Showing posts with label GH Frost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GH Frost. Show all posts

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Able Team #5: Cairo Countdown


Able Team #5: Cairo Countdown, by Dick Stivers
April, 1983  Gold Eagle Books

Man, it’s been forever since I read a volume of Able Team. And I’m not even sure what the holdup’s been, as I have a bunch of them, mostly the ones that were written by early series mastermind GH Frost. But as any Gold Eagle veteran knows, if you read the copyright page you’ll see who the real author was, receiving a special acknowledgement in tiny print. While Cairo Countdown is clearly the work of G.H. Frost – same as the previous one was, even though it was credited to “C.J. Shiao” – the copyright page acknowledges Paul Hofrichter!

But folks there’s no way in hell this book was written by the guy who gave us Roadblaster. To make it all even more perplexing, back in 2011 G.H. Frost himself left a comment on my review of Army Of Devils (one of the best damn men’s adventure novels ever published – and then some!!), where he specifically mentioned this very novel:

In Cairo Countdown, I had written the closing scene as summary justice. The Muslim Brotherhood government infiltrator who had choregraphed the missile-assassinations of pilots, then the kidnapping and torture of an American serviceman, the Egyptian had kicked the American close to death -- so I had Lyons do a justice scene on him. 

When Lyons captured the Egyptian, he shot off his feet. “He'll never kick an American again.” 

More or less. I can't find my typescript of the novel. 

( Just now, I looked for my copy of the book. It's in a box somewhere. If I remember correctly, the published last page cuts off, as if the editor simply crossed out paragraphs. Look at the book, I think that's it. ) 

So the editor had decided to not renew my contract. At that time, there were many wars in the world. I wanted to go somewhere interesting, I wanted to finish my contract, take the payoff, and go – 

I wanted to finish the last books on the contract and take off for another country. So ... I hyped up with coffee, wrote hyped until I passed out, woke, wrote.

So I’d love to know how Hofrichter could’ve gotten the credit for Cairo Countdown. Either it was a publisher snafu or he did some “polishing” of Frost’s manuscript – but still, for the most part this book reads like Frost. I mean there’s a world of difference between the writing styles of GH Frost and Paul Hofrichter. Perhaps Frost’s mention of Gold Eagle wanting to fire him factors into this (even though he went on to write many more installments of the series), and Hofrichter was given credit for the book in some passive-aggressive scheme to keep Frost from getting any royalty payments – as I understand it, early in the Gold Eagle days the ghostwriters got a certain cut of this.

But as I say, this definitely is the work of Frost, or at the very least the majority of it is – there are even a few flashbacks to the previous volume, in an effort to develop some continuity. But this being Gold Eagle and all, “continuity” is mostly relegated to subplots concerning guns and stuff; last time Carl “Ironman” Lyons, the leader of Able Team, had a lot of trouble with his Beretta 93R when the 9mm bullets failed to take out his targets with the first shot. So now Stony Man – ie the government compound in which Mack BolanPhoenix Force, and Able Team operate out of – armorer Konzaki has developed a modified .45 that has a three-shot burst feature, same as the 93R did, but with the stopping power of a .45. Plus it’s also nearly silent. This is all shown, rather than told, in a fun scene where Lyons and Konzaki go out into the woods to test out a bunch of guns, sort of like the Gold Eagle version of a picnic.

From here though it’s straight into the action, and ultimately Cairo Countdown is an endless sequence of action scenes. Lyons’ pager goes off while he’s out testing his guns, and next we see him he’s arrived in Egypt with his Able Team comrades Gadgets Schwartz and Pol Balancales. And guys I still can’t figure it out, but Gadgets is the one with the moustache on the covers and Pol’s the one with the gray hair, right? We don’t get much description at all, nor any reminder of the series setup, but we do at least learn that Gadgets and Pol are Vietnam vets – first introduced way back in The Executioner #2 – and Lyons isn’t, thus there are a few parts where they appraise his performance in the field, saying he’s doing pretty good for a non-vet. (Lyons for his part also first appeared in the The Executioner #2, but he was a cop and had a wife and a kid at the time, and I’ve never seen them mentioned in this series, so that’s another mystery for me.)

There’s a Very Special Guest Star this time: Yakov Katzenlenbogen, leader of Phoenix Force, who acts as an intermediary between the CIA and Egyptian officials and Able Team out on the field. There’s not too much interraction between Katz and Able Team, and honestly the parts with him could be courtesy a different author, ie Paul Hofrichter, but they still read like the rest of the book for the most part. I was surprised though that not too much was really made of Katz’s presence, but seeing his name in print took me back to my childhood in the ‘80s when I was obsessed with Phoenix Force. For the most part though he just handles the dumb officials who try to prevent the guys in Able Team from getting too violent in their quest to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been blowing up US spy planes that run out of a secret base on Cairo’s airport.

But this ain’t no Robert Ludlum suspense yarn; within moments of arriving in Cairo our heroes are already on the move, getting in a protracted chase on the busy streets of the city, riding in separate taxis and following various terrorists. They’ve also got some local help, one of whom talks in outrageous slang and has more personality than the heroes themselves. Actually the Able Team guys are pretty cool – Frost capabably captures the easy-going banter the series would be known for – but they’re a bit lost amid the endless barrage of action. But it must be mentioned that the endless barrage of action isn’t nearly as ultra-gory as in the later Army Of Devils, even though Able Team again employs their Atchisson auto-shotguns; it’s just that more detail was made of the ensuing guts and gore in Army Of Devils.

Overall it’s kind of hard to review Cairo Countdown, because it’s just an endless action scene for the most part. Able Team hits various Muslim Brotherhood strongholds, running roughshod over Cairo within hours of their arrival. A fun part in the book occurs after one of these strikes; an exhausted Able Team enjoys a sort of catered lunch, with boxes of burgers, fries, and etc delivered to them on the street so they can grab a quick bite before kicking more terrorist ass! Late in the game a subplot develops that the terrorists have abducted a CIA operative, and the team is desperate to track him down and get him back before he can be tortured and killed. This entails at one point a nicely-done sequence where Able Team descends into the sewers beneath Cairo to assault an underground stronghold. But the agent is moved out of Cairo, to the remote village of El-Minya, where he’s held hostage within a heavily-fortified compound.

The novel climaxes with a big action scene, as Able Team manages to infiltrate the compound by cunning and by craft. The bit Frost mentioned in his comment occurs here; the main terrorist leader in this compound is blown up, and Lyons ties a tourniquet on the stumps of his legs to keep him from bleeding out. There’s no “He’ll never kick another American” line, and overall the vibe is more that the Team is happy the dude’s still alive so he can give them the needed info. This could be indication that someone did indeed edit Frost’s original manuscript, that person being Paul Hofrichter. But as I say, the majority of the book just reads more like Frost, so I guess it will have to remain a mystery. 

Overall though there was a bit of a bland feeling to Cairo Countdown, too much of it in the generic “terrorist of the week” vibe of many of these Gold Eagle publications. But then given that this one was published in 1983, perhaps it seemed more so “new” than generic at the time. It’s no Army Of Devils, though, which only indicates that Frost would get better and better. It’s certainly well-written, with a nice focus on the personalities of the main characters – Gadgets and Pol have a realistic banter that clearly identifies them as vets – but it’s just not as over the top as I prefer my men’s adventure to be. But then that could be because Frost’s manuscript was tinkered with, who knows.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Able Team #4: Amazon Slaughter


Able Team #4: Amazon Slaughter, by Dick Stivers
March, 1983 Gold Eagle Books

It’s been too long since I’ve returned to the work of GH Frost. His contribution to the Able Team series, #8: Army of Devils, is one of the best pieces of action pulp ever, a tour de force of madness and gore, up there with the Phoenix saga. Amazon Slaughter at times approaches that unhinged level, but not quite. It more than makes up for it with the high-quality level of Frost’s writing, which again is leagues above the genre norm.

The copyright page credits the book to “CJ Shiao,” but Frost acknowledges it as his own on his website. I think Frost, again working under an alias (“LR Payne”) also wrote the first and third volumes of the series (I don’t believe he wrote the second one, though – that was Norman Winski), but I haven’t read them. At any rate this fourth volume ushered in an unbroken set of installments Frost turned in for the series, though apparently he was removed from it; his comments on his blog and also those he left on my review for Army of Devils suggest that he didn’t quite get along with Gold Eagle.

Frost’s comments make it sound that GE was unhappy with his work, or at least the direction he was taking with the characters. This is just more indication that Gold Eagle never understood quality men’s adventure and just wanted to churn out the same old “terrorist of the month” shit…and more indication why you’d have to pay me to read the majority of the books they’ve published. Anyway, that has nothing to do with the book at hand, which is a piece of quality men’s adventure.

The Able Team trio (Carl Lyons, Gadgets Schwartz, and Pol Balancales) are sent down into the Amazon due to recent evidence of a plutonium factory somewhere in the jungle, in an uncharted region of the map claimed by Bolivia. We readers know that the factory is under the control of Wei Ho (fetchingly named “Death incarnate” on the back cover), a Chinese warlord who employs a Khmer Rogue assassin as his security chief, as well as an army of mercenaries from around the world.

Wei Ho’s army ransacks the native Indian population (the Xavante), decimating entire villages. They kidnap the healthy and force them to work at the plutonium plant, which itself is a death sentence, as every Indian they’ve forced into bondage has died from working around the plutonium. All of which is to say that there’s a lot of death and bloodshed and misery going on here, and Frost really builds it up, showing the horrors of the Xavante in gruesome and excruciating detail.

Able Team is quickly on the scene, voyaging down into the jungle where they hook up with a group of Xavante warrirors. I believe this must’ve been the introduction of the Atchisson assault shotgun to the series, as Lyons has one and must explain it to his comrades. As is customary there’s a lot of witty banter between the trio, with lots of ragging and good-natured putdowns.

Even better there’s a touch of the psychedelic, when Lyons smokes some sort of substance with the Xavante. Pretty soon he’s gone native, painting himself in the black goup the Xavante make from genipap, covering themselves in it to ward off insects and to mask themselves with the terrain. Lyon’s mind is somewhat blown, and more banter ensues as Pol and Gadgets try to determine how gone he really is.

A goodly portion of the novel in fact is given over to Able Team working with the Xavante as they journey deeper into the Amazon. There are a few firefights here and there, most notably one in which they attack a group of mercenaries while they’re hauling around prisoners. One of the escaped prisoners is a young Brazilian army lieutenant named Silveres, who after initial hostility starts to help the team.

Action scenes are rendered very well, even if none of them have the savagery of Army of Devils. Frost is really good at getting you in the heads of his characters, for example Silveres as he volunteers to swim off alone through piranha-infested waters to sneak attack a ship filled with Khmer Rogue and turncoat Brazilian soldiers.

Strangely we get Wei Ho’s backstory toward the very end of the novel, as Able Team receives intel on his history. While this chapter is enjoyable, documenting how Wei Ho turned his family’s drug and crime business into an empire, blackmailing powerful communists in China, it just seems so out of place this late in the game. Even stranger is that Wei is so quickly brushed off in the last pages of the book, not nearly given the villain’s farewell you’d expect of such an evil character.

And for that matter, the finale itself is rushed. Two of Wei’s top henchmen just disappear from the narrative, and instead Able Team and the Xavante launch a dawn raid on the mercenary camp. Again, it’s a gory scene, with lots of heads exploding and guts spilling, but still nothing on the level of Frost’s later masterpiece. And again unlike Army of Devils, Amazon Slaughter just rushes to a conclusion. There’s no wrapup or even any real resolution, just a bunch of dead Cambodians and mercenaries. It’s as if Gold Eagle lost some of the pages of Frost’s manuscript during the printing process.

But for all that it was still an enjoyable book. The rapport of the team really sets this series apart from others, with the Able Team guys coming off like the soldiers in Gustav Hasford’s Short Timers, ribbing each other with that same sort of dark and morbid sense of humor. Frost returned with the next installment, Cairo Countdown, even though it too was credited to another author (Paul Hoffrichter). I’ll be reading that one next.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Able Team #8: Army of Devils


Able Team #8: Army of Devils, by Dick Stivers
October, 1983 Gold Eagle Books

Without a doubt, this is the most insane, brutal, sadistic, over-the-top gory book I've yet reviewed on this blog. It's great!! It goes beyond even the lunacy of Gannon or Blood Bath, which is shocking enough, but even more shocking is that Army of Devils comes from a most unexpected source: Gold Eagle Books. If more of their novels had been like this rather than generic, status quo terrorist-of-the-month stuff, then they'd be as hotly-collected as the earlier, more lurid examples of the genre. Because in reality Army of Devils is more like something Manor Books would've published a decade earlier.

"Dick Stivers" was a house name for the series; this novel was actually written by GH Frost, a man who wrote a dozen or so Able Team books, many of which are supposedly as insane as this one. When I was a kid in the mid-'80s I subscribed to Gold Eagle; every other month I'd receive a box of books. Able Team was always included, but I never read any of them. (They sure looked good lined up on my bookshelf, though!) Being such a fan of the publisher I knew all about them, though: a three-man commando team who usually responded to domestic terrorism threats, but would occasionally go abroad.

The Team is comprised of Carl Lyons, the leader and general alpha male, Pol Blancanales, and Gadgets Schwarz. It doesn't really matter though, as Lyons is the star of the book; the other two don't even show up until over halfway through, and even then mostly serve as back-up. This isn't a problem for me, as it allows Frost to concentrate on a protagonist and really build up the novel. Because quite honestly, Army of Devils is superbly written, with a level of character depth usually unseen in this genre; the action scenes are sadistic and brutal and insanely gory, but amid all of that Frost is still able to dole out exceptional dialog, narrative, and quiet moments of reflection.

But first the carnage. The novel opens with some of the most over-the-top stuff I've ever read, as Frost details the murderous rampage of a gang of punks one summer night in LA. Out of their minds on a variant of PCP which turns them into zombies, their only thought is to kill whitey. Yes, this novel preys on the fears of the conservative white male even moreso than the earlier Hijacking Manhattan.

These opening pages give the tone of a horror novel more than action, as the punks -- black and Chicano the lot of them, as Frost often reminds us -- kill with abandon, often in the most brutal of ways. And they truly do become zombies under the influence of the mysterious drug; unable to reason or talk, unable to feel pain. And the only way to kill them is to blow off their heads or sever their spinal columns! Just when you think this opening section has attained the peak of brutality, it goes even further, ending with another gang of punks killing the occupants of a broken-down car and then playing a quick game of ball with their baby...before finally tossing it out the window of their speeding car.

LA is set into a panic and Carl Lyons just happens to be on the scene, in town to provide a demonstration of an automatic shotgun to the LAPD. He's here with his girlfriend Flor, a pretty DEA agent who happens to be a sort of liason with Stony Man, the shady ensemble for which Able Team works. And who would believe that here we get an actual sex scene in a Gold Eagle novel?? Again, it's as if Frost has no idea who he is writing for, and more power to him. Beyond the shenanigans this is another well-crafted scene, with great dialog and introspection for the two characters. And Lyons himself comes off like a throwback to those earlier men's adventure protagonists, a hothead who's always about to blow a fuse.

Lyons hears all about the horror that was the previous night, and vows to find out what's up. He calls in his teammates and here the gory fun begins. The whole middle section of this novel concerns Able Team infiltrating a building filled with these drugged-up zombies, all of them armed and ready to kill. It's one hell of a gory ride, with the Team blasting apart wave after wave of zombie-punks, even hacking them up with machetes when they run out of ammo. In fact it gets to be so gory that eventually the Team finds themselves standing in ankle-deep blood!

Army of Devils comes off like Dawn of the Dead meets Assault on Precinct 13...or even like an NC-17 version of Death Wish 3 or Stallone's Cobra. If you have a fondness for those '80s action movies where middle-aged protagonists spend the entire film blowing away punks, then you owe it to yourself to check out Army of Devils. Just when you think he's topped himself, Frost rises to another peak and shocks you all over again. And again, it's not just a case of ultraviolence -- the man can truly write, even delivering some dark humor.

Every time I read one of these OTT novels I wonder how seriously we're to take the author. This is especially important when one is reading a Gold Eagle novel, a notoriously right-wing publisher. And Army of Devils does go out of its way to bash the "liberal media," the hippies of the '60s, the Black Panthers, and on and on. There's even a Geraldo Rivera-type who works for a "communist" public access show who suffers perhaps the goriest fate in the book, literally hacked to pieces by frothing, drugged-up punks -- Frosts's commentary on what the liberals deserve? There are also many instances where Lyons and his friends lambaste the liberal, tree-hugging attitudes of both the public and the media.

We learn early in the novel that the drug has been dispersed by a former Black Panther (of course, right?) who works with the CEO of a non-profit Hispanic American company. This non-profit guy is secretly a Communist agent and works to destroy the government (of course, right?). These two have amassed a veritable army of punks -- all of them black and Chicano, remember -- and juiced them with the drug, working them up into anti-white fits of rage. The idea is to foster a race war which will destroy the US. But the question is, where did they get this drug? The Team discovers there's more to the story than they first expected, and it all ends with a climatic battle with the Team in a helicopter going after a van which might be driven by CIA agents...a battle which ends in personal disaster for one of the Team.

Anyway, you can consider me impressed with the work of GH Frost. I'm definitely going to seek out more of his Able Team novels one of these days. This one comes highly recommended to all who want to see just how extreme the men's adventure genre can get.