Showing posts with label Jon Messmann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jon Messmann. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Jefferson Boone, Handyman #4: The Swiss Secret


Jefferson Boone, Handyman #4: The Swiss Secret, by Jon Messmann
September, 1974  Pyramid Books

At this point Jon Messmann has essentially turned Jefferson Boone, Handyman into a mystery series; what little action that does occur in The Swiss Secret is over quick and also bogged down by Messmann’s nigh-endless sentences, lacking any of the tension one would expect from such scenes. The main “action” of this fourth installment concerns Jefferson “Jeff” Boone, the Handyman, trying to figure out why two billion dollars has disappeared from a few Swiss bank accounts, and what nefarious means the money will be used for. And also there’s a girl who seems to fall in love with Jeff and incessantly nags, doubts, and disobeys him throughout the entire novel. I mean it’s like they’re already married. 

There’s no pickup from the previous volume, but then there hasn’t been much continuity in Jefferson Boone, Handyman. Jeff (as Messmann refers to him) is in Paris taking a vacation – or “holiday,” as he refers to it. I realized one of the things I don’t like about this series is that Jeff Boone, ostensibly a roving freelancer for the US government, doesn’t even come off like an American. He’s constantly saying stuff like, “I haven’t a gun,” and the like. I guess Messmann’s trying to convey that Jeff has a continental background or whatever, but Americans just don’t talk like that. It almost gives the impression that the series is British, and the sluggish pace, nigh-endless-sentences, and penchant for quoting poetry doesn’t help things. 

Well anyway, Jeff’s in Paris when we meet up with him, taking a well-deserved vacation. And of course he’s managed to pick up some chick: Meredith Pryor, a daughter of minor British royalty. Here we get Messmann’s patented “sex scene where you don’t know what’s really happening” material, with Dean Koontz-approved stuff like “cresting waves” and whatnot instead of the hardcore filth us sleazebags want. All this takes a sudden detour when Jeff and Meredith go to dinner at a bistro, and some guys with guns come in, and Meredith is killed in the crossfire. 

Here The Swiss Secret takes on its mystery vibe. Jeff will spend the rest of the novel trying to figure out if and why Meredith was involved with a scheme in which a combined two billion dollars have been snuck out of a few Swiss bank accounts. Messmann adds some pizzaz to the storyline with the appearance of Dianna (yes, with two “ns”), whose memorable intro has her blasting away at Jeff with a .38 while calling him a “rotter.” Again, the book just seems British. But then, Dianna herself is British, and what’s more she’s the sister of Meredith Pryor (and of course the daughter of Lord Pryor), and she’s after Jeff for revenge – info on the underground has it that Jeff and Meredith were working together on something, even though they weren’t, and thus the assumption is Meredith was killed because of Jeff. 

Messmann seems to have been inspired by Goldfinger, what with the Jill and Tilly Materton bit of the dead sister and the surviving sister who is now hunting the killers for revenge. Messmann’s even more overt with the girl’s name, ie “Dianna,” as in the ancient goddess of the hunt Diana. In fact it’s a wonder Messmann doesn’t have Jeff refer to The Golden Bough in this one, I mean something like that would be right in-line with our “phallic and literate” hero. But as mentioned in previous reviews Jeff’s a prick when it comes to women; the previous volume in particular featured him being a total ass for no reason. Messmann turns the concept around this time; Dianna as mentioned starts off literally shooting at Jeff in her intro, and will spend the rest of the novel fighting against him. 

The funny thing is, Jeff isn’t nearly as much of a dick toward Dianna as he was to the girl in the previous book, so it’s like Messmann increased the sexual hostility on the female front but toned it down on Jeff’s side. Granted, Jeff does spend the majority of The Swiss Secret telling Dianna to go home and leave it to the experts, and also he’s constantly pulling her out of the fire due to her stubborness. Otherwise Messmann tries to develop a belabored “love” deal between the two, with Dianna growing feelings for Jeff and constantly nagging at him for being “cold” and not opening himself up and etc. Indeed the lame finale has Dianna pulling a number where Jeff will have to chose between his “cold” devotion to duty or his feelings for Dianna. But once again the poor “full breasted” brunette is in over her head and Jeff must once again save her dumb ass. 

That I think is the main drawback of The Swiss Secret: Dianna is one of the more annoying female characters in the series, and Messmann spends too much time on her. This is because his plot doesn’t give him much else to work with; literally the entire book is Jeff chasing clues to find out why two billion was stolen, who stole it, and what the money will be used for. But this only causes even more friction between Jeff and Dianna, because Jeff is relatively certain that Dianna’s father was in on the plot, along with Meredith. Messmann foreshadows Meredith’s treachery at the start of the book, with the mention that Meredith has “small breasts;” per my doctorate paper on men’s adventure, only traitorous, evil, or ugly women have small breasts in this genre. Regardless, Dianna spends the novel trying to prove Jeff wrong. And meanwhile making a mess of things; for example, one of the novel’s few action scenes has Dianna getting caught by some bad guys in Paris, and Jeff has to go to her rescue, leading to a fight in the back alleys of Paris that honestly lacks any tension due to the protracted way Messmann writes. 

The same holds true for the lovin’. When Jeff and Dianna have their expected conjugation, something which actually occurs a few times throughout the novel, it’s rendered in overwrought prose like this:


Eventually Jeff deduces that the two billion is going to the Libyans, leading to a mention of Qadafi, almost as if we’re reading a men’s adventure novel from a decade later. But even here there’s no major action scene; as mentioned Jeff must save Dianna, leading to another Bond-esque bit where he must swim across a dark sea and infiltrate a Libyan boat and rescue Dianna before torpedos destroy them all. After this we have another fizzling action bit where Jeff and Dianna try to get to Lord Byron before the bad guys do; even here Dianna shows her stubborn foolishness, and also Messmann has wasted so many pages that he rushes through this climax to the point that it’s almost comical. 

Overall The Swiss Secret was my least favorite installment of Jefferson Boone, Handyman yet. I get the impression that, given that he was writing The Revenger at the same time (plus other stuff, I’m sure), Jon Messmann was getting a little exhausted with the whole “men’s adventure” scene. 

 I wonder if Pyramid Books was also getting tired of the series. Not only is the cover design different from the previous three volumes, but that doesn’t even look like Jefferson Boone on the cover. It looks more like Dakota! That was from a different publisher, but still. I wonder if the uncredited cover art for The Swiss Mystery was originally commissioned for a different series entirely.

Monday, January 17, 2022

Jefferson Boone, Handyman #3: Murder Today, Money Tomorrow


Jefferson Boone, Handyman #3: Murder Today, Money Tomorrow, by Jon Messmann
August, 1973  Pyramid Books

The third volume of Jefferson Boone, Handyman is a little better than the previous two, because Jon Messmann backs off on the “international terrorist” angle and delivers a mystery plot that’s more in-line with his cerebral protagonist. It was kind of hard to buy the whole Jefferson “Handyman” Boone concept in the earlier books; as I wrote, he just came off a bit too much like “James Bond meets Frasier Crane” to be believable. Messmann also slightly tones down on the introspective musings, which is a help, but he also turns way up on the casual misogyny. 

Again, I don’t virtue-signal lightly (or ever, really), but in this case there’s no other word for it but misogyny. Messmann is kind of a creep in how he typically treats his female characters, as has been noted in reviews of his other novels (as well as in the comments sections). And I’m not talking about how he objectifies them, how he always mentions their breasts – I mean I encourage stuff like that from my men’s adventure authors; these books should come straight from the male id. What I mean is how many of his male protagonists are just total assholes to women. Constantly putting them down, snipping at them, mocking them, etc. Murder Today, Money Tomorrow goes further in this regard than any previous Messmann novel I’ve read, with the ultimate effect that Boone (or “Jeff,” as Messmann most often refers to him in the narrative) comes off as a dick, and the “taming of the shrew” angle ultimately makes no sense in the context of the book. 

There’s no pickup from previous volumes, and in fact Messmann gives a bit more background on Jeff this time. Not too much, but in dialog Jeff relates how he decided to become an international “handyman” after the murder of his diplomat father. In fact we’re told his dad was “killed right in front” of Jeff. This volume overall really ties into Jeff’s past; when we meet him he’s waiting in the dark in rural Virginia for a childhood friend named Roger Van Court, an eccentric guy Jeff never really liked. Jeff’s dad and Roger’s mom were apparently having a bit of a fling when the two boys were kids, and Jeff would spend every Christmas at the Van Court estate. And we’re really in the upper-crust world of the filthy rich; this series has always traded on the jet-set world, and Murder Today, Money Tomorrow makes it clear that Jefferson Boone grew up in the lap of luxury. This of course makes his current role as a total bad-ass a bit hard to buy, but whatever. 

That bad-assery is displayed posthaste, though; first Boone is approached by a “truculent” young blonde with an “elfin” build who appears to be with Roger. Jeff immediately dislikes her, for reasons Messmann never really makes believable. She’s protective of Roger, clearly, but Jeff suspects her of foul play or somesuch. Roger does appear, but only momentarily, as some guys with guns show up and start blasting at him. In the pitch dark Jeff manages to turn the tables, killing off the thugs with his pistol. Here Messmann introduces a new gimmick to the series: Jeff drops a “little gold toolbox” onto one of the corpses. In other words, the calling card of the “Handyman.” Meanwhile, both Roger and the girl have fled. Jeff goes back to DC for some good lovin’ with a chick he’s been checking out at cocktail parties over the past few years; Messmann develops this curious subplot where the girl, Fran, she of the “full-bosomed, long-legged loveliness,” wants to be Jeff’s steady, but the relationship is broken off within a few pages, due to jealousy. Fran calls Jeff up next morning and discovers another girl on the line. This is Cassie, the “elfin blonde” who was with Roger the night before; she’s lost Roger as well, and will hang out with Jeff for the duration to find him again. 

The funny thing about Money Today, Murder Tomorrow is that the back cover makes it clear that Roger Van Court, a geologist, has made a discovery that could lead to a new form of power. However, Jefferson Boone spends the entire novel not knowing what it is Roger’s discovered, nor why so many people are trying to kill him. Even more ridiculously, Cassie herself has no idea what Roger was up to, even though she’s spent the past year as his companion. The two had an “understanding,” one that Messmann plays out as a lame mystery for almost the entire novel. But it’s clear that she and Roger were close, and a recurring bit is that Jeff is just unable to see Roger being with this cute blonde with an elfin build…however, when Cassie comes over to Jeff’s pad and takes off her coat, Jeff sees that “the little elf had magnificently high, full breasts.” 

Poor Cassie can’t catch a break from Jeff or Roger. She goes around the world with Jeff, who treats her like shit the entire time. Putting her down, mocking her, disparaging her relationship with Roger. He’s constantly on the attack, too; I lost count of the number of times Messmann used the dialog modifier “tossed off” when Jeff spoke to Cassie. But then Roger was a dick to her, too, a condescending one at that. She’s from backwoods Tennessee (or maybe it’s West Virginia; Messmann can’t seem to make up his mind), and Roger met her while on one of his research trips. He took a cotton to her, took her under his wing; it was a podunk town and everyone always took Cassie for granted until Roger Van Court came along. But, we learn, he tried to give her culture, giving her books to read, teaching her how to act in “polite society,” etc, etc. Now that’s “mansplaining” folks. And of course done without any apology; indeed, Jeff is quite pleased with the progress Roger made on the otherwise rednecked Cassie! 

But see that’s the thing. Nowhere does Cassie act like a dumb hick, or do anything stupid, or do anything that would make Jeff dislike her. And yet Jeff does dislike or at least distrust her, and goes out of his way to attack her at all times. It makes him seem like a total asshole, and what’s weird is that you get the impression that Messman doesn’t think he is an asshole. I mean we aren’t talking like an anti-hero sort of deal here. Jeff is the hero, no questions asked. So he takes Cassie under his own wing and they follow the vague leads on where Roger could be holed up, and why. Given this, Cassie has a greater part in the narrative than previous female characters. But it’s a strange relationship for sure, and Jeff’s attitude toward Cassie would certainly get him canceled in today’s “believe all women” world. 

It soon becomes clear that Roger is into something deep and is hiding for a reason. Jeff is constantly followed; even when going to pick Cassie up, driving back into Virginia, he’s tailed by some goons, managing to lose them in some salt flats. It gets to be annoying, though, because every time Jeff gets close to Roger, the guy will either run away or send an emissary in his place, to the extent that it almost takes on the tone of a Monty Python skit. Roger’s sought out Jeff, though, because Jeff’s “Handyman” status has become legedary, and also even as a kid Jefferson Boone was known for his fortitude. The action is infrequent, but always handled in a realistic matter when it happens, however as usual Messmann never dwells on the gory details. After encountering a few random thugs, Jeff deduces that Portugal had something to do with whatever Roger was into, so he and Cassie head there. 

The jet-setting Eurotrash stuff is pretty thick, here; as I mentioned before, Jefferson Boone, Handyman is more akin to the trash fiction bestsellers of the day, a la Burt Hirschfeld and the like. Messmann shows restraint, though, in that Jeff does not conjugate with the ultra-hot, ultra-stacked beauty Maria De Vasquez, whom he first sees getting into a fancy vintage car outside of a restaurant. Through various plot developments, Jeff has settled on Maria’s wealthy uncle as someone who might know what Roger was up to. De Vasquez seems to have walked out of a Bond novel, a man of such wealth that he retains his own retinue of enforcers and who has a garage filled with priceless vintage cars. Even here though the battle of wills with Cassie is played out; De Vasquez invites Jeff and Cassie to a party at his villa, and Jeff keeps imploring Cassie not to go, telling her she’ll be “out of her league” and “make a fool of herself” in front of all the jet-setting Euroscum. Seriously, the guy’s a dick. 

But the “Pygmallion” stuff is only reinforced when Cassie, wouldja believe, comes out of her room ready for the party…and it’s as if she’s become an entirely different woman. She has just one dress – bought for her by Roger, of course, for when he took her to socialite parties! – and she’s gotten her hair done, and she of course manages to hold her own at the party. Indeed she holds it so well that Jeff finds himself ignoring super-stacked Maria to keep checking on Cassie! Now all along Cassie’s been telling Jeff there was “more to the story” so far as her relationship with Roger went, and that night she finally tells Jeff it all: due to a “childhood incident,” Roger was no longer able to, uh, rise to the occasion, thus he and Cassie had a sort of “student-teacher” relationship and nothing more. And folks you better believe she’s ready for some good lovin’. She and Jeff go at it in a fairly explicit scene that for once doesn’t play out with the Hirschfeld-esque metaphors and analogies of previous such scenes. 

And meanwhile, Jeff still ponders this unfathomable case, this “increasingly multifaceted rigadoon with death.” Yes, that’s actually a line in the book. I don’t think even prime-era William Shatner could’ve delivered that with a straight face. (Orson Welles probably could’ve…and then he’d take a thoughtful puff on his ever-present cigar.) Finally, on page 147, Jeff learns that Roger was in-line to a breakthrough in “thermal energy.” This he learns from his State Dept. contact Charley Hopkins. And, of course, De Vasquez and his minions are out for it. This leads to a nice action scene where Cassie gets in on it; a country girl, she’s more than familiar with handling a rifle, and uses one to blast apart some thugs they chase while Jeff handles the car. As I say, she’s a likable character, making Jeff’s treatment of her seem even worse…though of course by this point they’ve been to bed a few times together, so at least he’s nicer to her. 

This proves to be the action highlight of the novel. As befitting the mystery thriller Murder Today, Money Tomorrow really is, the actual climax plays out more on a suspense vibe. Jeff and Cassie return to Roger’s home, where they learn exactly why thugs were constantly popping out of the woodwork to tail them. In other words there was a traitor in Roger’s life, and this character is dealt with in an entertaining – if predictable – finale. And it’s also worth noting that Jeff pitchforks a guy in this climactic sequence. It’s also interesting that Cassie knows her fling with Jeff has a limited lifespan; at novel’s end she wants one more roll in the hay, then she’s off to live her life. 

But man, there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t even cover here…like the bit where Jeff and Cassie go back to Cassie’s home town and run into some rednecks there. And other stuff on Jeff’s highfalutin childhood and jet-setting life in DC. As ever Messmann packs a lot of prose into the small, dense print of the book, clearly trying to write a “real” novel instead of the third installment of an action series. And I have to say, I think he succeeded this time. It won’t float everyone’s boat, but Murder Today, Money Tomorrow was pretty entertaining…if you can put aside the main character’s rampant misogyny, that is.

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Operation Snake (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #51)


Operation Snake, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1969  Award Books

“I’d never been on a mission where so much was going on and so little was happening.” 

So narrator Nick Carter tells us midway through this installment of Nick Carter: Killmaster, courtesy Jon Messmann, and folks sadly that for the most part sums up Operation Snake. This one’s nowhere near the crazed pulp majesty of Messmann’s earlier The Sea Trap, despite having a plot that features crazed cults, spiritual transference, and an actual yeti. For the most part, Operation Snake is a slow-moving travelogue set in Nepal, and I suspect “Nick’s” comment is Messmann’s subtle acknowledgement to the reader that the thrills have been few. 

And yes, we’re in the first-person narrative years now, with Nick himself telling us about his mission. I find this conceit hard to believe; I mean when the hell does super-agent Nick Carter have the time to even write these books? At any rate he’s on the job when we meet him, flying into Nepal on his latest caper. One thing the first-person gimmick robs from us is the usual setup of Nick being called into Hawk’s office, being briefed, etc. As is the case here, Messmann just leaves all that to backstory quickly doled out by Nick as he looks through an airplane window. As usual he’d been called out of bed, on vacation and the usual setup, when he got the urgent call from Hawk to get into DC asap for briefing. 

The plot Nick’s trying to stop this time is especially relevant today: the Red Chinese are taking advantage of the porous Nepalese border and sending Commie saboteurs over as “immigrants.” Couldn’t help but think of our own porous border and the countless unvetted immigrants who are literally being bussed into the country by the current administration, many of them with possible terror ties. (Not to mention the ones who have Covid but are dropped off on Texas city streets regardless.) But of course the big difference here is that the Federal government in Nick Carter’s world wants to stop such plots. So Nick is to wing his way over to Nepal, hook up with a local contact, and try to prevent a power-crazed monk from perpetrating the Red Chinese plan. Oh, and there’s also something about a yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman

Abruptly upon entering Nepal Nick encounters Hilary Cobb, a hotstuff blonde British reporter with massive breastesses; Messmann, Zod bless him, is sure to mention those big boobs every single time Hilary appears. But Nick resents Hilary’s “masculine” attitude in how she’s such a nosy, bossy pest; our hero is particularly reactionary this time, telling us he hates it when pretty women spoil their prettiness by trying to act like men. And Hilary certainly sets him off, despite her massive gazoongas, which Nick can’t help but oggle. Indeed he makes it a point to leer at ‘em, making Hilary bridle with rage; this entertainingly misogynist stuff is similar, I recall, to how Nick treated the hotstuff marine scientist babe in The Sea Trap. And sure enough, it will only serve to (eventually) turn Hilary on good and proper. 

In fact Nick’s treatment of Hilary is downright brutal in our touch-feely modern #metoo era; not knowing she’s dealing with a badass secret agent, Hilary tries to pull a fast one on Nick, sending him a fake summons so he leaves his hotel room and then slipping inside to steal his precious mountain climbing equipment. When Nick figures out what’s happened he quickly puts her to rights: he slaps her, ties her up, strips her, and of course oggles her boobs the whole time. Hilary is reduced to enraged tears. It’s all quite an uncomfortable sequence given that Nick is the friggin’ hero of the story! But we are to remember this all is occuring in a less sophisticated era, yadda yadda, and besides Nick’s just trying to keep the stubborn girl from following him out into the mountains, as he knows things are about to get very dangerous out there. 

Nick heads into the mountains where he meets his contact, who of course turns out to be another hotstuff babe, this one a petite native named Khaleen. “You’re a very beautiful creature,” Nick later tells her in another display of his brutish skill with the ladies – and of course she likes it. Khaleen’s the daughter of a local notable who stands against Ghotak, the power-mad leader of the Snake Cult. So basically Ghotak claims to speak for the snake god but is really an agent of the Red Chinese, and Nick’s intent here is to act as someone who has travelled quite far to speak against Ghotak and get the natives to rise up against him. So in other words the plot too is from a less sophisticated age, the natives suitably superstitious and gullible, and likely would reduce overly-sensitive modern readers to their own enraged tears. 

This is demonstrated posthaste when Ghotak calls a meeting at the temple that night, and per the ceremony a woman in the audience is chosen to “give” herself to the snake god, to be used by one of the men. All while tribal drumming is going on and a feverish pitch of eroticism is being reached by the onlookers, of course, with the expected orgy ensuing. Ghotak, as a challenge to Nick the interloper, calls on Khaleen for the honor, and she proceeds to storm onto the stage and starts dancing up a sensual storm. This bit is kind of overdone, with Nick trying to tamp down his horniness while protecting Khaleen’s virtue; he ends up storming the stage before any of the men can get to her and whisking her off to safety. However that night Khaleen repays Nick in the time-honored men’s adventure fashion: offering herself to him in his room. This leads to a mostly-inexplicit sequence; surprisingly, Messmann is much more conservative in tone here than he was in The Sea Trap

Nick eventually tangles with the yeti in a memorable sequence; after the latest Ghotak challenge he heads into the mountain to fight the monster, which apparently serves Ghotak. Hilary manages to go along with him, and soon enough the two are being chased by the shaggy, hairy creature; Messmann of course has it that Nick doesn’t believe in the yeti even though the natives do. Even sophisticated types like Khaleen and her father, with their fancy British educations, believe the yeti exists. And now here Nick gets first-hand proof, and only manages to fight it off so he and Hilary can escape. 

Stuck in the snowy expanse of the mountains overnight, Nick and Hilary engage in exactly the activities you’d expect. Even here Messmann keeps up the lovably misogynist tone of his hero, again recalling how Nick treated the main female character in The Sea Trap: “Are you going to try to make love to me?” Hillary asks, to which Nick responds: “I’m not going to try. I’m going to do it.” Indeed Nick taunts Hilary that soon enough she’ll be crying out in need for him, and sure enough she soon is. This bout’s a little more explicit than the one with Khaleen, but it soon develops that Messmann’s more concerned with the love triangle itself than he is with hardcore material. For Khaleen has fallen in love with Nick, slightly concerned he’ll soon be sleeping with the big-boobed “pretty” Englishwoman but trusting Nick regardless, and Nick slightly feeling like a heel for betraying her. 

Of course the veteran reader knows where all this is going. First though we have another encounter with the yeti, which turns out to be a human-bear hybrid, the product of a Sherpa woman who “used” a bear, per Ghotak. The mad monk found the creature and raised it, keeping it a bloodthirsty animal for his own ends. A captured Nick is to be chased by the yeti, but for some inexplicable reason Ghotak decides to allow Nick to keep his Luger and stiletto! While the beasts’s hide is too tough for bullets to pierce, Nick soon discovers that the inside of its mouth isn’t resistant to 9mm slugs. But this will be it for the yeti subplot, and I feel Messmann didn’t exploit it as much as he could’ve. 

Much more over the top is the finale, which sees Ghotak raising hell in his temple, complete with a trap door that leads to a room of poisonous snakes. Nick experiences what passes for heartbreak here, as one of the two women gives up her life to save him. Okay, a no-prize to whoever figures out which of the two women it is…the busty British babe who has spent the entire novel fighting Nick before bedding him, or the sultry but innocent native babe who is in love with him? Well anyway, Nick ends up finishing the novel on vacation with the surviving babe, pondering over “the difference between being wanted and being loved…the trick was to keep them apart.” 

This is unexpected depth from a men’s adventure series, but the sort of thing that would become par for the course in Messmann’s work, as demonstrated in The Revenger and Jefferson Boone, Handyman. As it turns out this “relationship” subplot had more of an impact on me than the plot itself, so clearly I need more testosterone in my diet.

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

The Deadly Deep


The Deadly Deep, by Jon Messmann
May, 1976  Signet Books

Like Marc OldenJon Messmann is another Signet Books author who moved into more “upmarket” fiction once the men’s adventure genre dried out in the mid-‘70s. After The Revenger and the Pyramid Books-published Handyman came to a close, Messmann began publishing one-off mystery and horror novels, this being one of the first of them. The cover blurb, with its reference to “jaws,” rather unsubtly lets you know which particular blockbuster horror novel inspired The Deadly Deep

At 222 pages of small, dense print, the novel is very much in-line with Messmann’s men’s adventure publications, with that same literary vibe where ten words do the job of two. The Deadly Deep is also gloriously, unapologetically “1970s” in its vibe: sex is a prime motivator of practically every situation and all women are referred to as “girls,” their breasts described ad naseum. All this of course is much to the chagrin of the perennially-aggrieved wokesters on Goodreads and Amazon, but it goes without saying that I personally dug it; a refreshing reminder of when books were written – and published – with a male readership in mind. Indeed, the novel’s opening sentence concerns a hotstuff “mistress” suntanning on the deck of a fishing boat deep in the ocean, about to take off her bikini top for the viewing pleasure of the first mate. 

Per the horror novel template, The Deadly Deep begins with a few one-off characters meeting their grisly fates. In short, marine life has run amok and begun attacking humans. The opening sequence, with the babe on the fishing boat, takes place in July 1975 (the rest of the novel spanning the ensuing months), and the “girl” (whose name is Candy!) is the mistress of a professional deep sea fisherman(!). As she suntans on deck, a big blue whale comes out of the Pacific and closes in on the boat, capsizing it. Only Candy survives, clinging to a shard of debris; “She was a survivor, and, as such, she would survive.” (That’s downright Biblical!) Her story is not believed by the authorities, but when a few weeks later a crab fisherman is similarly killed by crazed crabs it would seem that something rotten’s going on in nature. 

This brings us to the hero of the tale, studly ‘70s dude Aran Holder, a freelance science writer. (I assume his name is pronounced “Aaron.”) Again Messmann caters to the ‘70s demand for ruggedly virile protagonists; even though Aran is introduced while merely lying asleep in bed with his girlfriend, Jenny, we’re informed posthaste that the two recently did the deed: “[Jenny’s] moaning screams of ecstasy still seemed to echo in the silence of the cottage.” Curiously though Messmann isn’t as forthcoming with the sleazy details, until later in the novel when he almost randomly delivers a fairly graphic encounter between the two. And as ever it’s very much on the Burt Hirschfeld tip, with that same pseudo-literary vibe when the hanky panky goes down, a la “He moved his tongue through the deep soft-wire mossy triangle.” Talk about the deadly deep! Or my favorite, when Aran gets lucky with another swingin’ chick later in the novel: “She was sensuality…the Circean cup made flesh.” I mean that one’s almost straight out of the Loeb Classical Library. 

The major problem I see with The Deadly Deep – other than the inordinate narrative flab, that is – is Aran Holder himself. For some reason Messmann has chosen to give us a hero who is a freelance science writer, one who occasionally teaches on the side. And this is a tale about sea life going crazy and killing humans. What it needs is a more action-prone hero, like a grizzled ‘Nam SEAL vet or something, or like the dude out of the Sea Quest TV show. Someone who’d be out on the sea battling this threat. In other words, the type of hero you’d encounter if this story had been told a dozen years before in the average men's adventure magazine. But at this point in his career Messmann as mentioned is aiming for a more upscale market, thus his hero is more of a thinker than a doer, and in fact Aran’s major contribution is that he knows people, mostly via features he’s written. 

Otherwise the brunt of the “sea action” is handled by one-off characters who, in many cases, take up a lot more narrative space than necessary. Again, I know it’s part of the horror novel template, but still it bugs me to read several pages of backstory and setup on a character who’s about to meet a grisly fate. Messmann does this throughout, cutting across the globe and introducing sundry characters who make the fatal discovery that the denizens of the deep have now become supremely pissed off at human beings. Messmann gets pretty inventive with the various scenes, with all manner of aquatic attacks: giant squid, killer whales, pirhanas, and even your common everyday cod and other coastal fish. Surprisingly the one marine lifeform he doesn’t much exploit is sharks, probably because he didn’t want to be too on the nose so far as what particular blockbuster inspired this one. 

We see our first couple attacks in July of ’75, from the killer whale to a bunch of crabs eating some guy. Aran hears about this on the radio, vacationing in a seaside cottage in Maryland, and is further pulled into the mystery when his girlfriend, Jenny, is bitten by fish while the two are swimming. (Of course she happens to be topless at the time.) As mentioned Aran’s “skillset” is mainly that he knows people, so he puts in a call to the Fish and Wildlife Service and is eventually put in contact with East Coast boss Emerson Boardman, who works out of Boston. Aran knows Emerson from previous work, so the two already have a rapport. Emerson invites Aran to Boston to help serve as a sort of public relations guy, the setup being that Aran has experience with breaking down highfalutin “science” concepts so that even slackjawed yokels can comprehend them. 

This brings us into what The Deadly Deep will mostly be comprised of: Aran attending a ton of meetings. Meetings with other men, it should go without saying, with no females present other than secretaries, but I don’t want to elaborate too much else they come after Messmann once they’re done cancelling Dr. Seuss. But man, it does sort of go on and on, in particular Aran’s run-ins with a “let’s kill ‘em all” Admiral. Meanwhile Emerson (unfortunately there’s no mention of Lake or Palmer) proves himself incompetent; another horror novel template is the humorously-unecessary death scene, and this duly occurs when Emerson tells his secretary/mistress that it’s safe to go swimming with her girlfriends. When meanwhile there have been fatal fish attacks all over the coasts. This part is particularly unsettling given that the fish rip the girl’s breast off as they attack – I guess the dark side of the whole breast objectification thing. 

Meanwhile Aran shuttles back and forth from Boston to the cottage retreat along the Maryland coast. He again is brought into the dangerous situation in an eerie scene in which a “phalanx” of crabs set upon the area one night. Here too Messmann’s able to work in the ‘70s obsession with sleaze and sex, with the first victims being a married couple who enjoy getting sloshed and having sex on the beach (the literal thing, not the drink). This part also shows a sadly-unexploited hint of dark comedy when the poor woman’s last thought is that she ate crab for dinner! Otherwise Messmann plays it pretty straight throughout; sometimes, as is his wont, a little too straight, with his usual penchant for characters who will spout philosophical quips that would have Descartes stroking his goattee in thought. 

Emerson turns more and more to booze as the situation becomes untenable – the sea has become hazardous to any craft, and given the attack of sea life even the beef industry has to introduce limitations on product – and Aran takes over his role. This of course means more meetings for the reader to endure. There’s a definite focus on eco-concerns, again par for the course in ‘70s sci-fi, with some go-nowhere stuff from a marine biologist that all this might be due to chemical changes in the layers of water that make up the ocean. What initially comes up as yet another red herring turns out to be the prime mover of the narrative: Aran learns that one of his past studies, a “marine life communication” researcher named Evan Taylor, has just committed suicide down at his lab in the Florida Keys. 

Aran keeps wondering why Taylor would do this now of all times. When he goes down to the Keys to investigate he finds, you guessed it, a drunked-up hotstuff babe with “heavy breasts” and an otherwise brick shithouse bod (which is lovingly objectified for us) just waiting all on her horny lonesome for him. Her name is Kay Elliot (which we’re reminded of practically every time she’s mentioned or spoken to – as ever, Messmann has this strange quirk of always referring to minor characters by their full names) and yep, within like a few sentences she’s already propositioning Aran: “Let’s screw all afternoon.” She was Evan Taylor’s assistant (his full name is constantly given, as well) and clearly she’s gone to drink as a sort of security blanket. Aran fends off her amorous advances (he won’t later, though) and heads back to Boston…only to come right back on down when he suddenly remembers that Taylor was researching genetic engineering. All this is curiously modern sounding, with talk about human DNA being implanted in some killer whales and Taylor and colleagues raising the three calves. 

All this Aran finally learns from a sobered-up Kay. It gets kind of goofy here as it turns out that the baby killer whales learned to “talk” to the researchers via a series of panels in their tank, which was channelled off from the ocean. So basically one day, about a year after the implants and etc, the three orcas just didn’t show up anymore…and a few weeks later was the first sealife attack, ie the whale attack that opened the book. It gets super-‘70s quasi-mystical here with talk about Jung of all things, I mean the last thing you’d expect to read…but Messmann’s philosophy-prone characters speculate that “the awakened phylogenetic consciousness of an entire species” (!!) has turned non-killers into killers, as has happened with sea life across the globe. 

But hey, let’s get busy! That’s pretty much the idea that night as Kay, as expected, slinks naked into “the spare room down the hall” where Aran is spending the night. Messmann delivers another of his patented pseudo-literary “what exactly is even happening?” sex scenes, as the two find “respite” in one another. Because meanwhile the world’s gone to hell, Messmann delivering a suitably apocalyptic scenario that only gets worse and worse as the novel progresses. The gung-ho Admiral continues to botch things up, which only leads to more reprisals from the amassed sea creatures, including even a tsunami they manage to create. There’s also “guerrilla warfare” via fish that cling beneath the coastal crusts and venture out to attack oblivious swimmers…people still so obstinate that they’re willing to go to the beach. 

As mentioned though the goofiness really comes to the fore toward the end, to the point that it’s hard to take any of it seriously. So presumably the three DNA-impacted orcas have started this underwater rebellion, the fish deciding to kill mankind. The three orcas occasionally come back to their research pool, so as to taunt their former captors; the reason Kay’s still been down here. Aran gradually learns what really happened to Evan Taylor; the orcas would come to taunt him via those stupid panels, and he went out there on a boat with a gun one day…only to find out the orcas weren’t messing around. Aran’s plan is for Kay to call him as soon as the orcas show up again, and he’ll get a special Navy transport to whisk him down to the Keys to try to reason with the whales. So you see even here, Kay, the original researcher on the project, isn’t even given the opportunity to reason with them! Nor is the opportunity even presented to her. 

But the stupid Admiral strikes again…actually his plan isn’t that dumb. When Kay calls that the orcas have shown up, the Admiral doesn’t send a transport for Aran…but instead sends a couple fighter jets to take the “terrorist leaders” out! However this too fails, ultimately leading to a nicely-done scene in which Aran does indeed have a “talk” with the orcas. He goes out on a boat and carries out a discussion with them on those panels, and here the whales too are even philosophers, turning Aran’s arguments around on him. A nicely-done scene, but also increasingly ridiculous…especially when Aran displays heretofore-unknown badass skills when he sets his boat on fire and jumps out into the sea to swim away from the shocked killer whales. 

At 222 pages of super-small print, you’d think The Deadly Deep would tell a full tale with a satisfactory conclusion, but unbelievably enough the finale’s as ridiculous as the entire premise. SPOILER ALERT so skp to the next paragraph if you don’t want to know. Well, things have gone from dire to worse, with the entire world in the balance due to the sea attacks; the military has no choice but to nuke various areas so that the entire geography will be redesigned. There are end of the world cults, panic in society, etc. And then, virtually overnight, the attacks just stop. This then plays out with an overdone part where two kids go out fishing one day and don’t have any trouble. Soon enough it is apparent that sea life has gone back to normal. Aran opines that the genetic engineering “expired” and everything’s okay now…but really all this was a “warning” that man should respect other creatures. As if chortling to himself over how ridiculous this is, Messmann ends the tale with a couple yokels excitedly getting into their fishing boats, almost slobbering at the thought of all the fish they’ll catch! 

With a couple Biblical quotes here and there, Messmann clearly tries to convey a “serious” vibe, but really The Deadly Deep is pretty goofy…which by the way isn’t a criticism. If I’m going to read something like this I want it to go over the top. But as mentioned Messmann’s dogged insistence on stretching things out and making them overly “serious” tends to kill the fun. Oh and the uncredited cover art, while cool, turns out to be misleading – unfortunately there is no weird underwater babe who is behind all the attacks. After The Deadly Deep Messmann turned out a few mysteries, then some Westerns under a house name or two. The book features a bio of him, which I thought was pretty cool, if only because this might be the most we ever know about the guy: 

Thursday, September 10, 2020

The Revenger #6: A Promise For Death


The Revenger #6: A Promise For Death, by Jon Messmann
September, 1975  Signet Books

The Revenger series comes to a close with a sixth volume that caps off the storyline; it seems evident that Messmann knew this would be the series finale, and thus gave it an appropriate send-off. So, I can’t say I’m sorry to see The Revenger go, as Messmann delivers not only a fantastic novel but also a fitting series conclusion, paying off on elements that were introduced back in the first volume. This was by far my favorite installment of the series, with the introspection toned down and the focus more on suspense, action, and character.

It's about eight months after the previous volume, and Ben Martin (or “Ben,” as Messmann always refers to him in the narrative) has made his way back to New York, in yet another attempt to start over again. As usual he’s gotten a working-class life, driving a bakery truck for a Sicilian immigrant. But when we meet Ben he’s back to Revenger mode, Messmann again writing the sequence in present-tense. The fifteen year-old daughter of Ben’s boss was raped by a pair of young Mafia thugs, and in the following taut sequence we see Ben doling out some brutal payback with his customary .38. The action is more pronounced in A Promise For Death than it was in any of the previous volumes, most of which featured Ben sniping targets from afar. Here he’s taking down goons in pitched firefights, and this opening part packs more punch than usual because Ben’s fired up over how the Mafia has again spoiled the innocent.

Eventually Ben learns that Don Aldo Trafficante was behind the girl’s rape; Trafficante now runs the New York mob, having taken over the position vacated by Johnny Lupo in the previous book (after Ben killed Lupo, that is). Trafficante ordered the rape of a poor innocent fifteen year-old because he happens to be a distant relative of the girl – and had a hunch that the hulking new employee with the gray eyes at his cousin’s bakery might actually be Ben Martin, the Revenger. Thus the young girl’s rape was intended to draw Ben out, if indeed it was him, the rapist punks used as veritable Revenger bait. Not that Trafficante wants some revenge of his own; he’s got some problems with two rival dons, a mob war brewing with them, and he wants to retain Ben’s services as his personal executioner. In exchange Trafficante promises to give Ben insider Mafia info which could crush the entire organization.

Trafficante isn’t the only one who suspects Ben’s back in town; Captain Leo Hendricks, first introduced in the fourth volume, has also been keeping his eyes on the papers, and when he reads that some Mafia thugs have recently been gunned down he figures Ben’s back in town. Whereas Ben is against the idea of helping Trafficante, Hendricks pushes him to go for it, as the don could give Ben – and the cops – all sorts of info that would otherwise be inaccessible, and could do more damage to the mob than all of Ben’s previous kills put together. This elicits another nicely-done sequence, where Ben visits Trafficante in his townhome and Trafficante argues that Ben is always so willing to help “his people” but won’t help Trafficante himself, turning Ben’s own logic around on him. But as mentioned, Messmann doesn’t let the philosophy bog down the plot this time; during the argument, a phone call comes in that Bianca, Trafficante’s daughter, has been kidnapped by one of the rival dons. 

Ben now of course has the opportunity to do what he does best: save the innocent from the Mafia. Bianca, who you won’t be surprised to know is a smokin’-hot and stacked brunette babe, has nothing to do with her father’s life; her mother died when she was a child and Bianca was sent to Europe to attend various elite schools. Now she’s in her early 20s and back in America, living alone in her own apartment; she claims later to only have recently deduced that her father is Mafia. Ben tells Trafficante he’ll save the girl, leading to another taut and well-executed action sequence, which first has Ben posing as a firefighter to get into the building Bianca’s held in, then scaling down from the roof and breaking into the apartment with .38 blasting.

Bianca is a fully-realized character, probably the best female character in the series – which again is only fitting given that this is the series finale. And by the way, there’s no reference to the other “Bianca” Ben had a relationship with, the one who was last seen in the third volume; it’s possible Messmann himself had forgotten about her. I sure as hell had, until I recently reviewed my incredibly-overwritten reviews of the previous five volumes before writing this review. As with most any other female protagonist in a Messmann novel, Bianca is not only beautiful but capabale of deep thought and probing analyses of people she’s just met, and can also quote odd lines of poetry. Plus she’s great in the sack! Sorry, couldn’t resist. But yes, Ben and Bianca’s relationship develops in the expected direction, but it comes off as natural, not forced – Bianca feels that the two are “connected” now, given that fate has put them together – but whereas earlier volumes were fairly explicit in the sex department, Messman’s now firmly in a Burt Hirschfeld mode, where it’s all relayed via metaphor. 

Messmann doesn’t cheat us on the action, though. Ben we’ll recall was a “specialst” in ‘Nam, a “specialist in death,” per the first volume, and this installment really brings that to the fore. With Capt. Hendricks occasionally setting him up with gear, Ben pulls off a series of hits on the mob that would even impress Mack Bolan, from taking on a few cars filled with Mafia assassins in the Westchester mountains to employing one of the bakery trucks in the prevention of another potential assassination of Trafficante in Manhattan. Most of the action deals with Ben wiping out Trafficante’s opposition; per the agreement the two men have made, Trafficante vows to quit the Mafia if Ben will take out the two rival dons who are cornering his territory. Bianca herself is the one who has brokered this agreement, acting as intermediary between Ben and her father; Trafficante claims to love his daughter so much that he’s willing to quit the mob life for her. Of course, Ben doubts this, but Bianca is innocent enough to believe her father.

The action is broken up with sequences that focus on Ben and Bianca’s growing relationship. As with previous female characters in the series she sees right through Ben’s “Revenger” exterior and wants to be with him forever. But there is something about Bianca that sets her apart from previous such women. Again this is no doubt because Messmann knows he’s writing the final volume, but still, I take it we’re to understand what separates Bianca is that she’s a daughter of the very organization Ben has been warring against all this time. What I like is how Messmann doesn’t beat us over the head with the pathos; there are but a few references to Ben’s murdered son, his ex-wife not mentioned at all, but the implication is there that Ben wants to end his war and start over for real this time, making a new life with Bianca. First though he must prove to her that her father is a liar.

The last quarter is more of a suspense thriller, as Ben of course quickly deduces that Trafficante does indeed plan to kill him; we readers already know this, as Messmann this time writes several sequences focusing on other characters instead of just on Ben all the time. Thus we see Trafficante plot Ben’s death with his lieutenant, Joe Morelli. Messmann implies that the chief skill of a “specialist in death” is to always be prepared, thus Ben has staked out Trafficante’s downtown office and knows which buildings the don will put snipers on to take Ben out when he comes to meet Trafficante. This sets off a suspenseful finale in which Ben must chose whether killing Trafficante is worth losing Bianca over. However, fate intervenes in the form of a once-innocent fifteen year-old girl who was raped, at the start of the novel, and has been slowly going insane with a desire for revenge – a masterful play by Messmann, who shows that Ben Martin is not the only person who has ever owed the Mafia some payback.

Ben’s choice is taken from him, but revenge is served regardless. The novel ends with Bianca once again coming to Ben’s apartment and telling him she wants to be with him, for them to start a new life together. The last lines of the novel seem to make it clear that Messmann knew this would be it for The Revenger:

It might just work this time. Those who shared pain were so much more a part of each other than those who shared only joy. And, maybe, happiness was a revenge of its own.

It is a very affecting ending, particularly given that Messmann’s managed to give his hero a Happily Ever After without being too obvious about it. The question is whether Messmann himself chose to end the series at this point, or whether low sales were the culprit. I can’t help but notice that the second through fifth volumes were all published rather quickly, coming out between June of ’74 and February of ’75. But this sixth volume came out seven months after the fifth one, indicating that Messmann might’ve needed more time to write it…or that Signet put it on the backburner. But then, nowhere is it stated on or in the book that this is the final volume, so maybe Messmann just turned this one in and told Signet he was done.

In any event, A Promise For Death is an incredibly entertaining and well-written thriller, notable for being one of the few men’s adventure finales that acts as a legitimate conclusion to the series. I really enjoyed it, and highly recommend it – as well as the series itself.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Jefferson Boone, Handyman #2: The Game Of Terror


Jefferson Boone, Handyman #2: The Game Of Terror, by Jon Messmann
June, 1973  Pyramid Books

Well, it’s been four years since I read the first volume of Jefferson Boone, Handyman, and really I meant to get to the series sooner, but given that I was also reading The Revenger I guess I just didn’t want to mix my Messmanns, so to speak. Because really both series are written so similarly, Messmann going for this pseudo-Burt Hirschfeld style, with overly-introspective heroes and plots that hinge more on suspense than violent action. What makes Jefferson Boone, Handyman slightly different is the James Bond vibe, with “Jeff” (as Messmann mostly refers to him in the narrative) going around the globe in the capacity of a freelance troubleshooter.

This one’s a little more action-centric than the first one, but not by much. This is mostly due to the threat Boone faces: a consortium of terrorists who have come up with the novel idea of blackmailing the people they’re about to attack. “Terror for profit,” as Jeff thinks of it. Again we get a sad reminder of how terrorism wasn’t so commonplace at one time; early in the book, when hired by a trio of British, German, and Israeli intelligence directors, Jeff sits through a lecture – complete with slideshow! – going over the history of the terrorism movement, with a focus on the then-recent Munich Olympics disaster. Obviously this long-running sequence is here to fill pages and meet the word count, yet at the same time Messmann’s cleary trying to inform his readers on who terrorists are and how they operate.

Before that though we get a taste of the sub-Hirschfeld vibe Messmann employs for this series; Jeff is at a lush spa in Austria, summoned there by a mysterious telegram. He has been getting friendly with a hot American tourist named Judy, but there’s been no hanky panky yet. All of it is written like a trash fiction paperback of the day. Finally we get the blood and guts we’ve been waiting for when a visiting orchestra turns out to be a bunch of terrorists in disguise, gunning down innocent spa-goers. Jeff gives chase in his red Mustang – which he transports around the globe with him on cases, so the thing must have a helluva lot of miles on it – leading to a nicely-done action scene of him blowing away the two terrorists with his .357. After which we get a reminder of why I called Jefferson Boone “Frasier Crane meets James Bond” in my review of the first volume, as Jeff rumintes, immediately after blowing away the two thugs:

Senseless things were only senseless to those restricted by the normal, conventional framework of thought. It was one of modern man’s problems, the language of ideas and the language of words, too often an uneasy fit. Words, he grunted, willing accomplices to the deceits of the mind, more often than not protecting the rigidities of our own concepts and definitions.

I mean you ponder thoughts like this over a snifter of brandy, not when you’re driving away from a violent gunfight in your red Mustang. It gets even more goofy, as Judy pouts that Jeff abandoned her, basically calling him out as a coward. Once she overhears the management discuss “the crazy American who chased the terrorists,” her thoughts have changed – and into Jeff’s bed she hops for some long-delayed sex. But like last time Messmann continues with the Hirschfeld vibe even into the sex scenes, relaying it all via metaphor and turns of phrase, save for errant mentions of “the warm wetness of her” and the like. Oh and humorously, the ladies here all fall hard for Jeff’s custom-made “Handyman” business cards, immediately figuring it has something to do with international espionage. Not a single one of them think that it means he’s an actual, you know, handyman.

The men who summoned Jeff to the spa finally arrive, apologizing for the slipup on dates – they wanted to prevent the terrorist hit at the spa, which they’d gotten intel on, but it happened sooner than they could arrive. These are the three intelligence directors mentioned above, who treat Jeff to the slideshow while they relate the latest terrorism menace. They believe it’s affiliated with Black September, but Jeff will gradually learn that the terrorists are from all over the globe, running into Japanese ones, Irish ones, and your standard-model Arabic ones. Jeff doesn’t want the job, as he doesn’t “do” terrorism, so to speak, finding it too big a job for one man. But he keeps flashing on that attack at the spa, the innocents killed, and he changes his mind – and by the way there are lots of condemnations of terrorists in the book, but Jeff’s admonishments of them as “dirty bastards” and the like just doesn’t have much bite.

There are parallels to the Stark series this time, what with Jeff shuttling around Europe in his Mustang. The guy puts some serious mileage on the car. He acts in the capacity of a freelance terrorism-stopper, or such; the only lead the directors have is that a travel company owner named Jim Costa, an expat American on the French coast, might be a target of the terrorists, given that he ignored one of their threats. So Jeff drives on over and we get another Hirschfeld bit where he comes across a beautiful brunette trying to save her boat from being smashed at the docks during a fierce thunderstorm. They have a quiet moment in the nearby cabin and bat eyes at each other, and next day Jeff discovers that the babe is the daughter of Jim Costa. Her name is Angelique, and Messmann skillfully brings her to life, but he’s guilty of that hoary old cliché; she could be The One who captures Jefferson Boone’s heart after all these years of unshackled cocksmanship.

Speaking of which, the expected sex scene is slightly more risque, but again on the “intellectual” tip, with mentions of “curled flocces” and the like; I admit, that one sent me to the dictonary. Meanwhile Jeff just sort of walks around Costa’s premises to make sure no terrorists are attacking him. He also finds the time to have friendly philosophical arguments on the nature of terrorists with Costa’s Egyptian second in command, Aran. You’d think that an Egyptian guy arguing over the viewpoints of terrorism might set off alarm bells for Jeff, but nope. Instead we get more ruminations like:

The idea [of organized terrorism] assumed too much. It assumed the simultaneous existence of a single idea on the part of essentially diverse groups, the existence of a concept, a sick, perverted, horrifying concept but a concept nonetheless and he didn’t see these [terrorists] as conceptual thinkers. It couldn’t be entirely discounted but it didn’t fit, either…

Good grief, just kill someone already! We do eventually get a nicely-rendered sequence where Jeff’s called to another part of the French coast where a potential attack might happen. He oversees security of the beachside party, unable to find any weak spots…realizing too late he’s completely overlooked the friggin’ ocean. And like a second after his realization a retrofitted PT boat comes along and starts shooting at the partiers. Jeff again gives chase in his Mustang, following along the hilly roads with his lights off, and gets the terrorists when they’ve stopped to refuel. Again we have a rather bloodless but suspenseful scene as Jeff kills a handful of men with his .38. This part features the odd capoff where Jeff apparently considers taking a piss on the corpses:

He reached a hand inside the little pocket at the front of his trousers, held it there for a moment and then withdrew it. No one would come for them. They would lay unclaimed, all of them, and the gesture that had crossed his mind would be wasted.

Oddball moments like this are otherwise few and far between. For the most part it’s very much on the trash fiction tip, with verdant description of the Eurotrash surroundings, and lots of ponderings about the nature of terrorism and the like. But Jeff isn’t the sharpest, folks, because it soon becomes clear to the reader exactly why no one’s yet come to kill Jim Costa. Yet Jeff continues with his security detail, falling hard for Angelique on the side. What makes it all particularly lame is that Jeff has nothing to do with the finale, by which I mean he isn’t on the scene. Long story short, the terrorists take over a school in Bonn, threatening to kill the kids if demands aren’t met. But our hero’s all the way over on the French coast and all this is relayed via phone – a lame, copout “climax” for an action novel. 

Instead it continues on the suspense angle, as Jeff has finally figured out who is behind the terrorist ring. He ends up holding a gun on this person, but when his threats are laughed at, Jeff leaves with his tail between his legs…then realizes two can play at the terrorism game. In what is intended to display that Jefferson Boone’s just as tough as his enemies, Jeff kidnaps Angelique and threatens to kill her if the terrorism in Bonn isn’t called off. This leads to a lame denoument in which the main villain’s killed off by someone else, and Jeff gets in a brief fight with his underling. By novel’s end Angelique informs Jeff that he’s just as much a bastard as the terrorists he claims to hate – we’re to understand the two were in love, so this is supposed to be crushing, but at this point the novel has become a wearying read and you just wish everyone would go away, already – but Jeff shrugs it off and hops on a plane. Next stop America, for some more sex with Judy, from the opening chapters.

The Game Of Terror just sort of goes on and on, and in that regard as well it’s similar to Stark. I still say the Revenger books are superior because they’re at least shorter, but ultimately Messmann’s wordy, literate style is at odds with the fire and brimstone the men’s adventure genre demands. And I’m starting to think he didn’t write the almighty Sea Trap; maybe he did the initial manuscript and series producer Lyle Kenyon Engel hired some unknown contract writer to fix it up into the pulpy, depraved masterpiece it became – because honestly I have a hard time believing that the same author turned out this slow-churning book.

Monday, March 18, 2019

The Revenger #5: City For Sale


The Revenger #5: City For Sale, by Jon Messmann
February, 1975  Signet Books

If you want a little philosophy with your blood and guts, The Revenger is for you – Jon Messmann doesn’t let the little fact that he’s writing the fifth installment of a mob-busting series deter him from indulging in frequent and lengthy digressions on man’s inhumanity, free will versus fate, and even the occasional quote from Ecclesiastes. And yet despite all this, I do enjoy the series, with the caveat that you really have to be in the mood for it, because if you want fast-moving action you’d better look elsewhere.

There’s no pickup from the previous volume, but hero Ben Martin is still in New York, finding himself unable to leave. Now he serves as the foreman of a construction crew, and he’s gone back to using his real name – so much for the various cover identities he was using. Ben now considers killing mobsters “as natural as breathing;” it’s not something he burns to do, as in previous installments, but something fate often places in his lap. Like for example how he’s noticed a bunch of mobsters have been spying on a lovely young women who lives across the street from Ben’s construction site; Ben knows the men are hoods and has monitored them as they’ve monitored the girl over the past week.

Meanwhile, in what will prove to be a related plot, two Mafia gunners storm into a coutroom and massacre eleven people, including the judge. (Somehow they’re able to use a “silenced Magnum revolver,” which the uncredited cover artist has gamely illustrated.) The young woman being watched will turn out to be the daughter of another judge: her name is Carola Cozzi, and her dad is a judge who is known for cracking down on the mob. Ben is spurred into action when the mobsters finally make their move and abduct Carola, throwing her in their car and driving off. Here we see that the Revenger doesn’t mess around; he bumps into their car with his own, making it look like an accidental fender bender, then guns them down with his .38 revolver.

Surprisingly, Ben’s saving of Carola doesn’t lead to the hot and heavy sex scene you might inspect. Instead Messmann goes for more of a realistic depiction, with a shocked Carola asking Ben if he’ll stay the night so she can feel safe…and then Ben leaving when he sees she’s fallen asleep. This part’s kind of funny because Ben’s certain the Mafia won’t try for Carola again that night because “it’s not their way.” Yet throughout City For Sale Ben is constantly surprised by the unexpected tactics of the Mafia as represented by its latest boss, nutcase Johnny Lupo.

As Marty McKee so accurately notes, Lupo brings to mind Henry Silva to such a degree that Messmann must have been thinking of him when writing the character. Lupo’s taken over the New York action and has grand ambitions – he wants to rule the city itself, and has put together a mysterious plan to make this mad dream a reality. The courtroom massacre and the attempted abduction of Carola Cozzi are only pieces of the puzzle. Lupo dreams big, taking only the occasional break to explicitly screw his favorite girl, a redhead with “big tits” named Linda Akins who knows a good thing when she has it, and thus does her best to stay in Lupo’s graces.

Returning from the previous volume is Captain Leo Hendricks, who now acts as Ben’s unofficial supplier of info, weapons, and whatever else he might need to quash Mafia scum. Through Hendricks Ben learns that the murdered judge was actually on the Mafia payroll, which makes Lupo’s plot all the more mysterious. And Hendricks is sure Lupo is up to something, though he’s of course unable to do anything about it. Thus he uses Ben as his one-man army, getting Ben whatever he needs and helping him out. Don’t expect any major-duty firepower, though; true to the ‘70s crime genre, Ben Martin solely uses revolvers. This time it’s a .38 and a Colt Cobra.

Messmann spends more time on the mystery of Lupo’s plot and its unraveling as caused by Ben Martin’s presence. He also builds up the Ben-Carola relationship, keeping them out of bed until well past the middle of the book. However Carola doesn’t do much to make herself rise above the other female characters in the series; she comes off as a little one-note and boring, despite a fondness for scuba diving. She of course quickly gets her hooks in Ben, falling in love with him, though she knows from the start that he’ll end up hurting her. As ever Messmann writes their eventual sex scene fairly explicitly, though it’s not as hardcore as I recall the previous volume being.

One can’t accuse Messmann of not fully exploiting the angst and thoughts of his protagonist. City For Sale is literally stuffed with Ben’s musings on this or that weighty subject. And yet sometimes there is an impact to such material, like when Ben meets Captain Hendricks at a playground to exchange info, and Ben glimpses a boy on a carousel who looks almost identical to his murdered son. Messmann handles this well, not veering into the maudlin, and thus it actually makes an impression on the reader. But as mentioned Ben Martin is no longer fueled by the quest for revenge, and he just kills mobsters because it’s what he does. There is almost a Zen sort of vibe here, not that Messmann goes into that angle – one of the few angles he doesn’t go into.

But anyway, there’s a lot of musing and pondering over Ben’s growing feelings for Carola, even though he’s found himself in this exact same scenario for four volumes now – meeting and developing feelings for some new babe, all the while telling himself he can’t get involved and whatnot. And of course there’s no mention of what happened to his previous flings, other than a random moment when he thinks of something Valery Alwyn, from back in the second volume, once told him. Messmann doesn’t even bother explaining who she was, expecting his readers to remember her.

Unlike those previous gals, Carola gets slightly involved in the action; after an aborted infiltration of Lupo’s townhouse, in which Ben doesn’t find anything to figure out what the bastard is up to, he has a flash and realizes that Lupo’s hiding something in the water somewhere. And as luck would have it, Carola is a scuba diver. Ben retains her services to dive into a lake in the Catskills at night, and down there she finds all of Lupo’s hidden blackmail material. This is a nice part in which the mobsters almost get the jump on Ben, but he and Carola are able to escape, and later figure out that Lupo has stuff on all the city’s elite. He intends to take over the city in this way.

The finale is probably one of the best in the series, so it’s nice to see Messmann hasn’t gotten burned out five volumes in. Taking place at the Statue of Liberty late at night, it plays out on a nicely-done suspense angle. There have been various reversals and turnarounds at this point, and Messmann brings everything together fittingly. We also get a nice confrontation between Ben and Lupo, with the latter trying to lure Ben up the darkened stairs in the statue. I like it that Messmann gives Lupo a proper sendoff, because at this point you want to see him dead, however I did feel that Lupo was kept off-page a bit too much.

It’s funny; like the other volumes of the series City For Sale is deceptively slim. It’s only 144 pages, but man does it have some small and dense print. So what I mean is it isn’t a fast read by any means. I’ll be sorry to see the series end with the next volume, but at the same time I can see how all the heavy pathos could get tiresome if prolonged.

Monday, October 30, 2017

The Revenger #4: The Stiletto Signature


The Revenger #4: The Stiletto Signature, by Jon Messmann
October, 1974  Signet Books

Jon Messmann continues his “Burt Hirschfeld writing The Executioner” schtick with this fourth volume of The Revenger that’s once again heavy on the introspection, usually at the expense of the action. That being said, The Stiletto Signature has more sex than the previous three volumes, with hero Ben Martin scoring with two uber-sexy babes – several times over, in extra-smutty detail, which is how I demand my sleaze.

Surprisingly, given the “sex slavery” plot promised on the back cover, we don’t really get much about it; indeed, the sex slave stuff, which serves to get Ben Martin engaged on this particular hit, is given narrative short-shrift. The villain of the piece, a Sicilian mafioso named Vito Cavallo who has taken over the family of Don Genossanto (killed in the previous volume), runs a business in which Sicilian girls are imported to the US and sold to men who keep them in their homes ostensibly as maids and whatnot, but who really use them for sex. Martin’s distant cousin Rosa has become a victim of Cavallo, having been imported from Sicily for this sexual slavery, and murdered when Ben went around looking for her; Ben, who never even knew Rosa, was requested by her family back in Sicily to find out what happened to their daughter. Little did they know they were writing The Revenger himself.

But in reality the crux of Stiletto Signature is more about Ben plotting against Cavallo and trying to get evidence of the sex slavery business and who is helping the Mafioso run it. Cavallo was brought over by old Don Genossanto a few years ago, and has now used his native savagery to get to the top of the heap. He has brought back many of the savage old Mafia ways, in particular murdering turncoats and special enemies with a stiletto; the use of this particular instrument has become Cavallo’s “signature.”

The series takes a turn expected from so many of these other ‘70s lone wolf vigilante novels; Ben is contacted by a police chief who is not only a secret supporter of Ben’s vigilante work, but who also wants to secretly endorse him. This is Captain Leo Hendricks, who has become a fan of Ben’s over the past few years. When Ben goes to see the corpse of his cousin in the morgue, Hendricks has him hauled in, having suspected that the infamous Revenger might eventually try to become involved in this latest mobland plot.

Hendricks, after getting a grudging Ben to admit he is the Ben Martin who is supposedly dead but who is really the Revenger, tells our hero all about Cavallo’s sex slavery operation. If they can figure out how Cavallo is running it, who his financers are, they can bring him down legally. Ben takes the job and sets his sights on Carter Van Rhyne, a jet-setter type who employed Ben’s murdered cousin as a “housemaid.” Ben goes to Van Rhyne’s mansion, just flat-out asking about his cousin – and then telling a nonplussed Van Rhyne that she’s dead. Ben also trades interested looks with Larel, Van Rhyne’s hot-stuff sister.

Action is minimal, as usual; the Mafia tries to put out a hit on this mysterious guy looking into Van Rhyne’s business – for of course it turns out Van Rhyne is up to his neck in the whole sex-slave operation – and Ben fools them with a handy mannequin he puts in the front seat of his car. He guns them down casually, as usual mostly sticking to a revolver or a rifle for his mob-busting. However this volume puts a bit more focus on Ben’s ‘Nam past, in particular where it comes to his preparations for his various attacks.

Laurel unsurprisingly becomes Ben’s first conquest in the novel; she is gradually drawn to his side, initially disbelieving her brother’s role in any Mafia business, but soon pledging to help Ben stop him. She has a secret apartment in the city, and there the two enjoy the first of what will ultimately be a few explicitly-rendered sex scenes; Messmann actually has ‘em go at it twice, back to back, but bear in mind the sex scenes themselves are written in the “literary” vibe Messmann employs for the series: “[Ben] touches…the calyx of ecstasy” and the like. So while the hardcore screwin’ is fairly graphic throughout, it is couched in that same sort of highfalutin style that Burt Hirschfeld would use in his own novels, to the point that the reader doesn’t know whether he should be getting hot and bothered or reaching for a dictionary.

Eventually the action transitions to Sicily, as Ben heads to Cavallo’s hometown to disrupt his plans there. But even here the sex slave stuff isn’t much explored; throughout we only learn about the financial aspects of it, or how exactly Cavallo is bringing the girls over. Rather it’s all about Ben shaming Cavallo by exploiting the overly-masculine dictates of the old world. Which is to say, Ben screws the virgin Cavallo plans to marry! Pretending to be Cavallo himself, Ben ingratiates himself into the local community, all of whom look up to Cavallo with much fear and respect. Due to various reasons, Cavallo has never actually met the girl he is to marry, nor her parents, so Ben successfully bluffs his way into their presence and makes off with the babe, claiming that he has decided to marry her earlier than expected.

Her name is Norma, and Ben takes her virginity in another explicit sequence, one that, as with the material with Laurel, actually features back-to-back banging. Turns out Norma is “built for sex” despite being a virgin…and when Ben drops the bomb that he isn’t Cavallo, thus “despoiling” the girl forever (we are informed that these old-school Sicilians would rather their daughters die than lose their virginity before marriage), she takes it placidly. Ben for his part feels “stained” for the heartless deed he’s done, but hell, you can’t call yourself “The Revenger” without ruffling a few feathers.

Once Ben has called Cavallo back in New York to blab that he just banged his bride-to-be, Norma drops a bomb of her own: she’s known from the start that Ben was not Cavallo, having managed to find some photos of the man. She went along with Ben because she sensed he would be her savior, taking her from the life she does not want with Cavallo. So Messmann gets his cake and eats it, too – Ben thus is not a liar-rapist, but a hero after all. Anyway, Norma soon takes off to hang out with a girlfriend, and we’re into the homestretch.

The finale sees Ben fighting against time as he tries to make various connecting flights and arrive in the US a few hours before Cavallo’s latest shipment of sex-slaves, which are being transported first by a Sicilian fishing boat, then to a private plane, and finally to a lumber mill truck that waits for them at Kennedy Airport. Carter Van Rhyne is so involved with Cavallo that the distribution center of Van Ryne’s lumber mill is secretly used as a sort of waystation for the imported women, who are then shipped out separately across the US. Ben wants to get there before them, set up an ambush, and end the entire affair that night.

Laurel of course manages to go along with Ben on his assault, which sees him blasting from afar Cavallo and the ten mobsters he’s brought along with him. Here Ben again uses his .38, as well as a Mossburg rifle. It’s not an action-centric finale, playing more on chaos and Laurel’s fear that her brother will be killed. And Ben for his part bizarrely enough tries to take Cavallo alive, wanting to deliver him to Captain Hendricks, who will then go about the process of legally taking down Cavallo’s operation. But seriously, what kind of “Revenger” would Ben be if he didn’t kill his man – first shooting off his kneecaps and then his ear for the desired intel, and then finally blowing him away when Cavallo lurches at him with his stiletto?

The story ends with Ben once again boffing Laurel in literary-smut fashion, with the intimation that Laurel is going to be Ben’s woman…for a time. It would appear that Messmann is giving up on the ongoing storyline of the previous three volumes; as we’ll recall, Ben was also quite serious about his leading lady in the last volume, even debating at book’s end if he was going to return to her. 

Messmann’s writing is good as ever, though – at least, if you’re looking for a little literary-style stuff with your mob-busting action. But at this point, Ben Martin is not much different from Messmann’s other series character of the time, Jefferson Boone; both are presented as more worldly and sophisticated than the average man of action, prone to brooding and introspection, well-versed in history and poetry and what-all. But so far I like this series better.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

The Amazon (aka Nick Carter: Killmaster #43)


The Amazon, by Nick Carter
No month stated, 1969  Award Books

Not having much in common with the average installment of Nick Carter: Killmaster, The Amazon is more of a jungle adventure. Jon Messmann served as the author, and the book couldn’t be more dissimilar to his awesome The Sea Trap; whereas that one is one of the best men’s adventure novels I’ve ever read, The Amazon is, well, boring.

One questions if Messmann just recycled an old pulp manuscript, as even AXE boss David Hawk wonders if he should get a “less sophisticated, less urbane” agent than Nick Carter for this latest assignment, which really just entails venturing into the Amazon jungle and locating an “electronic brain.” Hawk explains that this thing will “revolutionize missile-to-missile defense” in the customary Hawk-Nick briefing that opens the novel. And speaking of which, in the opening pages Messmann proves why the series was so much better in third-person; most of this sequence is written from Hawk’s perspective, which I thought was an interesting touch.

But when Nick heads down to the “Brazilian territory of Ampasa” in the “north flank of the Amazon jungle,” the promise of the opening pages disappears, at least for me. Nick’s got a safari jacket courtesy Special Effects as well as some fancy bug zappers and a retrieval wench that he can attach the brain to once found, for a plane to receive and pull away, much like the finale of Thunderball. The brain was being transported by plane, and when the plane crashed due to an emergency the pilot broadcasted a mayday. The Russians and the Chinese intercepted, and their agents are already here, as is a sadistic expat named Kolben.

Hawk has set Nick up with a local guide; Nick initially fends this off, saying that he doesn’t feel like dealing with “Pidgin English.” To his surprise (but not the reader’s), the guide turns out to be young woman named Tarita, super-sexy daughter of a local chief. Tarita was raised in Switzerland(!), and hence is now a “woman of two worlds.” She’s got the flowing “jet black” hair and awesome beauty expected of pulp, but her boobs must be the feature attraction, as Messmann refers to them at least twice per page. Really! “Full, peaked breasts,” “studies in grace,” etc; these things must be real beauties. Nick’s gawking at them constantly.

He really gets to gander at them when Tarita, who claims that she becomes more native the longer she’s in the jungle, doffs her top and goes around – in the jungle! – wearing nothing more than a sarong bottom, letting “the girls” hang loose. Actually they don’t so much hang as they sway, heave, and just in general provoke utter lust in Nick. I shouldn’t joke, though – Messmann well understands the genre he’s writing for. The girl’s breastesses should constantly be mentioned, as far as I’m concerned. That’s just part of the genre’s brutish charm.

An early problem arises with The Amazon as Messmann delivers a false premise: namely, that the Killmaster does not kill. As mentioned, Nick sees that the Russian and Chinese teams are already here, ready to go into the jungle. He’s confident that they will get bogged down with so many people to look after, whereas Nick and his sole guide will move quick. Then there’s shady Kolben, who also clearly plots to find the brain for his own motives. And yet when Kolben tries to kill Tarita the night before they depart – leaving a scorpion in her hut – Nick runs over to the guy’s house…and beats up a few of his men. Why “the Killmaster” doesn’t kill this man who is clearly a threat to him – not to mention the fate of the free world – is a plot error Messmann hopes we’ll ignore.

Most of the narrative is comprised of Nick and Tarita trading lustful looks while dealing with the harsh brutality of the jungle. Messmann piles on the expected “jungle horrrors” material, including an anaconda attack. This brings us to Atutu, a “little Indian” about to become anaconda bait before heroic Nick saves his ass. Now Atutu, who speaks “Pidgin English,” is a loyal member of the party, helping Nick and Tarita gather food and etc during the journey in-country. It’s around this point that Tarita explains “I feel wrong with more on” as she doffs her top and “lets them tit-tays go” (to quote the Impractical Jokers), and Nick can’t gawk at ‘em enough. (Atutu for his part seems to studiously ignore the “twin peaks” which are “studies in grace.”)

Messmann also delivers the “man’s conquest” theme that was central to ‘60s and ‘70s pulp. Tarita you see has developed “stubborn perversness” from her time in the West; whereas the average native gal would be subservient to Nick, Tarita constantly questions him and at times outright defies or challenges him. She has become “haughtily western” and mocks Nick’s “masculine ego.” To which he responds, “My masculine ego isn’t hurt, honey. But your little ass sure as hell will be if you don’t cut this out.” When she continues to defy him, Nick takes a measure unheard of in today’s era – he knocks her “little ass” right out!

Now, if you think this abuse would make Tarita hate Nick, you don’t know men’s adventure novels. Rather, her eyes showing the “banked fire” of desire, Tarita shortly thereafter leads Nick into a waterfall – and he finds her there waiting for him fully nude. Messmann again proves that he writes the most explicit sex scenes in the series, with a few pages devoted to this initial Nick-Tarita coupling. Not much is left to the imagination and Messmann here delivers more graphic stuff than you’d encounter in some men’s adventure books from a decade later. Tarita is Nick’s only conquest in the book, and Messmann, per tradition, has the Killmaster developing feelings for the girl amid all the jungle humpin’.

But sadly the Nick-Tarita stuff is about all I found interesting in The Amazon. The rest is stuff that could’ve come out of any piece of jungle pulp, with lots of detail about the flora and fauna and occasional attacks via tapirs and jaguars and “spider wasps.” These latter attack the Russians en masse as Nick watches – he saves them with those Special Effects gadgets – and Nick reflects on how it will likely be an attack from something else which will finally cause mankind to band together. This brought to mind Messmann’s later “sea creatures attack” horror novel The Deadly Deep, which saw this very event occur.

The action is more so Nick et al getting into and out of scrapes, with little of the gun fighting or martial arts combat you’d expect from the series. Kolben ends up taking out most of the “enemies;” getting the Chinese team killed by posing as them with his men in rubber masks that look like Chinese faces (which Kolben, who has lived in the jungle for decades, just somehow has) – thus prompting the local headhunters to kill the real Chinese in retaliation. And Nick strikes up a sort of working relationship with the Russians, saving them at one point and getting saved by them at another. Only the finale sees any action, with Nick in a fistfight with one of Kolben’s men and then a knife fight with Kolben himself. Hmm, the Killmaster versus an old fat guy. Suspenseful! 

Messmann ends the tale on a joke, same as he did in The Sea Trap, one again courtesy Hawk – Nick, back in New York, is invited by Hawk to a special screening of a new film. Nick takes along Tarita, who is now “Therese,” given that she has returned to the version of herself that is part of the western world. The movie turns out to be a documentary about the Amazon jungle. Nick and Therese laugh it up and then head back to Nick’s place for more sex. Even here Messmann delays, giving the impression that he was struggling to meet his word count, with a lame “will they/won’t they?” mystery, given that Therese acts all sophisticated and whatnot in her other incarnation and might not be as prone to illicit humping like “Tarita” was. No worries, though, as the Killmaster always gets his girl.

This one certainly wasn’t a favorite, but Messmann’s a good writer and he delivers enough fun and entertaining material that the somewhat-boring plot itself isn’t as frustrating as it could be.