive that rig, is eventually murdered by Carboni’s thugs??

One thing that elevates Fire In The Streets above The Revenger is that here there is much less pathos; whereas in the previous book Ben Martin took quite a while to become once again the killing machine he was in ‘Nam, here he’s ready posthaste to kick some shit. This adds a fun layer to the novel, with Ben marveling over how “easy” it is to kill Carboni’s stupid goons, and Martin later calling the man himself to promise him he’ll die soon, too. But again, Ben comes off as the sick one, as this is not his fight, and indeed Jordon Alwyn is presented as such a spineless sap that you feel little sympathy for him anyway. Clearly, Ben’s unwillingness to back down causes more misery for Alwyn’s employees and family than anything Carboni might have planned.

As in the previous book Ben pulls off a series of daring public hits, first blowing away some Carboni thugs as they come out of an Italian restaurant. Then he gets more when some of them come to round up blonde bimbo Julie Egan, a scene which has Ben gunning each of them down as they stand beside the screaming girl, whom he lets live. Meantime Ben keeps on banging Mrs. Alwyn, who is already planning a future with Ben Martin – plus she’s figured out who he really is, having followed the newspaper stories a year before and easily piecing it together that “Ben Markham” and Ben Martin are one and the same.

Another figure from Ben’s past returns: Don Gennosanti, the elderly New York capo who tried to make peace with Ben in the first book. Gennosanti calls Carboni, insisting that he is playing this all wrong, and also the Don is certain this is once again Ben Martin at work. Also by novel’s end we see that the Don has actually started to like Ben Martin (he even drinks a toast to him on the final page), so this will hopefully serve up for a subplot that continues in the next volumes.

There are actually fewer “action scenes” in Fire In The Streets than in the first book, with the highlight being a bit where Ben is actually caught in a lame Carboni trap. But Ben is prepared, with a pair of derringers strapped beneath his belt with rubber bands; the sequence is entertaining, especially because it’s the first time yet in the series that Ben himself is in danger, but it all comes off too easy for him because the mobsters once again make every mistake he expected they would.

Even the finale is short on thrills, with Ben stealing yet another rig and strapping a bunch of dynamite to it, then steering the thing for a head-on collision with Carboni’s fortified house. But Messmann relays the sequence from the perspective of Carboni and his wife; the woman, beaten by Carboni throughout the novel, has herself turned to Ben Martin’s side, and per the Revenger’s request she keeps Carboni “occupied” so he’ll be in the house at this particular time.

Given the lack of action and the preponderance of literary stuff, with lots and lots of soul-plumbing and introspection, it occurs to me that Jon Messmann was trying to write a “real” novel here, just as he did in the previous book. I just don’t think this style gibes well with the men’s adventure genre. In fact Messmann’s writing throughout is very reminiscent of Burt Hirschfeld, with the same sort of “serious” turns of phrase that veer right over the line into pretension.

Fire In The Streets comes in at a mere 135 pages, but it has some of the smallest print I’ve ever read in a novel. But even so, even despite the lack of action and the focus on introspection and word-painting, I still enjoyed the novel, and look forward to the next book, with “hero” Ben Martin already disappearing into the shadows on the final pages, ready to go someplace else and take on a new identity.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

The Revenger


The Revenger, by Jon Messmann
September, 1973  Signet Books

Martin, while capable of violent action, is more introspective than many of his fellow Mafia busters. -- Brad Mengel, Serial Vigilantes Of Paperback Fiction

Here begins the six-volume saga of Ben Martin, surely the most boringly-named protagonist in the men’s adventure genre. Curiously, Signet Books does little to inform the reader that The Revenger is the start of a series, which makes me suspect that perhaps this was intended as a standalone novel, but got turned into a series once the sales figures came in.

As Brad Mengel mentions in the quote above, and as Marty McKee states in his reviews of two Revenger novels, hero Ben Martin is prone to a lot of introspection and soul-plumbing. At his core though he’s a primo shit-kicker, and part of the brunt of this first volume is how Martin strips away the veneer of civilization so as to “make the Mafia sweat with fear.” Like most other ‘70s-‘80s men’s adventure protagonists, Martin was a badass in ‘Nam, and gradually we learn he was a “specialist” (not that Specialist) – “a specialist in death,” who pulled off so many assassinations that he became legendary among the VC and NVA. 

Now he lives in NYC, where he runs a produce wholesale store. Messmann really goes for the mundane here – I mean, “Ben Martin, produce wholesaler.” Doesn’t really scream excitement, does it? Ben has a pretty wife named Donna and a six year-old son, Ben Jr. The first half of The Revenger is heavy on scene-setting, where we see that Ben and Donna disagree on things but still love one another – cue an explicit sex scene, the first of a few in the novel. Messmann also sets another standard; whereas most men’s adventure novels feature the protagonist having sex with every woman but his wife or girlfriend, all of the sex scenes in The Revenger are between married couples.

Trouble rears its head with mobsters, employed by New Jersey-based Joe Colardi, who are extorting the various shops near Ben’s produce store. When two of them come to his place, Ben practically mutilates them, including a memorable part where he puts a knife through one’s hand. Interestingly, throughout the novel whenever Ben goes into “Revenger mode” Messmann writes the scene in present-tense. The only other men’s adventure series I know of that’s written in present-tense is The Mind Masters, which curiously enough was not only also a Signet publication, but was also courtesy another “Jon” – that is, John Rossmann. I’m betting the two authors were not one and the same, but it is curious that even their last names were spelled so similarly.  (Also, like Rossmann, Messmann always refers to his protagonist by his first name.)

Anyway, after forcibly evicting the mobsters (and even going to the local precinct to ensure charges are pressed against them) Ben puts himself on Joe Colardi’s radar. Recently instated as a caporegime by Don Gennosanti, Colardi lives opulently with his wife Annette and teenaged daughter. He’s in high standing in his WASP-ish community, despite the well-known fact that he’s in the Mafia. Colardi decides to forego consulting with the Don and instead sends a couple men to kidnap Ben Jr.

With his wife in a panic and the cops unable to find the kid, Ben of course knows that Colardi has his son, though there’s nothing to prove it. Donna urges Ben to call Colardi, to just give in to them to get their son back, but he won’t relent: he’s determined not to back down to the Mafia. It comes off as buffoonishly stubborn, but Ben’s philosophy is that too many have backed down to the mob. If more people were to stand up to them, their power and influence would disappear.

Ben makes the call, only for Colardi to rub it in, relishing the moment; he tells Ben to call back later, as he can tell that he still has a bit of rebellion in him. Then Colardi’s two goons screw up. Watching Ben Jr. in some downtown slum, they leave the kid alone for a moment, and he tries to escape…ending up falling off the roof of the building. The kid ends up dead, and now Colardi’s really in a panic. The goons weren’t even able to hide the body, as the kid was discovered moments after hitting the ground. It’s front page news, and of course when word gets to Ben and Donna, the two are destroyed, the latter a catatonic wreck, the former ready to go full-on into Revenger mode.

Messmann somewhat believably has Ben and Donna go their separate ways; she obviously blaming him for their son’s death, and Ben, beyond his own belief that he was in the right all along, understands that his wife will never forgive him for it. So he gets a room in a downtown slum and starts buying guns. Messmann also keeps it real with Ben not pulling off any comic book-esque feats; his kills in The Revenger are made with store-bought rifles and pistols, and his success mostly comes through his war-trained ability to stake out a place and wait in ambush.

Ben starts by blowing the heads off a few Colardi goons with a high-powered rifle, and later guns down a few more. Colardi of course knows who’s behind these killings, but no one can find Ben Martin. I figured Colardi would go the clichéd route and kidnap Donna, but luckily this is impossible, the cops surrounding her apartment building in case Ben comes back to visit her. For the most part, though, Messmann treats the “action scenes” with reserve, with Ben hiding from afar, sniping a few goons, and then hurrying off. Only a scene where Ben gets the jump (so to speak) on a Colardi goon who’s visiting his hooker girlfriend delivers the lurid vibe you expect from these ‘70s books:

The door breaks open at once and he is in the room, in the blue light of a small lamp with a colored bulb in it. Solly is still inside the girl, atop her, and Ben sees his face, automatic, instinctive fright and astonishment. He fires at the fleshy nakedness of the man, firing three times while the girl’s legs are still clutching him in her. Solly erupts in a shower of red as the powerful slugs tear into him, and the girl is covered instantly by pieces of his torn flesh and spilled insides, and she is screaming, kicking furiously, trying to tear away. But Sully is atop her, literally a dead weight, keeping her there in a last embrace, a final fuck as his body quivers in the death spasms.

Don Gennosanti enters the picture, pissed off at Colardi for botching things so terribly. There follows an interesting scene where the Don visits with Donna, requesting that she tell her husband to contact him. Donna insists that Ben will never come back, but the Don assures her otherwise. And sure enough Ben sneaks into their apartment that night, to say “goodbye” to Donna – cue another explicit husband/wife sex scene. When Ben calls the Don, Gennosanti offers up Colardi in exchange for Ben calling off his vendetta; he’s willing to sacrifice Colardi to restore peace. Ben agrees, telling the Don to ensure Colardi is on the Staten Island Ferry at 4:30 that morning – and for Colardi to keep walking around, as Ben prefers “a moving target!”

The finale is taut, more suspense than action. Colardi has secretly called in Frank Ganz, “the best contract killer” in the biz, to help, but of course Ben, lurking in black on the ferry, soon spots him. This was the start of a series, so I think it would be pretty obvious that Ben gets his vengeance. However what’s odd is that The Revenger is like Mondo in that it’s pretty clear our hero dies on the final page – in fact, Messmann introduces a theme with Donna discovering at the end of the book that she’s pregnant, and venturing off into her new life, she declares that the child will be named “Ben Martin” and will learn to never back down. In other words, our hero’s wish has paid off, and the future generation will learn from his steadfast refusal to submit.

So then I’m betting Messmann decided to leave his options open; the novel ends with a shot-up Ben falling, half dead, into the water as the ferry returns to port, floating to rest in some hidden jetty. You could read it either way, that he lives or dies. Had it not been turned into a series, The Revenger would’ve made for a fine, if overly philosophical, revenge novel. But given that this was just the start I’m very interested to see how Messmann follows it up.