The Executioner #14: San Diego Siege

Howdy, you Triggermen And Shooters! 

So, a while back, I won a couple of auctions on eBay that were small collections of "Men's Adventure" books.  I got some Executioner (Mack Bolan), some Destroyer (Remo Williams), some Matt Helm, some Nick Carter, and the first book of the Specialist.  This time, I decided to read an Executioner book.

I have read one Executioner book before, way back when I was in my mid-teens back in the 90s.  I don't remember the title, all the covers looked alike (a white background with a collage of images and the logo was on an upward slant).  I'm under the impression he was working with the government or at least some sort of organization.  He went undercover as some kind of journalist, and I remember it being stated that articles are regularly published under the pseudonym to support the cover identity.  And I'm pretty sure he blew up a helicopter from his hotel room.  I have NO idea who was fighting, or what the bad guy was trying to achieve.

So, I was going into this with little idea of what to expect, beyond the cliche idea that he was one of those heroes who basically kills everybody and blows everything up.  Because, well, that's basically what all these guys are about, right?

I grabbed the earliest book in my current collection:  The Executioner #14:  San Diego Siege.  Of course, the author's name is Don Pendleton.  It was published by Pinnacle Books, with a copyright of 1972.  I have no clue who made the cover art.

So, Mack Bolan was some kind of special forces super soldier and sniper back in Vietnam.  He came home and found most of his family dead, his father driven to murder/suicide because of dealings with the Mafia.  His younger brother was the sole survivor and told him everything.  So Bolan began a one-man war against the Mafia, which has driven him through thirteen previous adventures.

In this novel, Mack Bolan has been "summoned" to San Diego.  He meets with Bancanales, apparently, they fought together in Vietnam, and in one of the previous books.  Bancanales tell him that their former Colonel reached out for help.  But Bolan is unsure because he found some dirt on this Colonel in a previous novel.  First, he wants to scout things out and try to see how dirty the Colonel is, to determine if he is deserving of Bolan's help.

However, when he goes to spy on the Colonel, he finds that the Colonel is dead, and embroiled in some plot with the local Mafia.  Somehow, this changes things, and Bolan is determined to figure out what happened and clearly establish the Colonel's involvement.

It was a pretty fun story, but a little silly.  See, the Mafia was using the Colonel to steal military radio equipment so they could set up a series of radio relays from Las Vegas to San Diego to Mexico in order to capitalize on horse race gambling.  I can't help but picture these radio relays set up like the fire beacons between Minas Tirith and Rohan in the Lord of the Rings movies.

To tell the truth, this seemed a lot lighter in tone than the Specialist did.  In the Specialist, the villain made people fight to the death with steak knives for his amusement, another mobster had a secret dungeon in his basement where he kept teens that he planned to sell into sex slavery, and the descriptions of inflicted damage seemed more visceral and gritty and generally stomach-churning.  

Now I'll admit that Bolan's family dying by murder/suicide is pretty dark, but you don't see it, you're only told that it happened.  The first guy Bolan kills gets shot in the head and you're told that his head exploded and he fell off the boat into the ocean where you didn't have to see it.  This was probably the most gory thing in the book.  Yes, a bunch of people were killed and others got hurt, but they didn't dwell on it.  Plus, these bad guys were really only after the goriesthorse track gambling market.  Mostly, it felt like an episode of the A-Team or some other 80's action show.  Except people died, and one girl spent two whole chapters wearing nothing but a bikini bottom so you knew this was "more grown-up" or whatever.

Maybe this is because this book came out in '72 while the Specialist came out in '84.  Or maybe it's just my own mindset and sensibilities.  Some things seem more serious depending on your outlook, after all.  But I think I liked this book better than the Specialist and I'm looking forward to reading the other books in my collection.

Of course, you can still get this physical book through Amazon or eBay, and a digital version from various places on the net if you want to check this one out.  Or perhaps you've read it already, if so, leave a comment below and tell us what you thought about it!  Well, I guess that's all I have to say for now, so I'll see you next time!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell

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

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins

Howdy you Truly Adventurous Souls! 

So, the other day, I was looking through some old video tapes and I found (among several other things) my copy of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.  Then I thought, "Hey!  That's adventure!  I should talk about it on the blog!"  So...I am!

The movie came out in 1985, but I never saw it until it got on HBO.  I must have been about twelve, and I had no idea who Remo Williams was.  For that matter, I had no idea who Fred Ward or Joel Grey were, either.  But I knew Wilford Brimley!  He was the only guy in the movie I recognized!

Anyway, Remo Williams was a New Jersey cop at the beginning of the film, and he was selected by a top-secret government organization to be their new recruit.  The first thing they did was fake his death, then they gave him reconstructive surgery (mostly shaving off his mustache) and informed him he had been recruited and given a new name:  Remo Williams.

The organization was CURE (I don't remember what the acronym was for), and seemed to be a three-man operation led by Wilford Brimley as Dr. Harold Smith, who implied that they were some kind of government institution.  So, they wanted Remo to be trained up to be an assassin, so they give him to an old Korean named Chiun who was to teach Remo the ways of Sinanju, kind of philosophy and a style of martial arts.  

I was kinda fascinated by the Sinanju training sequences.  The idea was that the human body was capable of so much more than we use it for.  Like...the way they say we only use a small percentage of our brain, but could do fancy telepathy and telekinetic powers if we could learn to use the rest of our brains.  Except, this was the whole body.  With Sinanju training and discipline, you were supposed to be able to do all sorts of fantastic Jackie Chan-type acrobatics and tings that seemed superhuman.

However, Remo is a typical American slob, and is very skeptical, but is impressed with the few uncanny moves Chiun has displayed and wants to learn because...it was just too cool.

On top of all this, there is a shady military arms dealer--an evil 80s business tycoon--who is fleecing the government for funds to build new weapons for the armed forces and only supplying shoddy equipment that blows up in the hands of our soldiers.  He had a sham weapons satellite that was rigged to blow up before anyone could get close enough to tell it was a phony.  This guy needs to be taken out, but whenever his stuff comes under investigation he gets away scott free and some underling gets all the blame.

This is a job for CURE, and they want to send Remo, their newest assassin, to eliminate him.

It was a nifty little flick when it came out, entertaining enough to occupy a couple of hours.  Fred Ward from the the first two Tremors movies played Remo.  Joel Grey played Chiun.  Wilford Brimley, as I said, was Harold Smith, the head of CURE.  And nowadays I recognize Kate Mulgrew, but I don't like her in anything since she stole Billy Crystal's novel in Throw Momma From the Train. 

It wasn't until years later that I found out it was based upon a series of books called "The Destroyer" by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy.  Apparently a line of men's adventure novels akin to The Executioner.  I tracked some down, but I've only read one so far...and that was some years ago now.  I don't remember what the plot actually was.  I remember a Chinese lady with a big coat who kept stealing essential like toilet paper and carrying them in her coat.  And Remo fighting some guys from a karate school.  I think they ended up in China and he got the Sword of Sinanju...why was it in China instad of Korea?  Maybe I remember wrong.

Anyway, the movie is kinda neat, although I've read some opinions online that suggest the books are better.  Hey, big surprise, right?  I'll have to read a few more books and watch the movie again to see if I feel the same way.

I also read that the movie folks wanted this to become a big franchise to rival stuff like James Bond.  In fact, he was supposed to the blue-collar James Bond.  So they hired a writer who wrote a couple of James Bond movies, and a director who directed a couple James Bond movies...but in the end, it just didn't become what they hoped for.  Sad, really.  I would have watched more of them. 

I wouldn't be surprised if someone in Hollywood was trying to reboot the series.  I mean, seems like they try that with everything, doesn't it?

Well, I guess that's all for now.  See ya next time!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell