The Penetrator #04 - Hijacking Manhattan

It was Chet Cunningham's turn to write the next Penetrator novel, Hijacking Manhattan, using the house name Lionel Derrick. In this vigilante series, Cunningham writes the even-numbered installments and Mark Roberts the odd. 

Mark Hardin receives some intel on a black militant group calling themselves Black Gold. It's a splintered faction from the Black Panthers, but with a deadly alliance formed with Chinese terrorists. This hybrid of black and red is a wrecking crew, working in prostitution, heroin distribution, racketeering, and general criminal tomfoolery. However, their newest endeavor has brought New York City to its knees.

Led by Abdul Daley, an ex-Vietnam Vet and career criminal, the group has undertaken a series of extortion involving the police and city officials. It begins with detonating a portion of the city's subway system. Abdul then makes a call to the police and demands millions in used $20 bills to avoid it happening again. The city pays up in a bungled attempt to tail the money grabber, and the whole thing recycles again with another planned bombing and payment. Thankfully, one man can stop the deadly game.

Hardin uses a tanning cream to make himself appear to be a nonchalant black guy in Harlem. He practices “acting black” in his hotel room to get the dialect and mannerisms down. He then infiltrates various cells, taking information by force and kicking balls along the way. The narrative's most interesting bit is an uneasy alliance with the book's eye candy, a secretive counter-intelligence woman who wants to nail a weapons distributor providing explosives to Black Gold. There's also a small sidestep with a female detective captured by the gang and then raped.

These books are violent pulpy fun, and both authors that contribute to the series never take it too seriously. Cunningham is a great storyteller and invests enough of the page count in providing character development on the faction's unique leader, as well as planting enough mystery behind Hardin's female counterpart in the book. Of the Executioner rip-offs, Penetrator continues to be one step ahead. Recommended. 

Get the book HERE.

G.I. Joe - Jungle Raid

I've covered G.I. Joe on a couple of different occasions here at PW, including the comics and the recent short story collection. The books that have alluded me my whole life are the YA Ballantine paperbacks that were published between 1987-1988. I've yet to find one in the wild, but thankfully, someone scanned the series' fifth installment, Jungle Raid (cover by Earl Norem), and posted it to Archive.org. It was written by R.L. Stine of Goosebumps and Fear Street fame.

In the fictitious island country of San Juego, the democratically elected government is in jeopardy of losing its nation to a terrorist leader named Raoul and his army of mercenaries. As the fighting erupts between the two nations, a plea is made to the U.S. government to send in the G.I. Joe force. Their mission is to be a peacekeeping faction to protect the innocent civilians. This brings some bitterness for team members like Law and Falcon, who are itching to get into the fight and stop Raoul.

Hawk meets with the team and announces that COBRA forces might be in San Juego conducting mind control experiments. The mission transforms from peacekeeper to investigative as a three-pronged assignment is unveiled. Chuckles will infiltrate the nearby village disguised as a laborer while searching for some sort of COBRA headquarters. Gung Ho and others will beat the bush searching for any sign of COBRA. Meanwhile, Hawk and his men will be busy defending their mobile command center from Raoul and his mercenaries. As the narrative kicks into high gear, all three parts of the assignment explode into action. 

This book begins like a typical adult men's action-adventure paperback from the likes of Pinnacle or Manor. Chuckles has a barroom run-in with village bullies and has a unique way of dealing with them. He then infiltrates the village workforce and is carted away to a secret lair where COBRA and a certain doctor are conducting experiments on villagers. This part of the book turns into a type of prison-break action formula as Chuckles battles the enemy as a prisoner. The action in the jungle expands to include familiar franchise villains like the Dreadnoks and COBRA Commander. But, there's also a central mystery included with Hawk announcing he is helping his brother in San Juego. Everyone knows Hawk doesn't have a brother, so the intrigue behind this relationship is enticing. 

I had way more fun with this G.I. Joe YA paperback than I ever expected to. Stine's writing is flavorful, and his prose is simple yet effective with plenty of G.I. Joe lore that isn't that different than the animated cartoon. This reads like an episode of the show – over-the-top, totally unbelievable pulpy fun. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, America saves the day. Who can argue with that storytelling flow? Jungle Raid is a fun romp that begs for a repeat performance. Thankfully, Stine wrote one more of these books. Unfortunately, the series is rather expensive in the used retail market. You can check prices HERE.

Nurses Dormitory

According to romancewiki, Alice Brennan (1913-1973) was a St. Louis native who lived in Michigan. She was employed as a dancer, hat-check girl, and secretary, but became a novelist in the early 1960s. She authored a variety of fiction that was centered in the romance genre. She wrote gothics and nurse-fiction for publishers like Lancer, Paperback Library, Belmont, Berkley, and Avon. I chose to read her first nurse novel, Nurses Dormitory. It was published in 1962 by Lancer, and later reprinted by Magnum Books. Cover artist uncredited.

The novel presents the careers and personal lives of three young nurses who have just started employment at fictional St. Joseph's General Hospital in an unnamed city. Brennan's smooth narrative focuses on a variety of subplots that affect the lives and inner sanctum of this medical facility. By switching perspectives from these three main characters, the chapters often entwine their personal struggles at the hospital and the various patients and medical concerns affecting both their work and sleep.

The most prominent character is Veronica, a farm girl who grew up with her childhood friend John. By earning an education and becoming a nurse, Veronica is now working at the same facility as John, a resident doctor. Veronica has loved John her entire life, so her placement as his nurse is a twofold problem. Her affection for John could jeopardize her career and derail her career ambitions. At the same time, John has always considered Veronica as a sister, yet her maturity now brings a new spark of romance to the relationship. Veronica and John are cautious in exploring this love affair, which made their portions of the narrative extremely interesting.

Susie enjoys nursing, but has an aspiration to marry into money. However, she meets Veronica's brother, a farmer, and her personal goals are ruined. She flirts with the idea of marrying for love, scoffs at the concept of becoming a farmer's wife, and debates the farmer's grandiose intention of having six kids. While enjoyable, their relationship struggles were the least effective portions of the narrative.

Lita is the daughter of a successful film actress. She's pursuing her medical career despite her mother's best efforts to lead her into the life of a spoiled nepo baby. Lita is also torn between two lovers, a successful entrepreneur named Peter and the resident doctor, Mark. Both men are admirable choices, with each experiencing their own life goals and purpose. Peter wants Lita's hand in marriage, but Mark is the real lover Lita is pining for. Lita's struggles with Mark were laced with a mystery concerning Mark's prior wife and a repressed guilt that leads him to alcohol abuse. 

While these three character studies were interesting enough, Nurses Dormitory surprisingly contains a tight-knit legal battle. The hospital's manager, a tightwad named Larson, has finally put the business into the black, yet his cost-cutting approach is nearly criminal. As the doctors and nurses are desperate for things like penicillin, Larson refuses to order more than a certain monthly allotment. As the doctors battle Larson, he begins restricting their use of the operating room, which leads to a showdown over a dying patient. These high-strung medical scenarios were imaginative and written well. There was also riveting patient drama with a small child's gunshot wound and attempts to save his leg from gangrene. 

While I'm not a fan of TV medical dramas like Grey's Anatomy and Chicago Med, reading these dramas seems to be something I'm drawn to. A lot of great writers penned nurse-fiction, from the king of paperbacks Harry Whittington, to authors such as Max Brand (Frederick Faust), Frank Slaughter, Arthur Catherall, and Peggy Gaddis. It's an entire genre that competes, and sometimes blends, with gothic-suspense and romance. If Nurses Dormitory is any indication of the genre's quality, then I'm all in. I enjoyed the characters, the development, the pace, and the author's ability to weave all of this into a captivating narrative in just 132 pages. 

Get the book HERE.

War of the Worlds

Perhaps the father of science-fiction, H.G. Wells, is best known for his celebrated classic War of the Worlds. The book was written between 1985 and 1897, and first published in Pearson's Magazine in the U.K. and Cosmopolitan in the U.S. The serial transitioned into a novel in 1898, and has been reprinted and offered in numerous formats since then. The seminal alien invasion novel has also been adapted into radio drama, films, comics, and television.

The novel, presented in third-person by an unnamed narrator, begins in Southeast England as a cylinder launches from Mars and arrives on Horsell Common in Surrey. The narrator approaches the pit where the capsule is laying. He then gets a neighboring journalist to accompany him and the news spreads as more and more people arrive to gaze into the pit. Eventually, the cylinder's top spins open and the aliens, possessing tentacles and a beak-like moth, emerge. Within a few minutes the aliens incinerate over 40 people with a devastating heat ray. The human slaughter commences and another capsule arrives.

The book's prose intensifies with more descriptions of battle. Wells focuses a great deal on catastrophe and destruction, elevated with the emergence of the tripods, three-legged Martian fighting machines that simply annihilate military forces. Entwined in the narrative is the narrator's flee with his wife to the nearby town of Leatherhead, leaving her there with relatives. The narrator (for reasons unclear to me) returns to the Woking area to witness more carnage and then the mass exodus of people abandoning London.

The book's second half (labeled Book 2) is more atmospheric as the nature of the novel expands into a more despondent post-apocalyptic tone. London, referred to as “Dead London” in chapter eight, is described as a truly dismal place littered with corpses and alien scavengers. These scavengers seemingly squeeze the blood from humans as a source of nutrients. 

The more intimate details of the book's second half features the narrator and a soldier trapped in a deserted house. The narrator is concerned with his wife's safety and irritated with the soldier's deteriorating mental state. There's a lack of food and water that adds more misery to the situation. Both characters eventually leave the house, only to find themselves trapped in another dwelling as the alien scavengers continue to scrape the streets and houses with probing tentacles. 

The book's climax comes as the narrator travels into lifeless London. As he walks through wreckage he begins to hear an eerie sound emanating from the aliens. I won't ruin the surprise here, but this is a hopeful sound that eventually leads to Earth's liberation from the Martian invaders. 

Reviewing literary classics is challenging. These works are over a century old, and my personal exposure to their legacy – various adaptations of the material, decades of critique, imitators, and overall cultural awareness – means I have been desensitized from the novel's initial grandeur. I hadn't read the book before, but I had watched the movies, heard the radio drama, and was made aware of the book's importance in science-fiction and as a catalyst for the genre's sub-genre of alien invasion. One watch of something as flashy as Independence Day (1996) makes this novel's action sequences a little underwhelming. But that's a personal problem reflective of my absorption of media, not any fault of the author or the work. 

With all that in consideration, I found War of the Worlds to be a good novel. I enjoyed the atmosphere, and the narrator's survival horror perspective. The Martians appearance as tall blood sucking creatures with large eyes, tentacles, heat rays, and deadly gas played on my fears of being flesh-squeezed by a hideous alien invader. The description of England as a lifeless and decimated husk was described in the darkest way imaginable. In post-apocalyptic situations, humans can be the worst horror of all. Wells does an excellent job presenting human suffering and the mass lunacy of everyday people forced into extreme circumstances. Selfishness and greed leads to the greatest suffering of all.

I think my only real complaint with the book was the inability to really hone in on the narrator. Often this character would tell me things happening in other parts of England or explaining in great detail his brother's exploits to survive the invasion, including a naval battle between a battering ram and an alien. I felt that I lost the intimacy of things directly occurring with the character, his personal predicament and the things affecting only him. It took me out of the moment and made the narration more epic in nature than personal. 

Needless to say, War of the Worlds is an important book, and a praised work of science-fiction worthy of imitation, inspiration, and discussion. Read the book and appreciate the novel's legacy and impact. You won't be disappointed.

Get the book HERE.

No Exit

Taylor Adams is an American thriller writer from Washington state who built his reputation on fast-paced, high-concept suspense novels that read like crackling paperback nail-biters. His 2017 novel, No Exit, is his most popular book, and it was adapted into a Hulu-original film.

Darby Thorne, a college student racing through a Colorado blizzard, is stranded overnight at a remote highway rest stop with four strangers. The setup is pure pulp gold complete with an isolated location, rising dread, and the sense that any of the snow-trapped travelers could be dangerous. Adams detonates the plot with one hell of a hook: Darby spots a kidnapped child locked in a van outside. No phone service. No escape. Someone inside the rest stop with her is a monster.

Adams writes with the smooth readability of a seasoned paperback pro. The chapters are short, the cliffhangers brutal, and the violence is gruesome and intense. Darby herself is a terrific modern pulp heroine: resourceful, scared, stubborn, and willing to take a beating to do what’s right. Fans of stories where a lone hero takes on overwhelming odds will eat this up.

No Exit is the kind of lean, high-concept thriller that would’ve sat nicely beside the old Richard Matheson or Day Keene paperbacks, but with a contemporary cinematic punch. The novel is a white-knuckle, snowbound thriller that reads like a classic Gold Medal paperback dragged into the 21st century. Adams gives us an ordinary protagonist shoved into an impossible situation and forced to improvise her way to survival. If you like your suspense tight, your villains vicious, and your heroes forged under fire, this one delivers the goods.

Get the book HERE.

Lady Wrestler

The Gardner Francis Fox Library, established in 2018 by Kurt Brugel, has created a remarkable resource to explore the author's life and literary work. Along with information about the writer, the online library offers a robust selection of Fox's novels and pulp stories in ebook and audiobook formats. You can obtain affordable digital copies of sexy spy series titles like Cherry Delight and Lady from L.U.S.T. or sword-wielding tales starring Kothar or Kyrik. Thankfully, the library also includes numerous Fox stand-alone novels that he wrote under pseudonyms. One of those, Lady Wrestler, was published by Midwood (F193) in 1962 under Fox's pseudonym of James Harvey. Vintage copies of the paperback net over $200, but I was able to purchase the book for two bucks. 

The novel opens with Bella Woods completing a short, ill-fated run of a Broadway performance. The experience left her financially devastated, emotionally depleted, and her body abused by the show's perverted producer. In bed with the sleazy promoter, Bella comes to the realization she needs a change and new life goals. An interview with a male model and entrepreneur opens up a world of possibilities: Pro-Wrestling. 

Brick hires Bella to join his budding stable of female wrestlers. With these eight ladies, Brick hopes to secure a few local bookings, tap into the market share of male pro-wrestling, and secure a television deal. It's all on the up and up, and Bella rightfully trusts Brick and his tunnel vision.

Bella arrives at Brick's family farm house and meets the other wrestlers. There are women there who use gimmicks like an obese jungle native, a tatted carnival oddity, a royal Queen, a revolting slave, etc. Needless to say, it is a colorful house filled with diversity and different perspectives. Bella's conflict is with a rival ex-Broadway star named Charlotte, that is sleeping with Brick. Her other conflict is with Brick's sister, a domineering lesbian named Cleo, who rapes Bella during her first night at the house.

Through Lady Wrestler's narrative, readers enjoy the rags-to-riches rise of these eight women from bingo halls to a local television program. Fox weaves a multitude of minor plot points that include Brick's financial struggles, Bella's romantic flings with Brick, Cleo's uprising, and the lifestyles of a few minor characters both in and out of the ring. The most satisfying plot point is a lawsuit from the television producers over Bella's indecent exposure on their programming. 

After watching the Netflix show GLOW, which fictionally documents the rise and fall of the women's Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling organization in the 1980s, I found so many interesting comparisons to this 1962 paperback. The characters, the TV deal, the promoter, the lifestyles – all of this is remarkably told by Fox nearly two decades before G.L.O.W. first aired on television in 1986. 

If you enjoy pro-wrestling, then you will really enjoy Lady Wrestler. The gimmicks and wrestling personalities were thoroughly enjoyable, and I liked Bella's perspective of being new to the industry. However, Fox was just a serviceable writer, never great but never dull. His writing leaves something to be desired, but nonetheless has enough variance and texture to bring these characters to life, albeit a little wonky on dialogue. 

For $1.99 you can't go wrong. Get Lady Wrestler HERE. 

Matt Helm #06 - The Ambushers

Donald Hamilton's sixth installment of the Matt Helm series, The Ambushers, was published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1963. The book was loosely adapted into a comedic spy film in 1967 with star Dean Martin. As the old saying goes, the books are always better than the movies. The Ambushers is proof positive.

The book begins with Helm in a place he describes vaguely as “let's call it Costa Verde”, an unknown banana country in South America. His mission is to carry a heavy sniper rifle through the jungle, meet up with a resistance fighter named Jimenez, and help assassinate the country's newest political rival. After snubbing a revolution, Helm's job is through, and he can head back to Washington. But like most Helm novels, things don't go quite according to plan. During the successful assassination, Helm finds two surprises. First, a nuclear warhead that was probably smuggled from the Russians. Second, a former Nazi senior leader whom Helm recognizes from a prior mission. 

In Washington, Helm receives a backhanded compliment from his direct Mac – praise for succeeding on the assignment. But Mac's associates scold Helm for ignoring two international threats during the mission. Defensively, cool-headed Helm dismisses their Monday morning quarterbacking and expresses interest in his next mission.

The fallout from the assassination is now spreading into southern New Mexico. In a quiet suburb, the former Nazi leader that Helm identified is now setting up shop for a new movement. Helm's job is to team with a reserved, previously traumatized agent named Sheila to expose the leader and quell this new Nazi uprising. 

Hamilton's prose is a smooth telling of espionage in a conversational tone. Both Helm and Sheila work well together, creating a cohesive fighting pair that both complement each other's scarred pasts. When the two find themselves at odds with a Russian spy (lovely as ever) they must jeopardize the mission to stop a much larger threat. There's plenty of mountainous terrain, gunfire, fisticuffs, and tepid lovemaking, but the real main event is always Helm's thoughts. In a generous first-person perspective, Helm talks to the reader in a way that is just uniquely captivating. 

I paired my reading of Hamilton's narrative with listening to Stefan Rudnicki's gripping audio narration. Either way, your experience with The Ambushers will be thrilling. Highly recommended. Get a modern reprint HERE or vintage copies HERE.

Pack Animals

I've always admired Greg F. Gifune's writing and have covered his books here on the blog and on the YT channel. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to exclusively reveal his newest book's cover, a glorious piece by the talented Zach McCain, an internationally published artist who also created visually striking artwork for Gifune's 2022 horror novella Savages (Cemetery Dance). Since seeing the cover for Pack Animals (Macabre Ink), I've been anxiously counting the days until the book's release. Finally, the hunt is over. Or is it?

Thankfully, Gifune's writing style - an effective combination of visceral violence and horrifying psychosis - takes on one of my favorite aspects of horror. Like Savages, the early description for Pack Animals was a homage to the survival, late-night horror films of the 1970s and 1980s. Films like The Pack, Day of the Animals, The Howling, and Grizzly all sprang into my mind. This was the VHS market I grew up in in the 1980s and early 1990s, and I'm always searching for that same nostalgia in pop culture.

Pack Animals begins with an unknown woman arriving at a medical facility. Inside, she learns that her husband, or boyfriend, has experienced a significant trauma and now remains in a state of mental shock as his body recovers from exhaustive injuries. Inside his room, there's this heavy vacuum that seemingly sucks the hope from the room. The man is despondent and silent as he fixates on something far beyond the hospital, far beyond anything the two of them can understand.

As the book's narrative unfolds, Gifune then takes readers back to the start to explain the happenings and surroundings that have crushed the man's body and spirit. The author introduces a group of thirty-something male friends starting with Truck. He has experienced infidelity, a divorce, and a type of midlife crisis reassembling his life. He moves to an off-the-grid place nestled deep in the rural mountains of New Hampshire. Yet his peace and tranquility are shattered routinely with night visitors that hover in the treeline. Truck's defense is a shotgun, a handgun, and lots of ammunition, which sends up red flags for the tiny community. They don't trust outsiders and send one of their own to warn Truck to keep the peace. 

Later, Truck's assemblage of friends arrives to spend a week with him in his newfound mountain oasis. On their drive to Truck's house, they see an old woman in a bloody nightgown walking through the forest. Later, at Truck's house, they discover there's no phone signal. This isolation becomes alarming when they find Truck's behavior unsettling. He warns the group to leave before dark, before the visitors arrive. When they refuse, Truck provides them with details on something, or someone, that he chained up in his shed. Is Truck insane, or does the darkness bring a host of Hell?

I'm careful with reviewing Gifune's work because it is subjective. Many of his novellas and full-length novels play havoc with your imagination. Many of the horrors in the author's work present themselves differently depending on the reader. However, there's no denying that Pack Animals is a monster story. The book's cover, title, and synopsis suggest a werewolvish type of reading experience, and I believe the lead into the book's release promises survival horror. But it still possesses many of the ingredients that make Gifune's writing so good. 

Truck's move to the country reminds me of the events leading to Lance Boyce's move to snowy Maine in the excellent Lords of Twilight, one of Gifne's best. The disturbing arrival of the town sheriff called to mind the arrival of Bob in Gifune's equally entertaining The Rain Dancers. The idea of average individuals stranded and cold is a concept that Gifune often uses, most effectively in Midnight Solitaire. However, as much as Gifune uses his old tricks to scare us, it isn't simply a recycle. With Pack Animals, Gifune takes all of these elements and thrusts them into an action-oriented, fast-paced survival yarn that is bone-jarring horror, but equally a white-knuckled thriller. It is compared to Gifune's Savages, which is a fair comparison, but also something like Oasis of the Damned. These stories and concepts work well because they pit vulnerable, everyday people into harrowing fight-or-flight situations that push the boundaries of mental awareness and physical exhaustion. 

I could write for days on Greg Gifune's work and how much of an impact he's made not only as an author, but also as an editor. It is novels like Pack Animals that remind me just how great a storyteller he is. If you are searching for an enjoyable action-oriented monster novel, pack your bags for Pack Animals. It's a trip worth taking.

Get the book HERE.

Random Notes – I jotted down a few things as I was reading the book that didn't necessarily fit the review. The sheriff's name of Leland made me think of the nefarious shopkeeper and rival of Sheriff Pangborn, Leland Gaunt, the star of Stephen King's Needful Things. There's a character mentioned at the end of Pack Animals named Maynard. This seems like a nod to Herman Raucher's classic horror paperback Maynard's House. It would be remiss of me not to say that Michael McBride's own monster novel Snowblind came to mind as well. Both Pack Animals and Snowblind should now be the high-water mark of the survival horror genre. 

Condemned to Devil's Island

Blair Niles (1880-1959) was a Virginia native that authored non-fictional accounts of global human suffrage and fictional novels that expressed commentary on social issues. She was a founding member of the Society of Women Geographers and was honored with a Women's National Book Award. I'm always searching for an entertaining prison-themed adventure, so I decided to read her novel Condemned to Devil's Island, which was published as a hardcover in 1928 and adapted into a film in 1929.

Niles authored the book after interviewing an unnamed French prisoner, named “Michael” in the book, that was serving a sentence at the notorious Bagne de Cayenne, referred to as “Devil's Island”, in French Guiana. In flashback scenes, readers learn of Michael's servitude to a Russian Prince and his descent into criminality, leading to a temporary prison sentence in France before being sentenced to seven years of hard labor on the island. 

When the book begins, Michael is jovial about the trip, looking forward to the passage by boat to the island and seeing a new land full of possibilities. He makes friends with another inmate named Felix and the two converse about their pasts and the opportunities that lie ahead on this new island of imprisonment. Despite the horrific aura of Devil's Island, Michael is in a blissful state of denial. He never seems to fully grip his real undertaking here.

As the book expands into the cumbersome chores of prison life, Michael becomes a type of prison courier that works in the village. At night he's behind bars in the less restrictive dormitory portion of the facility, and by day he socializes and gathers gossip that he later trades for various  goods in the prison. Eventually Michael develops a relationship with a warden's wife in town and makes a few escape attempts to no avail.

Condemned to Devil's Island isn't a men's action-adventure prison break novel. Instead, this is simply a character study in the form of a tepid melodrama about Michael's hopes and desires behind prison walls. In fairness, I barely finished the book and found myself skipping entire sections of pointless deliberation between characters over tedious things. This book was a sluggish bore and I can't recommend it to anyone. If you want a more inspiring prison-break adventure try Henri Charriere's Papillon (1969), Peter McCurtin's Escape from Devil's Island (1971), or Rene Belbenoit's Dry Guillotine (1938).

Time to Kill

Ted Stratton was a pulp author who wrote a 1953 Popular Library paperback called Time to Kill published under the pseudonym of Terry Spain. It’s basically an entertaining Mike Hammer ripoff, and it was recently reprinted by Cutting Edge Books.

Mack Berry is a hardboiled private eye assigned to collect intel on a local mobster named Dominic Parente. The racketeer’s organization sold marijuana to a teen girl who (of course) progressed immediately to heroin, overdosed and died. The dead girl’s dad hired Mack to do the gumshoe work to dismantle Parente’s dope operations in this rural New Jersey county.

Among the way, Mack encounters an array of hoodlums, crooked cops and two-timing dames who are itching to bang the PI. Mack also knows how to crack some skulls, and the fight scenes are vividly executed in his one man war against the mafia. Time to Kill is fast-moving, bruising, sincere, and unapologetically thrilling.

1953 was a year when Mickey Spillane could drop a Mike Hammer novel and outsell the Bible, and every aspiring pulp writer was trying to bottle the same mix of bruised masculinity and righteous mayhem. Taken in that context, Stratton’s pastiche is right on the money.

If you like novels where the hero saves the day but pays for it physically and emotionally, this is your kind of book. Just don’t expect a masterpiece. Get it HERE. 

The Outlaw Breed

William Byron Mowery (1899-1957) was one of the most prolific writers of early adventure pulp stories, amassing a robust catalog of nearly 400 short stories. He earned degrees from both Ohio State University and the University of Illinois and taught English at the University of Texas. His “north woods” stories can be found in magazines like Argosy, Adventure, Ace-High, and Blue Book. Several of his novels and stories were adapted into films like The Mysterious Pilot and Heart of the North. Cutting Edge Books has made a concentrated effort to feature Mowery's novels in new digital and physical formats, including his 1936 novel Outlaw Breed. The book is available in a stand-alone edition as well as a bonus novel in the publisher's unique digital collection, Canadian Westerns: Four Full Novels. 

In Outlaw Breed, Noel, a former Inspector of the Canadian Mounted Police, becomes embroiled in a murder mystery that reaches into the dense, rugged landscape of Canada's Manitoba region. When a young man named Jimmy is shot to death at Noel's apartment, the former policeman begins an investigation into the murder. Noel's torn between his former allegiance to Canada's law-enforcement authorities, specifically his ex-boss, and his stand-alone determination to chase his own form of justice for Jimmy.

When Noel flies into the rural areas of the Canadian interior, he is immediately assaulted by a gang of hired men. Eventually, Noel finds solace and cooperation from his least likely ally, a sharpshooting woman named Alice who has a close tie to Jimmy. The two combine their resources and track down the heart of the mystery, gold deposits on land owned by a tribe of Indigenous people. 

Mowery's effective use of a pandemic affecting this tribe, and the chaotic pursuit of hired guns trailing both Noel and Alice, make for a plot propulsive narrative that captures some of modern western's most inspiring tropes – a hardened hero, majestic locales, and a rich storytelling experience that showcases culture and tradition among the land's inhabitants. Outlaw Breed is top-notch! Get the book HERE.

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 125

In this energetic year-end episode, Eric looks back at a wildly productive 2025 for Paperback Warrior — packed with reviews, interviews, collaborations, and behind-the-scenes adventures. He shares big milestones, surprising personal updates, and a rapid-fire countdown of his Top 10 Reads of the Year (spoiler-free!). Eric also teases exciting projects coming in 2026, including new partnerships, publishing work, and podcast appearances. It’s a fast, fun celebration of a landmark year and a perfect jumping-on point for listeners old and new. Stream the episode below or any podcasting platform. You can also download HERE and watch on YouTube HERE.

Listen to "Episode 125: Top Reads of 2025" on Spreaker.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre

Paperback Warrior reviewed Philip Fracassi's 2023 horror novel Boys in the Valley and praised the author's skillful use of an isolated orphanage to build unease in his violent narrative. Fracassi has authored seven total novels and an additional eight novellas/shorts. His literary work has earned numerous awards including a Bram Stoker for his collection Beneath a Pale Sky (2021). Despite the wordy title, I was looking forward to reading his slasher novel The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre, published by Tor in a hardcover in 2025.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home is an upstate New York dwelling focused on seniors living their best life. The complex contains an apartment building, a dining hall, gym, sports area, a pond, medical center and a creepy abandoned mental asylum. Intersecting the home and surrounding grounds are colored paths leading to certain areas. Surrounding the complex is dense forest, a fire tower, and a railroad. There's no doubt Fracassi knew how to isolate these characters and reader. Atmosphere is everything in horror.

The book's protagonist is Rose, a former high school teacher now retired and comfortably living her late 70s at Autumn Springs. She has a semi-boyfriend named Miller, a retired professor that adores her. She spends her time watching mystery and crime dramas with Miller while engaging with a handful of close friends. But her peaceful tranquility is about to become shattered.

Readers are periodically removed from Rose's life and thrust into various rooms with a masked killer. This masked killer commits acts of ruthless violence on the home's residents, but stages each murder to appear self-inflicted or an accident. A man is thrown from a fire tower after a lifetime of searching for alien life in the skies (accident?), a man cuts his wrist in the bathtub after his lover is killed (suicide?), another man drowns in the local pond (accident?). As the body count rises, Rose is forced into action as the obligatory amateur detective. While the real detective, a nice but useless character named Hastings, spins his wheels searching for answers, Rose is on the offensive tracking down clues to learn the identity of the killer and his/her motive.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre could have easily been authored by an early 20th century mystery writer like Mary Collins, Elizabeth Fenwick, or Charlotte Armstrong. Sure, the novel works just as good as a Scream slasher, but I found the narrative brimming over with a thick mystery, a claustrophobic tightening of suspects, and an admirable amateur detective Hellbent on destroying her opponent. But, like a formulaic 80s slasher, plausibility is thrown away. How the killer can move effortlessly around so many people – security guards, doctors, nurses, residents - while creating this much chaos is unresolved. While the killer's identity makes it seem possible, one must still suspend disbelief. I nabbed the killer in the opening act. 

Aside from the horror and mystery aspect, I felt like Fracassi's telling of these seniors and their lifestyles was very touching. Rose is an endearing character, one of the best I've come across in ages. Her intimacy struggles with Miller, her familial relationship with her daughter, and her history with an ex-husband are all very real and very meaningful. Rose's life story, revealed in the book's final act, proves she's a viable fighter worthy of being deemed “the final girl”. 

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is an exhilarating whodunit that possesses a uniqueness – the murder of an aging population already braced for death. This peek into the world of our elders was a surreal glimpse at mortality. No one is getting out of this life alive. 

Get the book HERE.

Bloody Beaches

The name Delano Stagg appears on two fictional paperbacks published by Monarch in the 1960s, Bloody Beaches and The Glory Jumpers. Stagg was a pseudonym used by Mel R. Sabre and Paul Eiden, two highly decorated paratroop non-coms that jointly earned Silver Stars, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart for their valiant participation in World War II. These two military-fiction novels are now available in new editions thanks to Cutting Edge Books. I chose to read and review Bloody Beaches. 

Bloody Beaches is presented as a non-linear journey into the Pacific theater, focusing on two U.S. Marines, Second Lieutenant Donald Avery and his friend, mentor, and commanding officer, Captain Calvin Hobbes. Cal and Avery's relationship is central to the narrative and changes over the course of two years of ground 'n pound strikes against Japanese forces. It is this gripping plot point that elevates this men's action-adventure novel into a gripping, charismatic character study punctuated by occurrences both on and off the battlefield.

In the book's opening trilogy of chapters (February 1945), Avery and Cal are deeply entrenched in a beachhead assaulting an enormous ridge in Iwo Jima, a historical key moment in the Asiatic-Pacific victory. There's an obvious disgruntlement among the troops regarding Cal's leadership. The platoon's orders are to destroy the gun nests in a heavily guarded region. However, Cal fears the worst and orders the men to dig in and wait for reinforcements. This decision is met with worry, anxiety, and bitterness as the men fear they are sitting ducks within interlocking Japanese gunfire. Just as the tipping point is met, the authors cleverly pause the action.

In chapters four and five, readers step back two years to May 1943 as Avery and Cal first meet in the jungles of the Solomons. Cal rescues Avery twice in combat, which creates an uneven ebb and flow in the men's relationship outside of rank – Avery's allegiance to Cal affects the duo's friendship. Through the novel's next three chapters, a love triangle is introduced that shows the men's lovers crisscrossing. This creates a heightened tension that affects the two in combat later.

A year later, in 1944, there is a dark moment when Cal is accused of leaving one of his men to die on Miichi Island. Despite evidence, Avery defends Cal and encourages the men to follow Cal's disciplined leadership. Avery's suspicion plagues his every conscious thought, a mental unhinging that comes back full circle to the events that shaped the first three chapters, the platoon's violent exercises on Iwo Jima.

The novel's last four chapters detail the savagery of battle and the results of mistrust in Cal, both as a friend, confidant, fellow soldier, and Captain. These fiery events transpire as the men survive waves of incoming fire, charging enemy battalions, and the group's ineffectiveness in fighting as a cohesive unit. These pages are blood-soaked, action-packed, and explosive, but laced with gritty realism. The authors keep the narrative strictly anti-pulp, but descend into some really dark places with vivid scenes of gore and brutality.

While I don't have information on writer Mel R. Sabre, Paul Eiden became a literary journeyman in the realms of men's action-adventure. He wrote installments of John Eagle: Expeditor for Pyramid  Books using the house name Paul Edwards, and he wrote two of the three installments of the same publisher's Mafia books. Eiden, who was often selected by paperback creator Lyle Kenyon Engel, wrote additional novels like Assignment to Bahrein, The Strangler, and Crooked Cop. I conclude, that based on Eiden's rather violent subject matter, he constructed the Iwo Jima portions of the book. Sabre's more sexually charged emotional matters probably make up the book's middle chapters. 

Bloody Beaches is a spirited men's action-adventure novel that showcases war's two-fronted assault on a soldier's psyche – the possibility of death and a lack of faith in their commanding officer. If you love high-octane military fiction like Sgt. Hawk, The Rat Bastards, or The Sergeant, then look no further than Bloody Beaches. Highest recommendation. Get the book HERE. 

Murder Money

Edward S. Aarons' first published work appeared in 1938 with the novels Death in a Lighthouse (aka The Cowl of Doom) and Murder Money (aka $1,000,000 in Corpses), both published in paperback by Phoenix Press under Aarons' typical pseudonym, Edward Ronns. The books have been combined into an excellent twofer by Stark House Press with an introduction by the always enjoyable Nicholas Litchfield. In this review, I'm handling Murder Money.

In this mystery, Aarons introduces readers to Leo Storm, an eccentric man who tells Valerie, the female lead, that he does three things as an occupation: 1) Nothing, meaning vacationing, swimming, and fishing. 2) Archaeologist, dabbling in things like mummies. 3) He's a private-detective, messing around with missing persons, murder, and theft, all factors that contribute to the novel's plot. He travels with a Greek gun enthusiast named Poppo who handles Storm's light work.

As the book opens, Storm is on a vacation visiting a resort town in Maine. There, he finds a suitcase containing a quarter-mil in a tree. But, his attachment to the attache case is only temporary when he is held up by a man with a gun claiming the loot as his own. Storm later confronts an alcoholic Native American, deemed “the sheriff”, although he's not really any lawman, just a laborer that is working for a wealthy vacationer named Coulter. In this exchange of unpleasantness, Storm then runs into Valerie, Coulter's secretary. She wants to hire him to tail a guy she claims is tailing her. Storm, a quirky individual with a penchant for loaded dice, doesn't take the job and rudely sends her on her way. But, a moment later, the quirky detective tells Poppo that the woman is telling the truth – someone is, in fact, following her. 

Murder Money has a rather contrived plot device that propels a handful of characters into a monetary rat race. First, the wealthy investor Coulter is selling $250K in jewelry to a con artist who specializes in blackmailing paranormal professionals, people that describe themselves as psychics, ghost whisperers, etc. Coulter's investment will be paid back with interest after the con artist blackmails these professionals into giving him money to avoid being outed as a fake. It's a high concept. But the blackmailer is soon found dead, and the $250K is stolen. But is it? Because another $250K appears in the mix from a different source. So, there are two $250K loots floating around. Who's behind this crazy caper, and how is Valerie involved? That's the payoff in Murder Money.

Edward S. Aarons often used foggy seaside towns in New England to position his crime-noir elements. Murder  Money makes great use of the rural Maine countryside, complete with views of the ocean, dense forest, and the obligatory mist to seemingly isolate this small resort and its guests. The story is pure pulp, with shady characters like mobsters, their gunmen, bullheaded cops, sarcastic private-eyes, beautiful lounge singers, and, of course, the damsel in distress. There's no denying the plot is a bit stuffy and convoluted, and Storm is a prude. But it all works out if you love a pulpy crime caper with cartoonish heroes and villains. There's a seriousness that emerges with a gunshot as Aarons tips into some violent storytelling at the mid-point of the novel. 

Overall, Stark House Press is doing God's work by reprinting Aarons' crime-fiction work. Be sure to get this twofer HERE and the excellent juvenile delinquent book Gang Rumble HERE.

Port Angelique

Richard Jessup authored over 60 novels over his three decades as a published novelist. His most popular literary contribution is the five-book spy-fiction series Monty Nash and his western novel The Cincinnati Kid, which was adapted to a film starring Steve McQueen. Stark House Press published the author's Night Boat to Paris as a Black Gat Book in 2025, and they followed with this twofer containing two of Jessup's 1961 novels, Wolf Cop and Port Angelique. I reviewed the former already (here), so this review addresses Port Angelique. 

Jessup's Port Angelique is an ambitious effort that features a variety of plots and over a dozen characters that fight for the reader's attention. Unlike Wolf Cop, or many of Jessup's fast-paced plot-propelled narratives, there isn't a main character or protagonist. Instead, this is an ensemble cast of islanders that each have their own life obstacles, challenges, and goals that share in the responsibility of maintaining the island and village.

The character I felt a closeness with is Stanley Fowler, the police commissioner of Port Angelique, a small fictitious Caribbean island in possession of the United States. Fowler's nemesis is a career criminal named Sabo de Chine, an islander that Fowler ran off years ago. However, Sabo has been spotted once again in Port Angelique and rumors abound that he's back with a new gang of criminals Hellbent on retrieving millions that Sabo left behind on his earlier departure. 

I'm convinced Jessup's goal was to make Port Angelique a sweeping epic, yet was bound by Fawcett's limitation on a thinner page count. If Jessup were to attempt the novel 15 years later, I can foresee a brick book swelling at 350+ pages. When Hemingway was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 (The Old Man and the Sea), his contemporary style affected a number of writers. He defined a new, unique place in adventure fiction that focused on the subtle nuances of foreign locales and a careful character study of the inhabitants. 

Jessup's conjuring of Hemingway, albeit with lesser poetic synergy, is a valiant effort to present this exotic culture rich with traditions, rituals, and customs. The author creates a fictional history of an Aztec adventurer named Xochimilco (named after the Aztec canal system) that battled Cortes in the early 1500s. Providing cultural texture to the region, Jessup includes narration on the island's fishing development, laborers, barkeeps, prostitutes, dime-store criminals, drug running, and political strife dominating the region. 

Port Angelique is a challenging narrative with many moving parts. There's a bit of dedication involved in remembering the alliances and characters involved in the crafty development. While it doesn't require a Game of Thrones org chart, you do need to read this in one or two sittings for full effect. As a character study, the novel simply wins. It doesn't pretend to be a high-octane treasure-hunting adventure novel, but part of me was still hopeful it would transition into that for the third act. 

Get the book HERE.

Embrace the Wind

Embrace the Wind is a 1985 paperback by Harry Whittington (1915–1989), published in the United Kingdom under the pseudonym Ashley Carter and in the United States as Blaine Stevens. Both editions were packaged with generic romance-style cover art, even though the novel is actually a historical adventure centered on a covert mission into Spanish-controlled Florida ordered by U.S. President James Monroe in 1817.

The novel opens strongly. Our hero, Jeremiah Locke, rides from his Virginia plantation to the White House to meet with President Monroe. It’s three years after the War of 1812, and General Andrew Jackson is agitating for war against Spain, which still controls Florida as part of its sovereign territory. Monroe distrusts Jackson and sends Locke south to befriend him and uncover his intentions. Is Jackson plotting to seize Florida for himself and declare it his own nation? Whittington presents Monroe’s suspicions as entirely reasonable and ominous.

Let me pause the review here: This first chapter is fantastic. There is not a single other review of Embrace the Wind anywhere that I can find, and it has never been reprinted. Frankly, I’d be shocked if many 1985 reader lured in by the Harlequin knock-off cover made it past Chapter One. There’s virtually no overlap between the audience for dense geopolitical intrigue and the audience for bodice-ripper romance art. Whittington never stood a chance.

Back to the story: Locke accepts Monroe’s assignment in part because of troubles at home. He is accompanied by his clever enslaved servant, Cato, implied to be the mixed-race, unacknowledged son of Thomas Jefferson. Cato is a smart-mouthed, quick-thinking sidekick who often sees situations more clearly than Locke.

It takes Locke an exasperatingly long time to reach Florida, and when he finally arrives, he is immediately pulled into a power struggle on Amelia Island off Florida’s northeast coast. There he meets the beautiful Yolanda, daughter of the Spanish governor. She persuades him to escort her to Pensacola, the second center of Spanish authority in Florida. Together they essentially a horseback journey through the Florida panhandle along what would one day become Interstate 10.

A romance develops between Locke and Yolanda, including sex scenes that are slightly less explicit than those in a typical Longarm western. Along their route, they encounter detachments of Jackson’s troops operating deep inside Spanish territory. Whittington portrays these soldiers as brutal, redneck thugs who must be kept in check by Locke and his party.

The Spanish, by contrast, particularly their governor, are depicted as pragmatic and reasonable. After the British withdrew from Florida in 1815, they abandoned a fort on the Apalachicola River along with an enormous stockpile of weapons and ammunition. The fort quickly became a sanctuary for escaped slaves who, now fully armed, had no intention of returning to bondage in Georgia or elsewhere. Jackson demands that the Spanish dismantle the fort and force the refugees back into slavery. Or Jackson will invade and do it himself, international borders be damned.

From there, Jackson continues his consolidation of personal power into Spanish Pensacola. By the time Locke reaches the American camp, Jackson commands a force of 3,000 men. Whittington paints Jackson as a maniacal racist bent on crushing both Native Americans and escaped slaves with maximum cruelty while driving the Spanish out of Florida altogether.

Locke’s journey to confront Jackson carries shades of Apocalypse Now (1979), with Jackson as a rogue military leader who may have slipped the leash entirely. The scenes in which Locke and Jackson verbally spar are among the best dialogue Whittington ever wrote, and Locke’s undercover maneuvering within Jackson’s ranks provides genuine tension and excitement.

In the end, Embrace the Wind is a sweeping, often gripping, piece of historical fiction that deserved a better chance in the paperback fiction marketplace. The book does drag in places and would have been stronger at 244 pages instead of 344, but I still finished it feeling smarter and thoroughly entertained by this flawed but fascinating lost novel. Get the book HERE or HERE

Wolf Cop

I enjoyed my experience with Richard Jessup's Monty Nash series of hard-hitting spy-fiction novels, a five-book run he published under the pseudonym Richard Telfair for Fawcett Gold Medal. In reading up on Jessup, he had a remarkable literary career that spanned three decades and more than 60 books. The Savannah, Georgia native spent his early years as a merchant seaman before transitioning into a career as a full-time novelist. Jessup wrote across many genres, including western, espionage, action-adventure, young adult, and crime-fiction.

Jessup has gained the attention of Stark House Press recently, with the stellar publishing company reprinting his 1956 novel Night Boat to Paris (Dell) as a Black Gat Book in 2025, and they followed a few months later with a beautiful twofer containing the author's 1961 offerings Wolf Cop and Port Angelique (Fawcett Gold Medal). This review focuses on Wolf Cop.

Unlike most mid-20th-century police procedurals, Jessup places Wolf Cop in an unnamed midwestern town, probably Cleveland, based on places featured in the narrative. The protagonist is Tony Serella, a police sergeant who has recently transitioned from robberies to homicide. This promotion opens up new cases for Serella, but also requires that he complete the remaining 14 robbery cases. It's a lot of work, but Serella prefers it that way. He's a career cop, focused on nothing more than the next case. He's single, void of any social pipelines, and has few aspirations for anything beyond the badge. 

Jessup's narrative is a winding plethora of unrelated cases, propelled by three rigorous crimes that compete for Serella's time. There's a case of three homicides that may feature the same killer, a narcotics bust that may stop an impending bank vault heist, and a large turf showdown of prime-time players that may bathe the city in blood. With the enormous pressure of working these investigations comes a complex judicial hearing regarding Serella's physical confrontation with a young assailant. Serella's emotional defense ties into his relationships with department heads – those supporting his decorated servitude and the bullheaded powerhouses wanting failure. The sprinkling of Serella's relationship with a young woman provides a unique look at a career investment plagued by loneliness.

While I haven't read many of Jessup's novels, I can't imagine any of his novels dethroning Wolf Cop as his best work. This is a powerhouse police procedural that presents so many facets of the job, some that are somewhat ignored by other notable authors dedicated to the procedural craft. The transition from departments is an elementary yet pivotal plot device that thrives under Jessup's clever imagination. With these cases comes an ensemble cast of pushers, users, tramps, and nefarious wiseguys all looking for deals to either bypass the law or simply upend it. Through these tense scenes, the bullets start to fly, elevating the narrative's most dramatic moments into a frenzy of violence. 

Wolf Cop is a stirring police novel that easily competes with the best of the business, Ed McBain's 87th Precinct and Frank E. Smith's Pete Selby. Highest possible recommendation. Get it HERE.

Sinister House of Secret Love #4

I've been on a run every weekend reviewing the DC Comics' title The Sinister House of Secret Love. After reading, and enjoying, the first three issues, I'm saddened to tackle the fourth and last installment of the title, the May 1972 issue. Of course, the title would continue for a couple more years, but it transformed with issue five to Secrets of Sinister House with an enjoyable, yet campy traditional horror flavoring. The gothic tropes are mostly removed from the series going forward.

“Kiss of the Serpent” is the lead story for this fourth issue and the artwork is by Tony De Zuniga, the artist that also contributed to the title's second issue. The plot was created by Tony's wife Mary, and the story written by Mike Fleisher, a creator that worked on Spider-Woman, Ghost Rider, and properties for Fleetwood Publications.

In the story's beginning, Michelle Harlinson is experiencing a rough patch in her life. Her parents are both killed in a car accident, and weeks after the funeral she accepts a job opportunity in India presented to her by uncle. Weeks into the new job, her position is eliminated. Thankfully, she receives an invitation to meet a wealthy man named Rabin Singh. He offers her the job of governess for his two children. She accepts the position, and the lodging offered to stay in Rabin's enormous house. But, as these things go, the Kool-Aid is never stirred quite right. 

There's a central mystery on Rabin's brother being fatally bitten by a viper, and another of Rabin's brothers hints that Rabin himself is the murderer. Michelle falls in love with Rabin, but does voice concerns that he may have sinister motives. There's also a weird element where Rabin's mother believes that her dead son is living in a viper that she keeps in a basket. Like any good gothic fling, Michelle is nearly killed in “accidents” and eventually suspects Rabin's brother may be trying to kill her.

As a finale to The Sinister House of Secret Love run, I felt this issue is the weakest of the four. Atmosphere is key to these stories and the bright sun, intense heat, and desert setting just made the story feel misplaced. I'm a sucker for stormy nights and shore-front castles nestled in cliffs. This also seemed very modern with some frames of airplanes, corporate settings, and cars. I liked the idea of the story taking place in India, compared to Maine, France, or England, but with that comes a different look and feel for a gothic. The only other gothic tale that I know of with an India location is the paperback 1975 novel The Song of India, written by Mozelle Richardson. The other obvious issue is that the story just lacked any real depth. There's emotional highs and lows experienced through the protagonist, but it just didn't have much of an impact. 

Overall, all four of these issues are worth pursuing if you love gothic suspense. Recommended.

Run, Killer, Run!

Surprisingly, Lionel White was age 47 before he launched his writing career as a published novelist. The heist extraordinaire, praised for his literary contributions to the crime-fiction genre like The Snatchers, The Big Caper, and Clean Break (aka The Killing), worked as an editor for magazines and newspapers before seeing his first novel, Seven Hungry Men!, published by Rainbow Digest in 1952. As his career soared, he revised the novel as Run, Killer, Run! and  sold it to Avon in 1959 as a paperback. Thankfully, Stark House Press imprint Black Gat Books as made this revised book available again as an affordable paperback and ebook.

The book introduces readers to Rand Coleman, a man newly released from prison. But, his newfound freedom was paid for by a slick attorney named Borgman. The spring wasn't charity care - Borgman has a plan to knock off an armored car in downtown New York. The payout is over $2 million. The problem? The devious machinations of the criminal crew. 

In the book's opening act, Coleman, charged with commanding the heist, meets the various personnel. He's happy with two seasoned pros that he's worked with in the past. Yet, there's a couple of hired gunmen that ratchet up the tension, stirring Coleman into violence to prove capable leadership. The wild card is Borgman's nympho seductress Pam, a young woman that keeps popping up in Coleman's bed and backseat. With Pam and Borgman a defined couple, the internal gears that Borgman has greased to pull off the heist becomes sticky. Coleman and Pam is a problem. Complicating things even more is a gunmen's female accomplice that appears after the heist. Her name is Kitty and she has a play for Coleman too.

After reading two to three books per week for decades, there's hyperbole in suggesting this book is a masterpiece. But, books like this prove that White was in a class all by himself. The intensity of every calculated decision is an invitation to violence (the name of a White novel no less). This intensity grows as the strong arm of the law descends on the fleeing group. But, White plays this heist as a bit of nautical fiction, and the atmosphere breeds contempt, distrust, and death as these fugitives conspire against each other for control while aboard a ship destined for a rendezvous in Miami. It is a layered plot that showcases White's strong character development and absorbent pace. The payout delivers the goods in grand fashion. Don't run from this one. Highest recommendation. Get it HERE.