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Dirty Harry #11: Death in the Air - by Dane Hartman

"Dirty" Harry Callahan's investigation of a young woman's murder at a busy BART station uncovers a rogue government scientist's experiments in germ warfare.

For a short while, the first three quarters, say, I had my hopes up that I had cracked open a Dirty Harry novel that was not only fun to read, but was actually going to be a Dirty Harry story that felt like a Dirty Harry story.

No such luck.  The novel goes off the rails in the last forty to fifty pages, right around the time that Harry decides to skin a man alive.  Stepping on a gun wound to save the life of an abducted girl, an event from the first Dirty Harry film, that I could buy.  But skinning a man?  That seems a bit over the top, even for a cop as tough and no nonsense as Dirty Harry Callahan.

But while my hopes were up, I was enjoying Death in the Air for the disposable escapism that it was.  The opening crime and action set pieces are quite close in tone to the film series that inspired the spin-offs.  Harry even does his "Did I fire six shots or only five" schtick and the author (Dane Hartman was a publisher created pseudonym) manages to get the "Do you feel lucky, punk" quote right this time around.

The rest of the book is really just a protracted action sequence littered with gun fights, fist fights and various chases that alternate between Harry doing the chasing or Harry getting chased.  The trick is to keep the all the non-stop action rooted in something that feels true to the source material.  It's a trick that this tie-in almost pulled off.  Close, but no 44. Magnum this time around.

The Executioner #207: Freedom Strike - by Don Pendleton

Mack Bolan is dispatched to South Africa to ensure that neo-fascist whites or fanatical blacks do not get a chance to assassinate that nation's first black president.

When I cracked Freedom Strike open I thought that I would polish the book off in a day, perhaps two, and move on to other things.  It was only a 221 page Action Series Novel, what could possibly slow me down?

Growing disinterest in, then eventual boredom with, the novel's Idiot Plot (i.e. every character must act like a complete idiot in order for the story to work).  This novel qualifies as my first stinker read of 2009.  It was so bad it makes me wonder if I should dare to ever crack open another Executioner novel again.

Quite some time ago - back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth - I read a Destroyer novel titled Bay City Blast. Long time fans/readers of Men's Adventure Series novels (i.e. those my age or older) should be familiar with it, for it is justifiably famous for its merciless parody of The Executioner.  Having read that book, it was hard for me to take any of the events or characters in Freedom Strike seriously.  After awhile I had to give up and just start laughing at the book.

Don Pendleton's work-for-hire replacement (note, no author is actually credited as having written the book) bogs the story down with multiple conspiracies amongst the various militant groups that the Executioner has been dispatched to dispose of.  South Africa has no law enforcement community of its own, it seems.  Bolan (aka the Warrior) strides through the cities and countryside of South Africa, toting an utterly ridiculous amount of guns and explosive weaponry, effortlessly gunning down or blowing up any and all bad guys that cross his path...and there are a lot of bad guys that cross his path.  It gets to the point where the book reads like a description of an expert marksman knocking down plastic ducks in a shooting gallery.

The Executioner comes across as the equivalent of the Terminator.  Nothing can stop him, nothing can harm him (at least seriously, he does get a bothersome shrapnel wound at one point), and nothing can keep him from saving the day.  It was all as subtle as a sledgehammer to a watermelon, I only wish that the resulting mess had been more entertaining.

Dirty Harry #12: The Dealer of Death - by Dane Hartman

After James William Gallant escapes from prison he has only one goal in mind, to torture and kill the man who put him there.  That man is Inspector Harry Callahan.

Who else would it be?  Lieutenant Bressler?  (If you don't know who Lieutenant Bressler is, then stick a disc of the original Dirty Harry or The Enforcer, the second sequel, into your DVD player and give it a spin.)  Come to think of it, that might make for an interesting story.

As I slogged through The Dealer of Death I kept asking myself a question: Is this book supposed to be funny?  Depending on where the reader is at any given moment, that answer could just as easily be yes as it could be no.  There were plenty of moments sprinkled throughout the book where the author (Dane Hartman was a house name) captured the wry humor found in most of the Dirty Harry films.  But then there were far too many parts where the writing was simply sloppy or struck the wrong tone.  Dirty Harry is not the type of guy that would say, "Your quarrel's with me."

I was also amused by things that, as an almost lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, I should not have been amused by.  Like the faked suicide at the beginning of the book.  Gallant leads the SFPD on a merry chase through downtown San Francisco and Golden Gate Park before running his stolen car off of a cliff.  I guess I wasn't around for the massive earthquake that lifted the Richmond and Sunset Districts a hundred or so feet above sea level and then sank both the Great Highway and Ocean Beach into the briny deep.  That must have been one hell of a ride, though.

Of the Dirty Harry novels that I have recently read, The Dealer of Death comes the closest to reading like an actual Dirty Harry movie.  Harry stays local throughout the story, busting heads and blasting bad guys, which gets him into the usual troubles with both the press and his superiors.

Although the novel hits the proper Dirty Harry story beats, the book's rhythm is way off.  Harry winds up investigating two separate crimes that, thanks to the brevity of the Category Series format, turn out to share a common link with Gallant.  He also romances the widow of the man Gallant murdered, which is the crime Gallant was serving time in prison for.  But this "romance" is ignored to the point that calling it underdeveloped would be implying that the author spends anytime whatsoever exploring Harry's love life.  Doesn't happen.  Then there are the Idiot Plot moments.  You know, when the characters have to act like idiots in order for the plot to work?  That happens a lot.  I know this book takes place twenty-five or more years ago, but there was enough ballistics and forensic investigation going on that Gallant's "Master Plan" would have been uncovered in a matter of days, and this book evidently takes place over several weeks.  Worst of all is that Harry doesn't act like Harry.  He's way too laid back about someone breaking into his girlfriend's apartment and stealing his firearm.  Then there's the bit where he is racing to save the day and stops for a cheeseburger and a cup of coffee.  That is not Dirty Harry Callahan.  That is Sissy Larry Loserman.

The Dealer of Death was the last in Warner's "Men of Action Books" Dirty Harry spin-off series, but it is far from one of its best.  It's a good thing that there are several more Dirty Harry books that I have yet to read, because I would have hated to finish the series off with this book souring my Dirty Harry memories.

The Destroyer #14: Judgment Day - by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

With so many clandestine investigative tendrils snaking throughout the country, it was only a matter of time before someone took notice of CURE's intelligence gathering operations.  That someone is T.L. Broon, president-chairman of the board of IDC, a corporation that has grown beyond simply manufacturing computers and designing computer programs.  Seeing the mysterious intelligence gathering done by CURE as a threat to IDC's growing power, Broon assigns Blake Corbish, a thirty-seven year old vice president with a hungry, and quite ruthless, eye on a senior vice presidency, to find out what CURE is doing and how best to turn it into an IDC operation.

Corbish succeeds in learning the what of CURE by kidnapping and torturing Dr. Harold Smith, supposed director of Folcroft Sanitarium, CURE's cover operation.  But Corbish never really understands the why of it.  Since it will not profit him in any way, he decides a change and restructuring of CURE's operations are in order.  But Corbish has made one very deadly mistake.

He did not kill Dr. Harold Smith. 

A few weeks back I was listening to a podcast, I think it was Dead Central's Dinner For Fiends, where a host commented that she read so many books in a year (over two hundred, I believe) that she had a habit of forgetting what books she had read and wound up rereading a lot of them.  I don't go through nearly that many (but I do think that I go through about a hundred or so in a year, give or take a handful) but it was bound to happen that I would inadvertently crack open a book that I had read before.

Judgment Day was that book.  How can it be that, with something like 200 plus Destroyer novels floating around new and used bookstores, I managed to revisit one that I visited years ago?  What are the odds of that?  At least I did not have a particularly strong memory of the book (save for a gag where Remo spends fifteen minutes trying to kill a man, because he wastes fourteen of them laughing at his sorry excuse for a defense) and could approach it with a fresh pair of eyes.  Now that I have finished it, I can see why I didn't have any strong memories of the book.  There isn't anything memorable about it.

The cast is lacking in colorful characters and outlandish action set-pieces.  In what at first appears to be an odd move, Remo and Chiun step out of the limelight and allow Dr. Harold Smith to take center stage.  Smith is not a colorful character.  Not unless you consider having a "lemony" voice to be colorful.  But he shows himself to be a very tough nut and, when need be, a man of action willing to get his hands dirty to get the job done.

Consider also the fact that this is only the fourteenth book in the series.  So it seems fitting that Murphy and Sapir would take a little time to let their readers get to know Smith and his family on a slightly more personal level.  While Smith is clearly no replacement for Remo and Chiun, and this book sorely needed more of them in it, he is as every bit as irreplaceable as they are, in his own unique way.  That is something that Blake Corbish is far too late in realizing.

Able Team #7: Justice by Fire - by Rick Stivers

"Sometimes, my friends, the law's got nothing to do with it..."

Able Team is dispatched to protect a leftist journalist from a Salvadoran Death Squad.

I'm going to inch out onto the limb of oversimplified generalization - never a good thing to do, but this book screams that the following be addressed - and state that I suspect the readership for action series such as Able Team, The Executioner (from which Able Team is a spin-off), The Destroyer, .357 Vigilante, The Penetrator, and countless others, is predominantly a conservative one.  The kind of conservative that believes the best way to defend the Constitution is to ignore it.  Hell, that philosophy is the very foundation upon which The Destroyer series is built.

The utter contempt for the Rule of Law - which is usually dismissed as having nothing whatsoever to do with true "justice," (and, to be fair, most of these action series novels have nothing to do with justice either, they're just escapist revenge fantasies, plain and simple) - radiates off the pages with palpable force.  The heroes of these novels exist simply to punch imaginary bullet holes into the surrogates for the various Evil Doers that plague the Greatest Nation on Earth at any given moment of the day: Organized Crime, Communist and/or leftist radical groups, terrorists, etc.  The heroes never inflict collateral damage and always embody the very best perceptions of what the "real America" is all about, selfless generosity and rugged individualism.  The villains are the complete opposite, killing indiscriminately and acting in the most selfish and power hungry of ways.  Shades of moral or ethical gray do not exist in the strictly black/white universes of these novels, as it does in the real world; realism only ruins them.  These series are the literary equivalent of a bunch of kids playing "war."

The reason I bring all of this up is due to the weird twists in the political viewpoints/messages that are in this particular Able Team adventure (my first one), in which a no doubt radical leftist journalist (i.e. the kind you would hear reporting on programs such as Democracy Now or Flashpoints) is one of the good guys, for a change, and the (unnamed) Reagan Administration's highly questionable activities in Central America are soundly (and graphically) criticized.  How the author (and I'm reasonably certain that "Dick Stivers" is a house name) hoped to contort and twist obviously "leftists" views into something that would not alienate the core conservative readership (most of whom would think that Ronald Reagan is/was the greatest President ever) had me wondering why he (or, perhaps, she) even bothered.  Considering all the flack that President-Elect Obama gets about his "socialist" economic policies, the moment where the main villain grouses about the Communist United States of America (and many on his laundry list of those responsible for societal ills great and small are likewise routinely blamed for the very same on innumerable Right Wing talk radio programs today) I found it highly unlikely that the core audience would ever swallow the not so subtle leftist commentary that is layered throughout the book.  I don't think that this book would even get published today, not with Able Team at one point helping a family of illegal immigrants remain hidden from the federal agent(s) that would harm them.

Beneath all of the confusing political revisionism and contortions is an illustration free comic book of violence.  The highlight of which being a gun fight/car chase along Highway 101 South (somewhere in the vicinity of San Jose, California, I think).  Able Team effortlessly,and in gory detail, blows apart bad guy after bad guy, without hitting or injuring a single innocent, of course.  Meanwhile the surviving bad guys pepper the mobile home the Team is tooling around in with bullet holes, yet never manage to hit anyone inside of it.  I swear, reading it was like watching a fan movie where Imperial Stormtroopers try to take out The A-Team!

Considering that Able Team is not all that far removed from the heinous Death Squad (come on, the team is routinely sent out on clandestine missions to "eliminate" - aka exterminate - threats to good old U.S. of A.); I thought the book needed some much needed clarification as to why Able Team's outside the law tactics are "good," while the Salvadoran Death Squad and its supporters in the American government and law enforcement agencies are "bad," and that would have made for a better read, and definition of Able Team and its members, than the confusing as hell political mishmash of "What the hell?" I was given.

.357 Vigilante #3: White Wash - by Ian Ludlow

Try as he might, Brett Macklin cannot escape his alter ego of Mr. Jury.  When a racist copycat killer begins using the Jury name, Macklin races against time to bring him to "justice."  Problem is, no one believes that there is another Mr. Jury.

The .357 Vigilante series concludes (due to the series publisher going bankrupt, not author disinterest) with what I think is the best book in the series.  For most of it's narrative White Wash is happy to be an unapologetically pulp adventure; filled with larger than life characters, villains so evil even the Devil wouldn't want them, and dashes of over-the-top action - at one point a guy gets decapitated by a helicopter's landing skid.

Lewis Purdue and Lee Goldberg, the writers behind the Ian Ludlow name, manage to keep a nice balance between gritty urban realism and over-the-top pulp luridness.  There is a bit too much 80's in some of the descriptions: one character is described as wearing a sweater draped over his shoulders, with its arms knitted in front, an 80's fashion staple, and the red jumpsuit with black make-up mask across the eyes ensemble the Mr. Jury clone wears seems more suitable for a Duran Duran video than waging stealth urban race warfare.  But it was 1985.

But that dated silliness only adds to the fun.  Something that was sorely lacking in the first two Vigilante books.  It was a real hoot to read about Macklin rebuilding his 1959 Cadillac, complete with bullet proof tires and glass, and machine guns mounted behind the front headlights.

I had so much fun reading White Wash that I'm saddened that the cliffhanger ending would never be resolved in the announced, but never to be, fourth novel in the series, Killstorm.

The Penetrator #17: Demented Empire - by Lionel Derrick

When a Florida land swindle leaves five senior citizen victims dead, Mark Hardin, aka The Penetrator, unleashes his distinctive and brutal vigilante justice on the Syndicate hoods responsible.  But Hardin finds evidence that the land swindle was only a very small part of something far bigger and nastier.  The hunt is on.

Penetrator?  Hardin?  Derrick?  My word, someone, somewhere really needed to compensate for something, no?

The Penetrator.  Now there is an Action Hero moniker that can make one wonder exactly what kind of action will be going on in them thar pages.  Couple that suggestive series title with the no doubt House Author name of Leslie Derrick, and the all-too-necessary lurid cover art, and it should come as no surprise to learn that I could not even look at this book without giggling.

My reaction to actually reading the book?  Demented Empire is every bit the hyper-lurid escapist pulp trash that its cover art boldly states it to be.  For a change, the cover art accurately illustrates the contents of the book; everything you see on the cover is actually in the book.  Hardin shoots, stabs, and, I'm pretty sure, even stomps the ever living crap out of every slimy villain he meets.  The dude is unstoppable.  Oh, and he beds several ladies as well.  So knives aren't the only things doing some much needed penetrating.  Try not too be too surprised about this, but Hardin is every bit the incredible Stud Hero in the bedroom as he is on the battlefield.

It's all pretty standard pulp adventure stuff.  The Penetrator works through a labyrinth of conspirators (with no innocent collateral damage resulting from his violent ruthlessness, of course - only the bad guys kill innocent people, even by accident) until he lays siege to and destroys the head of the organization in some isolated mountain lair.  The events in these stories are seldom different, only the names are.

Demented Empire is my first Penetrator adventure and, due to my completest streak more than a love of the character - he's a bit too serious for such a silly name, a smidgen of humor here and there would have made the book a far more entertaining read - it will not be my last.

The Destroyer #10: Terror Squad - by Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy

A strange, new breed of terrorist threat has arisen in the world; common thugs that nonetheless manage to act like the well trained soldiers they are not during their attacks.  Remo and Chiun are dispatched to eradicate the threat and race against the clock to do so before an Anti-terrorist Conference is held at the United Nations...

This early Destroyer adventure (America's Favorite Action Series!) is a far more gritty and grim outing than the tongue in cheek and over the top romps that I am used to reading.  The book almost lost me with the opening rape scene (note to the authors, women DO NOT find themselves reluctantly enjoying getting violated sexually) that culminates in the brutal murder of an infant.  Yuck.  Then there was the blatant racism during Remo's torture and murder of a trio of Black Militant hijackers.  The sequence is played far too straight for me to buy as satire and, yet again, I found myself questioning whether or not I should even bother finishing the damn book.

Well, I did manage to finish Terror Squadand I have to say that, despite my misgivings early on, I wound up enjoying the second half far more than the first.  By the novel's end I was glad that I decided to work my way through the rough spots, for there was just enough of the humor that got me hooked on the series to sweeten the book to the level of tolerable.  Another thing that made suffering the book's unpleasant sections a tad easier was the high quality of the bickering between Remo and Chiun.  Whenever these two begin snapping at each other, whatever is happening around them becomes irrelevant and the back and forth quickly turns into something that reads like an Abbott & Costello routine.  The father/son dynamic between Remo and Chiun is nicely handled as well.  It was more than a bit touching to see just how much the two cared for and about each other, although one would never dare admit it to the other.

I can only recommend this entry to the most dedicated of Destroyer fans.  Newcomers and/or any first time readers would be better off reading something along the lines of Bay City Blast or Profit Motive, two entries I enjoyed far more than this one.

.357: Vigilante #2: Make Them Pay - by Ian Ludlow

Brett Macklin is back, albeit reluctantly.  At first.  It has been almost a year since "Mr. Jury" last stalked the mean streets of Los Angeles and Brett Macklin's hopes are that his violence loving alter-ego will become nothing more than an unpleasant memory.  But a recently released sack of scum named Wesley Saputo changes everything.  Saputo loves kids.  He also loves filming his kid loving and, with the financial aid of crime lord Crocker Orlock, Saputo has built a nice "little" kiddie porn business.  Errors made during an investigation have tied the LAPD's hands, forcing Los Angeles Mayor Jed Stocker to call upon the services of Mr. Jury himself, Brett Macklin.

Make Them Pay is a modest improvement over the first .357: Vigilante adventure.  College student turned pulp writer Lee Goldberg (writing as "Ian Ludlow," with the assist of Lewis Perdue) has a better grasp of both the story and characters this time around.  He also manages to avoid the silly sounding melodrama that made the first .357: Vigilante adventure read like something akin to a parody of the genre he was attempting to exploit.  He even works in some interesting, albeit somewhat ludicrous, plot developments that build the framework from which future .357: Vigilante adventures could hang.  (Unfortunately there was only one more, titled White Wash, before the publisher pulled the plug on the series.)  This makes .357: Vigilante #2 somewhat different from other Men's Adventure category novels, in that Goldberg/Perdue don't content themselves with simply rewriting the first book, replacing the dispatched villains with a different-but-similar cast of scum for Mr. Jury to wipe out.  The characters and the bizarro world they inhabit change and grow with each plot development/twist.

But what makes Make Them Pay only a modest improvement is its failure in the action department.  There really isn't a whole lot of it.  Macklin busts a shotgun wielding robber's head and, in a sequence so out of the blue I thought, for a paragraph or two, that is was only a dream, he blows away a trio of bank robbers, and that is about it until the inevitable showdown with Saputo, Orlock and their cronies at the story's end.  Even at a trim 150 pages (I polished this sucker off in less than a day) it feels light, too light, and, even worse, reluctant to embrace its bloodthirsty potential.  Death Wish 4: The Crackdown did it better, even though Make Them Pay did it first.

Dirty Harry #10: The Blood of Strangers - by Dane Hartman

A bomb explodes in the San Francisco International Airport, killing and wounding dozens.  Two police officers are shot dead, murdered by the fleeing terrorists.  Now the SFPD, the FBI, and the CIA are teaming up to bring those responsible for the attack to justice, and "Dirty" Harry Callahan is just the man they need to investigate this dangerous case.  Too bad that attractive KCVO anchorwoman Ellie Winston is determined to ride shotgun with Harry until the bitter, bloody end.

"Dirty" Harry Callahan as international man of mystery and action?  Excuse me while I scratch and shake my head in confusion at these strange and almost laughable turn of events.  The Blood of Strangers gets off to a promising start, with a reasonably tense sequence involving the setting of the bomb in the airport and the killing of the two police officers.  Ellie Winston's introduction is also nicely done, as is a botched hotel robbery that Harry shuts down as only "Dirty" Harry can.  But then the plot starts to slip off the logic track when the FBI and the CIA send Harry down to Los Angeles to act as bodyguard for a Libyan dignitary they suspect is also a terrorist financier.  Harry saves the man's life during an assassination attempt and earns a seat by the man's side as he returns to Beirut.  That is where the story derails and tumbles down into stupidville, never to recover.

I can suspend my disbelief and accept "Dirty" Harry blasting away assorted criminal scum on the gritty streets of San Francisco, or Boston, or any other metropolitan city he might be visiting in the United States of America.  But engaging in a gunfight at the Paris airport?  Charging a tank in Beirut?  Going Commando in San Salvador?  That I cannot swallow.  "Dirty" Harry is a shoot first and ask questions later cop, not a globe trotting Secret Agent Man.  To paraphrase Harry himself, "a story's got to know its limitations."

The Destroyer #25: Sweet Dreams - by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Professor William Westhead Wooley (the unintended irony, since the book was written in the late 70s, of the character's initials being WWW is rather stunning) has invented a dream machine that completely reinvents television.  This machine, dubbed the "Dreamocizer" by Wooley, allows its user to create and control whatever images play across the television screen.  With fantasy fulfilling programming like that, who needs books, movies, or television?  Everybody, including Dr. Harold W. Smith, the head of CURE, sees a unique potential for this invention.  Smith sees its potential as a tool of interrogation, a Mafia don sees its potential for peddling smut, and the broadcasting industry sees its potential for ending their ability to generate income.  Everybody wants the Dreamocizer, for one reason or another, and more than a few are willing to kill for the chance to get/destroy it.

That's when Remo and Chiun get involved.

Sweet Dreams (Destroyer, No 25) is the first Destroyer novel that I have read in over twenty years and, even though this particular entry is thirty years old, I was pleased to find that, despite its age, the book managed to retain a certain degree of freshness.  The book could have been written today, as is, and it would not read as an old-fashioned thrill ride.

Briskly paced, yet surprisingly light in the action department (I've read far more violent, not to mention funny, Destroyer novels) Sweet Dreams manages to slip in a serious message about letting ones dreams control ones actions.  Remo himself is not immune to such temptations, for he has became tired of living an anonymous life in one hotel room after another.  He is introduced in a sour mood, yearning for something that will give his now hollow life some kind of substance.  He decides a home would be nice and begins to pester Smith for one.  He then spends a great deal of time daydreaming about getting this house, instead of focusing on the task at hand, which is defending Professor Wooley's life.

But a meaningful message does not a good novel make.  I cracked open Sweet Dreams expecting a lot of action and humor, because that is what I remembered most clearly about the Destroyer novels I had read so many years ago.  The book's rather serious tone, not to mention the rather clumsy changes in Wooley's characterization as the story unfolds, caught me off guard.  Another thing that did not sit well with me was just how cold and uncaring Remo and Chiun were about any and all that crossed their path.  Murphy and Sapir seem to notice this and make a somewhat successful effort at bringing out some compassion in the duo for the book's finale.

With such a lengthy amount of time between reading Destroyer novels, I cannot say how well it compares to those that I have read, or to any of the other one hundred plus books in the series.  But my slight disappointment wasn't enough to make me to regret all the Destroyer novels I recently purchased.  I fully intend to read and review those, as well.  Every writer has an off book, after all.

.357: Vigilante #1 - by Ian Ludlow

When the gang that brutally murdered his father is set free, Brett Macklin takes the law into his own hands.  Toting his father's .357 magnum into the urban jungle that is now Los Angeles, Macklin becomes the justice dispensing Mr. Jury: Terror to thugs, hero to citizens, and criminal to cops.  Although his personal desire for revenge is satiated rather quickly, "Mr. Jury" finds that his war against crime has only just begun.

Ian Ludlow's .357: Vigilante #1 is an amateurish, albeit modestly entertaining, relic of what appears to be an all but extinct sub-genre: the numbered category Men's Adventure novel.  (Men's Adventure novels now sport author branded franchise titles like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell or Fire Ice: A Novel from the NUMA Files, instead of The Destroyer #111: Prophet Of Doom or Stony Man #61: Rogue State.)  While the book contains all the necessary elements of a Men's Adventure (a stalwart hero, a colorful supporting cast, and a slimy pool of scum villain that gets his deserved comeuppance personally delivered to him by said hero in a grand mano-a-mano finale) the final result feels just a tiny bit off.  At times .357: Vigilante #1 reads like a high school student's concept of what a hard boiled man of action story should sound like (not surprising, considering that author "Ian Ludlow" was actually a college student named Lee Goldberg) or an out and out parody of one.  For every taut action sequence, there is one that is clumsy to the point of being laughable.  The biggest offender for me was a love scene between Macklin and a helpful nurse named Cheshire.  I kept expecting her to purr, "Oh Brett, you have obviously had hundreds of girlfriends."  Macklin, although seeming to have no stated experience in handling firearms, is an expert shot and, despite leaving a trail of evidence that a blind man could follow, only receives a modest amount of attention from the bumbling detectives investigating the vigilante murders.  These boobs couldn't even catch a cold, much less a Paul Kersey wannabe.  To be fair, the novel does an adequate job explaining this incompetence, but, more often than not, it comes across as a first time novelist's attempt to get out of a plot hole, so that the illogical chain of events can somehow remain linked together.

Clumsy and uneven, .357: Vigilante #1 will be of interest only to fans of Lee Goldberg, or a numbered category Men's Adventure book completest.

Dirty Harry #5: Family Skeletons - by Dane Hartman

When "Dirty" Harry Callahan, San Francisco Police Inspector #71, is forced to take his annual vacation, the trip is anything but restful.  Harry's cousin Linda has contacted him, asking Callahan to come to Boston and help with a family emergency.  A young lady who attended the same church as Linda's estranged daughter has been brutally raped and murdered.  Harry has to figure out if either a serial killer or some kind of bizarre Unitarian cult practicing human sacrifice is threatening the girl.  It's time to bust some heads in Beantown!

Talk about a blast from the past.  Way back in 1982 (when I was just a freshman in High School) Warner Books briefly published a collection of Men's Adventure novels under the imprint title Men of Action Books.  One of the four titles being an official spin-off of Warner Brothers' lucrative Dirty Harry film franchise.  (I don't remember the other series titles, but I am fairly certain one involved either ninjas or mercenaries...or perhaps they were ninja mercenaries.)  Men's Adventure novels were kind of like Harlequin Romance novels, but for guys.  A new and sequentially numbered book came out each month and, instead of all that smoldering sexual tension and mooshy stuff in those girlie-girl Harlequin books, it was a marathon of two-fisted action spiced with enough gunfights, car chases, and explosions to fill three or four Charles Bronson and/or Clint Eastwood movies.  The two most famous Men's Adventure series are The Destroyer and The Executioner.

Dirty Harry seems like a pretty good fit for this kind of thing.  Harry Callahan fought crime by shooting first and reading the suspect's rights second.  If Harry didn't have his gun, then he just punched the suspect until the guy told Callahan whatever it was he wanted to know.  His stock question, always asked while sticking his .44 Magnum in some slimeball's face, was "Do you feel lucky?"  (These books were published prior to Sudden Impact, when Eastwood had supposedly sworn off making anymore Dirty Harry films.  When he changed his mind, he had the line canceled.)   

The twelve Dirty Harry novels of "Dane Hartman" (it was an imprint pseudonym) captured that essence perfectly.  Harry strides stoically through the mystery, uncovering clues through entertaining examples of police brutality and psychological intimidation.  He tracts down suspect after suspect, trying to ask some simple questions.  The suspect always winds up giving Harry some lip and tries to flee.  Harry gives chase, catches the guy after shooting at him once or twice, and then beats some sense into his thick skull.  More often than not, the chase leads to a dead end.  Whenever the footwork threatens to become too pedestrian, some stupid, and thoroughly unrelated to the plot, slimeballs decide to rob a nearby store, bank, or restaurant to give Harry a target to unleash his pent up frustration upon.  This leads to one of those spectacular shootouts that only happens in Dirty Harry movies.  The kind where lots of real estate is demolished, cars crash through fruit carts and flip over, things go boom, and Callahan easily kills or incapacitates every slimeball but the last.  To that cornered rat, Harry points his gun and asks, "Do you feel lucky, asshole?"  Works every time. 

Family Skeletons mystery was a fairly well structured one, though any savvy reader with more than one mystery novel under his or her belt will easily figure out who the real killer is.  The clues were well placed and, best of all, there were no narrative "cheats."  (The equivalent to having Mrs. Voorhees show up in the second to last chapter to explain to the hero the whys and what-fors of all that has happened.  Wait a minute, that does happen.)  At a slim one hundred and seventy-five pages, the story is incapable of straining a reader's brain (if one doesn't stop to think how a vacationing police inspector can run around Boston, randomly shooting at any person he suspects of committing a crime) and the book can be read in a single afternoon.  In some strange and goofy way, this literary guilty pleasure made my day.