Book Review: NYPD 2025

Book Review: 'NYPD 2025' by Hal Stryker

0 / 5 Stars

'NYPD 2025' (185 pp.) was published by Pinnacle Books in May, 1985. The cover art is by John Berkey. 

'Hal Stryker' apparently is a pseudonym, as the book is copyrighted by George H. Smith (1922 - 1996). According to his Wiki entry, Smith churned out more than 100 novels, in a variety of genres, for a variety of paperback publishers, making him a genuine 'Paperback Writer.'

So, how well does a forty year-old novel set in the 'future' predict what 2025 actually will be like ? The answer is, not very well. Indeed, 'NYPD 2025' essentially is an exercise in facetiousness.

As Stryker imagines it, the New York City of 2025 is like something out of 'Magnus, Robot Fighter,' or the film The Fifth Element. Meaning, 200-story skyscrapers, thousands of aircars buzzing though the skies, wall-sized TVs that transmit 3-D programs called 'solidios,' miraculous medical technologies, androids / robots, ray guns, colonies on Mars, communications devices wired directly into brain tissue, etc., etc.

The novel's opening chapters introduce us to the lead character, the square-jawed, rugged, All American man of action Zack Ward. A veteran of campaigns waged in Central America against the commies, Zack is in a spot of trouble, having been kidnapped by a team of anarchists. Led by the villainous Pablo and Kruger, the anarchists, trusting that the Media is the Message, want to abuse him for a solidio, this being the best vehicle to discredit Zack's anti-communist ideology and advance the cause of the Socialist International.

Luckily for Zack, he meets up with the eponymous NYPD 2025 unit Ten. This is a team of operatives, including the unfortunately named android 'Andy Jumbles,' who are led by the stunning Judge Portia van Wyck. The Ten are something of an extralegal unit, tasked with using all means at their disposal to combat the epidemic of crime loosed on the city, and the greater USA, by the ultra-liberal rule of President Buchanan.

Judge Portia sends Zack off on a mission to investigate leading silidio producer Dynamic Studios, whose hit show is a 'snuff' feature starring '...the Slasher of Slaughter Gulch, who has dismembered thirty-five victims so far in his demonic search for [the lubricious young woman] Foxxy [van Pelt].'

This sets Zack on a course for a fateful encounter with the Slasher, one sure to end in bloodshed and death - !

I picked up 'NYPD 2025' with the realization that it is a 'Men's Adventure' novel in a thin sci-fi coating. I wasn't expecting deathless prose, measured pacing, or in-depth characterization. 

But even when giving the novel wide leeway in evaluative terms, it comes up as a very, very lame entry in the genre. While author Stryker suffuses the book with sarcastic humor that takes aim at liberal and progressive idiocies, the constant stream of winking asides quickly grows tiring, as does the contrived nature of the action sequences and the inane dialogue. It's not difficult to see why, despite the cover blurb, no additional volumes in the series ever saw print.

Even dedicated fans of the Men's Adventure novel genre are going to find 'NYPD 2025' forgettable. I give it a Zero Star Rating. With prices for used copies starting at $23 on up, you're better off passing on this one !

Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows

Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows

by Jean-Claude Mezieres (art) and Pierre Cristin (story)

Dargaurd, 1981

'Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows' (48 pp.) first was issued in 1975 as a serial in the French magazine Pilote, then later, an album des bande dessinee (Franco-Belgian comic book). 

It's one of a number of Valerian albums des bande dessinees that were translated into English and published in the United States by Dargaud during the early 1980s; 'Ambassador' was issued in 1981. That same year, it was serialized in Heavy Metal magazine.

Some of the contents of 'Ambassador' were incorporated into the 2017 feature film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

The Dargaud editions measure 8 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches, which corresponds to the dimensions of the traditional bande dessinee. It's nice to see the artwork in the format in which it originally was published.

As 'Ambassador' opens, our heroes Valerian and Laureline are tasked with escorting the Galaxity ambassador to an important diplomatic conference on the massive artificial planet of Central Point.

Central Point, which has been in existence for hundreds of years, is home to envoys from all the civilized races of the galaxy; these are accommodated in neighborhoods custom-tailored for the physiologies of their inhabitants.

This being a French comic, the ambassador likely is a satirical depiction of an actual French politician from the mid-70s, but I confess to not knowing exactly who that French politician is..........

Soon after their arrival on Central Point, a group of assailants ambush the team and abduct the ambassador and Valerian. It is up to the resolute Laureline, accompanied by a reluctant Colonel Diol, a 'protocol officer' of cowardly bent.

The search for the ambassador and Valerian will takes Laureline all over Central Point, and involve encounters with all manner of strange alien races.

'Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows' is another good episode in the Valerian Canon. The action is well-plotted by Cristin, who takes advantage of the sprawling nature of Central Point to introduce the characters into a new milieu every other page or so. This being a comic intended for a juvenile audience, there is no explicit violence or risque content, but there certainly is some satiric humor that will be understood on a 'adult' level.

As with other Valerian titles, there is a political subtext to Cristin's story, namely, Galaxity (a stand-in for Earth) is a less than noble entity, and the ambassador's mission has an underlying motive that belies Galaxity's outward appearance of cooperativity and mutual respect. 

Mezieres' artwork is very good, and the color schemes are arguably more advanced as compared to those appearing in the American comic books of the 1970s and 1980s.

If you're interested in getting a copy of 'Ambassador of the Shadows', copies of the Dargaud edition remain available for prices under $20. Also available is a smaller-dimension English version, released by UK's Cinebook in 2013. And, as the sixth book in the Valerian series, 'Ambasador of the Shadows' currently is included in Cinebook's 'Valerian: The Complete Collection' hardbound edition, Volume 3 (2017).

The Dreamer by William Hjortsberg

'The Dreamer' by William Hjortsberg

from Penthouse, February 1979

Here's a tale of proto-cyberpunk that went through some different incarnations in print media in the 1970s.

 

Hjortsberg (1941 - 2017) is perhaps best known for his 1978 horror novel 'Falling Angel,' which later was made into the 1987 film Angel Heart. His 1971 sci-fi novel 'Gray Matters,' which uses the brains-in-a-jar theme, is reviewed here. 

 

'The Dreamer,' which was published in the February, 1979 Penthouse, is an adaptation of a novelette Hjortsberg published, as a chapbook titled 'Symbiography,' in 1973.

'The Dreamer' benefits from a fine illustration from Don Ivan Punchatz:

As a spoiler-free summary, I'll say that 'The Dreamer' is set in the near future, after a catastrophe (probably nuclear war) has left much of the planet a wasteland, peopled by nomads whose lives are nasty, brutish, and short.

 

Civilization survives in the form of the City, a high-technology enclave run by a cadre of bureaucrats, who are in turn aided by sophisticated computers. Within the City, the populace take their pleasure in reliving the dreams of others, via the aid of specialized neurolink devices through which they can 'download' the dreams from the network.

 

Par Sondak is one of the small coterie of professional dreamers, whose dreams are recorded and then distributed - for profit - to the audience in the City. To enhance his dreaming experiences, Sondak resides in isolation in a well-guarded oasis of greenery in the midst of the wasteland.

 

As the novelette opens, Sondak is facing something of a crisis. Direct Experience Tapes, or DETs, are overtaking dreams as a commodity. DETs, a sort of GoPro technology as it might have been envisioned in the early 1970s, can feature all manner of experiences that are real, not dreams. And the lotus eaters in the City have a preference for DETs that feature explicit sex and violence.

 

Unless Sondak can come up with a way to compete with the DETs, his career (and its accompanying affluence) as a professional dreamer is in danger.

 

But a chance encounter with a wasteland nomad, 'Buick' of the Cincinnati clan, plants an idea in Sondak's head......

'The Dreamer' is a good mix of proto-cyberpunk with a 'Mad Max' sensibility. Its prose is clear and unadorned, the characterization of Per Sondak and his nomad acolyte adroidt, and its portrayal of a near-future society in keeping with the tenor of the early 1970s. I find 'The Dreamer' to be superior to 'Gray Matters.'

While both the 1973 chapbook 'Symbiography' and the 1979 Penthouse are not easy to come by nowadays, the novelette is included in the 2004 omnibus, 'Odd Corners: The Slip-Stream World of William Hjortsberg,' which is quite affordable. Those with an interest in proto-cyberpunk may want a copy.

Book Review: Blueschild Baby

Celebrating Black History Month 2025

 

'Blueschild Baby' by George Cain

 

4 / 5 Stars

 

Here at the PorPor Books Blog we like to celebrate Black History Month by reading and reviewing a book, fiction or nonfiction, that illuminates the Black Experience. For February 2025, we are reviewing 'Blueschild Baby' by George Cain.

 

'Blueschild Baby' first was published in hardback by McGraw-Hill in 1970. In January, 1972, Dell books issued a mass market paperback edition, copies of which can be rather pricey. This trade paperback edition (210 pp.) was issued by Ecco / Harper Collins in 2019 and is considerably more affordable. 

 

It features an Introduction by Leslie Jamison, an essayist who has written books about addiction. Jamison is a white liberal, and while her Introduction features insights into Cain garnered from his wife Jo Lynne Pool, Jamison steeps the Introduction in identity politics and grievance politics (it is structural racism fomented by the white power structure that drives People of Color to take up clandestine drug use, etc., etc.).

 

'Blueschild' is the first and only novel by Cain, and is autobiographical in nature. Born in 1943 with the name George Maurice Hopkins, he later converted to Islam and changed his surname to Cain. During the writing of the novel in the 1960s he would head into the ghetto with notebooks tucked under his arm, taking notes of the landscape from which he was scoring dope. While 'Blueschild' made him a rising star in the literary scene, he struggled with heroin addiction all his life, and despite assistance and encouragement from his editor, he never was able to write another book. Cain died in 2010 at age 66.

'Blueschild' is set in Harlem in the summer of 1967. The first-person narrator (also named George Cain) is only 23 years old, but a stone-cold junkie who must get a fix every day. In the opening chapters we are introduced to the lifestyle of the junkie, the process of scoring dope and shooting up, hustling for the next hit, staying one step ahead of the Man, and evading injury or death at the hands of Harlem's criminal element.

The first half of the novel chronicles Cain's misadventures in the back alleys and tenements of Harlem, and his fraught relationship with his family, who lecture him - to no avail - about the need to get cleaned up, if not for himself, then for his daughter Sabrina.

The crux of the narrative occurs about halfway through the book, when Cain decides to quit, cold-turkey, with the aid of his long-suffering girlfriend. The narrative then goes into flashbacks of his upbringing, and his efforts, often tortuous, to straddle the world of the streets and the world of upper-class society.

'Blueschild' uses a jive-influenced, clipped prose style, mingling stream-of-consciousness with introspection:

 

Take the bus downtown to Washington Square. Walking across the park see strange signs and omens. Young white beggars fill the streets, pawing and panhandling. Dirty and drugged. Everywhere gross acts and running obscenities. Bold, they exhibit their infirmities for sympathy and inspection, dead souls and lost minds. The cancer has found a fatter host, it began somewhere deep in my bowels and now consumes America. Tourists roam the place. Laughing and giving freely for what they think funny, not knowing it is their own death they're watching. 

 

Coming onto Thompson Street, go into my bag. I swagger and sneer at them. Italian women dressed in dumpy-black, hanging from the windows and stoops, cursing me in their foul tongue while counting beads and blessings.

 

George Cain is not a likeable character. He is self-centered, consumed with self-pity, often violent and abusive towards women, racist towards whites, and sometimes hateful towards other black people. He will betray anyone, if it gets him another fix and another day lost in euphoria.  

Along with its stark portrayal of the self-degradation of addiction, 'Blueschild' also is an observation of the conversion of John Lindsay's New York City into the hellhole it would be in the 1970s. The exploding numbers of addicts in Harlem are a foreshadowing of the spread of social disorder into the other boroughs of the city, and the advent of the pervasive decay to come.

Where 'Blueschild' falters is in its closing chapter, which, without disclosing spoilers, ends on an ambiguous note. It's something of a cop-out on the author's part.

Summing up, 'Blueschild Baby' succeeds as an insightful treatment of black life and times in the sixties, and is deserving of a Four Star Rating.

Book Review: Alfred Hitchcock's Fear and Trembling

Book Review: 'Alfred Hitchcock's Fear and Trembling'

 4 / 5 stars

 

'Alfred Hitchcock's Fear and Trembling' first was printed in 1948 by Alfred Knopf. This little Dell paperback edition (192 pp.) was issued in 1963, and features cover art by Fred Banbery. 

 

I'm really going back in time with this review, into territory more frequently covered by M. Porcius, whose blog focuses on sci-fi and fantasy literature from the postwar era. In my experience the literature of this era can be rewarding more for the mystery / detective / suspense genres, and considerably less so for sci-fi.

 

The fourteen stories compiled in this anthology all saw print in the first 50 years of the 20th century, and almost all were written by British authors. Unlike the latter Hitchcock anthologies, which were edited by Robert Arthur, it is unknown who edited this particular volume.

 

My capsule summaries of the contents: 

Cassius, by Henry S. Whitehead: a strange, and dangerous, little animal is loose on the otherwise tranquil grounds of an estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands / St. Thomas. This novelette is overwritten, but imaginative. Its prose is too un-Woke to be viable nowadays.

 

The Tarn, by Hugh Walpole: amidst the idyllic vistas of the English Lake Country, evil is nurtured in the dark heart of a recluse named Fenwick.

 

Little Memento, by John Collier: in the drowsy Somerset countryside,  a young man named Eric Gaskell makes the acquaintance of the village eccentric, an elderly man who knows "all that goes on." 

 

Although only five pages in length, this is a well-constructed tale, in which dialogue is used to direct the plot towards an understated, but effective, denouement (one with a note of viciousness). Collier (1901 - 1980) is considered one of the most capable short-story writers of the 20th century. I have ordered a couple of his anthologies for further reading.   

Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad, by M. R. James: while 'on holiday' in rural England, Professor Parkins, a fussy and unimaginative man, unearths an artifact that was best left alone. This story first was published in 1904, and is too fuddy-duddy for this anthology.

One Summer Night, by Ambrose Bierce: a short-short tale that still is memorable, more than a century after its first publication in 1906 in Cosmopolitan magazine.

Telling, by Elizabeth Bowen: it's an Evelyn Waugh, Downton Abbey- style fine summer morning in the English countryside. Everyone is rousing themselves from a long night of partying. But Terry, it seems, did Something Bad last evening.....

The Jar, by Ray Bradbury: a backwoods simpleton named Charlie decides to buy an artifact from a county fair sideshow. A decent enough tale from Bradbury, although the highly descriptive prose style rapidly tires after a few pages.....

The Badlands, by John Metcalfe: a young man suffering from a 'neurosis' seeks quietude and healing in the coastal Norfolk village of Todd. A road near the hotel leads him to a strange and troubling landscape. Is it a figment of his neurosis ? This story is reminiscent of the stories of Arthur Machen and William Hope Hodgson, and (arguably) a progenitor of the 'weird fiction' genre.

Ghost Hunt, by H. R. Wakefield: you may remember the 'ghost hunters' program that was popular 20 years ago on the Syfy channel. This 1947 tale from Wakefield is the progenitor.

Skule Skerry, by John Buchan: a 'skerry' is a small, windswept island located in the Orkney or Shetland archipelagos. In this story, an ornithologist decides to spend a few days on one of the most remote and isolated of such islands. He finds himself in an unexpected struggle with violent weather and its associated eerie manifestations.

'Skule' is not a ghost story in the traditional sense. The unsettling aspect comes from the protagonist's insistence on intruding into a locale that intrinsically is hostile to man. Despite the lack of overt horror elements, it nonetheless is an effective story.

The Red Room, by H. G. Wells: a 'modern' (as of 1896, when the story was published) take on the haunted house trope.

The Sack of Emeralds, by Lord Dunsany: a fable about a wretched man and his burden. Despite its brevity, the tale's prose is adept at communicating the atmosphere of a foreboding October night in the English countryside, with horror looming from the darkness

The Night Reveals, by William Irish: 'William Irish' was the pseudonym of Cornell Woolrich. In this story, a man discovers his wife has been going on for late-night assignations of a disturbing kind. 'Night Reveals' is a well-told noir tale, but a bit out of place compared to the other contents of this anthology.

 

The verdict ? For a collection of 'traditional' ghost stories, stories that invariably had the adjective 'macabre' applied to them in the era in which they saw print, this Alfred Hitchcock anthology is quite readable. I favor these stories over the figurative and opaque prose style of the 'quiet horror' movement of the latter decades of the 20th century. If you share my attitude, then 'Fear and Trembling' will be a rewarding acquisition.

Deathlok 1991-1994

Deathlock (1991-1994)

Marvel Comics

I've always been a fan of the 'Deathlok' character from Marvel comics, starting with his first appearance in 'Astonishing Tales' No. 25 (cover date August 1974). Deathlok, created by Rich Buckler circa 1972, predated Martin Caidin's 'Cyborg' as an iconic cybernetics - based superhero.

 

Buckler's Deathlok, which appeared in 'Astonishing Tales' from 1974 to 1976, was a marked departure from the Marvel superhero paradigm. Deathlok was set apart from the Marvel universe, in a dystopian, 1990s USA marked by social anarchy and a military-industrial complex run riot. 

 

The stories had a bleak, existential quality and featured content that pushed the boundaries of the Comics Code as far as violence was concerned; Deathlok would just as soon shoot somebody, as opposed to knocking them out for later incarceration.

 

In 1990 Marvel published a four-issue miniseries, titled 'Deathlok', and the response was encouraging enough for the company to relaunch the character in his own eponymous series, which ran for 34 issues, from April 1991 to April 1994.

 

The Great Comics Boom of the 1990s then was underway. It's worth noting that, according to Jason Sacks and Keith Dallas in their book 'American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1990s,' in November of 1993 Marvel produced 128 comic books, compared to 92 comics for November 1992 (page 117). Anything that Marvel thought might sell, got packaged and sent to the stores.

Last summer I picked up the entire 1990s run of Deathlok (including the two Annuals) for a very affordable $15.

Also worth noting is the 2015 trade paperback, 'Deathlok: The Souls of Cyber-Folk,' which compiles the first 15 issues, and one Annual, from the 1991 series.

Unlike the 1974 Deathlok, the 1991 version was part of the Marvel universe, a move which allowed for well-known Marvel heroes and villains to make guest appearances (and boost circulation).

 

 

 

Whereas Luther Manning, the original Deathlok, was somewhat ambiguous in terms of his racial identity, the new Deathlok, Michael Collins, was black. Writers Denys Cowan and Dwayne McDuffie were black as well. Black superheroes and creative teams were starting to gain momentum in the early 1990s, and in 1993, Cowan and Mcduffie would go on to form Milestone, the first black-owned comic book publishing company, which issued its books through DC comics.

Reading the 1991 series, I have a mixed reaction. On the one hand, the series definitely has some energy to it, with plenty of segments of furious action that recall the tenor of the original series. On the other hand, Cowan and McDuffie, and later, writer Gregory Wright, are insistent that Michael Collins exhibits a pacifistic attitude, which deprives the character and setting of the edgy quality of the original series. After a while, the humanistic homilies that drive the Michael Collins Deathlok get tiresome.

  

 

 

However contrived, the appearances of various guest stars from elsewhere in the Marvel pantheon does lend some interesting twists to the storylines. This is particularly true of the final four issues (#31 - #43) when, in the 'Cyberstrike' story arc, the original Deathlok arrives to team up with the Michael Collins incarnation of the character. Lots of big guns, in the style of 1990s action comics:

In the early 1990s cyberpunk was a growing pop culture motif and the Deathlok writers worked it into their story lines. Michael Collins was a computer expert prior to becoming Deathlok, and as the cyborg, he routinely would enter cyberspace for one reason or another. The artists did a reasonably good job of depicting this facet of the series.

One of the better story arcs involves a three-issue adventure in Wakanda, with the Black Panther fighting side-by-side with Deathlok to prevent a usurper from taking over the country
 

 

Looking through these 1990s comics, I'm struck by the various gimmicks and come-ons, such as foil-embossed covers, that were part and parcel of the comics boom of that era. It's also interesting to see that, in the 90s, artists and editors with a high-profile status were able to earn money via independent appearances at comics-related events.

 

One area where these comics have not aged well is in the color schemes. Page after page of these Deathlok issues, like so many Marvel comics of the early 1990s, have remarkably ugly coloration. It's as if Pantone had a 'dogshit shades and hues' category, which Marvel was partial to. 

 

To be fair, the crappy color was due in part to the decision by World Color in Sparta, Illinois, to switch from their old and failing letterpress equipment to 'Flexographic' printing, using rubber plates. Flexographic meant that Marvel and other publishers could continue to produce comics, at the cost of shittier print quality.

 

The result was panels and pages (like the ones below) where the colors make your eyes hurt......

 

 

 

Interestingly, as I was perusing these 1990s Deathlok issues earlier this Fall, Marvel released a 'Luther Manning.....Deathlok' one-shot comic as part of its commemoration of the character's 50th anniversary:
 

As the title indicates, this one-shot revives the original character and places him in the dystopian New York City of the 1974 incarnation.

Much as I like Deathlok, this one-shot was a disappointment. The opening sequence of the book, designed to introduce the character to the 21st century readership, was incoherent. Once the narrative moved into present-day (so to speak) and the ruins of the city it steadied a bit, although still it tried to cram too many story beats into too few pages (a common failing of Marvel titles). The ending was contrived and made no sense, other than to try and provoke those few people who still buy 'floppies' (i.e., traditional comic books) into keeping an eye out for some future Deathlok limited edition series.

 

In keeping with the mercenary marketing philosophies that rule Marvel nowadays, this 50th anniversary issue had four different covers, designed to pry more cash from the fanboys. Needless to say, I resisted and just got the one book.....

When all is said and done, the 1990s incarnation of Deathlok is a readable, if not overly memorable, series. If you can find the comics for a reasonable price, and you like the franchise and science fiction-themed comics, then it's worth getting. I am not aware of any Marvel 'omnibus' in preparation that would collect the 34-issue run but if I do get word of such a production I'll post about it here at the PorPor Blog.

Book Review: Plunder

February is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Plunder' by Benjamin Appel

 

3  / 5 Stars

'Plunder' (180 pp.) is Gold Medal book No. 266 and was published in October, 1952. According to his New York Times obituary, author Appel (1907 - 1977) published more than 25 books between 1934 and 1977, many of these novels in the noir and crime genres. 'Funhouse' (aka 'The Deathmaster,' 1959) is science fiction. 'People Talk: American Voices from the Great Depression,' first issued in 1940 and reprinted by Touchstone in 1982, is an oral history of that era.

Stark House Press has republished some of Appel's crime novels, including 'Plunder.'

Appel also wrote a number of books for juveniles under the 'We Were There' imprint, such as 'We Were There in the Klondike Gold Rush.' I may well have read some of these when I was a kid - !

'Plunder' is set in the Philippines in April, 1945, just a month or so after the end of the brutal Battle for Manila (which killed an estimated 100,000 civilians). Vice and corruption seethe in Manila, as the destitute and impoverished Filipinos try to make as much money as possible from the American military, before it ships out in order to pursue the Japanese elsewhere in the Pacific. Amid the ruins of the city, neighborhoods have been turned into Red Light Districts, where bars, brothels, and souvenir shops compete for the pesos being spent by G.I.s. 

In the opening chapter we learn that the novel's protagonist, Joe 'the Lawyer' Trent, is in the stockade for deserting the battle in order to work in a brothel called the Five Sisters. In the stockade, Trent befriends a swarthy G.I. named 'Blacky' MacIntyre, who is willing to buy into Trent's promises of wealth and women. Trent makes a bargain with First Sergeant Murdock, the stockade NCO, to escape confinement. Fifty miles later, Trent and Blacky are back in Manila, and Trent is ready to wheel and deal.

Working with Tommy Cruz, the owner of the Five Sisters, Trent schemes to masquerade as a Military Police (M.P.) officer, and acquire easy pesos by coercing the owners of the other red light brothels and bars into paying protection money. Trent is very good at exploiting the avarice of the officers in charge of various Army logistics units in Manila, into playing along with one clandestine business arrangement after another.

As the novel progresses, Trent's flair for illicit commerce leads to the creation of a syndicate that has its fingers in all manner of commodities, and Joe is a thorough man-about-town, consorting with a rotating cast of beautiful mistresses and influential gangsters. But Joe has a big weakness: his greed has no bounds. Sooner rather than later, Joe Trent is going to discover that once dishonesty exceeds a certain threshold, retribution is all but assured.....

One thing 'Plunder' does very well is remind the reader of the aspects of the American involvement in World War Two that tend not to be mentioned in the history books: the massive scale of corruption and profiteering that mushroomed in the war zones once the shooting stopped, and the hustlers saw their chance to operate. In such an environment morals evaporated and transgressions became commonplace.

Appel was present in the Philippines following World War Two, as an aid to the American High Commissioner (and later Ambassador) Paul McNutt, so Appel's descriptions of wartime Manila, its commerce (open and clandestine), Tagalog phrases, and G.I. slang and idioms, give the novel considerable verisimilitude.

Where the novel falters is in its final third, where the prose gets florid and Blacky's psychological turmoil gets so much attention that it drains momentum from the narrative. As well, readers are unlikely to be surprised by the denouement, which takes its time in arriving.

Summing up, 'Plunder' is a solid Three Star crime novel. If you like a blend of noir and exotic locales, then it's a worthy read.

Lookin Out for #1 BTO

Lookin' Out for #1

by Bachman Turner Overdrive

1976

An underappreciated, brilliant little gem of a song. 'Lookin' Out for #1' was recorded on the 1975 BTO LP Head On, and released in the USA in 1976 as a single. It reached number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

 

The song starts off as a downbeat, bluesie number, one with a stark message perfect for the 'Me' decade. But then, in its coda, it suddenly transitions to a progressive rock - jazz fusion melody. Stuff that bands could do, back in the mid-1970s.

 

You can listen to 'Lookin' Out for #1' here.

Book Review: Mad River

 January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Mad River' by Donald Hamilton

1 / 5 Stars

Donald Hamilton (1916 - 2006) was a very successful writer of paperback fiction from the 1950s on into the 1980s. Twenty-eight of his 42 books were novels about the secret agent Matt Helm, but Hamilton also produced several western novels, one of these being 'Mad River,' first issued in 1956 by Collier, and later reprinted (date unknown) as Gold Medal book No. k1500.

'Mad' is set in the Arizona Territory, in the late 19th century. The protagonist is Boyd Cohoon, who, at twenty-four years of age, has just finished serving a five-year sentence at the territorial prison in Yuma. As the novel opens, Cohoon is returning to his hometown of Sombrero, which, unfortunately is under the thumb of the mining tycoon Paul Westerman.

It transpires that Cohoon's prison term is linked to a robbery that cost the life of Westerman's son Harry, and Westerman has nothing but animosity for Cohoon. And a message: get out of town, and don't come back.

Of course, Boyd Cohoon isn't scared of Westerman, nor of the town Marshall, Willie Black, who takes his marching orders from the mining magnate. Cohoon is less interested in following Westerman's dictates, and more interested in trying to figure out who bushwhacked his father and brother while Cohoon was imprisoned in Yuma.

Cohoon's also in town to settle accounts with the Paradine family. Claire Paradine once was his fiancee, but Cohoon knows that things can change with five years apart. There is her brother Francis, who shares complicity with Cohoon in past misdeeds in the arroyos and canyons outside of Sombrero. And then there is Colonel Paradine, who is accustomed to using guile, as well as wads of cash, to deter potential problems.

Sticking around Sombrero and prying into things left better left alone is a good way for Boyd Cohoon to put his life at risk from any number of parties, including the 'General,' a mysterious bandit who has been robbing the town bank with a disturbing regularity. As Cohoon makes his way around the dry and dusty streets of Sombrero, he'll need to keep an eye out for firearms leveled at him from the shadows.......

'Mad River' is a perfunctory effort from Donald Hamilton. It reads as a crime or mystery novel that was repurposed to a western. Even though the novel is only 143 pages in length, it is a  sluggish read. There is no real action until page 85, and Boyd Cohoon doesn't even fire a weapon with deadly intent until page 140. Much of the narrative is taken up with dialogue passages that relate the emotional interactions of the lead characters, and the final chapters rely on contrivances to pull together various complicated intrigues, and Whodunit revelations, that are out of place in a Western novel.

While I certainly wasn't expecting 'Mad River' to have the energetic violence of a George Gilman / Terry Harkness 'Edge' novel, it's a bloodless adventure reminiscent of the Marvel  westerns of the Post Comics Code-era, when the Two-Gun Kid, the Rawhide Kid, and Kid Colt all had to shoot the guns from their adversaries' hands because the Code discouraged depictions of people being struck by gunfire. 

If you enjoy that sort of western, you might like 'Mad River,' but all others can pass on this vintage Gold Medal title. For the sake of fairness, however, I will point out that a review at the Vintage Pop Fictions blog found the book to be more rewarding.