Showing posts with label Andrew Sugar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Sugar. Show all posts

Monday, July 13, 2020

Israeli Commandos #3: The Kamikaze Assignment


Israeli Commandos #3: The Kamikaze Assignment, by Andrew Sugar
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

I really enjoyed this third volume of Israeli CommandosAndrew Sugar follows sort of the same vibe he used in The Enforcer, focusing more on suspense and tension than outright action, but it’s all done very well. The characterization is a notch above the genre average, and there’s also a little bit of development for the overall series storyline – shame, then, that there was only one more volume to follow. Plus, there’s a part where our titular commandos are attacked by ninjas! 

Our protagonist this time is Dov Abrams, who starred in the first volume; Sugar seems to have developed the template of Abrams featuring in one volume and Gershon Yelinga, another Israeli Commando, featuring in the next – Yelinga was in the previous volume and mentioned in the first one, but we don’t hear a thing about him this time. I assume though he’ll return for the final volume. Otherwise Abrams is the central character, and he’s much more likable this time, less hot-headed. The plot also takes advantage of Abrams’s status as a famous heavyweight boxer – as we’ll recall, he’s known as “The Israeli Muhamid Ali,” which is just wrong on so many levels.

While Abrams is the central character, as with The Enforcer there are recurring characters who add to the storyline. For one there’s The Major, Abrams’s taciturn spy boss. There’s also Abrams’s boxing trainer and his entourage of sparring partners and the like. Most importantly there’s also Ronit, Abrams’s famous model girlfriend, Abrams being one of the few ‘70s men’s adventure protagonists with a steady girlfriend. Ronit gets to take part in this installment’s mission; there’s a humorous part later in the book where she informs a surprised Abrams that she’s suspected for a long time that he’s a secret commando for Israel, as it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out why he’s always calling for matches in unusual locations – locations which turn out to experience heavy terrorist-blasting action soon thereafter. Abrams wonders if this means that Ronit too will eventually be drafted into the commando network, but unless Abrams figures into the next novel we’ll never find out.

Abrams and Ronit are on vacation in the South of France and enjoying some fine dining when a pair of local racists come over and start badgering Abrams for being a famous Jewish boxer. This leads to a nice fistfight in the street, with even Ronit getting in on the act. This will serve as our only action sequence until much later in the novel, though. In fact this one might have the least action yet in the series, but as stated this doesn’t take away from the enjoyment factor. While I found the previous two volumes a little patience-trying, The Kamikaze Assignment moves at a fast pace and keeps you turning the pages. And as the title suggests, this one takes place in Japan; per The Major, a Japanese explosives expert with radical leanings has offered the PLO some newfangled guidance systems for mini-atomic warheads or some other such Maguffin, and Abrams’s mission is to head on over to Tokyo and get one of the prototypes before they can be shipped to Iran…and be used posthaste on Israel.

Abrams’ only cover for going to Tokyo is to challenge an upstart Japanese boxer, one who is well below him on the boxing totem pole…sort of like Apollo Creed challenging Rocky Balboa in the first Rocky. It is of course a highly unusual move, and further casts doubt on Abrams’ entire cover identity; both Ronit and his coach reveal later in the book that the only possible way Abrams could even want to challenge this guy was if it was because he needed to go to Japan on some sort of “secret” commando mission. As I say, the novel at least ends with Abrams’ entire team being aware of his secret operative status, which promises further series developments – something Sugar was known for in The Enforcer.

But one thing Sugar doesn’t bring to this series is the sleazy and lurid vibe of The Enforcer, which was almost fixated on breasts and nipples and the like, with hardcore sex scenes in the earliest volumes. Israeli Commandos is comparatively tame. Abrams’s few sex scenes with Ronit all occur off-page, and she’s barely exploited at all. I mean what the hell? This could potentially have something to do with the fact that Andrew Sugar supposedly became a woman sometime in the mid to late ‘70s; way back when I reviewed The Enforcer #1, a few people left varying comments that Sugar was really a woman, or that he was a man with a wife and kids, etc. Around 2012 I was briefly in touch with a guy who had met “Andrea” Sugar and who told me he’d been called as a witness in a trial Sugar had put together against Clint Eastwood, claiming that the Dirty Harry flick The Enforcer infringed upon Sugar’s series of the same title! This was in the late ‘70s and of course the trial was thrown out.

But anyway, this person told me that Andrew Sugar had become “Andrea Sugar” shortly before the trial, and made for a “handsome woman.” He didn’t know anything else about Sugar and was only called as a witness on the artistic aspect of the case, as he himself was a writer. What I found most curious is that nothing else was ever published by Sugar after the trial; the last thing credited to him is the 1979 Manor paperback The Cult Breaker (which curiously features a Clint Eastwood lookalike on the painted cover!), and so far as I can tell there’s never been anything by an “Andrea Sugar.” Prior to “the change,” Sugar had been fairly prolific (and always published under his own name), so I wondered why he would’ve stopped writing even if his gender had changed. I was going to do a post about this on the blog at the time, but just never got around to it, so these two paragraphs will have to suffice.

So off our heroes go to Japan, where Sugar doesn’t beat us over the head with the cultural differences or arbitrary travelogue stuff. The flight over begins the suspense and tension vibe that will continue for most of the novel, as Abrams is summoned to the cabin of the 747 and informed a bomb’s been discovered onboard. Abrams has been called because it’s known by the public at large that he grew up dismantling bombs and stuff, just part of the daily life of being a kid in postwar Israel. He defuses the bomb in a nicely-done scene, only for one of his entourage to die regardless, thanks to some cyanide in a mixed drink. Later at the airport there’s a bomb in a briefcase; at this point Abrams knows one of his people is a traitor, and of course it turns out to be some minor character we’ve never met before.

It’s more on the suspense tip as Abrams and entourage are hooked up with a training facility outside Tokyo, but his concern is how to get off the premises without their police security detail not seeing them. Abrams’s lack of training for the upcoming match – ie, the very reason the world thinks he’s even here in Japan – becomes humorous (intentionally so), and serves up another reason for his coach in particular to suspect that Abrams is here for another reason entirely. And here come the ninjas – one night Abrams and his group are roaming the camp grounds when Japanese men in black suits bearing swords come out of the shadows and attack them, leading to a taut action scene where Abrams and his boxer pals defend themselves with their fists. It’s not until later that Abrams is told they are ninjas, which he’s never heard of. The various attacks make Abrams suspect there are two different factions trying to kill him, and he turns out to be correct, but the main threat centers around the Eijiro Electronics headquarters, owned by the radical who plans to sell his missile tech stuff to the PLO.

There are interesting scenes throughout, like a late-night soft probe Abrams makes on Eijiro, where he discovers the grounds are guarded by giant mastifs in addition to high-tech sensing devices. Sugar brings something else to the series that he did The Enforcer: a theme, something you don’t often find in the men’s adventure world. The theme is “Israelis are born survivors,” and Sugar successfully displays it throughout, from Abrams’s childhood familiarity with defusing bombs to the various members of his entourage willing to put their lives on the line for Israel. It’s especially displayed in the taut (but brief) climax, in which a battered, beaten, and bloody Abrams gets in the ring with the Mike Tyson-esque Japanese boxer, about the only thing fueling Abrams his fiery will to survive.

The action doesn’t really pick up until Abrams and team make an attack on a terrorist hideout, a very well-done scene which has them setting up some oldschool tricks like wiring up a door so that it electrocutes whoever touches it. The biggest action scene is on the night of Abrams’s big match; he rightly suspects it’s the only day the police guard won’t expect him to try to sneak off the training compound – given all the attacks on his life, Abrams has been placed under 24-7 police guard. They hit the Eijiro facility, wiping out hordes of terrorist scum, with Abrams delivering brutal justice with a .357 bast to Eijiro’s face.

This is where most novels would end, but Abrams still has a heavyweight boxing match to attend! Even though his right arm has been so injured he can’t use it and he’s got shrapnel wounds on his ass. In a half-daze he’s driven to the arena, where he demands that his coach give him some painkiller shots and stitch up his ass wound, insisting that he can still fight. I thought Sugar would have the fight called off, but it really happens – and not to blow any spoilers, but it is very much in the Mike Tyson mode, as Abrams has that Israeli fire in him and basically destroys the dude, using just his left hook, in a couple seconds.

So if this is the last we’ll see of Dov Abrams, it’s at least a bad-ass way to go out. As mentioned there’s a lot of opportunity as Abrams’s entire entourage is now aware of his being an Israeli Commando, with the potential that they’ll now be able to help him out on his future assignments. But it seems that Sugar developed a revolving protagonist setup for the series, so I suspect this will indeed serve as our farewell to this particular Israeli Commando. Overall though, The Kamikaze Assignment was a lot of fun.

Monday, April 2, 2018

Israeli Commandos #2: The Fireball Assignment


Israeli Commandos #2: The Fireball Assignment
No month stated, 1974  Manor Books

Here’s another series I took too long of a break from. The second Israeli Commandos is more entertaining than the first, and also proves that the series title should be plural, after all; it appears that Andrew Sugar intends to focus on a different “Israeli Commando” each volume, rather than the “team” concept I assumed from the series title. Last time it was “Israeli Muhammad Ali”(!!) Dov Abrams, this time it’s former American turned Israeli citizen Gershon Yelinga.

Abrams opens the book, lending the impression that he will again be the protagonist; he’s in Syria, taking out a machine gun nest, not aware that this latest Israeli-Syrian war has ended within the past hour. He’s assisted by a young man with no experience; this is a recurring theme in The Fireball Assignment, as both Abrams and Yelinga consider themselves “old” and surrounded by young, inexperienced Israelis. This is a taut scene, more thrilling than any in the previous book, as Abrams worms his way through barren terrain toward the machine gun emplacement while the kid acts as a diversion. Abrams succeeds, killing the two Syrian soldiers, but the kid ends up setting off buried mines after all, killing himself and injuring Abrams.

Here's where we learn Abrams won’t be the star of the show; when next we meet him, he’s in the hospital and temporarily blinded. The Major, Abrams’s intelligence boss, mourns the fact that Abrams won’t be able to go on this little assignment that just came up. No big deal, though; the Major will send Gershon Yelinga, who as we’ll recall appeared in the previous book as a supporting character. After this Sugar drops Abrams, still fretting in his hospital bed over all the people he’s had to kill in his military career, and we never go back to him. The ball’s firmly in Yelinga’s court, and to tell the truth I think he’s a more likable protagonist.

Like Abrams Yelinga is “older,” at least so far as his fellow Israelis are concerned: he’s 41, and has spent his career on the field. But as with most Sugar protagonists, Yelinga is plagued with self-doubt and occasionally tempts himself with the thought of falling in love and quitting the warfare game. This is a common trend in Sugar’s work, and even a glue-sniffing kid could tell you that tradition demands that something bad will happen to the woman in question before book’s end. Surprisingly enough, this doesn’t happen here – Sugar delivers the expected emotional gutting in a different manner.

Another thing about The Fireball Assignment is that it’s packed with action, particularly when compared to Sugar’s Enforcer novels. While I loved them – but unfortunately a re-reading of The Enforcer #1 the other year didn’t thrill me nearly as much as my first reading did – those books were methodically-paced at best. Given this I wondered if Sugar would be able to do a more action-based series. He proves without a doubt that he can, but be warned that The Fireball Assignment is too long for its own good, coming in at 190 pages of small print – meaning that, while it does feature frequent action, too much of it is of an arbitrary nature.

Yelinga’s assignment is to head back into Syria and detain a former CIA operative who has gone over to the Arabs. His name is Morris, and, like Joaquin Hawks, his belt buckle is a disguised .38. Yelinga, like Abrams, is given an untried youth for his comrade, and together they venture to Latakia and collect Morris, catching him in bed with a young hooker; yet another taut scene. And a scene that ends similarly to the previous one; Yelinga’s kid partner pulls a dumb move and ends up dead, the whore too. But Yelinga gets Morris, takes him aboard a sub, and there a ghoulish Israeli intelligence doctor breaks the former agent with heavy-duty drugs.

Morris was in Latakia as he’d been contacted along with other foreign agents by the PLO, which has something nefarious in mind; all he knows of it is the codename “Fireball.” The Major now tasks Yelinga with a new assignment – he’s to go back to Latakia, but this time posing as Morris. So back goes our hero to Latakia – which us men’s adventure die-hards know as the place where Nick Carter gets the tobacco for his specially-made cigarettes – and meets Morris’s contact in a sleazy bar. Sugar does a good job of capturing the uncertainty of Yelinga’s actions, of how he carefully wades into this dangerous situation, relying on his experience while fretting over how “old” he is for this stuff – another theme of the novel, and perhaps Sugar’s oeveure in general.

The PLO thugs reveal that “Morris” is part of a team of foreign mercs, and each member is being given a female minder – and of course it’s a sexy Arabic babe. Yelinga’s is named Marta and our boy is checking out her “large breasts” posthaste. Sugar doesn’t seem too privy on the workings of radical Muslim terrorists, as he has the PLO crew drinking champagne in a toast to “Morris.” But it conceals a knockout drug, and Morris wakes up on a plane bound for Mexico. Turns out his PLO contact Ald wasn’t as trusting of Yelinga’s story as he claimed; this even after Yelinga has killed a captured CIA man to “prove” he was really Morris. In reality, Yelinga was putting the poor tortured bastard out of his misery.

One of those arbitrary action scenes occurs here, and indeed is the incident depicted on the cover; the contact at the private airfield in Mexico turns out to be a hijacker, one who has incorrectly guessed that the secret cargo coming in on this chartered plane must be some sort of valuable contraband. This leads to a big firefight, Yelinga getting badass with an appropriated grease gun. Sugar as ever gets pretty gory in his action scenes, with nice detail of exploding guts and heads. Curiously though he keeps referring to an Uzi as an “Ubi,” but that could just be the usual subpar Manor copyediting at work.

There follows an interminable sequence where Yelinga and Marta have to sneak across the Mexican border into the US (we’ve gotta build that Wall, man!). It just sort of goes on and on, Yelinga racing against the clock to get to the secret meeting house in Corpus Christi in time for the pre-arranged meeting with the other mercs. That being said, he and Marta still find the time to finally get around to screwing; Sugar doesn’t get as explicit as he did in some of the earlier Enforcer novels, but you at least know something naughty is happening. Upon their arrival at the meeting house Yelinga meets the other mercenaries hired by the PLO; they’re from all over the world, and each of them have their own female minders. The boozer Irish merc tries to swap babes with Yelinga, but our boy says no – per the usual Sugar template, Yelinga has begun to fall in love with Marta.

Yelinga though is quickly outed as not really being Morris – the nervous former CIA agent in charge of the plot hired everyone personally, thus knows Yelinga is an imposter. Not that he kills Yelinga straightaway. Instead he keeps him on ice, figuring the CIA has hatched onto the plot and sent Yelinga to spy. And it turns out the “Fireball” plot is to blow up some Texas refineries in Galveston, the team operating out of a chartered ship. But Marta, herself in love with Yelinga, frees him: “Yelinga finally realized that Marta was committed to him. To him and not to America, politics, ladies’ liberation, or any other ideal.”

The climax sees Yelinga in desperate battle against the mercs who have become his sort-of friends; that hidden belt-buckle gun comes into play in a memorable moment. But Sugar rushes through the part where Yelinga stops the refinery destruction – not even killing the guy behind the plot, who ends up going soft at the last moment and unable to proceed with his plan. Even more bizarrely, Sugar completely leaves off-page a part where Marta takes on and captures the other five female minders; Yelinga finds her holding a gun on them and easily keeping them in line. Instead the finale is more focused on the growing love between Yelinga and Marta, a love that is blown when she accidentally learns Yelinga’s an Israeli.

Going insane that she betrayed her people over a “filthy Jew,” Marta has to be pulled kicking and screaming out of Yelinga’s hospital room. This after she’s spit in his face and tried to claw at him. For his part Yelinga takes it all quite pragmatically, figuring theirs was a love that could never last…then he starts to think maybe it could last, at that. Marta, thanks to his request, is to be given a US citizenship and a clean slate, given her aid in stopping the Fireball plot, so who knows, she might cool off after a time.

Doubtless Marta will never be mentioned again, anyway, as there were only two more volumes in the series, and if the first two are any judge, they might feature a different protagonist than Gershon Yelinga. Overall though I enjoyed The Fireball Assignment, but it could’ve used a little pruning.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Israeli Commandos #1: The Aswan Assignment


Israeli Commandos #1: The Aswan Assignment
No month stated, 1974  Manor Books

When Lancer Books when out of business in September 1973, the Enforcer series was in limbo (that is, until Manor Books brought it back in ’75, reprinting the Lancer originals as well as two new installments). In the meantime it appears that Andrew Sugar took his services proper to Manor, and created for them this obscure, four-volume series that was “as timely as today’s headlines,” per the hyperbolic back cover.

Israeli Commandos is much different from The Enforcer, and judging from this first volume, not as good. On the plus side, it’s more action-focused than that earlier series, but on the negative side, it just isn’t as compelling or interesting. This series just has a completely different feel – and hell, protagonist Dov Abrams doesn’t even smoke, which is a huge difference from the cigarette-loving Enforcer books!

Abrams is 28, Israeli born, and a world-class heavyweight boxer. In fact we learn the press has dubbed him “the Israeli Muhammad Ali,” which is just wrong on so many levels. Also, you’d think a top-secret commando would have a less-visible cover, but whatever; every few months Abrams’s handler, The Major, comes out of the woodwork to task him with some impossible mission. Then Abrams shaves off his full beard (the Major’s idea of a disguise), gears up, and goes out into the field to fight for Israel. The series title is plural, but really it would more accurately be called “Israeli Commando,” as Abram works solo, being provided with different contacts on his various assignments.

The current mission, Abrams contacted by the Major seconds after having won a heavyweight match, has our hero venturing into Egypt, where intel reports that Arabic terrorist faction Black February plans to blow up the Aswan Dam. Abrams, an underwater demolitions expert, knows that the dam can’t be blown up by normal means, but the terrorists merely intend to make it appear that the dam was attempted to have been blown up – by Israelis. And to do so they will plant the corpses of two Israeli frogmen there, so it will seem clear that they were behind the plot.

Per the Major’s briefing, Israel isn’t held in high esteem in the current world view, mentioning the “recent” downing of an Egyptian airliner in Israeli airspace (an event which happened in February 1973). Therefore, Black February hopes to sow further dissent against Israel by making it appear that the Israelis tried to blow up the Aswan Dam. Abrams’s mission is to head into Egypt’s Eastern Desert, find the two terrorist convoys which reportedly will be converging on Aswan, and to rescue the two captured Israelis (both of whom are friends of his) who will be turned into decoy corpses as part of the plan. If Abrams can’t save them, he’s to kill them, something which causes much gnashing of teeth…and even the desire to be a smoker!

The middle section is heavy on the desert action, with Abrams parachuting in and hooking up with two young contacts, Chaim and Ben-Al. After lots of camel-riding and sandstorm-evading they come across a group of Black February terrorists, most of them Arabic-American mercenaries. These are old-school terrorists, by the way, more concerned with public opinion than killing innocents; when Abrams poses as a lost American and stumbles into their camp, the terrorist leader requests that, when he returns to civilization, Abrams make it clear that he was saved by Black February. Also throughout the novel there is repeated efforts by the various parties to treat their captives well, and etc. All of which is to say, the entire affair comes off like a gentleman’s sport when compared to the modern day.

Anyway a firefight ensues, and here Sugar proves the major difference between this series and The Enforcer, with Abrams blowing away terrorists with his .357 Magnum and the two contacts whittling them down with Galil rifles. The leader survives, though, and here begins the first instance in which Abrams ensures he’s well tended-to with treatment and bandages. Also here Abrams hooks up with Gershon Yelinga, New York-born and raised soldier who has immigrated to Israel to become one of their top commandos. Older than Abrams by a few decades, Yelinga provides the novel’s humor, poking fun at Abrams amid the mayhem.

Another action scene soon follows, with Abrams using plastique to blow up an Egyptian tank. In the melee the captured American terrorist escapes on a jeep, and Abrams and Yelinga split up, Yelinga heading for Aswan and Abrams for the small town of El-Bemi Saff, where the terrorist has apprently fled. Here Abrams meets up with another contact: Zohra, a fellow sabra (ie Israel-born) who poses as a dancer in an Arabic cafĂ©, where she sleeps with the owner and clientelle as part of the job. She immediately throws herself on Abrams, telling him he’s the first non-Arab she’s been with in months. Cue a fairly explicit sex scene, though nothing to the level of the early Enforcer volumes. 

Zohra later informs Abrams that not only was the Arab-American who escaped a well-known terrorist who goes by the name Al-Sakr (ie, “The Falcon”), but also that he is behind the entire plot to blow the Aswan Dam. But when the Falcon gets the jump on the two, the book begins to drag, even though it goes from one action sequence to another. It’s all just sort of drawn out. First we get this over-long firefight in Zohra’s apartment, with the Falcon and a few comrades with AK-47s blasting away at the pair, and since Abrams only has 3 bullets in his Magnum, he has to pull off some MacGuyver moves to rig up explosives with whatever junk is at hand.

There follows more plodding stuff as Abrams and Zohra first steal a truck and then try to steal a small airplane, to catch up with the perennially-escaping Falcon. While waiting for the plane to be repaired, Abrams and Zohra go at it again, right there on the desert sand. The best action sequence in the novel follows, as they take the plane and, while Abrams flies it, Zohra blasts down at the terrorists from her window with an AK-47. This whole section is pretty gory, with even camels buying it in graphic detail. However Zohra herself gets hit by the flying bullets, and Sugar delivers one of the most comically-overdone deaths of a female protagonist I’ve yet read in a men’s adventure novel:

At four thousand feet, [Abrams] leveled off and reached for Zohra to see how badly she was wounded. But his hand went right through what was left of her face and his fingers scooped out handfuls of bloody brain matter as he quickly withdrew his hand. One of the Arab blasts had caught Zohra in the face and chest, and the once-beautiful and exciting face was gone, shattered into red splotches covering the inside of the cockpit. Where her sensuous eyes had been, there were now empty sockets. Empty holes where blood puddled and congealed. 

All of which is to say, she’s dead. Abrams crashes the plane and survives it, managing to fling himself out with Magnum blazing, but he still gets caught…and wakes up in a room facing the Aswan dam, where the Falcon and an obese comrade have Abrams tied to a chair in rawhide ropes. They’ve also captured Yelinga, who is similarly tied. The two are informed that when the rawhide dries, Abrams and Yelina will die horrific, excruciating deaths. However Black February has been whittled down to just three men, and the Falcon goes off with the third member to plant the bombs underwater. 

It’s the climax, but it’s just kind of boring. Abrams and Yelinga get loose and appropriate scuba gear, using icepicks to kill the frogmen terrorists. One of them of course is the Falcon, and it’s one of the more anticlimactic villain deaths I’ve ever read; even Abrams feels disappointed, and jumps back in the water to confirm that not only the Falcon is dead, but also that it was Abrams himself who killed him! The two captured Israeli frogmen are saved, the plan is thwarted, and that’s that.

One of the main problems with The Aswan Assignment is Dov Abrams himself; he just comes off as too rough around the edges, too immature and prone to throwing temper tantrums. It seems like every other paragraph Sugar is informing us of Abrams’s “bitching” and “cursing” about some setback or inconvenience. There are many moments where he’ll curse and mutter to himself for like an entire paragarph before he comes up with an idea. I mean, he just comes off like an annoying hothead, and he’s nowhere in the category of Alex Jason, who was actually an interesting protagonist.

Sugar’s writing, which I usually consider to be great so far as the genre goes, comes off as uninspired. Despite the plethora of action (at least when compared to the Enforcer books), The Aswan Assignment just plods along, with nothing really making it stand out. That being said, I’ll still of course be sure to read the ensuing three volumes.

Monday, December 31, 2012

The Enforcer #4: Kill Deadline (Manor Books edition)


The Enforcer #4: Kill Deadline (Manor Books edition)
No month stated, 1979  Manor Books

As I mentioned in my review of Kill Deadline, the 4th volume of the Enforcer series, Manor Books failed to reprint this particular installment when it took over the series in 1975. The original edition of Kill Deadline was published by Lancer Books in 1973, and was the last volume of the series that Lancer released.

When Manor Books began re-releasing the novels in 1975, they issued each of the Lancer originals with new covers (and in the case of Enforcer #1, a new title – “Caribbean Kill”). My guess is it must’ve been an oversight which prevented Kill Deadline from being reprinted with the rest of the Lancer originals. Anyway, Manor finally got around to it in 1979, four years after the others had been reprinted, and six years after the original Lancer Books edition.

But boy did they screw up with this printing. For one, take a look at that title. They have Kill Deadline as “#6” in the series, when in reality it was #4. I assume Manor was trying to fool people into thinking this was a “new” installment…and also, if you count the Lancer originals that Manor reprinted (Enforcer #1Calling Doctor Kill, and Kill City), plus the two "new" Manor originals (Bio Blitz and Steel Trap), then this would actually be the sixth volume, at least in order of publication.

I once read somewhere that this Manor edition of Kill Deadline was supposedly a wholly new book, just with the same title. Sadly, that’s not true. The Manor edition of Kill Deadline is the exact same novel that Lancer Books published in 1973. Even the cover is the same – Manor couldn’t even be bothered to commision a new cover for it, as they had for the others.

Again looking at the cover, you’ll notice something is missing – namely, a byline for series author Andrew Sugar. Manor only put Sugar’s name on the spine, and even here they goofed: see if you can spot what’s wrong in the picture below:


My favorite thing about this Manor edition though is the back cover. Clearly written as an overview of the Enforcer series but written by someone who’d obviously never read a single volume of it, this back cover synopsis makes the series sound like some sort of pulp-horror hybrid:


The blurb on the first page is also enjoyable, offering more vague (and misleading) hyperbole instead of the customary excerpt from the novel itself:


This Manor edition of Kill Deadline is easily the rarest volume of the entire Enforcer series. It took me a long time to find a reasonably-priced copy; what few copies are out there generally start at around a whopping $50 or more. But I had to find a copy…mostly because I really hoped this was some heretofore-“lost” installment of the series, but also because I’m just such a geek about The Enforcer. It’s like my Star Wars, I guess.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Enforcer #6: Steel Trap


The Enforcer #6: Steel Trap, by Andrew Sugar
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

It’s not numbered, but this was the sixth volume of the Enforcer series, taking place a few months after the preceding volume, Bio Blitz. Ironically enough, just as Bio Blitz harkened back in some ways to Enforcer #1, Steel Trap harkens back to #2: Calling Doctor Kill. It follows the same template, with our cloned hero Alex Jason once again venturing into a high-security location, pretending to be someone he’s not. And like that second volume, Steel Trap starts off strong but gets lost toward the end, delivering an anticlimatic finale that seems dashed off.

Overall the novel is much better than Calling Doctor Kill, though, and Andrew Sugar’s writing is up to its usual level. I still say this guy was one of the unsung masters of the men’s adventure genre, and one of these days I intend to re-read the Enforcer series in full – I like it that much. Also, after the stagebound affairs of the middle books in the series, Sugar has better figured out how to meld action scenes with introspection-heavy sequences; it’s not up to par with Bio Blitz, but Steel Trap does offer some nice and violent set pieces amid the philosophizing and ruminating.

As seen in the previous volume, Lochner, Jason’s arch rival and nemesis of the John Anryn Institute, has been killed (by Jason’s “fat” boss, Flack, no less). You’d think Sugar would open it up and introduce some other villain, but no; Jason and his fellows are still dealing with the remnants of Lochner’s syndicate. It seems that many of them are unaware that Lochner’s dead, and so the Institute is keeping it a secret so as to lure some of the syndicate bosses out into the open.

One of them turns out to be a guy named Spevic, who was in an experimental prison in California, a place nicknamed San Angie. Spevic was tossed out of a top floor before he could deliver evidence on who among Lochner’s successors was next in line to run the syndicate. He’s contacted the Institute and, in exchange for a healthy clone body, the now-paralyzed Spevic will tell “Big John” (as the Institute is called) everything he knows.

This develops into the first of a few gory action scenes, this volume being the most violent I believe since Enforcer #1. Jason and a few redshirt clones sit in a van and wait to ambush Spevic’s police caravan as he’s driven through the desert, on his way to a hospital – Flack’s nephew Hamilton, a fellow Institute employee who works as the doctor in San Angie, is on board and the key to Jason's plan. But Jason and his crew are themselves ambushed, by a helicopter filled with mercenaries bearing M-16s. (Sugar never really explains who these guys are, or who sent them.) But here we have heads exploding and Jason blowing off arms and legs with his handy laser pistol.

When Spevic ends up a casualty of the ambush, Jason goes back to square one. Back at the Institute HQ in New York, he continues to brainstorm with Flack, Hamilton, and Institute head scientest Rosegold – that is, when he isn’t having a drink or a smoke or sex with his girlfriend Samantha. Sam as you’ll recall was introduced in the previous volume, and again she doesn’t bring much to the tale, quickly shunted off to New Mexico for some project for Rosegold.

Sam though is similar to Brunnie, Jason’s girlfriend from way back in the first volume – like Brunnie, Sam is a clone, and also a decade or so older than Jason himself, even though they both live in eternally-young clone bodies. Steel Trap in fact opens with a good scene between these two, with Sam taking Jason to “Club Nostalgia,” a 1940s-themed bar which brings back memories for Sam; after which they go park in Jason’s car for some 1950s-style backseat shenanigans. (Sugar also sets a precedent for the number of times an author can mention a female character’s breasts; he nearly runs out of adjectives describing Sam’s, which apparently must be friggin’ stupendous on her current body.)

Sugar plays up a new development here, one that I assume would have had repercussions in ensuing volumes; Flack keeps hassling Jason that he’s an “executive,” not an enforcer, and that Jason should not be going out on anymore field assignments. (I guess Flack doesn’t realize the series is entitled The Enforcer.) Apparently this was something Flack specified back when he offered Jason his new lease on life in the first volume, but I missed it, or have forgotten about it. But anyway, Flack keeps bullying Jason that Jason needs to find other enforcers to go out on the field and handle action items, such as this new plan of Jason’s to send an enforcer into San Angie to root out the Lochner-successor Spevic claimed was there with his dying breath.

Jason has to prove himself the only clone fit for the job, passing an ESP test devised by Rosegold. This placates Flack, but the threat is left that Jason will have to come up with reasons to be an enforcer in future volumes. Sam too is suffering the same problem, and she and Jason make a pact to help each other out, as Sam herself is an action junkie and doesn’t want to be desk-bound. Whether Sugar intended to follow this through in future volumes is a mystery, as sadly Steel Trap was the final installment of the series.

Given a muscle-bound new body which is almost identical to a prisoner who is about to be transferred to San Angie, Jason studies the convict he is supposed to be impersonating and dreams up another scenario to sneak into the prison. This turns out to be almost identical to the previous job; once again Jason and some redshirt enforcers hide out in the desert and ambush a police caravan! This time there’s no helicopter ambush, and Jason is able to switch out the man he’s impersonating.

I’m not a fan of prison fiction, so I wasn’t really thrilled about Steel Trap’s plot. Luckily Sugar doesn't get to the prison stuff until over halfway through the novel, and it only takes up maybe a quarter of the narrative. Only problem is, the book kind of stops dead once Jason is in the prison. As in the middle volumes of the series, the novel becomes a stagebound mystery-thriller with Jason deducing and brainstorming, and forward momentum is lost. Also, once again like in Calling Doctor Kill, there’s lots of incidental subplots that have no bearing on the story and just come off like padding.

Spevic’s dying words were “Big Al,” so Jason ponders this while trying to navigate the brutal world of prison. Not that he has much trouble; by the end of his first day he’s already “the boss of the whites.” Racial disharmony is of course prevalent at San Angie, and Sugar as expected immediately has Jason stirring things up. (Another flashback to Calling Doctor Kill, where Jason again had no problem with baiting a black character.) Meanwhile he will go off to the medical ward, where he has meetings with Hamilton. It was all sort of like a weird prefigure of that show PrisonBreak.

After a lot of red herrings and page-fillers, Jason finally deduces who “Big Al” is in a move that strikes of the utter bullshit we saw back in #4: Kill Deadline. Big Al’s identity is a total cop-out on Sugar’s part; turns out the man himself is a schizophrenic, so that Jason, while using his ESP powers, was unable to pick up Big Al’s thoughts, because the man himself didn’t even know he was Big Al at the time! Like I said, utter bullshit. But still, the way Sugar unveils it, trying to make his goofy plotting seem realistic, is a wonder to behold.

The finale is rushed and anticlimatic, again like the second volume, with Jason deducing Big Al’s identity and fostering a prison riot – one Sugar doesn’t even bother describing. In fact Jason breaks out of San Angie immediately thereafter, thanks to a helicopter of his own, and next thing you know he’s chasing Big Al across the pitch-black desert outside, Jason tracking Big Al via infrared pellets he’s eaten – another Big John invention, but one which will render Jason permanently blind if he sees any bright lights. (True to form for the series, Steel Trap begins at the end, with a blind and gunshot Jason lying in a ditch and wondering if Big Al is about to finish him off, before flashing back to the preceding events.)

It’s interesting to note that the novel is set in 1973, something mentioned both in the narrative and the dialog. My assumption is that Sugar must’ve written these six volumes all in that year, but Bio Blitz and Steel Trap just went unpublished until 1975. In other words, these two were not just “new” installments written for Manor Books. I’m curious though why Sugar did not write new volumes. Maybe by then he’d moved on to the Israeli Commandos series, which was a Manor original…maybe he’d just lost interest in the Enforcer.

So while it isn’t the strongest finale for the series, Steel Trap still has its moments. The gore factor is a little stronger, as mentioned; though there aren’t many action scenes, Sugar really plays up the carnage when they occur. However the “art of being a guy” stuff is toned down, with the rampant smoking and drinking of previous books a bit in the background – well, maybe not the smoking. Jason still smokes like a chimney here. But despite the anticlimatic end and the cop-out reveal of who Big Al is, the book is still enjoyable, even if it does lack the weird flourishes of Enforcer #1 and Bio Blitz.

Well, as another long review will attest, I really love the Enforcer series. It’s one of my very favorites, maybe even my top favorite. I’ll miss it. I like to imagine though that maybe Alex Jason is still out there, hanging out in Big John HQ and smoking and drinking his brandy, philosophizing with Flack and Rosegold and Sam, a-and maybe even new Institute clone members Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna…now that would be a series!

Monday, June 25, 2012

The Enforcer #5: Bio Blitz


The Enforcer #5: Bio Blitz, by Andrew Sugar
No month stated, 1975 Manor Books

After Lancer Books stopped publishing the Enforcer, Andrew Sugar's series was in limbo for two years before Manor Books picked it up in 1975. Reprinting the Lancer originals with new covers (athough for some curious reason, #4: Kill Deadline wasn't reprinted until 1979 -- and with Sugar's name misspelled as "Angrew" Sugar on the spine!), Manor also published two new installments, Bio Blitz and Steel Trap. Neither installment featured a number or a publication month, which must've caused reader confusion. Given that each prior Enforcer novel had been heavily based in continuity, which of these two new books was supposed to be read first?

Anyway, I can confirm that Bio Blitz takes place shortly after Kill Deadline, and precedes Steel Trap; hence, it's the fifth volume of the series, even though Manor (for whatever reason) neglected to title it as such. I can also happily report that Bio Blitz is a return of sorts to the lurid, scifi-esque pulp of Enforcer #1 -- still one of the best men's adventure novels I've ever read. Though Bio Blitz doesn't quite achieve the twisted glory of that first installment, it comes close at times.

For one, Sugar here has figured out how to meld his Objectivist/Libertarian views with violent pulp. Whereas the first volume started off strong with great characterization, plotting, writing, and action, the succeeding three volumes became increasingly static. Gone were the jungle locales and weird menaces of the first book, replaced by long scenes of our clone hero Alex Jason sitting around, smoking and drinking endlessly, while he would talk his way through some conundrum. The series, I'm saying, was becoming more of a psuedo-mystery thing, with a veritable intellectual/philosophical thrust. I am not saying however that I didn't enjoy it. Hell, I rank the Enforcer way up in the ranks of the men's adventure series I've read. I most like it precisely because it's something different than the genre norm.

But still, the series was becoming a bit too padded and, at times, dull. Kill Deadline in particular, while promising a great plot about a killer stalking new members of the John Anryn Institute (ie the shadowy private organization for which Jason enforces), was given over to patience-trying scenes of Jason drinking and smoking and talking and talking. So Bio Blitz comes as a jolt of fresh air, given that it features a lot more action and thrills, the narrative very rarely getting stuck in the mire of the longwinded digressions/discussions of those three previous volumes.

Sugar here capitalizes on two popular topics of the mid-'70s: the bug menace craze (as seen in innumerable films of the time, most spectacularly in the almighty Swarm, with Michael Caine) and women's lib. Both topics are combined in the latest threat facing the Anryn Institute; Lockner, archenemy from the previous volumes and seen briefly in Kill Deadline, has concocted an incredibly complex scheme to infiltrate the Institute, involving strains of specifically-mutated insects as well as an army of gun-toting women's libbers.

In Kill Deadline Jason's longtime flame Janet was murdered by Lockner's vassal; at the end of the novel, Jason discovered that Janet had also been pregnant with his child. As we'll recall, Jason swore vengeance, and pledged that the Institute would go on the offense. Bio Blitz opens up three months later (we also learn it's been "over four years" since the events of the first volume), and the Institute hasn't gotten much closer to finding Lockner, let alone capturing him...but Jason has found himself a new flame!

This new character, Samantha, is one of the failings of Bio Blitz. She is a carbon copy of Janet (a veritable clone, you might say): a gorgeous doctor who enjoys the thrill of danger and who falls in love with Jason. The only difference being that Samantha (nicknamed "Sam" -- just like in Bewitched!!) is also a clone. But really she is so similar to Janet that it made me wonder why Sugar even bothered killing Janet off...especially given that Janet is mentioned but a few times in the novel, Jason already getting hot and heavy with Sam in one of Sugar's trademark explicit scenes (though, sadly, the sex scenes have become less and less explicit with each volume).

However Bio Blitz features many inventive scenes, such as when Jason goes out to the countryside with Institute honcho/best friend Flack to see the man's restored Colonial mansion, which falls apart beneath their feet, courtesy some Lockner-designed termites. This scene features the first of a handful of actual action sequences, with Jason using his 3-shot laser pistol to blow off the heads of a few of Lockner's goons. Another enjoyable scene, Sugar playing up the dark comedy and lurid aspects throughout, is when three of the female militants try to break into the Institute, and Jason makes them strip before they are interrogated. The highlight though is the climax of the novel, with Jason and Samantha, nude from the waist down, trying to get across an approaching army of ants so they can rescue Flack from Lockner's clutches.

This is not to say that Bio Blitz doesn't occasionally revert to the stagebound, dialog-driven nature of preceding volumes. Sugar must've done a lot of research on insects and he displays his knowledge, in outright bald terms, through the conduit of a newly-introduced scientist on the Institute's payroll. Also, Lockner's schemes are way too complex, and there are several scenes where Jason will talk his way through them for pages and pages. Again Jason is presented as the know-it-all, able to figure things out long before anyone else. That being said, though Jason is smart about some things he's a complete idiot when it's narratively convenient, like when he fails to spot the obvious identity of a frail man who's trying to gain admittance to the Institute.

The "lost art of being a guy" ethic I've written about in previous Enforcer reviews is here in full force, possibly moreso than any other volume yet. Sugar must've been a hell of a smoker, or perhaps he was trying to quit and was getting a vicarious nicotine fix through his characters, because these people friggin' smoke. Each and every scene features a mention of someone pulling out a pack of smokes, offering it around, holding aloft a zippo, taking pleasurable drags. It about made me want to go out and buy a pack! In fact, it occurred to me that Manor lost a great opportunity for some product-placement revenue; Bio Blitz features one of those cardboard ads for Kent Cigarettes, bound into the book, as was custom for a lot of these 1970s men's adventure novels. All Sugar had to do was specify that Jason and his pals smoked Kents, and Manor probably could've raked in some extra cash.

But anyway we again have many scenes where Jason and his Institute comrades sit around and smoke cigarettes and drink brandy -- and they drink brandy just about as much as they smoke cigarettes. Jason in previous books has been a bit more "advanced" than the average men's adventure protagonist, more open-minded about women and the world. So here Sugar lets the other Institute guys mouth all of the misogynist stuff, in particular Abernathy, the Institute's non-clone head of security. This guy gets a lot of lines in about the female militants, who of course are played up as complete idiots; every time he brings them into the narrative, Sugar goes to pains to tell us how stupid these militant women are. I also got a kick out of the official Institute name for female enforcers -- "enforcerettes!"

Bio Blitz is layed out the same as previous volumes, opening up with a scene before the climax, with Jason reflecting back on how it all started before we make our way back to the end. So we have various bug attacks, convoluted schemes, a sex scene or two, lots of drinking and smoking (at one point someone even jams a cig into Jason's mouth immediately as he regains consciousness after being knocked out!), Jason blowing off heads and searing off limbs with his laser pistol, and the final comeuppance of Lockner -- something worked toward since Enforcer #1.

One more volume remains, the aforementioned Steel Trap, which apparently sees Jason going undercover in a prison. Bio Blitz by the way doesn't play up much on the clone aspect; indeed Jason's body in this volume, a red-haired and burly Irish model, is arbitrary to the plot itself. Anyway, as the length of this review will attest, I quite enjoy this series, despite its faults, and will be sad to see it go -- sometimes I get the feeling we could learn something from The Enforcer, but god knows what it might be.

Monday, March 5, 2012

The Enforcer #4: Kill Deadline


The Enforcer #4: Kill Deadline, by Andrew Sugar
July, 1973 Lancer Books

The Enforcer series continues to become more of a dialog-driven mystery thriller, which is unfortunate given the pulpy action-filled charm of the first volume. I agree with Marty McKee on this one, as Kill Deadline is for the most part a rather tepid and slow-moving affair. It isn't as bad as Calling Doctor Kill, but it's nowhere as good as Enforcer #1.

Sugar continues to extol what I called in my review of Enforcer #3: Kill City "the lost art of being a guy." Kill Deadline is filled with scenes of guys sitting around as they smoke, drink brandy, and discuss serious issues. There's more drinking in Kill Deadline than the average episode of Bewitched. I lost track of the number of times hero Alex Jason would pour brandy over ice and gulp it down. Jason, a clone, has little concern over his health, and indeed relishes the fact that he can indulge in any vice he wishes, given that he only lives in each new clone body for 90 days.

However the clone aspect begins to wear thin with this volume. It also robs the series of a sense of danger. While on his latest mission, Jason even keeps a spare clone body handy in case he gets "killed!" In other words, no worries about mortal danger; all our hero has to do is have his brain mapped into a new body, and he can go right on enforcing.

One novel aspect this time is that Jason plans the mission himself, given that he's apparently the only person in the world who can connect the deaths of various millionaires. All of these men, dead of what appear to be natural causes, were each being considered for membership in the John Anryn Institute, ie the shadowy "looking out for the little guy" corporation for which Jason enforces.

Jason deduces that these men were killed by an individual who wishes to get inside the Institute. That individual could only be Alfred Lochner, Jason's nemesis since the first volume. The clues come together after a wealthy corporate bigshot is found dead hours after playing a looong game of poker with Jason and his other Institute buddies. (As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing more boring to read about than poker.) The man's now dead and his young associate, certain to one day take ownership of the company, is at death's door. Both men were poisoned by mushrooms, but even the old lady who gave them the mushrooms is dead.

Figuring that someone is shadowing people looking to get into the Institute, Jason decides to pose as Richards, the associate who survived the poisoning. Going around in a wheelchair (due to the fact that the convalescing Richards can no longer walk), Jason is assisted by his gorgeous girlfriend Janet, who poses as "Richards's" nurse. This entails many more scenes of Jason talking to various cronies as he bides his time until someone tries to kill him.

There's lots and lots of talking in Kill Deadline. Jason comes off like quite the blowhard, especially given that he's the only person to ever figure out anything. As per his custom, Sugar spices things up every so often with sex scenes between Jason and Janet. But anyone who read Enforcer #1 knows that Jason suffers from the Death Wish curse -- anyone he loves is certain to meet an unfortunate end, and soon. Also as per custom, Sugar opens the novel with a scene that takes place toward the very end, with a beaten Jason meeting Lochner face-to-face, shortly before Lochner is to have Jason tossed into the Hudson. Then Sugar backtracks so that the majority of the novel comes off like Jason's reflections upon recent events.

A few lurid moments liven things up. For one, the cover depicts actual events in the book; in one of his schemes, Jason, posing as Richards, has Institute clones pretend to be goons who storm into a party and take "Richards" captive. Prying a shotgun from a clone in a rehearsed scene, Jason then blows the head off of a handy brainless clone body. For the life of me I couldn't figure out the point of this scene, as it had nothing to do with anything and didn't help Jason solve the mystery.

Even better is a scene late in the game where a gorgeous socialite comes into Jason's apartment while he's still posing as Richards. She kisses him and Jason is instantly smitten with her -- some sort of drug on her lipstick. She then takes off her top and has Jason go to town on her breasts. Endless detail here, the moral of which is that the lady's breasts are implanted with a poison that she squirts into men's mouths as they are sucking on her. You read that right. As Jason later refers to her, "The lady with the killer-tits." Now that would've made for the title of a book.

Kill Deadline only picks up in these final pages. As mentioned Jason suffers a personal loss but snaps out of it after a bit of mourning, using those handy mental powers of his. He goes after the killer, Darkhurst, whom Jason of course is able to unmask via goofy means. Darkhurst works for Lochner, and so Jason ends up facing his nemesis at the end of the novel. The villain again escapes, and Kill Deadline ends with Jason vowing that this time the Institute will go on the offensive; they're going to find Lochner and put him out of business.

Lancer Books was apparently uninterested in joining the fight. This was the last volume of the Enforcer they published, and it's certain they dropped the title, given the cliffhanger ending Sugar delivered. The series returned however in 1975, this time through Manor Books, who reprinted the Lancer originals. All of them, that is, except for Kill Deadline.

For some reason, Manor overlooked this particular volume of the series, not reprinting it until 1979, four years after they'd reprinted the other Lancer originals. The Manor edition of Kill Deadline is quite rare, and my suspicion is it was a scarce printing. Why? Because Manor really dropped the ball on it. For one, they didn't even commission a new cover painting, as they did with the other reprints. But also they screwed up the title, numbering the book "#6" in the series, when it was really #4. But worst of all, they even misspelled Sugar's name on the spine, writing it as "Angrew!"

After a lot of searching I was finally able to get a coverscan of the Manor edition of Kill Deadline:

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Enforcer #3: Kill City


The Enforcer #3: Kill City, by Andrew Sugar
June, 1973 Lancer Books

First off, I want to say thanks to Ralph Blanchette for posting a comment on my review of Enforcer #1. Ralph, an artist, was friends with Andrew Sugar in the '70s and collaborated on some work for Argosy Magazine with him. (He's also confirmed that Sugar was indeed a man!) Unfortunately Ralph doesn't know what happened to Sugar, or even if he's still alive.

Kill City features the return of everyone's favorite clone, Alex Jason, who once again has been given a new body which will last for 90 days. But at this point Jason is used to the constant changing of bodies. Given that his mind stays the same with each new body, he's now focused upon honing his ESP skills. He's also focused upon his relationship with Janet, the attractive doctor he met in the previous volume. Janet is a non-clone but also works for the Institute, and now lives with Jason in their HQ in downtown New York City.

Out for a beer, taking a break from his writing (the world at large doesn't know that famous author Alex Jason was dying of cancer a year ago), Jason is mugged on his way back to the Institue. Like a true man of action, he takes the opportunity to test his martial arts skills. He nearly gets his ass kicked. He's saved by two guys in tan uniforms who show up in an Impala(!) and shine a light on both the hood and Jason. Suddenly Jason wants to kill himself. Using his sharp mental skills he defeats the raging impulse. The hood meanwhile takes his revolver and shoots himself.

The rescuers identify themselves as members of "The Patrol," a sort of unofficial citizen's police force. They admired Jason's fighting skills and ask him to consider joining. Jason however can't shake his suspicions and investigates. As in the previous volume, Jason goes undercover. And once again he discovers a plot to undermine the country, with the Patrol really a sort of strike force commanded by Lochner, Jason's arch-enemy. Lochner's method of destruction is "The Suzy," that beam which "saved" Jason in the opening pages; it zaps the mind and triggers the brain's self-destruct mechanisms. Only 1 in 10 people can withstand it, Jason of course being one of them.

Whereas the previous volume was a padded-out bore, Kill City is much more entertaining. Sure, there's lots of stuff that could've been cut, but Sugar keeps the action at a nice pace with occasional shootouts, fights, and sex scenes between Jason and Janet. The thing is though that the Enforcer series is just so much better-written than the average men's adventure novel. Sugar remains locked in Jason's POV through the entire book, really fleshing out the character. The most incredible thing is that there's actual character development here: Jason is a much different character than he was a mere two volumes ago. This in itself is a novelty in the genre.

Regardless, one must be ready to slog through many scenes of Jason and his comrades sitting around and talking. There are many, many scenes of one character unloading theories or beliefs upon another character. Kill City is much more plot and dialog heavy than the average men's adventure book. But then, I realized something with this installment: Sugar really isn't writing a men's adventure sort of series at all.

It's my contention that instead Sugar used this series as a forum from which he could advance his political and philosophical beliefs. This is the same thing Ayn Rand did with Atlas Shrugged, only Sugar has done it in the wild and wooly world of men's adventure novels. The characters Jason meets -- politicians, self-styled police, scientists -- rail against the government, the sheeplike mentality of the common man, the growing corruption and how it could all easily be avoided. And Jason acts as the bellwether, agreeing with certain things but arguing against those that fall outside the rubric of Libertarianism. Not that the Party is ever mentioned; it's all more of a subtext sort of thing. To be sure, it makes for some slow reading at spots, but at the very least I can respect it as it's something different than the genre norm.

Another thing I like about this series is how Sugar encapsulates the lost art of being a guy: Jason and his pals sit around and discuss big issues while drinking brandy and smoking cigarettes. And unlike the usual men's adventure protagonist, Jason's a more sensitive sort (Sugar insinuates that this is because Jason is a writer, and so more open-minded), and he's careful to shelter Janet from "male chauvinism." And Jason truly does love her, which again is different from the genre standard: Janet is the only woman Jason's with in the course of the novel...but that doesn't stop Sugar from again delivering graphic sex scenes between the two.

In 1975 Sugar took the series over to Manor Books, who reprinted Kill City along with the other three Lancer originals. Here's the cover:

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The Enforcer #2: Calling Doctor Kill!


The Enforcer #2: Calling Doctor Kill!, by Andrew Sugar
April, 1973 Lancer Books

After the fantastic Enforcer #1, this second volume is quite a letdown. It's nothing like its predecessor, filled with needless and endless exposition, bland characters, and lazy plotting. It only cements my opinion that the first volume was conceived as a straight-up novel and not the first volume in an ongoing series; this "sequel" appears to be nothing more than a quick and dirty follow-up churned out to meet a deadline.

What makes it all the worse is that Calling Doctor Kill opens so strongly. We pick up with clone Alex Jason on vacation, trying to get over the disastrous events of Enforcer #1. His girlfriend, fellow clone Brunnie, was killed in the final pages of that novel, and Alex still can't accept her death. In his latest clone body he is of course oggled by his fellow vacationers in the resort, but Alex is too bereft with misery to acknowledge them. Until he meets an attractive young lady dealing with her own bereavement -- several pages of graphically detailed sex follows, a sure cure for any woes. But beyond the hardcore shenanigans this is actually a touching scene, as these two characters find strength in one another. A "regular" novel could've focused solely on this aspect...but this is an action series, dammit, none of that pansy stuff.

To wit, Flack appears in the middle of Jason's frolicking and breaks it up with grim news. Flack is Jason's contact with "Big John," the institute for which Jason serves as an Enforcer; Flack relays that Rosegold, head scientist at the institute and Jason's friend, has been kidnapped by the syndicate. Jason breaks it off with his lady friend -- clones can never have relationships with nonclones, after all -- and heads with Flack back to headquarters where they can plan out a mission to free Rosegold.

Here's where the novel starts to suck. Back at Big John Jason engages in tons of conversations with Flack about Rosegold and how he was captured; also endless theoretical and political debates with the young doctor Jason is about to impersonate. Rosegold it develops is most likely imprisoned in a syndicate-owned rehab clinic, and Jason is to pose as this young pathologist and break Rosegold out. If he can't break him out, then he must kill him. I had a hard time buying that Jason could pose as such a specialized doctor, but no matter -- the narrative completely skips over any possibilty of Jason having to fumble his way through a pathologist's duties. Instead, once Jason arrives at the exclusive, resort-like clinic, we're to believe that the place is so overstaffed that a pathologist is only here for appearance's sake.

The enemy this time out is Guider, a ranking psychiatrist who runs the clinic. Guider's a syndicate member and Jason's certain the man has Rosegold locked away in the violent ward. What follows is a lot more exposition as Jason's shown around the clinic, with useless rundowns on various patients, the layout of the place, and etc. Page filler. More page filler ensues with more good ol' graphic sex, as Jason meets and then enthusiastically screws Janet, a gorgeous Big John inside agent who works with children in the clinic. This bit leads to one of the more lurid elements of Calling Doctor Kill; one of Janet's patients is Dennis, a retarded child who is used as a "private sucking machine" (to quote Burt Hirschfeld) by various orderlies.

More lurid stuff follows; part of Jason's ruse is to stir up a revolt in the clinic, and to do so he berates the local union rep. This happens to be an irascible black man, and Jason takes the opportunity to call the guy every racial slur in the book. Yep, that's our hero. It all finally boils to a head in the last pages, as Jason is captured, bullshits his way out of a certain death, and finally locates Rosegold. In fact the ending is so rushed that it's upon us before we even realize it.

All told, a disappointing followup to Enforcer #1. Even the writing is a step down. I have the rest of the series and I can only hope the ensuing volumes improve.

In 1975 Manor Books took over The Enforcer series, republishing the volumes; here's their cover for Calling Doctor Kill:

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Enforcer #1


The Enforcer #1, by Andrew Sugar
March, 1973 Lancer Books

Death is rotting your guts, tearing you apart with pain. It's all over; there's nothing left but the funeral, and they're measuring you for the coffin now.

No, that's not copy from Hallmark's new line of Sympathy cards, it's the back-cover blurb for volume 1 of Andrew Sugar's 6-volume Enforcer series, which started off at Lancer Books and then with #5 moved over to Manor. (Which makes Justin Marriott speculate that Andrew Sugar must've owned the character, and not the publishing house.)

The first quarter of The Enforcer #1 follows the grim tone of that back-cover blurb. We meet 38-year-old Alex Jason in the last stages of terminal stomach cancer, wracked with constant pain and awaiting death. Spurning drugs he deals with his horrendous pain with "ki," focusing his will into a diamond-hard blade of resolve. But the ki's no longer working and Jason knows the end is near. Then a hologram appears in Jason's apartment and offers him a chance to go on living...

Jason it turns out is a Hunter Thompson-type (well, a Hunter Thompson with the looks of a young Burt Reynolds, I guess), an investigative journalist known for stirring up hornet's nests of vice and corruption. His work has destroyed careers and put powerful men in prison, and as a result he has caught the eye of the John Anryn Institute -- the shadowy corporation which sent that hologram into Jason's apartment. Beyond its normal business functions, the Anryn Institute also houses a secret division which uses cutting-edge technology to defend the oppressed peoples of the world. A main component of their technology is cloning, hence their offer to Jason: while his "real" body dies they will map his mind and place it into a wholly-new body, one that's young and virile and untouched by disease.

The only catch is that these bodies last for a mere 90 days, and then they literally melt. However Jason's mind can be mapped again and placed into yet another clone body -- but the catch here is that this can only go on for a maximum of two years. After that, the mind-mapping becomes faulty and things start going haywire. The Anryn Institute's working to solve this dilemma, but at the very least their offer to Jason right now is for a minimum of 2 extra years of life. They ask that in return he must become their "Enforcer," fighting for those aforementioned oppressed masses. Jason finally agrees and, given a young and handsome Latino body, he's prepared for his first mission.

Afer a few weeks of training (in which he falls in love with one of his trainers, a fellow clone named Brunnie who in reality is a few decades older than Jason but now lives in a body just as young as his own), Jason is armed with a laser rifle and sent to a tiny Caribbean nation where he must destroy some oil wells. Things go wrong immediately and Jason's captured. He becomes the prisoner of the local ruler, a half-Spanish, half-Irish thug named O'Brien who tortures Jason mentally and physically. At O'Brien side throughout is a white male whom Jason suspects is a Syndicate rep -- ie the Mafia, the John Anryn Institute's #1 archenemy.

After an interminable stretch Jason's finally freed by some Anryn people -- Brunnie among them -- and they escape into the jungle. We're already over a hundred pages into the book, but instead of ending it takes a new turn; Jason's immediately given a new mission. It turns out there's a nearby base in which some twisted, Syndicate-funded scientists are turning people into plants (!). The Anryn Institute wants the place destroyed.

There are only two problems. First, one of the Anryn Institute reps who freed Jason, a redneck named Turley, is the prototype of a new clone body -- past his two-year expiration date, Turley's been given one more chance in a new but expiremental change to the mind-mapping procedure. And he's quite obviously going insane. And the second problem -- Jason's own clone body is fast approaching its expiration date, and all of the warning sings are in place: numbness in the left side of his body, motor skills fading. It won't be long until his flesh is a mound of goo and he's nothing but a brain resting on the jungle floor, awaiting a slow death.

At 220+ pages of tiny type, The Enforcer #1 is meatier than the average men's adventure novel. A lot of this is due to Jason's backstory, but beyond that one reason for its meatiness is that Andrew Sugar, believe it or not, is here crafting a genuine novel. This is certainly not something quickly churned out to make a buck; Sugar has put a lot of work into this character and his world. The Enforcer #1 is an exceptionally well-written novel, with emotional content, good dialog, a wry sense of humor (the insane Turley is an obvious spoof of the typical gung-ho men's adventure protagonist), taut action scenes, and a fair amount of graphic sex.

Not only that, but Sugar is the first of all these men's adventure authors I've yet read who doesn't -- not even once -- jump from one point of view to another. POV-jumping is a staple of amateurish writing (or, at least, hastily churned-out writing). We're in one character's head and then in the next paragraph we're suddenly in another character's head. It's jarring and it breaks the vivid dream of reading, and it happens all of the time in men's adventure novels. But in The Enforcer #1 we stay locked in Jason's point of view from beginning to end. It nearly brought a tear to my eye.

Also, Sugar is capable of delivering stupefying lines such as this one, describing a woman Jason is "associated" with:

Marcy was, simply, a sensual animal who lived for only one thing: to have a man, any man, spew sperm inside of her.

Well, if that doesn't sell you on this novel...

In 1975 Manor Books took over the Enforcer series, reprinting the Lancer originals with new covers. Here's the cover for their reprint of The Enforcer #1, which they retitled Caribbean Kill: