The Butcher #35 - Gotham Gore

You know how a schlocky action movie will promise you all kinds of crazy, high-velocity mayhem on the DVD cover, but then the movie delivers little or nothing of that and you’re left feeling ripped off?

Well, that happens with action/adventure novels sometimes, and “GOTHAM GORE” is a standout example. It’s the 35th and final novel in the Butcher series, written by Michael Avallone under the pen name Stuart Jason. 

The first disappointment an unsuspecting reader will face is that the Butcher doesn’t live up to his name. If you’re hoping (as I was) that he’s a kill-crazy vigilante psychopath, forget it. He’s actually a former Mafia guy who turned secret agent for the government. Oh well.

As always in this series, the novel opens with the Butcher having to deal with a would-be assassin. Once that’s out of the way, we slowly work our way into the slow-moving story, and slowly begin to realize that none of the cool stuff depicted on the front cover of the paperback will be forthcoming. 

The blurb on the back assures us that the novel has “something to do with black magic, hand grenades and a Demon Master--- with a little Nazi know-how thrown in for good measure.” Well, here’s what you’re led to expect, and what you’ll actually get: 

What you want: The evil Satanic ritual depicted on the book cover, with the human sacrifice of a busty virgin 

What you get: The Satanist is about as creepy as your dad’s accountant; the girl is no longer a virgin (ladies can’t resist the Butcher) and there will be no ritual and no human sacrifice

What you want: The Butcher blowing away bad guys with a machine gun, like he does on the cover

What you get: One pistol, no machine gun. The Butcher shoots only two or three people in the entire book

What you want: That Nazi with the “know-how”

What you get: The Satanist’s henchman is a German guy who never does anything remarkable, other than getting the drop on the Butcher several times but stupidly never killing him

What you want: That “Demon Master”

What you get: No demon, no master

What you want: The Satanist is scheming to blow up New York landmarks like the Empire State Building. Let’s see stuff get blown up!

What you get: Nothing gets blown up but the Satanist and his hide-out

What you want: The book’s called “GOTHAM GORE”, so let’s have some!

What you get: No gore, just a couple of explosions, and they don’t happen in Gotham 

What you want: A fitting conclusion to the saga of 'The Butcher', since this is the final book in the series

What you get: He calls Headquarters, gives the boss his report, that’s about it (mitigating factor: the book is finally over)

Johnny Rotten once asked his audience, “Ever have the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Why yes, Johnny, I have. I’ve read “GOTHAM GORE”.

Roadblaster #03 - Blood Ride

I am requesting that this book be enshrined into the Library of Congress. Paul Hofrichter, aka He Who Creates the Horror, should be commended for not only this novel, but the trilogy of trophies known as the ‘Roadblaster’ series. It’s truly extraordinary, a spectacle of grand design. Those of you familiar with my reviews of this novel’s predecessors, “Hell Ride” and “Death Ride”, understand just how low I place this author on the rungs descending into that scorching, skin-searing abyss known as Hell. “Blood Ride” far surpasses the legendary status of the prior books and lowers to the ranks of what can only be deemed as the new "worst piece of fiction ever created". It’s an utter abomination worthy of high praise and endless critique at world-renowned libraries like the Reading Room of the British Museum and The Vatican. I’d like great Monasteries like Saint Gall and Benedictine to marvel over its printed pages for centuries to come.

Paul Hofrichter, the horror…the absolute horror.

Stack, our “Roadblaster”, begins this final chapter of spiraling doom with a visit with a biker gang aptly titled The Harley Davidson Club. They request that he accompany them across the Golden Gate Bridge to locate two sisters of a deceased gang member. It’s only four days after the nuclear bombs annihilated America and Stack is concerned about his parents, kids and loving wife back in New York. Rather than mourn the potential melting of his entire family, he graciously accepts the offer. At one point, the narrator explains that Stack wants the military to fly him – a New York city cab driver by trade – to New York so he can check on his loved ones. He clarifies to a biker that he can’t drive his van across the US for fear of depleting his fuel or experiencing engine failure. He dismisses the fact that cars are strewn everywhere, and that fuel should be in abundance considering the nukes just fell and people are still driving. But, instead of vanning cross-country, he’s walking across the cables to a stranger’s house to locate two sisters that are probably dead. The walk…takes 60 pages.

Mercifully, Stack reaches the other side, and, instead of searching the ruins of the house, he sits down for lunch. Later, an elderly man swings by hoping that Stack will offer his tuna. Stack doesn’t and the whole chapter is just awkwardly dedicated to…lunch. Food is brought up again in the next chapter as Stack and the group disregard the importance of searching for bodies and decide a night at the beach frolicking and eating crabs is an important use of precious time. In 12-pages of utter nonsense, Hofrichter explains that it’s a cruelty to cook crabs while they are alive. He goes on for pages and pages of how barbaric it is to eat crabs and lobsters boiled or broiled. At one point, the group can’t properly boil the crabs, so they fetch a pot of dirty, radioactive seawater to use. After crabs, an aimless Stack gets invited by a female colleague to engage in anal sex (because she doesn’t want to become pregnant). Stack, consistently demanding more than anyone in this post-apocalypse nightmare, says it physically hurts too much. The female, in her infinite wisdom, requests he run to the water and fetch another cup of dirty, radioactive seawater and pour that on his penis and reenter. I barely have words.

Somewhere, around page 160ish, Stack is thinking about the abandoned B-52 in the mountains. If you will recall, the first book discussed the bomber and a motorcycle gang in demand for a B-52. The stereotypical gang, The Bloodsuckers, are still running around wanting this plane so they can rule California, eat pizza and commit intercourse with the state’s residents. They are big on intercourse. So, they remain in the book and the author spends time introducing us to them in long backstories with absolutely no point or story development. One character he describes as angry because of his “prison experience”. Apparently, this guy could only masturbate on his cot with his knees bent. He wanted to do it lying completely flat but couldn’t due to the gay prisoners seeing him. This experience has made him angry with the world and only a B-52 bomber can expel that pent-up sexual frustration. There are pages of this, so much that with only 20-pages remaining the plot finally rears its ugly head.

Stack wants to use a Soda Truck (let’s call it “Shasta”) to transport the missiles and bombs from the plane’s wings and undercarriage. He has no tools for this and the weapons weigh over 500-pounds. Once he places them on Shasta, he will then drive them to a river, load them on canoes and float them into an underwater cave. The reason? He feels if they are left in the sun for an extended period they will heat, creating an explosion. Thus, placing them on water in an underground cave resolves this potential environmental disaster. The Bloodsuckers appear. Stack and his group shoot at them. The Bloodsuckers go back home. Telos. The End.

At the 160th page of this 190-page book…we still don’t have purpose, planning or anything remotely resembling a damn plot or what is promised to us on the cover. At the end, we still don’t. We deserved that cloak and smoking CAR-15 and we damn sure deserved that painted motorcycle-outlaw cave shit at the bottom. Hofrichter, you thief extraordinaire, you baited and hooked us again only to troll us at the deepest depths like some slimy, trash eating carp. I’m gutted, defeated and scorned…but in your unskillful brilliance you have miraculously provoked me to tell others about this literary monstrosity. Somehow, your ‘Roadblaster’ atrocities will live eternally, carrying on long after I’ve departed this world. For that, I applaud your half-assed effort and bow to your coveted immortality.

Phoenix #02 - Ground Zero

"Ground Zero" is the second release in the 'Phoenix' line written by David Alexander and released in 1987 via Leisure. Phoenix (real name Magnus Trench) is currently an attorney, formerly a Vietnam vet and is vacationing alone in California when the US goes total nuclear devastation. He survives because he has goes into a cave to avoid the bomb, radiation and this strange Russian virus they have plagued Earth with. His wife and son are on the East coast so Phoenix is out to search for them across the American wasteland. He makes it into LA where he learns that only after three months since the nuke that the entire US military is gone. So are the cops and all semblance of law and order. Instead factions have arose and most people have dropped their first and last names and gone with cool monikers like "Uber Ballsack" or "Banana Dong". Magnus Trench becomes Phoenix. Phoenix learns there are the Contams, folks that have the Russian viral stuff. He also learns there is a New World Order called SCORF who have targeted him due to his immunity to the virus. All of the above is ultimately book one. 

Phoenix and teen prostitute September Song part ways somewhere between LA and Las Vegas, leaving Phoenix in a little town called Trinity in the opening pages. He gets into a gun fight and gets rescued by a midget named Big Wally. Adorable. Big Wally and Phoenix head into Las Vegas where the Sheik runs the show and controls everything. The author takes a lot of liberties with the character and that's a bit frustrating for the reader. Phoenix can walk into a shop and they just hand him awesome guns and loads of ammo. No one rides for free - except Magnus Trench. He gets everything for free because he survived the bomb in a cave. It turns out that it's Murder Weekend or something in Las Vegas. The Sheik has his road games where contestants battle in fast cars toting huge guns like 'Deathrace 2000'. It's only a matter of time before our boy Trench gets to meet The Sheik. 

Apparently, the Sheik needs a new contestant to represent his faction so Trench gets a sweet ride called Death Wings. After some hanky panky stuff, and there is a lot, Phoenix enters the death race thingy and of course he can outrun everyone. He mops the track up with the clowns and then notices all of these troops and planes trying to shoot him down. Phoenix is outrunning a fighter jet in a car. He ends up wrecking and falling into another cave. Here's where the author just goes bonkers with this stuff. Inside the cave is a sex cult that feel they can escape Earth during orgasm. At one point Phoenix watches the ultimate of orgies go down and, in his infinite wisdom, asks when it can be his turn. Phoenix quickly learns that he is going to have to escape the caves due to an army of attacking orcs. He chooses to resurface only to fight it out with SCORF. Phoenix, using a small arsenal meets the SCORF baddies in an abandoned town in pulp western style.

'Phoenix' in general is just simply awful. It's gun porn before pages and pages of porn. I mean every single male character is essentially running around just trying to find something to mate with. Alexander spends painful amounts of detail on guns and calibers only to completely get them wrong. I've checked his firearms and the calibers don't match. But this is trivial, yet just explains how bad this really is. If you are looking for all volumes of this series you can purchase them in digital format at Amazon. You owe it to yourself to at least pick the whole series up for a measly $10 and just poke fun at what is essentially some of the worst fiction ever created. 

Last Rangers #01 - Last Rangers

This is not to be confused with another post-apocalyptic series called 'Last Ranger'. This is an entirely different series, publisher and author. "The Last Rangers", by Jake Davis, was released in 1992 via Berkley and is the first of a trilogy. I was intrigued by the cover and the promise of Texas Rangers fighting gangs in the year 2035.

This one weighs in at 180 pages and unfortunately has at least a half dozen storylines that are sporadic and amorphous in their presentation. By page 150, I still had no idea what the book was about. There aren't any Texas Rangers at this point, no clear villains or crimes and absolutely no setup. This is a big 'ole pile of poo-poo. 

The first 50 pages were extremely frustrating because it presented a cage full of prisoners being deposited on the door step of an underground fortress. The author painstakingly provides page after page on each criminal in the cage and what they did leading up to the capture. Who the frig cares? One would think this is important going forward...but it's not. This whole concept is quickly abandoned along with the fortress setting and prisoners. Why was this even included?

The next 100 pages jumps around to a group of criminals meeting about some sort of plan they have to destroy something somewhere. I never could decipher what was going on and why they were attempting to create destruction. By page 150, we are introduced to a machine called Bird Dog as its travels through the desert doing something unknown with a prostitute named Rita. I have no Earthly idea why Bird Dog is important and why he is battling a gang in rural areas of Texas. Rita serves no purpose. The book ends with Bird Dog, a lawman named Amos Smith and Rita blowing up the original group of criminals that had their purposeless meeting around page 100. 

I seriously think Jake Davis threw together six or seven ideas he had about machines and locale and just used "The Last Rangers" as a sketch book to present the ideas to paper. It encroaches on 'Transformers' but fails to deliver anything that is remotely sane or even uniform. "The Last Rangers" is absolutely abysmal and there will be no future reviews of the next two entries in the series. I could barely get through this one.

Swampmaster #01 - Swampmaster

The 'Swampmaster' series consisted of three books all written by Jake Spencer (real name Jerome Preisler). This one was released by Diamond Books in 1992. From the synopsis and look of the cover one would think this is a hybrid of Native American western stuff super imposed over a 'Doomsday Warrior' sort of nuclear wasteland. No, not really. In fact, the cover and synopsis is really just a farce.

It turns out John Firecloud has been raised by his Seminole father Charlie and taught the way of the warrior complete with martial arts training and archery. Remember all of those kung-fu movies about Seminole Indians in Florida? I don't. Charlie also raised Firecloud's white brother Bill Coonan, a man who shows up early in the book and never makes another appearance until the last page. I'm not sure what purpose his role was here but it seems rather clear that Coonan has a good role in the second book. America has been nuked ,and what is left isn't described as the typically battle scarred wasteland that traditionally paints these landscapes. Instead, this America has its share of marauders and mutants but it just seems few and far between. In fact, Firecloud's village is actually growing crops and eating some semblance of a normal diet. 

The book introduces us to the new regime of America, a faction called The National Front. This government is made up of sadists and racists and wages war with the Free States or territories that have ceased from The National Front union. Early on we catch a glimpse of Firecloud using a compound bow to take out a helicopter of baddies hellbent on rape and debauchery. Using just his feet, hands, bow and the occasional firearm he quickly disposes of seven heavily armed men...and what amounts to be an Apache helicopter. This guy is the king of my kickball team. Soon, Firecloud is at the bedside of his licorice eating father who passes on some spiritual nonsense about leadership. He passes away and now, apparently, Firecloud has turned the corner and officially become....Swampmaster. 

I'm reading this sort of paperback adventure trash to get barrel chested warriors doing battle with hunchbacked radiated ogres. Instead, this story involves a planned bombing in Atlanta that will bring chaos to The National Front and the Free States. We get pages upon pages of babbling nonsense about the planned bombing, who is carrying the briefcase, where it is being dropped at and somebody in a car accident. At one point I questioned whether Swampmaster was going to make another appearance and if his Seminole Kung-Fu fighting was just all talk. 

Around the 120 page mark Swampmaster is introduced to the bombing exhibit through a third party; a female swat team member and her two martial arts dwarfs. Really? The three approach Swampmaster in the midst of his capture by a horny female mutant called Itchy Peg and her two inbred brothers. Swampmaster takes a beating and then is in the process of being raped and boob smothered by Peg when the dwarfs show up to lend a hand. From there they form a plan that involves going up the Florida coast to hijack a train full of carnival oddities so they can fetch a pilot there that can fly the Apache helicopter that was left behind in chapter two. I'm not making this up. 

Once they get Zeno and he agrees to jump in as pilot they hatch another plan that involves Swampmaster boating to a fort on the water in St. Augustine, climbing barehanded up a thirty foot wall to C4 a jail cell and rescue a scientist that apparently is key to the survival of the Free States. He does all of this in the midst of missiles, bullets and a horde of baddies that spend their spare time eating faces and sewing extra limbs on their captives. Swampmaster defeats them all and rescues Zeno. Along the way we find that the baddies are still alive and they want Swampmaster dead...and they will use his brother as a pawn. Boom. Story sequel coming.

"Swampmaster" is 232 pages of absolute nonsense. You and I love this stuff simply because it is over the top fun. Three fourths of this book is utter nonsense about planting a bomb in Atlanta and has no real connection at all with what Swampmaster is doing in the Everglades or the train full of carnival performers. Very little action, a ridiculous hero and bad guys that are middle of the road. I'm avoiding the other two books in this series and I'm begging - no pleading - for you to do the same.

Phoenix #01 - Dark Messiah

David Alexander. This guy wrote one of the most over-the-top gore drenched series to grace the aisles of "Men's Action Adventure". I recently got his crowning achievement with four of the five books of 'Phoenix', a post apocalyptic series he created in the 80s. Book one is horrifically titled "Dark Messiah", released in 1987 via Leisure Books. 

The series shows us a nuked out 1989 America courtesy of those dang Soviets...again. Our post-apocalyptic hero is Magnus Trench - what a name. Trench is a Vietnam veteran who knows how to manhandle any weapons or flashlights. He now lives the life of the wealthy as a corporate white collar family man. He happens to be in San Francisco when he sees the mushroom clouds. He somehow finds shelter in a cave and survives the inferno because caves are great fallout shelters. Three days later he comes out to examine the wreckage and deems himself a new hero named Phoenix. Let's forget about his wife and kids back home because apparently this guy did.

He journeys down into San Francisco and finds that a new regime has taken over led by an insane Christian. Apparently this guy has infiltrated the US government, had the president killed and sparked the nuclear war that destroyed America. His Jesus goon cult is called SCORF and in three days time has established authority in the big cities. In just a little under a week the entire country has been nuked, then sprayed with a chemical plague that transforms the survivors into mutant monsters called Contams. Of course, in the midst of this is a street gang called the Pagans that interact with SCORF and have a mutual interest in raping and pillaging humanity. I can see the bumper sticker now - Join Us Now For Raping!

The survivors of the plague are called Immunes because the chemical plague doesn't affect them. SCORF runs a few dozen military units that holds all sorts of Contams, Immunes and survivors. These are basically just deathcamps where it's fun to push citizens into pits containing drugged out horny Contams. Alexander doesn't hold anything back and can flip an innocent onto all fours faster than a rat finding a cheeto. In it's most trashy element the Contams ravage the survivors, thrusting huge radioactive organs into their pit prey. Forget nuclear winter and sickness...the biggest threat in the post apocalypse is being sodomized by a mutant ding-dong.

In one ridiculous early scene we see Phoenix drive a jeep through the wreckage of San Fran then stop to poke around a bit. He goes into a burned out factory and sees gang members - get this - dressed in leather chaps with their penises and butts exposed. So, in just a little under a week humanity has dwindled down to a bunch of horny Rob Halfords running around with cod pieces? I wouldn't even be out of milk in less than a week but humanity is a sex ravaged wreck. The gang have a couple of survivors pinned down and as Phoenix watches they annihilate one with a flamethrower (these are just laying around). After watching the scene, Phoenix rescues a girl and finds that her name is September Song. Right. It just so happens that she is part of a huge group of survivors out of a safe house. She leads Phoenix there and he sets up a command post to make "commando" runs on SCORF bases. These are just exercises of action fiction that go absolutely nowhere.

Here's the issue with Phoenix and David Alexander. The author can't decide his hero's name so throughout the book he deems him Trench or Phoenix...whichever fits the scene. Secondly, Alexander spends entire pages describing weapons. Not just the size or sounds of the gun but down to the most agonizing detail. For example, Badass Number One may be holding a MAC11 380 SMG shooting .45 ACPs hung low on his right hip in a speed rig. In every single firefight the battle slows to a crawl so Alexander can identify every single weapon in the room and what type of holster or sling it is in or out of. He then rambles on about the velocity of the bullets before cutting to "the .45 ACP blasted through the skull creating brain salad". Really? Why did it take a half page to tell me about the pistol just so I can get to "brain salad"? 

Alexander has very little knowledge of the English language aside from guns. Instead of describing goons he simply deems them "Badass One, Two, Three, etc.". Often, our hero drives around randomly in search of something to do and more times than not there is no clear reason why he does any of these things. If Phoenix is missing his wife and family back home, and carefully considering if they are alive or dead, why does he sleep with other women in this book? Beyond that the author makes Phoenix a combination of Incredible Hulk and Rambo, often able to crush skulls simply by squeezing heads. The author spends time explaining that our hero is using punches like Drunk Monkey, Black Fist Tiger and the Scorpion Sting Backfist while somersaulting all over the place.

At least the synoposis is actually fitting:

"Phoenix was a survivor, a man who had honed his bloody skills in the stinking junbles of Vietnam, an expert with every type of weapon, a master at hand-to-hand combat. Battling nature gone insane and men driven mad by total destruction, he forged his way across what was left of the US, driven by hatred and thirsting for revenge against the Dark Messiah".

I can't imagine four more books of this non-sense but I owe it to you to at least give them a try. These aren't as horrible as 'Roadblaster' but certainly not entertaining. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. If you want a decent run at post-apocalyptic sort of fiction try Simon Clark's 'Bloodcrazy' or David Moody's 'Dog Blood' albeit both are leaning more towards horror than action.

Roadblaster #01 - Hell Ride

I have been reading books for over thirty years now and this is by far the worst piece of trash I've had the pleasure of reading. I plan on buying copies of this book and sending it out as gifts to my buddies. It is one of those strange things in life that is so abysmal that it is laugh out loud funny. Thank God for "Roadblaster". Thank you Paul Hofrichter...better known as the voice of "he who creates the horror".

The 'Roadblaster' debut is called "Hell Ride". It's filth was released to the masses in 1987 via Leisure's "Adventure" line. I believe there are a total of four books in the series and I am searching high and low for the other three. The author is Paul Hofrichter and I'm sure that isn't a house name but it damn well should be. Of course the series is yet another 80s entry in the "Soviets nuked America" formula ('The Last Ranger', 'Out Of The Ashes', 'Phoenix'). This one was supposed to center around a one word hero named Stack and his mechanical abilities. 

Huh? 

80s action heroes need guns, bullets and babes. Stack has none of these. In fact, Stack has no skills whatsoever, runs from action and is a complete loser. But more on that in a minute.

Let's start with the cover. It shows us some sort of science fiction/fantasy scenes of a hero in some sort of shoulder padded cloak complete with a gold coin badge and bullet belt.That hero is not in this book. There are no cloaks, shoulder pads, bullet belts or gold coin badges. Our hero Stack...the Roadblaster...has jeans and a t-shirt and his gold coin badge is a taxi driver's license. Yes. The motorcycle gang on the cover wearing cloaks, American Gladiator apparel and battle helmets is not in this book. Our criminals are your normal Mel's Bar & Grill variety that shoot pool, chase broads and happen to ride motorcycles. There is a B-52 bomber on the cover and...oddly that is in this book.

The novel begins with a guy named Stack. He is in northern California doing a little hunting on vacation. His wife and three kids are in New York holding down the fort while he is trampling about. From a mountain side Stack witnesses the mushroom clouds of doom and realizes the Soviets have nuked most of California. Oddly enough he doesn't panic...certainly the idea of his family being killed by bombs had to cross his mind but instead he makes his way into Fresno picking up a few survivors along the way. Once this is established the book completely switches gears and now tells us all about a small Airforce team flying over the Pacific in a B-52 with nukes ready to drop on the Soviet Union. They have engine trouble and are forced to land in California with a belly full of armed death. After sixty plus pages of Stack's story we now get fifty pages of B-52 engine failure. Where the Hell is this Roadblaster versus motorcycle psychos alluded to in the synopsis?

Oddly the next introduction we get...as if we needed another...is about a motorcycle gang that just happens to be cruising around looking for a town to take over. I am not making this up...the gang is called The Bloodsuckers and the member names are:

Black Doughnut
The Viking
San Quentin Sal
Billy Bullshit
Ivan The Terrible
Zoyas
Rokmer

The Bloodsuckers get about twenty pages or so before we switch back to Stack. He picks up a fifteen year old girl named Rayisa and drives to a small town for food and shelter. He hangs out in his van...eats, sleeps and makes mindless chatter with the band of survivors. You know...heroes named Stack do these kinds of things in action adventure novels. In one of the more ridiculous scenes, The Bloodsuckers decide that the small town of Vista Royale is perfect for an orgy. They roll into town and start shooting and raping all of it's citizens. The small band of survivors decide they will go out and liberate the town and push out the bikers. They go to Stack and tell him about the situation and that basically The Bloodsuckers are running a train on Vista Royale's women and they need to be stopped. They ask if he can join them. His response?

"No thanks. I've had a day and night I won't forget if I live to be a hundred. Good luck with everything."

Good luck with everything?!? A town is being raped in post apocalyptic Hell and this guy is going back to his van to lay down? What? His wife and kids are possibly dead in New York and he is taking catnaps down by the river? So, needless to say the survivors pounce on the town, get annihilated and retreat back to the safe zone. They return to town and stir Stack into saying this to the Sheriff...

"Sorry about what happened. I took a nap in my van, but all the commotion as your people came back into town woke me. What I want to say is that if you need my help in the future feel free to call on me".

Priceless man. Just priceless.

At one point one of the survivor's asked Stack if he knows anything about nuclear radiation cures. His response...

"I'm no doctor. Maybe home remedies. I don't know."

Home remedies for radiation sickness? Really. Really?

We read a few more despicable aspects of The Bloodsucker's reign in Vista Royale. Apparently only 24 hours removed from a nuclear war the only thing to do is to take over a small town and have pizza, beer and sex in various houses on Main Street. The gang fight a little with each other but none can really speak in complete sentences and resemble something more akin to 'Hills Have Eyes' than the roving motorcycle gang they should be. The survivors in the mountain decide Stack, of all people, will lead their next attempt at reclaiming the town. Apparently his naps in the van and ridiculous dialogue is enough to render him the only capable leader. Oh and this awesome conversation...

Sheriff: "Have you got weapons?"

Stack: "A Savage 99F hunting rifle that holds a five-bullet clip plus additional ammunition and various knives."

That spark of wisdom leads the Sheriff to ask:

"Have you had commando training?"

Stack says "I was in the National Guard and took commando courses".

What in God's name are commando courses? Is there some branch of our military that teaches Commando? Speaks Commando? Performs Commando? What is a Commando Course? Because of Stack's great commando skills he leads the assault and loses fifteen year old Rayisa to the gang. As he prowls around from house to house he sees his new "daughter" figure stripped naked and being whipped to oblivion with a leather strap. In her cries of pain she stops to ask the gang why they are whipping her and "she has never been whipped like this before". As if whipping a fifteen year old girl's bare back and buttocks spread eagle is just a normal Friday night. But this whipping is something really different. What does Stack do? He watches the whole thing and does nothing. He must have learned this in his commando courses.

Soon the battle spreads out and the motorcycle gang finds out a B-52 filled with nukes is just a few miles away. If they can get their hands on the nukes then they can have sex with most of the country's survivors. In a final battle scene, Stack really does nothing, asks for a lot of assistance from the town and survivors and eventually lets two of the gang members escape. 

Wow...all of that came from this back cover synopsis:

"One man stood out like a tracer round in the night sky. His name was Stack and his skills at staying alive made his mechanical wizardry even more valuable. Tough, dangerous and ruthless, he could build or repair any piece of machinery ever made. And in a world where cars and gasoline were worth far more than human lives Stack could name his own price."

Does that synopsis sound like a different book? Stack has no mechanical wizardry other than driving a van and sleeping. He doesn't build or repair anything after the bombs fall. How could gasoline and cars be worth that much? Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. The worst piece of trash ever written and one that will go down in the "Hall Of Shame". I desperately need to pick up the other books to see how our hero evolves in a world gone bad. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Conan - Conan the Defiant

Where does on even begin to discuss the Conan contributions of author Steve Perry? Where L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter's collaborations and novels are written fairly well, Perry is just flat out lifeless. His scenes go off into so many tangents that I had to jot down notes. I had no idea which character was alive, dead, or somewhere in between. At the end of the day none of it really mattered as Conan the Defiant went absolutely nowhere.

Conan The Defiant was originally published as a paperback original by the Tor brand in 1987. The book finds our hero shortly after he has left the cave of "The Thing In The Crypt." His wandering path leads him to the aid of Engh, an Oblate priest who is fighting off enemies using only a staff. Conan is intrigued and eventually the two are friends back at Engh's temple. There is a tussle, Engh is dead and Conan is off to right the wrong in the predictable vengeance formula. This is where things get bizarre. 

A necromancer named Neg The Malefic has a small army of zombies, one of which is a beautiful woman named Tuanne. Neg also employes a vile henchman named Skeer. Why? Because he needs an amulet/charm thing called The Source Of Light. Apparently, if he has this amulet he can make even more zombies than he has now. Neg is basically trying to become Evil Ernie and rule the world with his corpse companions. In the way is Conan, the recently escaped zombie Tuanne and another beautiful wench named Elashi.

Perry goes on the deep end three-fourths into this book. He has an army of tarantulas hunting Skeer while the main characters are searching for Neg and an armed assassin and his crew are pursuing Conan. Neg himself has a crew of a dozen or more blind zombies trailing Conan. Who can keep up with this nonsense? To make matters even more confusing, Conan, Elashi and Tuanne become lovers of each other along the way - relationships, partners, enemies, heroes, etc. 

The end result was a battle that was quickly dispatched and disposed of in less than five pages. The absolute worst part? Conan actually cries at the end of the book. Crom be damned. There are at least four more Perry novels in this list and I'm not sure I can read another. This was absolute rubbish with a pretty cover. Hall of Shame was built for books just like this one.