I like boxing stories. I like Plantation Gothics. As such, I was excited to read “Mantee” by Robert J. Hensler from 1969. Based on the cover blurb, it’s about a black slave who becomes a boxing champion. Mandingo meets Rocky! What’s not too like?
Then I saw this posting on the Internet from the author’s son, Eric:
“My father wrote this book. He’s not proud of it or the other pulp he cranked out in the sixties but it kept food on the table for our little family. Before you judge too harshly, remember that somebody had to demean themselves to write this in the first place. Just a quick note to give a glimpse behind the curtain...”
Wow.
At first this review/apology made me re-shelve the book. I read for entertainment and escapism, not to open the old wounds of a nice family’s shame. Upon further reflection, I needed to know if this book was something truly worth causing inter-generational embarrassment. Curiosity clawed at me every time I walked by my library. To be sure, plantation fiction was a salacious and tawdry sub-genre that leveraged America’s discomfort with topics like racism, inter-racial sex, and the repugnant stain of slavery on our nation’s past. However, I don’t think these books are racist. The slaves are almost always drawn in a sympathetic light, and their evil masters generally get their comeuppance in slave uprisings forming the novel’s climax.
I couldn’t find much info about the author, and my initial attempts to contact his son failed. I know Hensler wrote an innocuous-sounding book about Washington, D.C. during his career, but I was unable to identify any other pulp fiction bearing his name. None of the vintage fiction experts I consulted knew of the guy. If he wanted this chapter in his life to be forgotten, he’s done a fine job staying under the radar for the past 50 years.
Anyway, onto the plantation book:
“Mantee” takes place on Alabama’s 250 acre Rosebriar Plantation in 1859 - four long years before emancipation- where the slaves pick cotton and take whippings from the dysfunctional Darby family. The cast of characters is an array of stereotypes. Benson is the patriarch who rules his land with an iron fist. Evangeline is his compassionate abolitionist wife. Lance is the cruel heir who loves to order up whippings. Marlena is the horny daughter - physically excited watching the muscular black bodies suffer abuse.
On the slave side of the plantation, Mantee is the biggest, strongest, and most handsome of the indentured blacks on the property. The comely Marlena is hot-to-trot and fascinated by the idea that Mantee likely has an enormous dong. You can see where this is headed. There’s a whole mess of slaves who fill every archetype required by the genre, and Hessler wastes no words detailing the rape and torture of slaves in graphic detail. After awhile, these scenes became rather stomach-turning and I can only imagine that they served to pad the page count and thicken the paperback to a market-friendly length. The consensual and non-consensual sex scenes were extra pornographic and extra long - even compared to other plantation novels.
Accused of rape, Mantee becomes a runaway slave leaving his torturers behind. It is during his flight that he encounters a series of white saviors and eventually the sport of boxing. The fight scenes are absolutely fantastic and resemble early MMA in their brutality rather than the gloved Queensbury Rules we know today. Once the boxing story kicked in, the author really brings his A-game.
To be sure, “Mantee” is an imperfect novel. The author’s choice to write the dialog in a phonetic southern dialect wore thin pretty quickly. I would have also preferred more punches thrown and fewer girls deflowered along the way as the sex scenes became tiresome and repetitive. Nevertheless, the paperback never failed to hold my attention, and I mostly found myself enjoying Mantee’s adventures - vertical and horizontal. Plantation novels were written to be salacious, but these fictional dramatizations will inevitably bring readers greater empathy for the people forced to suffer through this shameful chapter of American history.
And that’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
After I completed the “Mantee” review above, I finally heard back from the author’s son, Eric Hensler. He reports that his dad is still around at age 86.
“Our family grew up everywhere. New York, California, Texas, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Florida,” Eric said. “Within those states, we lived in more cities than can be counted without aid from him which is, unfortunately, not to be had at this point.
The reason for all the moving around? “His primary career was in radio,” Eric explained . “He was, I suppose you might say, an itinerant DJ. Rarely staying at any one station for more than six months, full of a wanderlust insatiable. Or such was the case until the early 1970s. At that point, he attached himself to WSST in Largo, Florida and stayed for nearly 20 years. He rose through the ranks and for his second decade there, he was the general manager.”
“My father never held particular political positions or otherwise,” Eric said. “He was an experimental man and a pragmatic one at the same time. He wrote hippie-porn, plantation fiction, poetry, non-fiction and on and on it went. He has published well over 50 books but the difficulty lies in that he used many different pen names. So many, in fact, that I have done much hand-wringing in trying to compile a bibliography. He is still alive, but unfortunately, he has advanced dementia and is of little help in this regard.”
Eric pointed me in the direction of a 1977 Pocket Books novel titled “Washington, D.C.,” a title so generic that it’s hard to find much information about it. Eric explained that it was the only other work of fiction released using his real name. I did find a single online review of the book that described the novel as being about power, sex, and sixties-style revolutionaries who want to blow everything up but are too inept.
Eric explained that a lot of his dad’s books were published under pseudonyms, including “Robert Scott, R.J. Scott, Arjay Scott and so on.”
Bingo! This explains a lot.
There were a bunch of Bee-Line erotic novels written under the pen name of Arjay Scott that are clearly the work of Robert Hensler. They had lurid titles like “Circus of Flesh” and “Fornacation, Inc.” His novel “Diabolical Chain” features the tagline: “Hollywood Voluptuaries in an Orgy of Lust...and Blood!” Most of his Bee-Line porno books have non-descript covers with no art. However, his paperback “The Swapping Game” features an attractive photo cover with some decent graphic design.
My personal favorite of Hessler’s titles was “The 27-Foot Long Love Machine.” However, my enthusiasm was dampened when I learned that the Love Machine in question was a camper van. His erotic fiction work for Bee-Line explains the author’s comfort in writing long, graphic sex scenes in “Mantee.”
“All of the pulp of any ilk that he did publish was through his agent, a man who went by the name Jay Garon,” Eric said. “We heard his name and saw the checks all the time when I was a boy.” I learned that Garon, who died in 1995, represented several working authors of pulp fiction around that era, including Michael Avallone, author of the Ed Noon mystery series.
Eric has heard rumors that his mother may have a box of dusty old books from dad’s writing career. “I need simply to convince my mother to direct me to it. She, you see, is a devout Christian and wants nothing to do with them, but as he fades, she softens to anything to do with his life and history,” he said.
Like many senior citizens in his condition, Hensler has good days and bad days. Eric told his father about the upcoming Paperback Warrior feature, “I explained what was going on to my father and he smiled and said he would like to read it. He was clearly amused, at least for a few moments until slipping back into his unfortunate fog.”
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'Dennison's War' was a mid-80s men's action-adventure series published by Bantam. The books were written under house name Adam Lassiter by Steven M. Krauzer, a journeyman author who contributed four novels to the 'Executioner' series as well as penning the nine-volume western series 'Cord' (with William Kittredge). My jumping on point is the fourth entry, “King of the Mountain”, for no real reason other than the book's catchy cover art.
The idea behind the series is fairly straight-forward. Dennison is a US ex-military operative and Vietnam veteran. During the war he worked under Peter Chamberlain (probably CIA) and had a team of six to ten hardened warriors. Now Dennison's retirement consists of freelance opportunities to support Chamberlain on various assignments where an unofficial military presence is needed.
During the harrowing curtain jerker, armed commandos ascend a windswept, snowy mountainside in Glacier Park, Montana. The team quickly kills the US Secret Service squad before entering a posh ski-lodge to capture the US Vice-President. Then a call goes out to Washington D.C. that the team wants a chopper loaded with gold, a Russian prisoner and Dennison brought to the lodge in exchange for the Vice-President. That call then gets routed through command channels until it reaches Chamberlain. The reader must suspend his disbelief that anyone would bother to kidnap a Vice President. You might as well kidnap the White House pastry chef if you really want to make an impact in Washington.
Chamberlain wants Dennison and his team to take out the bad guys and rescue the VP. But things get a little more convoluted when a backroom deal buys another team that ultimately wants to sacrifice Dennison's crew to the enemy while making the greedy grab and go during the crossfire. This plot-twist was used five years later in the fourth 'Eagle Force' novel “Red Firestorm”, which coincidentally was also published by Bantam and also used a snowy mountain setting for the action. It also used the same cover model for both books – Jason Savas. Go impress your friends.
“King of the Mountain” has a great beginning. The middle of the book is a long flashback scene involving Dennison and Chamberlain's operations in Vietnam and the double-cross by US operative Mitchell Horn, who is the villain of the book. Most of Krauzer's writing is of the espionage/spy variety which is surprising if you are looking for a simple 'Phoenix Force'/Able Team' sort of novel. At the standard 190-pages, the book seems a bit more dense than the average shoot'em up. It's not an easy read, but a worthwhile one if you really concentrate on the action. I'd be interested in reading more of the series.
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Considering the enormous success of series staples like “Mack Bolan,” “The Butcher,” and “The Penetrator,” it would make sense that publishers would want to steer their marketing and branding efforts into the look and feel of the Gold Eagle or Pinnacle product lines. Brutish bullies, fast cars and the damsel in distress surrounding bold fonts, a serial number, and an immortal gun-toting hero. These elements are the centerpiece of the book’s plot, so why not run with that for the marketing flair? Back in the day, every bookstore and pharmacy in America had a prominent display of these book covers depicting all of the above hallmarks of the 70s and 80s costume party known as the Men's Action-Adventure genre.
This packaging approach was an economic success story for a lot of publishers. But what exactly could publishers do when they didn’t really posses written content suitable for a Men’s Action-Adventure series? That seemed to be a problem confronted by Berkley Books back in the day, and they had an interesting solution to this lack of supply.
In 1981, book shoppers may have seen a new action hero adorning their paperback aisles. His name was Raven, and Berkley released “Raven #1 – Raven Settles a Score” in the US with a tag line that introduced “The playboy ex-cop in the sizzling new action series.” The cover design certainly dressed the part with the scantily clad woman, a sleek car, and a turtleneck-clad hero with gun-in-hand. New subscribers had a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor with this alluring new series. The problem with “Raven #1” is that it wasn't a new series at all. In fact, this novel was actually the sixth book in a pre-existing series originally marketed as the 'John Raven Mysteries' – and the story was a far cry from the cover’s promise of an extraordinary action-hero debut.
'Raven' author Donald MacKenzie received most of his official education at a hodgepodge of England, Canada and Switzerland's school systems. However, like so many of writers, his true education came through life experience. MacKenzie was jailed numerous times - once in the U.S. for five years and another time in England for three. In fact, his life was so tumultuous that he wrote two autobiographies chronicling his checkered past - “Fugitives” (1955) and “Gentlemen at Crime” (1956). He began writing stand-alone crime novels in the late 1950s, with titles like “Manhunt”, “Knife Edge” and “Double Exposure.” But it wasn't until 1974 that he really hit his stride.
The 'John Raven Mysteries' ran from 1974 through the writer's death in 1993. The series comprised 16 total entries about an ex-British Inspector named John Raven. It was published in England by Macmillan and featured standard and unremarkable mystery novel cover designs that bore zero resemblance to the gun-toting bold font and Raven branding that Berkley invented for this benign series. To their credit, the bland covers of the original novels made no attempt to deceive or rook their intended audience. The plots themselves are more international man of mystery stories. There's plenty of espionage, international escapades and a sense of heightened alert – but John Raven just isn't an action hero in even the broadest definition of the genre. They were more like Tom Clancy writing Sherlock Holmes starring Spenser. Not exactly 'Hawker' or 'The Revenger' as Berkley conveyed the series in their deceitful packaging.
The grift behind “Raven Settles a Score” was simple enough for Berkley. After obtaining the license from British publisher MacMillan, they falsely staged the books as a new American series by dressing them up in packaging dripping with testosterone. The publisher either didn't know the chronological order of the original stories, couldn't get the rights to the earlier books, or simply just didn't care. It appears that Berkley simply slapped a #1 on whatever book was handy to score some quick cash from ill-informed male book shoppers looking for some action.
Berkley’s opening shot, “Raven Settles a Score,” begins with a walk down memory lane among series regulars John Raven and Inspector Jerry Soo. The whole scene is confusing to the uninformed reader with talk about a recent marriage, Soo's current happenings and the presumed defeat of a villain named Drake. Later, some alliances form that were clearly the bi-product of some incidents in prior books from the British Raven mystery series. Any reader believing this was truly the opening episode in a new series is bound to be lost. To hamper things even more, the “Settles a Score” reference in the book's title actually refers to the prior book altercations between Raven and his nemesis, Drake - a malevolent figure in this book that Soo/Raven both want to defeat for the greater good. Again, there's very little action and most of the book is simply positioning characters in key locations where Korean Embassy officials are hiding bad deeds while utilizing drug squad members as cover. There's a damsel in distress, but she’s buried in dialogue and never actually seems to need Raven’s help all that much. In fact this whole novel (or the 95-pages I could tolerate) is really just a ton of dialogue among a humongous cast of characters with very little explanation or entertainment value.
Apparently, Berkley's ruse didn't generate an enthusiastic reaction among readers. The publisher ran only four titles before canceling the whole debacle:
Raven #1 - Raven Settles a Score (originally 1979's sixth entry)
Raven #2 – Raven in Flight (oddly the second novel from 1976)
Raven #3 – Raven After Dark (renamed from 1980's fifth book, Raven Feathers His Nest)
Raven #4 – Raven and the Paper Hangers (originally the seventh title from 1980)
The entire 'John Raven Mysteries' series:
Zaleski's Percentage (Macmillan, 1974)
Raven in Flight (Macmillan, 1976)
Raven and the Ratcatcher (Macmillan, 1977)
Raven and the Kamikaze (Macmillan, 1977)
Raven Feathers His Nest (Macmillan, 1980); US title Raven After Dark
Raven Settles a Score (Macmillan, 1979)
Raven and the Paperhangers (Macmillan, 1980)
Raven's Revenge (Macmillan, 1982)
Raven's Longest Night (Macmillan, 1984)
Raven's Shadow (Macmillan, 1984)
Nobody Here by That Name (Macmillan, 1986)
A Savage State of Grace (Macmillan, 1988)
By Any Illegal Means (Macmillan, 1989)
Loose Cannon (Macmillan, 1991)
The Eyes of the Goat (Macmillan, 1992)
The Sixth Deadly Sin (Macmillan, 1993)
Buy "Raven Settles a Score" HERE
By 1960, author Charles Willeford (1919-1988) had already been an orphan at age 8, a school dropout at age 13, a U.S. Army combat veteran, a U.S. Air Force airman, a published poet and novelist. His writing always seemed more literate, humorous, and philosophical than his hard-boiled fiction cohorts. His seventh novel was submitted with the title “The Director” and was published in 1960 as “The Woman Chaser.”
The novel is narrated by a smooth-talking Los Angeles used car salesman turned lot owner named Richard Hudson, and it is written in a first-person narrative style in which Hudson regularly breaks the literary fourth wall to explain to the reader that he is writing this book using flashbacks and narrative hooks he learned from watching movies. At times the hilarious meta-narrative style begins to resemble Kurt Vonnegut which I really like, but your mileage may vary. There’s also lots of sexist content that makes the book a true throwback to its era: “Women are made for bed, and men are made for war,” a character observes. They certainly don’t write them like that anymore. You get to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Anyway, the book is so much fun to read, you almost lose track of the fact that the plot doesn’t really get off the ground until about halfway through the paperback. Richard is a fan of movies and decides that he’s got what it takes to write and direct a feature film. His step-father is connected within the industry and finds a studio that will back a production based on Richard’s harebrained plot synopsis. Anyone with an interest in film-making will find the paperback utterly fascinating.
“The Woman Chaser” is a great read but not much of a crime novel. It’s written in a hardboiled style, but it’s ultimately just the story of a schemer trying to get a movie made and released. To be sure, it is one of the best books I’ve read this year, but it’s not the kind of gun-fighting bloodbath we normally cover here. It’s just a damned interesting paperback by a crime novelist adapting his noir style to a mainstream plot with a dark ending.
Despite the publisher’s title, there’s really not much woman chasing happening within the pages. To be sure, the narrator gets laid, but not much cardio was involved in making it happen. Overall, “The Woman Chaser” was an excellent novel that I can highly recommend without reservations. But you should know what you’re getting before you purchase a copy for yourself.
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We're on the road to adventure! This episode, Eric discusses author Jack Higgins including his WW2 novel "The Dark Side of the Island" from 1964. Tom reviews "The President is Missing!", a 1967 book by Henry A. Milton. Eric tells listeners about hitting the jackpot at a flea market shop in Florida. Listen below or download directly LINK. Also, stream anywhere that offers podcasts.
Listen to "Episode 11: Jack Higgins" on Spreaker.
In the early 1970s, every kid in America wanted to learn Kung Fu. From the magazines to the comics, martial arts as a whole were growing in popularity. With the rise of prominent Chinese film star Bruce Lee (Real Name: Lee Jun-fan), pop culture became fertile ground for martial artists to achieve their creative freedom. With Bruce Lee's “Enter the Dragon” (1973), the idea of exotic martial arts tournaments became a consistent theme within the genre. To capitalize, Berkley Medallion released the debut 'Jason Striker' novel, “Kiai!”, in 1974. It was the beginning of a six-book run that showcased an American “Master of Martial Arts” battling international criminals. The series was written as a collaborative effort between Piers Anthony and Roberto Fuentes. I decided to tackle the debut novel to see how much time and energy I wanted to invest in the short-lived series.
“Kiai!” introduces former Green Beret Jason Striker as a financially strapped Judo instructor. His protege, Jim, is scheduled to compete in a world class tournament held in Nicaragua. However, in a freak dojo accident, Jason accidentally injures Jim. Fearing judo would not be properly represented in the tournament, Jason agrees to replace Jim as a contestant.
This exotic martial arts tournament is held in Nicaragua and broadcast globally on television. It's a contest that pits representatives from various fighting styles into a no-holds barred tournament to win cash and firmly establish their style is superior. In many ways, it's “Enter the Dragon” minus the interesting parts. But more so, a lot of the tournament resembles an early prototype of what would later become the legitimate mixed martial arts sport. In 1974, styles didn't clash. Kickboxers, Muy tai fighters, Wrestlers, Boxers, Karate Masters and Judo specialists generally didn't fight opponents of other styles. This tournament forces each contestant to fight combatants of each style, sometimes twice, in an elaborate points system. As a fan of 90s mixed martial arts, I found this tournament to be somewhat innovative despite “Enter the Dragon” establishing the idea in the US.
Beyond just the wear and tear of fighting over the course of several weeks, “KiaI!” really fails to deliver anything else worthwhile. There's some side-stories regarding a multi-millionaire hiring Jason to teach his sexy daughter judo, a competition with a rival judo instructor and some intrigue behind the tournament, but none of this is remotely compelling. The end result is a first-person narrative from a rather weak protagonist. Kudos to the authors for not making Striker vulnerable and very human instead of over-the-top pulp. However, it isn't enough to warrant a search for any other books in the series. Like 'Ninja Master', I'll take a dive to avoid any of these.
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Jerry Pournelle (1933-2017) was primarily known as a successful science fiction author, science fact writer, and compiler of SF anthologies. However, his first published novel was a spy thriller from 1969 titled “Red Heroin” that was originally published under the pseudonym Wade Curtis and has since been reprinted under the author’s proper name. In addition to multiple paperback printings, the short novel is also available as an eBook and an audiobook from the usual suspects.
Paul Crane is a civil engineer in Seattle whose friend Danny was just named Chief of Police in the small town of Lathrop, Washington. It’s a part-time gig, and Danny wants Crane to be his part-time deputy. Neither guy has any police training, but the town’s mayor wants a couple cops on staff to arrest a drunk every now and then or ticket a speeder on weekends. The job doesn’t pay, but Crane will get a badge that can be used to get out of speeding tickets, so he agrees to help Danny. Soon thereafter they head out to Lathrop for a night of police hijinks in a small town.
It doesn’t take long for the two quasi-cops to find themselves in the middle of a real bloodbath of trouble. The violence propels Crane into the hands of the CIA who recruit him as an operative for an assignment. The upshot is that the Red Chinese are funding their U.S. intel operations by refining poppies into heroin for the American market. It’s a twofer for the Chinese: Drug sales generate U.S. dollars for espionage operations while also getting a generation of American youth hooked on the junk. The Agency wants Crane to get himself recruited as a smuggler for the Chinese while actually serving as a double agent for the CIA.
The transition from unqualified cop to unqualified spy was a bit clunky and requires some suspension of disbelief, but the payoff is great. The CIA wants Crane to ingratiate himself with a leftist student group at the local university hoping that will be the gateway to the Chinese commies. The plan is for Crane to spread the word that he’s buying a boat to attract the student radicals into utilizing him to smuggle the Chinese heroin from Canada.
Along the way, Crane meets a hot hippie chick tied into the student group. Between off-page lovemaking sessions, he really begins to fall for her. Is she just a sincere do-gooder or a tool of Chinese spies? His CIA contact agent for this assignment is a sassy young woman with real sex appeal as well, and her character was my favorite in the novel.
If Pournelle wasn’t such a well-known author, I’d really suspect that “Red Heroin” was pseudonymous work by Donald Hamilton, author of the ‘Matt Helm’ series. His knowledge of hunting rifles and their loads - along with sailing - rivals Hamilton’s own expertise, and the first-person narration has the matter-of-fact, logical self-confidence of many Hamilton protagonists. It’s likely that Pournelle was a fan of the Matt Helm books and set out to write “Red Heroin” as a Helm tribute with a very different origin story. It was also a novel steeped in realism - unlike, say, a ‘Nick Carter: Killmaster’ adventure. When things get violent towards the climax, there’s a gritty realism to the carnage that made for satisfying reading.
“Red Heroin” is a thinking-man’s espionage novel rather than a high-speed action killfest, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The sequel “Red Dragon” (unrelated to Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lector novel) came out in 1970, and I will definitely check it out. This first Paul Crane adventure is an easy recommendation and probably the best book of its ilk that I’ve read in quite some time. The paperback deserved a better cover from the various publishers, but it’s what’s inside that counts.
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I like boxing stories. I like Plantation Gothics. As such, I was excited to read “Mantee” by Robert J. Hensler from 1969. Based on the cover blurb, it’s about a black slave who becomes a boxing champion. Mandingo meets Rocky! What’s not too like?
The reason for all the moving around? “His primary career was in radio,” Eric explained . “He was, I suppose you might say, an itinerant DJ. Rarely staying at any one station for more than six months, full of a wanderlust insatiable. Or such was the case until the early 1970s. At that point, he attached himself to WSST in Largo, Florida and stayed for nearly 20 years. He rose through the ranks and for his second decade there, he was the general manager.”
