Destroyer #3: Chinese Puzzle by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

I never saw the big screen adaptation of the Destroyer. From what I've heard, that's no big loss. In any event, I'm a late arrival to this action-comedy series by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. But after reading just this one installment, I understand why the series is so popular.

The plot is rife with Cold War intrigue, with a few twists to keep you guessing. It concerns a kidnapped general from the People's Army, and his attractive concubine. Remo and Chiu are dispatched to resolve this international incident.

Remo Williams is a regular guy. No, make that an exceptional guy. He's an old-school adventurer who happens to be learning a deadly martial art from a wizened master. Chiu isn't just exceptional--he's pretty much superhuman. We get some background on him in this book, concerning his native village in Korea, and the art he has mastered. He's also a hilarious smartass, who kept me snickering periodically.

There is an affection between these two heroes--that of a teacher for his gifted student, and the student for his incomparable master. And yet, we learn Chiu is prepared to kill Remo if ordered to by those they work for. Lucky for both Remo and the reader, this doesn't happen.

So whether you like action or humor, but especially if you like both, this book gets a strong recommendation from me.

Military Intrigue With Hints of the Supernatural: Ghosts of Babylon

Yet another veteran-turned-author has joined our ranks. With Ghosts of Babylon, R. A. Mathis has not just earned a place for himself, he’s carved out a rather unique niche as well.

The novel takes place during the occupation of Iraq. Stuart Knight, a professor of archaeology, has volunteered to be a translator for American forces (since he speaks some Arabic) with an ulterior motive: he wants access to the priceless archaeological finds he is sure are waiting to be discovered in the Sandbox. He is attached to a battalion-level command which includes Regular Army soldiers and National Guard, so there’s conflict to be found everywhere—not just between Kurds and Iraqis.

It doesn’t take that conflict long to heat up, either. A local terrorist known as Al-Khayal is developing more and more sophisticated improvised munitions to use against occupation troops. Captain Allen, an intelligence officer (not an oxymoronic title in this case) has an old score to settle with the phantom killer, so finding Al-Khayal is a personal obsession for him. Fellow captain Crumm and their C.O., Colonel Thorne, have their own agenda in-country, and it doesn’t line up with Allen’s.

Then there’s Hadi, the young Kurdish boy who likes to explore. He finds just the sort of archaeological treasure that Stuart Knight is looking for, and that puts his and his family’s lives in jeopardy. There are some adults willing to kill for the artifact, and Hadi eventually runs afoul of Al-Khayal himself.

To read the rest of this review, follow the link to Hot Extract.

One Second After by William R Forstchen

I've been meaning to read this one for a while. I like some of the TEOTWAWKI fiction/film that's been produced, and hearing the raves about this from "mainstream" readers, I figured it would be hard to go wrong.

I remember looking at a cover of Popular Science or Popular Mechanics back in the 1980s, showing a nuclear blast in the atmosphere above Kansas. The blurb said such an explosion could knock out electronic devices all over the United States. It was over a decade later before "Electro-Magnetic Pulse," or EMP, became a familiar term in our lexicon. With the Cold War over, most everyone assumed it would never be used as a weapon. But rumors were widespread that EMP devices were being planted under the highways as a means of ending high-speed chases.

Forstchen has written a novel which assumes there are still nations and organizations around the world with ill will toward the USA, and they cripple us with just the sort of EMP attack theorized by that magazine in the '80s. He speculates how things go in the first year after such an attack in one small town near Asheville, North Carolina. It's not really a survivalist novel, though it does document the community's efforts to survive.

The protagonist, John, has a few things in his favor. He's a retired Bird Colonel, and a professor of history, which enables him to plan and execute the defense of Black Mountain. His mother-in-law owns a couple functional pre-electronic ignition vehicles (not dependent on microcircuitry--therefore EMP-resistant). And he lives up in the hills where there is plenty of game to hunt...at first.

John also has some disadvantages. Primarily, one of his daughters is a diabetic, and dependent on insulin.

Forstchen concentrates on the medical side of such a scenario--with food availability being a related health factor. And it would be every bit the nightmare he describes.

An EMP wouldn't just knock us back to the 1960s or '70s (before our entire society became so dependent on electronics). It wouldn't just knock us back to WWII, or even the 1800s. Because of our ignorance of how things were done before the pervasive technology we now take for granted, it would be more like the Middle Ages. How many of us know how to farm? How many know how to turn wheat into bread (assuming you live within range of where wheat is grown)? How many can fix stuff when it breaks (without power tools)? You can hunt for food if you have firearms, or are knowledgeable enough to build your own traps or weapons (which you probably aren't). OK. But how will you prevent most of the meat from spoiling before you can eat it? How many even know how to start a fire? How would you transport the tons of crops from the west and midwest to the starving masses in the rest of the country before it rots where it sits?

Forstchen grazes these subjects while spinning this yarn. Again: this is not a survival story. And it sure isn't escapist entertainment. It's a warning. On a few occasions John wonders at why no precautions were ever taken against this very real threat.

(WARNING: political screed follows. Colored text.)

"Our" government is about 17 trillion dollars in debt last I had the stomach to check, and putting us millions deeper in debt with every passing second. What are we spending the money on? Bailing OTHER countries out of their problems, for one thing. Our tax dollars have already turned Red China into a superpower, and transferred our industrial capacity to them. And we're borrowing billions from them so we can give it right back to them in the form of foreign aid. (I dare anyone to justify that. It cannot be justified, so it is ignored.) Part of that astronomical debt has been accumulated by bailing out Wall Street, of course, and other institutions, at the expense of the middle class. It's being used to form, fund, train, equip and arm various organizations (standing armies, is what the founding fathers would call them) to infringe and eradicate our individual rights protected by the Constitution which every politician swears to uphold. The money's used to make those same politicians filthy rich on our dime, as they immunize themselves from the "laws" they pass for the rest of us. The money is heaped upon illegal aliens and the Parasite Class to bribe them into loyalty to the Democrat Machine and to continue to steal our elections. It's used to arm and feed our enemies in the Middle East and around the world, to topple existing regimes and replace them with even more anti-American despots. It's used to fund undeclared wars. It's used to prop up the hopelessly corrupt, incompetent, anti-American, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic would-be world government called the United Nations. It's used to fund an untold number of frivolous studies and "works of art;" to pay for infanticide, condoms and untold multitudes of political pork. It's used to cover up the unending crimes perpetrated by the present administration while funding their exorbitant vacations, concerts and shopping sprees even as those of us trying to earn an honest living (if we're fortunate enough to still be employed) have to deal with higher and higher cost of living as the wages we earn plummet in buying power.

That's just a glimpse of where this money is being flushed, as the government refuses to fulfill its legitimate functions (like securing the borders). Meanwhile not one dime of this astronomical spending is directed toward strategic missile defense, a civil defense infrastructure, or protecting our power grids from EMP. "Homeland Security" is all about planning for an offensive war against American citizens, evidently, and has nothing to do with protecting the homeland from attack.

And while this goes on, the nations that hate us (but are all too willing to accept our handouts) are acquiring the capability to knock us into Medieval times with relative ease.

Forstchen slips a few pointed questions into the narrative about why nothing was done before it was too late, but never questions the priorities of those holding the purse strings, as I just did. Understandable, for a number of reasons. What I've just done is considered "preachy." And "preaching" is only tolerated when hardcore leftists are doing it. Also, as obvious by an introduction written by Newt Gingrich this is a neocon novel. My definition of neocon: a socialist who wants a strong military and espouses lower taxation. 

In the Newspeak we're being trained to use, Marxists are called "liberals" and neocons are called "conservatives." I've just about quit using the term "conservative" (at least without quotation marks) because the term is constantly used to describe anyone not as devoutly left-wing as those who control the mainstream media. Don't let all the misnomers confuse you. Neocons split from the Democrats basically during the Cold War because Stalin and Mao were a bit excessive in pursuing Marx's utopia, and neocons prefer a more subtle and gradual, less violent means toward the same ends (as long as taxes are dialed down a bit while military strength is dialed up) while the "liberals" adore the likes of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez...Until/unless knowledge of their own despotism becomes too common.

The neocon disposition is evident in some of the solutions and policies conceived by the good guys in One Second After. But it's all plausible enough, and even though I would be classified as a dangerous kook in a TEOTWAWKI community presided over by the Forstchens or Gingriches of the world, One Second After was still a decent read for me. Enough attention was paid to character and conflict to keep me turning pages, and caring what happened next.

Full Asylum by Michael Isenberg

I didn't plan it this way, but reading this book kinda' fits into my recent mini-007 meme.

Our hero, overqualified software engineer Gimbel O'Hare, is a James Bond fan. The 007 character and his adventures speak to Gimbel's quest for excellence in what he does. In fact, there's a couple times when Gimbel suffers some sort of psychological identity displacement and imagines that he IS Bond...

Oh, wait a minute. The name is Dunn. John Dunn. Not Bond-James Bond. His operative ID and the name of Her Majesty's Secret Service are altered, as well. And Gimbel's not the only guy suffering this fantasy/reality swap. But that's just one element in Isenberg's delightfully absurd satire.

O'Hare works for Byte Yourself, a software company which has jumped from an entrepreneurial start-up into an empire--much to the chagrin of competitors and bureaucrats. Those competitors and bureaucrats have joined forces to bring down Byte Yourself, and Gimbel O'Hare is caught in the middle of it.

Full Asylum weaves together British superspy mania, professional wrestling, paintball and a charming cast of characters in a tale of office politics gone viral. Or should I say, gone pandemic?

Here's a notable line of dialog from a book which takes pains to be upbeat, or at least humorous, most of the time:

"...It isn't easy when everyone responsible for enforcing the law works for the criminal."

In the spirit of Ian Fleming, Isenberg has some nifty names for some of his characters as well: Cherri Tarte, Dora Jarr, Lacey Briefs...

If you're in the mood for some social satire with a lighthearted touch and a positive attitude, give this one a read.

Not as Lame as Quantum of Solace! Skyfall

Looks like I've got a little 007 theme going lately.

I've been going through Ian Fleming's books, and re-watching the Bond movies. After seeing Casino Royale a while back, it seemed like the film franchise was reconnecting with the roots. I also saw Quantum of Solace, and remember very little of it. If I had to describe it in one word, I'd say, "forgettable." But I'm usually willing to give someone another chance after falling flat, so I gave Skyfall a look.

I'll remember this one, so it's at least an improvement over the last Bond effort. But it's hard for me to classify it as a Bond movie.

Seems to me the film makers weren't trying to make a Bond movie--they were trying to make a typical blockbuster action flick: a formulaic Explosion Fest punctuated by chase scenes. In that they were successful. They also threw in a villain who is, basically, Hannibal Lecter without the cannibalism. And they tied it up nicely in the end to make it a reboot of the 007 mythos, with a new M, a new Q and a new Moneypenny.

There was a cameo by the 007 spy car from the Connery-era movies, too. The Aston Martin was never a very attractive vehicle in my opinion, so what happened wasn't as annoying as it was designed to be. But from the moment it appeared on screen I knew (modern action flick directors having a fetish for vehicular destruction) the sucker was toast. What goes through their minds, anyway? Do they fear that moviegoers will demand their money back if there's one less cinematic fiery blast in their cookie cutter plots? Or are they just too caught up in some kind of sick pyro-sexual thrill to think at all?

(It's also, like destruction of the Skyfall Estate, part of the formula: Take the character back to his roots, then destroy them. How many times is the Batcave going to be destroyed I wonder--or at least discovered by the bad guys and the entire population of Gotham City? As many times as you buy a ticket to see it, plus one.)

Skyfall is a crowd-pleaser, but could have just as easily been a Die Hard, Bourne, Taken or fill-in-the-blank series movie. Watch the videos--they sum up a lot of my thoughts on this movie.

42: Another By-the-Numbers Black History Jock Movie

I used to be a sucker for these movies. From Louis Gossett Jr. playing Satchel Paige to The Express: the Ernie Davis Story not too long ago, I ate this stuff up. But my enthusiasm has waned in recent years.

One reason this movie has a strike against it (pun intended) from the opening pitch is because the story has been told so many times already. It's difficult enough scraping up some originality for ANY jock flick, much less the Black History subgenre of jock flicks.

Most people still love to watch a silver screen depiction of an athlete overcoming adversity, beating the odds and earning some kind of great victory. Not easy to do without becoming predictable. Throw in the "color barrier" aspect from the Jim Crow days and not only is the outcome predictable, so is most of the conflict on the way to it. We know the hero is going to be persecuted by rednecks in the bleachers, on the opposing teams and in their own locker room. Bigots will deny them hotel rooms, seats on planes and buses, and rob them of good plays on the field with blatantly crooked officiating. There will be a gratifying scene or two of those bigots getting some measure of commuppance; a touching instance of a teammate overcoming his own bigotry to help the hero at a critical juncture; and of course the big Victorious Moment when the hero scores the big home run/touchdown/goal/knockout/three-pointer/whatever.

I don't know that much about baseball and have never followed it (though I played in Little League and plenty of sand lot games as a kid), but according to some quick Internet research, 42 is surprisingly factual (if chronologically tweaked). And yet while watching it, I couldn't help feeling that it wasn't about Jackie Robinson the man--Jackie Robinson's name was merely stuffed into the Hollywood Black History Jock Flick cookie cutter.

The film makers combined visuals, dialog and mood music at all the Big Moments for the desired effect, but to me this was just faithful adherence to a well-worn formula. It's hard to tell if there was much, or any, passion for the subject matter.

This lack of passion trickled down into the performance of most of the actors. The best I can score most of them is "near miss." I can't fault the players, who certainly seem talented enough. In the case of Robinson's wife, reporter Wendell Smith and both managers of the Brooklyn Dodgers, they just didn't have much to work with. They were given just enough screen time and dialog to mark off a box on the formula checklist, but not enough to contribute anything significant to the story. Nicole Beharie as Rachel Robinson, for instance, could have been instrumental in helping her husband temper the rage building in him from the injustice he suffered. It almost seemed like that's what we were about to see once or twice. But if the scenes were ever shot, they must have wound up on the cutting room floor. So the passionate embraces and expressions of concern which were included amounted to nothing more than boxes checked off. Successful stamps of the cookie cutter.

Even the lead actor Chadwick Boseman wasn't given sufficient opportunity to define the Jackie Robinson character beyond type. Harrison Ford, however, hogged the camera from beginning to end, mugging and hamming as owner Branch Rickey. So much so that the flick was more about him than about Robinson. There's no doubt in my mind that Ford used his clout as a big name movie star to amp-up his part, to the detriment of the film itself and the other actors in it. And critics may even praise him for "stealing the show."

Robinson (as well as American League counterpart Larry Doby, and trailblazers Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson) were exceptional athletes and remarkable men. Unfortunately, there's nothing exceptional or remarkable about this movie.

In addition to the formula being so overused, maybe Hollywood film makers are equally hindered, subconsciously by their own worldview, from crafting a noteworthy film on this topic. After all, to tell the story with any modicum of historical reality they must depict an individual who, through hard work, diligence, determination and a measure of God-given talent, fights his way up from obscurity, rejects mediocrity, pursues excellence and achieves it despite the many forms of adversity in his path--usually an offshoot of institutionalized group identity. And the individual's exceptional accomplishments did not come by way of entitlement programs or government handouts.

That's not a message Hollywood likes to deliver.

Some thoughts on the Bond of Ian Fleming and Hollywood

Thanks to Books on Tape, Blackstone Audio, et al, and now Audible Audio for my Kindle, I'm tearing through books at a steady rate during work-related travel.

After paying for my subscription to Audible Audio, I decided it was finally time to read the source material for the spy movies I grew up with. I had previously read Casino Royale and You Only Live Twice which were fairly good reads, but were quite a different flavor from the Bond flicks I'd seen. So anyway, I set out to go through the rest of the Bond canon in the order the novels were written. So far, in addition to the two mentioned above, I've read Live and Let Die, Moonraker and From Russia With Love.

The first Bond I ever saw on screen was Roger Moore. It wasn't until my teen years I began to see some of the Sean Connery flicks. I knew nothing about the literary Bond, and didn't favor one actor over the other, but I liked the Connery flicks better. My favorite became Thunderball. How can you go wrong with an underground battle between frogmen using spearguns and submerged jet skis?

My senior year in high school I got a chance to see Dr. No and I really liked it. Not many cool gadgets, but the feel of it was groovy, and Connery's Bond in this flick was one cool customer (closer to Ian Fleming's character, in my opinion, than any actor has come until Daniel Craig or perhaps Timothy Dalton).

Speaking of Timothy Dalton, I just saw License to Kill this month. Hollywood finally did to Felix Leiter what Fleming did to him in the second Bond novel. I was shocked to read about the fate of Bond's CIA counterpart in Live and Let Die, not just because it was gruesome, but because Felix Leiter had been a healthy, able-bodied staple in just about every Bond movie.

I'm sure this topic has been analyzed to death, so I won't ramble on too long. But reading the books does take some of the Bond mystique away.

The silver screen Bond is a supercharged exaggeration of the character in nearly every way, as are his adventures. The literary Bond has only used his "license to kill" a couple times in his career. The movie Bond kills anywhere from three to a dozen times in any given story.

One of those kills to Bond's credit, by the way, occurred during the war if I remember correctly. What war? Fleming's Bond got into intelligence work during WWII, and continued serving in that capacity into the Cold War. In the movies, he was strictly Cold War, and we were never given any indication how he got into the business. He was conceived in a test tube by M for all we knew. With all the reboots, I think even the Cold War origin will soon be swept back (if it hasn't already). And with the Daniel Craig films delving more into the Bond character than any previous flicks, we'll probably get his background filled in, too (retrofitted, of course).

Hmm. Just checking the canon, I realized I skipped Diamonds Are Forever. Have to remedy that. I was actually checking because From Russia With Love ended in an almost cliffhanger fashion and I wanted to see what followed it, guessing it would be You Only Live Twice. Nope. Dr. No.

Well, my Bond education will continue. Though the books are interesting, I don't like them enough to make them a priority. So this could take a while.

Day-by-Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne

I am new to Zombiemania and, truthfully, still an outsider. But my education has begun. My textbooks? The first two seasons of The Walking Dead, and this book.

Well, I also saw Night of the Comet back at York Theater many moons ago, as well as I Am Legend much more recently. Okay, technically IAL was about vampires, but they behaved enough like zombies for the movie to fit in the genre. I've also watched a variety of post-apocalyptic flicks wherein mutants behave pretty much like zombies, too. Seeing as how zombies originated in Voodoo, one could argue that even the zombies in "purist" zombie film/fiction aren't exactly zombies, either.

Back to the book: (I listened to an advertised "unabridged" audible audio version via my kindle/car stereo.) Bourne has written it in journal fashion, from the perspective of a Navy aviator living in San Antonio. It has a familiar TEOTWAWKI feel to it--the hero survives the initial catastrophe only to face the struggle for survival in a new, far more dangerous world. Enemies are everywhere--mostly undead--but he collects friends along the way.

The collection of basically decent, moral people band together in an effort to survive, facing death no matter which way they turn. There are many suspenseful scenes, some interesting locations, and the implied promise that the narrative will take us on an epic journey...

Then the book ends without taking us anywhere.

Afraid that I must have bought a glitched version with the last 2/3rds missing, I checked good ol' Amazon. My investigation turned up evidence that this book began as free zombie fan fiction on a blog. And now it makes perfect sense why there is no story arc or character development, and why it ended just when it had potential to get really interesting. Basically I paid money for some blogger's writing experiment.

And now I will end this post similar to how Bourne ended Day by Da

Cogar's Despair by Nate Granzow

As a rule, I try to avoid novels with a reporter protagonist. This is perhaps hypocritical, since my own entry in the Fight Card series, Tomato Can Comeback, is narrated by a reporter. In any case, Grant Cogar is well worth an exception to this rule.

Cogar's Despair is a fast-moving, fun read with some brilliantly developed characters and a plot that is far from predictable. And while it may be fun for the reader, the story is not always fun for Cogar--who is brought to the very brink of, um, despair a couple times. His misfortunes come via a combination of an impulsive nature, friends entangled in some dangerous shenanigans, some terrible (but humorous) luck, and bad guys who are flat-out bad, and proud of it.

I mentioned characters. Where Granzow really nailed it for me is in his hero, Grant Cogar. I like the guy. You will, too. You can't help it. He's somebody we can relate to, yet somebody who winds up taking heroic action when the going gets tough...without trying to be heroic. I'm tempted to compare him with Richard Sharpe from Bernard Cornwell's renowned series, because he's a man of action. But he doesn't necessarily want to be. He's not a super-stud or somebody who aspires to be one...it's more like he's just a loyal friend whose bad luck gives him a break now and then.

And there's a romantic element involving an Australian ice queen. It is handled in a believable fashion which added to the tension, kept me turning pages and, in the end, left me satisfied. In pulling this off, Granzow avoided the cliche`s and formulaic plot devices I've come to dread.

If there is a weakness in this novel, it's isolated to a portion of dialog toward the end between Cogar and his boss which is a bit too on-the-nose for my taste...the skinflint editor grudgingly admitting what an all-around great guy our hero is. It's a hard plot resolution to pull off without grating on me, I'll admit, but I would have liked something more subtle.

In short, folks, this is a very good read. I recommend it with no reservations, and look forward to the forthcoming Cogar's Revolt. If that one flows like this one did, I'll probably become a fan. Check out Nate's website (named after his other novel, which I now must add to my TBR stack) The Scorpion's Nest.

The Big Bounce by Elmore Leonard

It's no secret why Elmore Leonard is such a popular author--he writes some good, memorable books. What I've come to expect from him are (seemingly) unusual characters with serious flaws. Depending on how serious those flaws are, he runs the risk of making characters--even his protagonists--unlikeable.

In a nutshell, that's where he went wrong with this book. The story centers on two characters who border on the grotesque...morally speaking. I personally despise thieves, but that's what Jack Ryan is. His co-star Nancy isn't exactly a thief, but she's even more grotesque--a thrill-seeking brat who delights in ruining other people's lives for any or no reason.

Let me say a little about Nancy: she's a physically attractive girl. She knows how to use her attractiveness, too. She's a serial seductress who has ruined several marriages just to see if she could. She enjoys invading the privacy of others. She likes breaking expensive stuff that doesn't belong to her. She runs people off the road for the hell of it. She takes pot-shots at passing boats with a target pistol for no other reason than it might be fun. "It might be fun" is her justification for all of her sick behavior. With premeditation, she plans to murder someone for the same reason. And for the length of this narrative, her occupation is live-in whore. Or "rich man's plaything" if you prefer the author's more polite description.

Back to Jack: he's a burglar. I've mentioned how I feel about thieves. You know what I hate even worse than a thief? Somebody who screws over a person who has helped them out. The only likeable character in this book, for me, was Mr. Majestyk, who bent over backwards to give Jack a break. Does this loser appreciate it? Hell no. He lies and disrespects his patron throughout, and at one point contemplates stealing from him, too. At least Leonard didn't have him go that far. I might have stopped reading, then.

I've collected my share of favorite antiheroes--maybe that's why I like some of Elmore Leonard's other work. But it's hard enough reading about villains who screw people over with no remorse. Don't expect me to sympathize with "heroes" who do the same. I'd be a fan of Martin Scorcese's films if I enjoyed feeling slimy like this.

You call me whatever names you care to. My advice is to avoid this book.

Jim Morris and Hank Brown Discuss Classic Men's Adventure Spoof "Breeder"

For anyone who loves to read, I’ve got a great story for you. Have you ever owned a book that you enjoyed so much, you read it all over again every few years? Have you ever wished you could meet the author and have a conversation with them about that book? Well, folks, that happened for me.

Most people discover Jim Morris’ writing through his most well-known book, the autobiographical War Story. Some come to his prose by way of The Devil’s Secret Name or Fighting Men, from watching Operation Dumbo Drop (based on one of his stories) or from reading some of his magazine articles. I was introduced to his work via a men’s adventure novel which was a breed apart (pun intended) from any military fiction I’d read before. Jim and I discuss what makes it unique below, but I should mention up front that he is a boombastic writer. His prose in this novel especially appeals to me because the style is so much like the way I think and speak and joke around. However it happened, he really locked in on my wavelength.

Breeder has just been re-released in both paperback and e-book formats, and the literary landscape is more picturesque now because of that, so far as I’m concerned. So here’s our dialog:
 

HANK: First of all, Jim, thanks very much for taking the time to discuss this with me. For me, Breeder is one of those books I dust off every few years when I want to escape for a while and recapture the fun I had the first time around. Should a Fahrenheit 451 scenario unfold and jackbooted thought cops came to burn up all my dangerous literature, they'd have to kill me before I let them torch that book. Re-reading it is like catching up with an old friend and snickering together at some of our familiar "in" jokes.

JIM: I had started Breeder in Oklahoma, and when (editor Mike) Seidman took Sheriff of Purgatory, which had been published in a shorter hardback version by Doubleday I figured he'd buy Breeder, so I finished it. They paid me $3500 for it, and if they ever got any fan mail they never forwarded it to me. I was always proud of it, but I had no idea anybody else ever got what I was doing with it. Your review was the first and only reaction I ever got from anybody about it. I have no idea how many books were sold, because I never got any royalties, and nobody ever told me. When I asked Cindy (Manning) to do the cover she told me she liked it a lot, but she never had mentioned it before. I didn't even know she'd read it. Same with my son Crews. When I told him it was coming out again he told me he liked it too, and liked that it was dedicated to him and his brother. So I'm liking this new way of doing business. There may or may not be as many sales, but God knows the royalties are better, and writers have a much more personal relationship with their readers, which makes me really happy.

HANK: I’ve never been traditionally published, but I suspect this new author-reader dynamic is far superior as well. Also, I’ve never been quoted for a back cover blurb on a paperback, as far as I know. So it’s a double honor that I’m quoted thusly on the latest edition of Breeder. And the fact that I get to grill the author of one of my favorite books is just too friggin’ awesome for words.
This is a little embarrassing: I remembered a story one of your characters (Lady Strange) told the hero about her father, but I forgot where I "heard" it in between readings. I figured it must have been one of my ex-girlfriends, but couldn't figure out which one. (Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most. But that gives you an idea how much a part of my long-term memory this book became.)
I'll start with the generic question: What inspired Breeder? Where did it come from or what made you want to write it?

JIM: I read a piece in a newspaper Sunday Supplement section, oh, sometime about 1977. It was about a lab experiment which was basically the Breeder experiment. They bred sterile super-rats and those rats killed off the regular rats and took over their females. There was one breeder super-rat, and their fear was that it would escape the laboratory. I thought that would be a perfect setup for a satire about the exaggerated heroes in men’s fiction. It took a few years before I actually got around to writing it though. The first draft was titled SuperRat. Mike Seidman, my editor at TOR, convinced me that this title would not be a draw.

 HANK: I could second-guess that decision. “SuperRat” hints at the humor and outlandish nature of the novel, and might have drawn Harry Harrison fans thinking it was a spin-off of his Stainless Steel Rat—only to find out it was something even better…IMHO.

This book actually hit the shelves at the twilight of traditionally published men's adventure fiction. I didn't know the genre was being phased out at the time--being stationed at Bragg since the mid '80s there'd never been a shortage of the genre in the Fayetteville bookstores and I just took it for granted that it would always be available. In fact, a lot of that fiction had begun to grate on me. The invincible super-stud with the porn star endowment who could charm any nubile wench into the sack and then spring up post-coitus firing a 20mm cannon from the hip while espousing some sophomoric worldview to make Freud smirk...that had grown stale, striking me as too much like the grandiose self-image of some of the alcoholic Neanderthals I served with. So the way you poked fun at the conventions of the genre was one aspect of Breeder's appeal to me. And yet it was such a subtle spoof that plenty of readers would take it at face value.

I remember a college acquaintance once praising the "genius" of the Batman TV show in the 1960s, because the campy humor flew right over the heads of the kids who watched the show, but it slapped the adults in the face...letting both demographics enjoy it on a level where they were comfortable. While Breeder never approaches that ridiculous flavor of parody, you did walk a tightrope of sorts, crafting a narrative with appeal for both an audience that "gets it," and an audience that assumes this is just Ramsay Thorne's Renegade on steroids with some speculative fiction and social satire thrown in. I'd like to hear why you made that choice.

JIM: Basically I made it for fun. The kind of stuff I read as a kid was science-fiction, mostly. Later I graduated to a more elevated kind of men’s fiction. I was a big fan of Hemingway, James Jones, Vance Bourjaily, Joe Heller of Catch-22 fame... Then, later, in New York, I edited that kind of stuff, but also the men’s series adventure fiction. A lot of it I liked. Jerry Ahern was a good writer, and some others were terrific. My friend Hank Schlesinger wrote really good men’s fiction. But also a lot of it was the purest of crap. And I’ve never liked the formula of formula fiction. Anyway I thought it would be fun to exploit the genre and satirize it at the same time.

HANK: Somewhat related to this general topic, I guess, is the self-reflective comment on the genre early on in Breeder, made via Desmond, the hero's roommate. (How men's fiction protagonists are always uberstuds, never guys like Desmond.)

And I hadn't noticed Dale A. Dye's comment on the original cover until just now that Breeder is cliche'-free. Do you agree? Seems to me the whole point of Breeder is to highlight the cliche's of the genre, and amplify them to a nigh-ridiculous level while at it.

JIM: I’m not sure it’s still a cliché when you exaggerate it out of shape. You’d probably find English teachers who go either way on that. The idea was pretty much to laugh my ass off and keep the adrenalin up at the same time.

HANK: You were successful from where I sit. You had me snickering throughout, but certain parts made me laugh my ass off—like a scene after the recon of the local banks. Clendenning and Lady Strange are deciding which bank they want to rob first, cars they’ll have to steal for the getaway, guards they may have to kill, things that could go wrong resulting in their own deaths…stuff like that. During this discussion she glances at a bank brochure procured during their recon and remarks (and if she didn't make a tsking sound first, she should have), "My, these interest rates are just awful." I almost laughed myself into a stroke.

The way I shopped for reading material in those days went something like this: I drove to the bookstore, found the shelves with what I was in the mood for, and scanned for something that caught my eye. When something did, I'd pull it down, give the cover art the once-over, then read the back cover blurb. If the blurb intrigued me, I'd open it up and thumb through some random pages to determine if the author's style could hold my interest. Depending on my mood, if the book scored high in all criteria, I'd lay down my $3.95 for it (boy, those were the days!).

JIM: What’s neat about that to me is that, as an editor, that’s exactly how I tried to set my books up. I wanted a cover that would catch the eye from say the front door of a 7-11, or at a distance from a book rack in a store. The cover would draw you to the blurbs. The blurbs would draw you to the front matter, and the front matter would suck you into the story. You went the extra step of sampling the prose itself, which means you were an especially smart and dedicated reader. Actually I think you were the kind of reader I lived to reach, which is to say the same kind of reader I was before I got in the biz.

HANK: That is DA BOMM! I don’t think I’ve ever been so expertly baited before.

 As I mentioned earlier, I had dialed back a notch or two on my enthusiasm for men's adventure by then, so I was actually browsing the science fiction shelf when I found Breeder. It was a Tor book, with a southwestern landscape in the background of the cover art, and a firefight underway outside a small adobe village. In the foreground was a blond, bare-chested dude making out with what appears to be an Injun babe. Dominating the cover, though, was the hero brandishing an Uzi...inside a test tube.

JIM: So let’s pause a sec and give credit to Royo, the artist. He’s Spanish. I’d liked his covers I’d seen before and asked Mike to use him, which he did, and for which I’m glad. The current cover is by Cynthia Manning, the best commercial artist I’ve ever personally known, and who also has the added distinction of having been my second wife.

HANK: Now I understand how incomplete my own strategies have been. I should have married an illustrator, whose father is an ad executive/marketing genius and mother is a big wig at Amazon or something. (And then be very careful not to piss them off, of course.)

My attention so effectively caught with the cover art, I flipped it over to the back cover blurb, which read:

HE WAS A BREEDER...but he didn't know it. He only knew that America was torn by civil disobedience and strife and that his job was to help settle things down.

HE WAS A SOLDIER...Clendenning knew that, knew tactics, knew weapons. But he didn't know what he had been trained for, what he had been born for. If he had gone to the debriefing, things would have been very different. But Clendenning always did things his own way.

JIM: Another pause to give Mike Seidman credit for that copy. Mike and I had the odd distinction, at that time, of being the only action-adventure editors (I was working for DELL then) who were also veterans. Mike had been a leg MP in XVIII Airborne Corps at Bragg. We had another distinction in common. He had answered a call one morning and actually caught a rapist leaving the scene of the crime. The guy didn’t understand “Halthalthalt,” said very fast and low and so Mike blew his young ass smooth away. So he and I were the only action-adventurers who had ever actually killed somebody. Maybe that’s why he liked my stuff.

HANK: Breeder does have a rather morbid outlook, come to think of it. Maybe that’s another reason it appealed to me so much. I think it would have appealed to most of the grunts I knew at the time (those who were capable of reading/comprehending more than just a Bacardi or Everclear label, that is) as well.

After reading the blurb my eyebrows were definitely raised. So I thumbed through some random pages, and my eyes caught this phrase: "Hot rod Christian Indian Sorcerer." I probably did a double-take. I searched around and read the better part of a couple chapters right there in the store and found that one of the Geebees drove a badass Charger RT. Not one of these butt-ugly four door luxury sedans they call Chargers since the Daimler-Chrysler debacle. A REAL Charger. And another Geebee drove a hopped-up Corvette. That clinched it for me--there was no way I was leaving that store without buying the book. I'm still something of a gearhead but I was a flat-out fanatic in those days, and the only medium in which I could read about street machines was in the automotive enthusiast magazines (Hot Rod, Car Craft, etc.). For some reason, no author ever featured truly wicked machinery like that in novels. As it turned out, those cars played a very minor role in the story, but still I loved the fact that they were included at all. Was this a case of you merely fleshing out the stereotype of those you thought would constitute the corps of a Geebee movement?

JIM: Probably had to do with the fact that one of my favorite things to do in this world is to drive a beautiful, powerful car at a high rate of speed with loud stupid music in the background. I have very little mechanical knowledge, but, oh baby, I know what I like.

HANK (channeling the Big Bopper): Shantilly Lace, she had a purty face…

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. Beautiful, powerful cars ripping up the road in an orgy of high-octane mayhem—that’s freedom, baby!

There were several elements in Breeder that I knew something about. Aside from ROTC and the Rangers, you didn’t go into much detail on many of them, but what details you did include were spot-on (taking into account that this was speculative fiction, of course)—a piece of jargon or some other little nuance here or there—and I really appreciated that. The film makers behind the Fast and the Furious franchise are so blatantly ignorant about the subject matter of their movies that I refer to all their celluloid abominations as “The Lame and the Ludicrous.” Big respect to you as an author because, unlike those Hollywood hacks, you limited yourself to what you could present credibly.

The new cover looks cool. The infant brandishing the AK47 inside the test tube is great. But I still like the original cover, too.


JIM: All credit to Cindy on that. Like I said, she’s the best. But I did write the new cover copy.

HANK: Anyway, in the back cover blurb of the re-release, you now make it clear from the beginning that the breeder's entire upbringing was a charade with your Potemkin Village comment.

The first time I read it, you hadn't made it so slap-in-the-face obvious up front. I remember the first major clue for me was in Chapter One when Clendenning read his own article the paper, in which he opined that college football should be played between different schools instead of between frat houses. Hmm. Then he ambushes a sorority queen who is "glowing" and she utters narry a protest as he ravages her. Double hmm. (I must have forgotten the title of the book I was reading, and the blurb, and was anxious to get to the Charger RT.) Then when Clendenning kills his ROTC instructor in front of a class full of witnesses and there are absolutely no reprecussions I did another double-take. I was active-duty enlisted and at the time had never been to college or involved in ROTC at all. Even so, I was fairly confident that this sort of thing just did not happen.

JIM: I wrote those first chapters when I was still in Oklahoma. Later, in the University of Arkansas writing program I put that stuff up for evaluation by the writer’s workshop. I did that with satirical intent too, because some of the people in the workshop were soooo politically correct that I knew the rape scene would give them the leaping fantods, especially one jerk who had no sense of irony whatsoever, and who wrote the most boring prose I’ve ever seen in print. It worked too. He went into high dudgeon mode and called me awful names. Oh, it was so distressing!

Jim Whitehead, who taught the workshop, had to point out that the rape was stylized, and obviously written with satirical intent. But I loved to watch that fool froth at the mouth and flail about.

HANK: One of many reasons I never shared this book with any of my friends in college. Besides, according to your protagonist he didn't commit rapes--they were just "extremely rapid seductions."

To read the rest of this conversation, go to Hot Extract where it's published in its entirety. Also, Jim now has his own website you should visit: www.jimmorriswarstory.com. Some great articles and other info there!

Under Outlaw Flags by James Reasoner

Few people dispute that John Ford was a great film maker. Two of my favorite westerns were directed by him: The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In the latter, the bulk of the story is told in flashback to a reporter after the Wild West has been tamed. James Reasoner has employed a similar storytelling device in this novel, though both the "present day" setting, and the time period of the flashback, are skootched forward from those of John Ford's mythical tale.

Reasoner transports us back in time to the days when the Tacker gang was at large, and living large, even after the wilderness had become a garden (to paraphrase a John Ford theme as expressed in the aforementioned film). The Tacker Gang is a collection of likeable bank robbers. There is honor among these thieves, who visit a cathouse early in the novel, wind up losing all their hard-stolen cash to a crooked card sharp, then plan and execute a big job to replenish their coffers.

What develops from there is a heist-gone-wrong. Afterwards, a judge gives them the choice between prison and fighting the Hun in the First World War. They choose the latter.

These honorable thieves are men out of time, still living as if the West is Wild in the age of the automobile and the telephone. None more so than Drew, the narrator of the tale just dripping with anachronistic aw-shucks colloquialisms from a bygone era he doesn't fancy lettin' go of. Fortunately for Black Jack Pershing, these human time capsules come in mighty handy in the tussle against Kaiser Bill.

They fight as infantry and cavalry. They fight in the trenches, behind the lines, and a couple of them even fight in the war-torn skies over France. They even manage to pull another job while on furlough in Paris, though what they do with the ill-gotten loot afterwards is far more commendable than what the Tacker Gang was infamous for.

Under Outlaw Flags is pulp fiction (which if you've followed this blog for any time at all, you know is a compliment). It's a story which could feasibly have come from one of the popular western pulps of the 1950s-60s, if not from a western dime novel from even further back. It's an entertaining read with likable characters and hissable villains, set during a fascinating, transitional period in history that is often overlooked.