Black Berets #01 - The Deadly Reunion

The Black Berets was a 13-book paperback series published by Dell between 1984-1987, a fertile time-frame for the men's action-adventure series industry. Dell was simultaneously publishing the post-apocalyptic series Traveler as well as the vigilante novels in the Hawker franchise. Therefore, it made sense for the publisher to include a team-based combat series in their catalog of offerings. The Black Berets was written by John Preston and Michael McDowell under the house name Mike McCray. Both authors were openly gay and authored a number of well-received gay-fiction novels. McDowell wrote movie and television scripts including Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Tales from the Darkside. After enjoying the aforementioned Dell publications, I decided my team-combat reading could use some fresh faces. Camouflaged of course.

Beak, Rosie, Cowboy, Harry and Runt were utilized by the CIA as a special forces squad during the Vietnam War. After the war ended, the group disbanded and began living their separate lives. Billy “Beak” Beeker is the authors' focal point, the group's leader who is introduced in the opening chapters as a Louisiana Native-American who teaches at a private school while minimally living on large acreage. In the opening installment, Deadly Reunion, Beeker receives a call from the team's old boss, Parker. After an eight year hiatus, he wants to put the band back together again.

The next chapters are dedicated to Beeker reluctantly tightening his bootstraps once again and recruiting the original team members. After partnering with cocaine-cowboy and flying ace Sherwood “Cowboy” Hatcher, the two travel across the country explaining the team's new mission, and the reader learns the backstory of each member. All parties are hesitant to join the resurrected team and are skeptical about Parker's historically-shaky allegiances. The motivation for the reunion is that Parker informs the team that a former Black Beret member has finally been found. After going missing-in-action during the war, this team member has been spotted in a Laos prison. He's not dead but barely surviving off of meek rations among years of torture and abuse. Parker wants the team to penetrate Laos and rescue the man.

Deadly Reunion is like a really good Fawcett Gold Medal novel. The team reunites for a secret mission in hostile territory to recover something with the geopolitics updated to incorporate Vietnam. There's even the old heist bit thrown into the narrative to capture that vintage feel. I had some doubts about another 1980s team-combat series but instantly fell in love with these characters and the solid writing. Unlike other high testosterone action-adventure series, the authors dedicated time and effort to tell a realistic story about Vietnam Veterans. Many of the team members find themselves lost after returning home, haunted by the combat nightmares. Lost love, poor finances, alcoholism and drug abuse are part of the Black Berets narrative, and I found that vulnerability to be a more realistic approach than the typical barrel-chested brawny heroes of the 1980s.

Overall, I just can't say enough good things about this opening installment. Compared to Able Team, Dennison's War and Eagle Force, The Black Berets seems to be solidly higher quality. I've already purchased the second installment in hopes the momentum continues. Stay tuned! 

Note: Author, editor and podcast host Paul Bishop has an excellent write-up on this series including each book's synopsis and vivid cover art. Check it out HERE.

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The Big Caper

Lionel White was a master storyteller who specialized in heist crime-noir. Several of his novels have been made into movies starring the likes of Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford. Director Quentin Tarantino credited White’s work as inspiration for his critically-acclaimed 1992 film Reservoir Dogs. I've been thrilled with every novel I've read by this author and I was excited to read what many consider one of his finest works, The Big Caper. It was published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1955 and adapted for film in 1957. It is now available as a twofer through Stark House Press. 

The book stars a WW2 veteran named Frank who finds himself befriended by a crafty bank robber named Flood. One thing leads to another and Flood eventually proposes his boldest scheme to Frank. The idea is that a professional heist crew, featuring an arsonist, a safe-breaker, two drivers and two gunmen, will rob a large bank in the small Florida town of Indio Beach. The millions will be split up and this triumphant caper will be Frank's first (and hopefully only) criminal foray and Flood's last. But, like any good ol’ fashioned bank blow-out, there's a wrench in the gears that proves to be a fatal flaw: Flood's girlfriend Kay.

Flood's proposal is that Frank and Kay become merry citizens of Indio Beach months before the heist. The two are to fake it as a married couple and submerge themselves into American Suburbia. Frank opens a thriving gas station where he smiles and pumps gas and fixes the town's auto problems. Kay is the proverbial happy housewife and makes plenty of canasta and bridge club dates with the couple's friends. After a few months of successful socializing and law-abiding living, Frank and Kay learn to fake it so well that the whole farce becomes reality. The two fall in love with each other and begin questioning their motives to gain happiness through a criminal enterprise. In a clever twist, White asks readers to ponder the real definition of happiness. Kay grows to fear and despise the controlling Flood, and Frank becomes wary of the plan and its proper execution. The Big Caper spirals into a character study of everyday people placed into a viper's den of greed and criminal exploits - the very essence of crime-noir.

White's narrative settles into a routine, customary tour of small town life in the book's opening half. The storytelling is key with the author providing many vivid images of this tiny Florida community. There's an ensemble cast of characters that are supportive of Frank and Kay's role as happily married do-gooders. But, once the professional criminals hit town, the novel's second half becomes a ticking time-bomb as Frank and Kay countdown to their date with destiny. White is willing and patient to deliver the goods, but he primes readers with a plethora of possibilities on which directions Frank and Kay turn. It is this nervous anticipation that makes The Big Caper such an entertaining and pleasurable reading experience.

I just can't say enough good things about this author and his stellar body of work. What a remarkable legacy to leave behind for generations of readers to enjoy and celebrate. When compared to Lionel White's contemporaries, this author remains in the very top echelon of mid-20th Century crime-noir creators.

Note – Dan J. Marlowe borrowed this novel's plot for his equally entertaining 1966 novel Four for the Money. In it, a former card-sharp and ex-convict migrates to a small Nevada town and integrates himself into the community. He awaits the professional heist crew who he plans to assist in knocking over the town's casino for millions. But, he finds that his pleasurable small town life, and lover, might override his need for crime.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 65

With Halloween quickly approaching, Paperback Warrior Podcast Episode 65 takes a deep-dive into the world of 1970s and 1980s horror paperbacks. We discuss the best and worst in vintage scary fiction with tons of recommendations and reviews. Listen on your favorite podcast app, at PaperbackWarrior.com, or download directly HERE

Listen to "Episode 65: Paperbacks from Hell" on Spreaker.

Parker #01 - The Hunter

Donald Westlake had been writing professionally for several years when his first book as Richard Stark debuted in 1962. The Hunter (later reprinted as Point Blank) was a monster success and launched a 24-book series over the next 46 years with several movie adaptations along the way.

As the novel opens, Parker is pissed. He was left for dead in a post-heist double-cross orchestrated by his own wife and the novel’s primary adversary, a loathsome weasel named Mal Resnick. Adding insult to injury, the backstabbing lead to Parker serving a stretch in jail. The heist itself is a mere footnote to the plot as The Hunter is really a story of betrayal, vengeance, and settling accounts.

Even in this earliest iteration, Parker is a fully-formed, stoic violence machine. He’s like a Terminator in the famous sci-fi series - always moving forward towards the target. The physical descriptions of Parker as a big man with giant hands who doesn’t need a gun to kill are vivid and paint an intimidating picture of the legendary anti-hero.

By the same token, Resnick is a fantastic villain who inspires revulsion in the reader as Westlake fills us in on his own back story. The short version is that he betrayed Parker to steal Parker’s wife and $80,000 in heist proceeds to repay a debt to the mafia, famously known as “The Outfit” in the Richard Stark Universe.

As an organization, The Outfit is the third leg of the stool making The Hunter stand tall as one of the best crime fiction novels ever. Syndicate bosses set up shop in a hotel serving as a high-rise safe house for the mobsters to plan and scheme without fear of violence or the law. It’s an innovative idea borrowed decades later in the John Wick franchise of action films.

The Hunter is also the first in a trilogy of interconnected novels followed by The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit. After the first three paperbacks, the series generally showcases stand-alone Parker adventures with a few exceptions toward the end. As such, the first three books in the series should definitely be read in order. This shouldn’t be a hardship as they are all masterpieces.

But start with The Hunter. Don’t sleep on this book. If you read the book decades ago, do yourself a favor and pick it up again. It’s a reminder of how good crime-fiction can be. Highest recommendation. 

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Violent Saturday

Arkansas-born William L. Heath (1924-2007) served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a radio operator during World War 2 before earning a degree in English Literature from University of Virginia. After selling several short stories, his first novel, Violent Saturday, was published in 1955 and later adapted into a movie. The paperback has been reprinted several times and remains available as a $5 ebook or free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription.

The novel opens with three mysterious men arriving in Morgan, Alabama (Population: 4700) on a train from Memphis. They tell their taxi driver that they’re from the electric utility company, but that’s clearly nonsense. They register at the town hotel as Mr. Thomas, Mr. Blake and Mr. Brown, but I wasn’t buying that for a moment. What brings these three serious men to Morgan?

I suppose it’s not giving away too much to say that the three strangers are planning to rob the town’s bank. As heist plans go, this one of well thought out and logical. There are some uncharitable descriptions of black people that wouldn’t fly in today’s world, but I’m incapable of feeling outrage over words used by fictional characters 65 years ago.

The core plot veers off course fairly early as the author introduces the reader to a wide cast of townies - way too many for my tastes - but I was determined to stick it out to get to the actual Violent Saturday part. The myriad of subplots involving the lives and loves of the locals were a real snooze and definitely distracted from the paperback’s enjoyment, and they unfortunately make up the bulk of the novel. The heist and its aftermath are both plenty exciting, but you need to navigate through a lot of nonsense to get there.

If this was the only vintage heist book available, it would be an adequate genre paperback. However, we live in a world where the novels of Richard Stark and Lionel White are plentiful and cheap. Given the vast and superior options at your fingertips, don’t waste your time with Violent Saturday.

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Benedict #02 - Gift of Death

Edward S. Aarons' most recognized literary work is the 42-book Assignment series starring the globetrotting CIA agent Sam Durell. However, before that series began in 1955, Aarons authored a two-book series of crime-noir novels starring amateur private-eye Jerry Benedict. The first of the two books, No Place to Live (aka Lady, the Guy is Dead), was published in 1947 and introduced Benedict as a New York political cartoonist who is drawn into a murder investigation when he finds a corpse. The second novel, Gift of Death, followed a year later and moves the action south to a rural Connecticut farm. My first and only experience with the Benedict character is Gift of Death.

In the early chapters, Benedict is summoned to the office of Lucius McConaughy, the editor of The Globe newspaper where the two men work. McConaughy praises Benedict's sleuthing skills for solving the murder mystery found in No Place to Live. He explains to Benedict that his Uncle has recently passed away and a $600,000 inheritance is to be divvied up between himself and five cousins. Benedict's role is to determine who is potentially killing off the cousins to grab a bigger slice of the pie. After cousin Amanda's secretary was decapitated at the family's sprawling farm, McConaughy feels that the murderer was targeting Amanda and mistakenly killed her secretary instead. Benedict agrees to assist and the two travel to Connecticut to submerge themselves in a nest of cousinly vipers.

Aarons' narrative includes a Weird Menace sub-plot at the family farm. The old house is rumored to be haunted, a double-suicide occurred in one bedroom and there's a massive tree that was used for hanging in the early 1800s. Moreover, the unknown killer is attacking at night using a razor-sharp scythe as the killing tool. The author's macabre depictions of grizzly decapitation is combined with his trademark signature of sweeping Gothic imagery. Like Terror in the Town (1947) and The Net (1953), Gift of Death features a thick, foreboding sense of dread and doom. Aarons' drapes the story in old swaying oak trees, dark cornfields, moaning winds and positions the characters in eerie, ghost-like places such as hill-top cemeteries and abandoned summer cottages. Needless to say, Aarons' sense of décor and atmosphere is both stylish and effective.

If you like an old-fashioned, dense murder mystery, Gift of Death will surely be a pleasurable reading experience. Despite the spooky ambiance, I found the characters to be a little shallow and stereotypical undermining the core mystery. Benedict plays the proverbial 1940s detective well, interviewing all the parties while gaining liquid courage from mid-shelf bottles. It's a familiar, well-worn formula that doesn't hamper the narrative's momentum. Overall, I was glued to the story and didn't rush the reading just to pull the mask off.

Aarons' is such a masterful storyteller and Gift of Death proves that in spades. Highly recommended.

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Spawn

British horror author Shaun Hutson’s writing career took off in 1982 with the publication of his iconic paperback Slugs (yes, it’s about shell-free killer gastropod mollusks). He found his niche as a great storyteller who can weave a compelling suspense story out of a crazy, gross-out premise. Case in point: his 1983 novel Spawn. Granted, it’s about murderous aborted fetuses, but the novel is also so much more. Read on...

It’s 1946 in Great Britain and Harold - the son of a prostitute - is a seriously messed-up kid. At age 14, he occupies his time giggling as he tortures insects with fire. This harmful diversion leads to the fiery death of Harold’s family leaving the boy grotesquely deformed without a person in the world who cares about him.

We rejoin Harold in 1982 where he has been a resident of a mental institution undergoing intense psychological and physical therapy for over 35 years. He’s sweet, shy, polite and severely scarred. His dilapidated asylum is closing, and it’s time for Harold to rejoin society. He’s hired as a janitor at a local hospital. The facility has basement pathology lab where the giant furnace incinerates the body parts, organic materials, and aborted fetuses from various medical procedures.

The sight of a fetus in the incinerator brings back some awful memories for Harold as he recalls his baby brother’s death by fire. Harold begins swiping the pre-babies and burying them near the hospital, so they don’t suffer the indignity of the consuming fires. The means by which Harold’s fetus friends are eventually reanimated wasn’t particularly realistic, but I can’t imagine a situation where that result would seem reasonable.

Meanwhile, a violent murderer named Harvey has escaped from a rural prison where he spent most of his time in solitary confinement. Two smart police inspectors are heading up the manhunt in hopes of catching the maniac before the body count mounts. This subplot was interesting enough, but the eventual link to Harold and his fetus gang was fairly inconsequential.

Spawn is a fun and bloody bit of escapism, but there’s also some interesting themes running through the narrative. The first is that the human monsters who walk among us are made through childhood abuse and neglect.

The author also seems to be saying something about the personhood of the unborn, but Spawn never feels like a political or religious pro-life parable. Upon reflection, I’m not sure that either side of the debate wants to claim Harold’s zombie abortions as their own. Still, it’s hard not to notice.

As a novel, Spawn is an entertaining gross-out paperback. You’ll cringe and squirm, but it’s unlikely you’ll actually be frightened. However, you’re also unlikely to put the paperback down because it’s well-written and compelling as Hell. You’ll want to see what Huston is going to do next. By now, you probably know if you like this type of thing. If so, you’re certain to enjoy this bloody ride. 

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