The Specialist: A Talent For Revenge

 Hello to all you Troopers, Assassins, and Snipers! 

I got something a little different for you this time.  See, when I was in my teens, there used to be a section at the bookstore called "Men's Adventure".  Nowadays I think this stuff is filed under some sub-category of "Thriller" on storefronts like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  This caught my eye because I found some Indiana Jones novels there.  But there were other series, too.  Things like "The Executioner", "The Destroyer", "Able Team" and "Phoenix Force".  

Now, I understand that these were the sort of thing where the hero was some disaffected rogue government agent or free-lance soldier-for-hire who basically kills everybody else by the end of the book.  Of course, that's the general impression of sword-n-sorcery, right?

So, I eventually read an Executioner book...I don't have any idea which one...I remember that he went undercover as a magazine journalist, and I think there was a helicopter in the collage on the cover.  I eventually read a Destroyer book, because I had enjoyed the Remo Williams movie so much.  I think it was called "Chinese Puzzle", and I really don't remember anything that happened in it, either...but I still have the book packed away somewhere, so  Icould re-read it someday.

Mostly these books bored me, cuz at the time, if it didn't have dragons and knights and wizards, I wasn't very interested.  But, in recent months decided to track down some books that I had heard of, but never found anywhere.  I bought some obscure books on eBay, some fantasy and sword-n-planet stuff.  I eventually found a lot of these old men's adventure books:  some Executioner, some Remo Williams, Nick Carter, Matt Helm.  Then I stumbled upon The Specialist #1 "A Talent For Revenge".

It was the FIRST ONE!  It's so hard to find the FIRST BOOK in a series, so I jumped on it.  It showed up about two weeks later and I read it.  So today I'm going to talk about it.

First of all, a little context:  Usually I read some pretty cheesy stuff.  Lots of ridiculous adventure, sure there's death and destruction, but it usually your attention isn't drawn right to it.  I've read a couple of fantasy things where your attention IS drawn to it for a moment, usually to emphasize how terrible the bad guy is, or how terrible life is for these people before the hero comes to save them.  

Think things like "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".  As they're trying to enter the temple where the Holy Grail is, there is a booby trap that chops off people's heads.  This is horrible if you sit and think about it.  But in the movie, it's presented sorta like "uh-oh! it's game over for that guy!"  You know what I mean?  It's not all gory and gut-wrenching and stuff.

In my humble opinion, there are one or two instances where they looked a little too closely at the violence, and it was to show how bad the bad guy was.  There were two brief little sex scenes that I don't really think were necessary, but we didn't dwell on it too long so it wasn't a big deal.  There were also a smattering of swear words, especially the F-bomb (the most commonly used bomb in the book!).  

I understand that these things were put in to show that the story was "gritty" and "grown up".  But to tell you the truth, these things could have been left out and not really affected the story at all.  I don't really think that it was written any better than, for example, "The Warrior of Vengeance:  Sorcerer's Blood", and I could pretty much see both stories in my head being the basis of a Roger Corman flick.

I don't really think of myself as a prude or anything, but I thought I ought to point this stuff out as it is the first book I've decided to talk about with these features.  The other stuff is kinda PG to PG-13; but language and sex definitely elevate this book to an R rating.

With that said, let's get to the story!

Our hero is Jack Sullivan, a veteran of two wars who apparently became a mercenary before the beginning of this book.  He hasn't taken a job in about three-and-a-half years, he is mourning the death of his...uh...wife? ...Fiance? ...Girlfriend?  Well, some woman named Lily who was on his boat when someone blew it up.

In the French Riviera, he gets a job offer from an old acquaintance, formerly from the FBI.  His name is Malta, now he works for a rich lady who wants to hire a mercenary to kill a man.  The man is Ottoowa, a deposed African dictator who once kidnapped the woman and her sister in his small country.  There, the two women were used, abused, starved and tortured.  The sister was decapitated and her head was brought to the woman on a platter.  When she finds out that Ottoowa is also in the French Riviera, she wants him dead--and to have his head brought to her on a plate.

Jack Sullivan takes the job.  

The bad guy has a yacht and a castle on a cliff overlooking the sea, because what's more dramatic than that?  There are complications, of course, he knows some of the mercenaries currently working for the bad guy--in fact, one of them is his old mentor.  He has to dodge the French police, and local thugs, but also has a couple of run-ins with the Mafia.  But worst of all is a 20 year old girl whose smitten with him and gets embroiled in the adventure (of COURSE she gets kidnapped by the bad guys as insurance).

Jack has several run-ins with the bad guy's henchmen in small groups of two or three or four, and he takes 'em out one-by-one so there won't be as many when he tries to break into the castle.  But the bad guy just hires more guys, so it doesn't seem to matter much.  There's a lot of shooting, and explosions, and a couple of guys get knocked down cliffs, a guy gets caught in a noose, another gets garroted.  Again, sorta like bad barbarian fiction when they just kill all the bad-guys by the end of the book.

Of course, one of the henchmen gets revenge on Sullivan before he expires.  This guy tells Sullivan that he and another fellow--whom he refers as "the Blue Man"--placed the bomb on the boat that killed that girl Lily.  But then he dies before Sullivan can get any more information out of him!

It's the first in the series, so I guess it's not much of a spoiler to say that Sullivan lives to go on to the next book.  A little bit of online research suggests that he gets more clues in the next book or two and finally tracks down the people responsible for Lily's death, so there's an over-arching story arc, that's kinda neat.

So...would I read another one?  If I had another one, yes, I probably would.  Am I going to go looking for another one?  No.  I have a whole room full of books and pulp magazines and comics that I want ot read, I really don't need to add to it.  If and when I ever finish that...I might.  It would depend on what else I want, how hard it was to find, and how much it would cost me.  I DID find Book 3 on the Internet Archive where it can be borrowed for free, so I might read that one sooner or later.

It wasn't a bad book, but I do prefer things with dragons...or spaceships...so this was a fun diversion from that stuff.  And I do have some other vigilante guys to read, like the Executioner, and Remo Williams, and Nick Carter, and Matt Helm...  Maybe I'll like one of them a little better.  Then again, maybe they'll be so bad that I change my mind and decide this was great!

I guess we'll find out in time!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell