Pugilistic And Ballistic : Books That Blow Your Face Off #4

Today we have a selection of Motorbikes and Hutsploitation as we first go right up to the May 2010 Mack Bolan offering and then enlist in Cody's Army and unleash a flag waving good time!

"The bullets entered his face, leaving marks that looked like an angry case of chicken pox, and exited through holes that weren't much larger than the entrance holes.  But they did their intended job, scrambling the man's reptilian brain stem on their way through."

After realizing that I had not read a Mack Bolan book that was written more than 20 years ago I trundled down to the only place I know that carries the Gold Eagle line at a discount (The New England Mobile Book Fair) and grabbed up The Executioner #378-Death Run and gave it a read.  Not bad really, though I noticed that the story plays a lot like the show 24. Mack Bolan. Jack Bauer. Jack. Mack. Bolan. Bauer. Hmm....

Terrorists decide to blow up Los Angeles and we call CTU (no no, sorry) Stony Man in to action!  The unique and fun setting this time is a set up mixing Malaysians, Al Qaeda and a Phillipino Gang setting a MotoGP team to smuggle in Plutonium to blow up the city in order to get at some diplomats...and the rest of the city as collateral damage!  We spend as much time with the various factions as we do Mack Bolan in this novel. But nobody slays 'em like Bolan, even in the year 2010.  Mack has a cellphone, a GPS and tons of high performance bikes to zip around on during lengthy high speed ballistics n' rubber burning chase sequences.  

The villains are eeevil, this time we have a sadistic torturer reducing humans to lumps of flesh AND a meth dealer with a dog name McVeigh! Mack strikes down the bad guys in gory fashion, yet still manages to keep the human element that I enjoy as he takes at least one Spaghetti Western styled beatdown and mess up a few bits of his operation.  All in all, Death Run was a fun way to watch a stripped down season of your favorite action TV show in two sittings, yet still manages to retain the fun and flavor of Mack Bolan. 

In 2010 Bolan is a little more refined and tech support oriented, but fun nonetheless.  Sometimes the fun in an adventure novel is to get immersed in a different world, and I never expected to have an equal amount of motorcycle and car porn in my gun porn!!  But...it works, mostly because author Darwin Holmstrom brings his expertise in motorcycles to the table and makes it easy for a novice to understand and still meet the physics bending reality of high speed chases without going in to all out science fiction.  I'm sure that he was working on Let's Ride at the same time he was researching all of this material.

While the lead villains have moved to the terrorist cells of Al Qeada, Bolan remains Bolan and bodies and machines go BOOM while we are treated to a loving run down of all of the weapons the soldier uses in his never ending war.  The only knock I can really give against this, and it has little to do with the content of the book, is that I prefer the more dated adventures for the ambiance of the dated dialogue and attitudes.  Perhaps this is what brings me to the novels of the 70s and 80s so much, not only are they insane fantasy action stories, but they take me to a favorite time in exploitation film.  This is slick and technologically advanced fiction.  A great read, but I think I'm still more intrigued by Mack vs. The Mafia!

"It is a climate made for violence.

If that came their way, the men of Cody's Army were prepared."

Rah Rah Sis BOOOOOOOOOM Bah(m)!  Cody's Army is here!  Well, you can't even imagine how excited one of the authors of the book on Italian Action Films was when he saw that cover and that title.  Fred Williamson once wailed "I ain't going to no GottDamm Phillipines!" as The Black Cobra, but I've seen so many waterfalls and huts explode I just love that area of the world for some action.  And while it has many faults, Cody's Army delivers on action in big doses.  

Cody and his crack outfit are sent in to rescue an American family from the evil Col. Locsin and his "Flip" cronies, and the first 70 pages of the story are basically one huge infiltrate, rescue, destroy mission that sets up a subplot of a rebellious teenage daughter that goes native for a brief time so that Cody's Army has someone to protect for the remaining 130 pages.  Turns out, she also rats out her dad, who is working as an engineer, as an ex-CIA operative.   So, everyone wants him...but it all unravels as we meet up with at least 4 different groups attempting to pull of Operation Thunderstrike.  You have mean Malaysians, angry Philippino toughs, government officials and more.  But have no fear.  Cody is backed up by the President of the United States to just smash everyone in to tiny little bad guy bitlets.  And they do. 

While the plot is generic and the pace slows down to a crawl after the opening salvo, I found myself enjoying this book more for the authors attention to describing what is going on with the Philippines after the Marcos regime was forced from power than I was the 2 Star Generals damning Cody for being recklessness while asking God to love him for his heroism.  Action wise...it is fine, I liked the final assault sequence and helicopter battles quite a bit, but nothing goes as over the top as something like Killsquad, which left me feeling a little dry. 

I mentioned enjoying the period atmosphere in the Bolan review above, and it is true...Cody's Army would have made an excellent Cannon film, it has enough action as to not break the bank for a film company and the pace is almost exactly the same.  But this is a book and there is no budget to worry about.  I honestly never really looked at why all those 80s Philippino action films had so many insurgents, counter insurgents and corrupt government officials.  After a little checking, it seems that the author of this one had his facts straight. I may not have loved the book, but it did give me a nice way to appreciate all the action films I love.  Not that Strike Commando really needed a lot of clarifying-yet to use that old dubbing chestnut..But Still....

Non-Essential reading, but I will always love the title of this one...PHILIPPINE HARDPUNCH rocks!

Pugilistic and Ballistic - Books That Blow Your Face Off #2

Time for more masculine adventuring in the neo-pulp world with today's installment of Pugilistic and Ballistic--THE SLAVER EDITION!  Two titanic tales of flesh peddling, sex smuggling and vengeful vanquishing.  First up...Mack Bolan goes berserk in THE EXECUTIONER #60--SOLD FOR SLAUGHTER!

Bolan huddled underneath the rain of flesh and shrapnel, battered by the heavy-metal thunder of the blast.

Bolan finds himself on a rescue mission in a slave pit where a one time ally, Smiley Dublin the sexy Sensitive Ops Agent, has found herself imprisoned.  Luckily, Mack uses one of his mob Ace pseudonyms to pull off a rescue and demolish operation on her behalf. But it just leads to another case in the files of The Executioner as the seeds of the slavers evil are in need of being burnt out of existence, and Bolan will do just that. Following the stench of sold human skin all the way to Algiers (a place that seems to have bad connotations for Bolan as we are given an Executioner history lesson)-and straight in to the heart of human hate.  Toss in the fact that Smiley can't stay out of trouble and ends up right back in the hands of the grubby flesh merchants and beneath the torture instruments of the sadistic Countess-it is double time for the grisly gun muzzles of Mack the Mangler.  Parabellum punishment ahead!

I love Mack Bolan books. Good ones, bad ones, barely plotted ones, over plotted ones....they are always a fast and furious read.  This one is from 1983, which would put me right at 15 years old and about the right age for when I was most in to the Gold Eagle line.  While the sleaze is really off page for the most part, it is the unrelenting glee which Mack Bolan turns the bad guys in to human mulch that puts him in a class by himself when everything is working right.  Mike Newton knows how to keep plot straight forward, gun porn practically bludgeoning and manages to find intriguing ways for Bolan to bring the pain on a page to page basis.  

And he writes the phrase Parabellum Manglers a whole lot.  I'd love to use that as a band name.  

Sold For Slaughter may be run of the grist mill in everything but the action scenes-but if you are there for anything but enjoying the Jason X of ballistic mayhem do his thing then you will probably never encounter this book.  Start it at breakfast, enjoy your day, finish at bedtime...I had a blast.  I'm still enjoying reading the cover blurb, is it me or would a letter "a" make this much smoother?  Also note, the cover image is actually a FANTASY of the female agent. Woah!

I think there are more badguys mulched in the first 100 pages of this book than the entire run of Black Samurai. 

Brett picked up a fork from the table in front of the man who'd lit the match and thrust it in to the man's heart. The stunned, overweight Mexican gasped and fell forward into a plate of half eaten refried beans and chicken bones.

Ah the Ninja Master series (see review of #1 here)..."Wade Barker" is always welcome in my paperback perusal.  This entry see Brett Wallace now as a full blown Ninja for hire if justice is on your side character...and a missing TWA hostess becomes the target of his investigation.  She gets in to more than a little trouble on a Mexican layover, and instead of a little boozing and shopping, she ends up in a flesh market, stripped, shaved and available for test drives by anyone interested in purchasing her from the malefic General Estrada.  Lucky for this stewardess, she is Japanese and her boyfriend has access to the United Ninja Help Line!   Brett has his regular farewell sex scene and pulls his pal Jeff Archer along for a mayhem filled ride of sleaze and smashing just over the border.  

Reviewing number 1 I was surprised how low on the nastyometer it was, but not so here.  THIS is what I remember the series being like.  Besides the upped and more hardcore sex, the violence is all of the flesh shredding and pummeling variety-and the General gets up to things like sponsoring vicious cat fights and lesbian sex shows.  The hapless stewardess, Meiko, does get to bust some battle moves, but also finds that her first lesbian experience, performed under duress, gives her "explosive" orgasms-surely something her boyfriend at home will benefit from.  Also look for a near Cannibal Holocaust styled torture sequence near the books end that will leave a dent on readers.  That makes the books kick off castration look gentle.  Overall, a very nasty dip in to the deep end of American Ninja Exploitation Novels of the 80s.  

Since my last post I was informed by Ballistic Book Bearer John Grace that Ric Meyers is not "the" Wade Barker but "a" Wade Barker.  It makes sense as later books would be much more ninjariffic and martial arts oriented. These early volumes are only as exotic as shuriken belt buckles and the occasional lapse into Kung-Fu styled flashbacks, but I don't care. I dig 'em.  

Now, who exactly is this Wade Barker...I must know!