Showing posts with label Narc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Narc. Show all posts

Monday, July 20, 2020

Narc #9: Kill For It


Narc #9: Kill For It, by Robert Hawkes
September, 1975  Signet Books

The final volume of Narc is of a piece with the previous installments: a sort of ensemble affair that has more in common with the crime novels of the day than men’s adventure. And poor John Bolt, the series protagonist (who seems to have gotten yet another makeover on the cover – love the plaid pimp coat!), disappears for long stretches of the narrative while we focus on the stream-of-conscious thoughts of various one-off characters.

For once though we have an actual change so far as the series goes: Kill For It doesn’t take place in the usual boiling hot New York summer, but in the midst of a freezing winter. Otherwise there’s no pickup from the previous volume or any other volume, and Bolt is even more of a cipher in this one. I just realized that it’s taken me ten years to finish this series, but Marc Olden wrote the series in the span of only two years – while also writing Black Samurai and who knows what else. So doubtless he was a machine at this point, churning out pages to meet an ever-approaching deadline. The only problem is, eventually the readers begin to detect this…I mean how many volumes now have followed this template? Busy plotting, too many minor characters, and Bolt lost in the shuffle. It’s no surprise really that this was the last one, and I wonder if Olden minded, as he seems bored.

Another change from the usual template is we’re denied an opening action scene. Usually the opening sequences are the highlights of the Narc books, but this one’s pretty tame: Bolt and recurring fellow narc Kramer (aka the black one) kneeling in the snow, guns to their heads. Posing as buyers from Detroit, they’ve been burned by a multiracial trio that’s posing as cops, three members of a group who have been burning drug dealers in New York over the past couple months. Bolt and Kramer walked right into the trap, falling for the story that these three had a connection to some high-grade heroin, and now they’re in the snow with guns to their heads. There’s no action, no fighting; instead it’s on the suspense tip, as the trio decide to abduct Kramer and hold him for ransom, believing his cover story that he’s the brother of a high-ranking Detroit drugrunner who could afford to pay for his release.

The plotting is especially busy in Kill For It. We have this storyline, about the group that’s burning drug dealers, adbucting them and holding them for ransom, and we also have another storyline about a group of New York cops who raided the porperty clerk’s office a couple years ago, stole all the heroin and coke, and sold it through a Mafia fence for a cool three million. But the brains of this group, an older married guy named Lt. Hannah, hid the money somewhere, telling the others to wait until the heat cooled off before they collect their earnings. This is enough for two books but Olden jams the separate plots together; gradually we’ll learn that the dealer-burning group has its sights set on the cop-stolen three million, and even more gradually the two plots coalasce.

Meanwhile Bolt’s been left to collect the demanded $75,000 for Kramer’s release; his main concern is that the captors not learn Kramer’s really a Fed. The novel occurs over a twenty-four hour period, another notable difference from previous volumes, but for the most part Bolt spends the time simmering in the D-3 office or chasing various leads. There’s nary a hint of action throughout; even the finale plays off more like a low-key ‘70s crime thriller. While fretting over Kramer’s predicament, Bolt is approached by a hulking, hirsute New York cop named Ira Kraft, who asks Bolt for help – Kramer’s been working on that stolen heroin case, and thinks he’s traced it down to two cops, one of them retired and one still active: Ray Zwerdling, the retired one, who now runs a sleazy bar, and Lt. Hannah, who is still on active duty.

Bolt initially brushes Kraft off – and it is kind of confusing for the reader, so far as the names go, that Olden’s named this new character “Kraft,” while there’s also the subplot about poor abducted “Kramer” – but of course the two eventually work together. And in fact Bolt’s hardly around at all; we get a lot of stuff about the kindappers, including Billy Brazil, the moustached Cuban ringleader, and Gypsy Waller, the black one who strikes up a sort of friendship with the bound Kramer. These minor characters, as well as Zwerdling and his hotstuff Cuban girlfriend (that’s her on the cover), take up the majority of the narrative, as ever rendered via stream-of-conscious thoughts. We get a lot of lecherous dialog concerning Toni, the hotstuff Cuban gal, but the sleaze factor has been greatly reduced in Kill For It, along with the violent action.

It eventually develops that Toni is a plant; she’s married to Billy Brazil, who brought his gang up here from Florida after they abducted a retired lawyer down there. The lawyer was penniless, though, his rich lifestyle just a façade, but in desperation he told them that he’d once represented a group of cops who got away with stealing three million. Armed with the names of a few of the cops, Billy brought his gang up north to seek them out, capture them, and torture them for the whereabouts of the money. In the meantime I guess they decided to keep putting bread on the table by burning average dealers – as I say, the two subplots don’t quite gel. Since Zwerdling was one of the cops Billy knew the name of, he sicced sexy Toni on him, there to keep tabs on him and any other cops who came into his bar. 

There’s no real action until well into the novel. Billy’s men were armed with new .357 Colt Pythons, and Bolt checks various leads on where they could’ve gotten them. This leads him to a grungy tenement building in Spanish Harlem from which a heavyset Hispanic lady in her 50s sells guns. Bolt actually gets in a fight with this woman, and she almost gets the better of him – a sequence that’s both gripping and played for laughs. One of the lady’s sons, a dude in his 30s, comes out with a machine gun blasting on full auto, and Bolt takes him out – his first kill in the novel. Olden well captures the grit and grime of this hellish place, from the ever-present stench of urine to the multiple locks the people have on their doors to hide their criminal activities.

But other than this, the ensuing action is pretty threadbare. Later in the book Bolt and Kraft get in a shootout with one of the dirty cops and Bolt takes him out, his second kill in the novel. (He’ll only kill one more, in a shootout with the abductors in the finale.) Bolt gets the address of where Kramer’s held in a novel way; per the cover, he finds one of the abductors, baiting the guy with a hooker, has him strip naked, and takes him up to a snowswept roof and makes him kneel in the freezing cold. Soon enough the guy, a hotblooded Cuban, is quaking and crying and tells Bolt all he wants to know. But as mentioned even the climax is pretty low-key, with Bolt, Kraft, and recurring fellow narc Masetta (aka the Italian one) storming the apartment in which the kidnappers are holding Kramer – a scene again played more for tension, with one of the abductors holing up in a room with a gun to Kramer’s head, but eventually giving up and coming out with his hands up.

The actual finale is even more on a suspense vibe: Lt. Hannah has kidnapped Toni and is in the process of breaking her fingers to find out what she’s told the Cubans. Bolt dashes onto the scene with some other agents, Kraft, and a bound Billy Brazil – ie, Toni’s husband. This finale is unintentionally goofy because suddenly Bolt cares all about Billy and Toni’s relationship (meanwhile, Billy’s the sadist who kidnapped Kramer and was going to blow his brains out!), so he shames Hannah for having tortured the poor girl, threatening to put Billy in the same cell with him when they both go to prison. So here’s yet another sequence that doesn’t culminate in blasting guns or action or whatnot; Hannah merely gives up in exchange for Bolt not fixing it so that Billy shares a cell with him – Billy being known as a master torture artist and all.

And this is where we leave John Bolt; Hannah has given him the location of where the three million is hidden, info which Bolt will give Kraft per agreement – Kraft wants to climb the ladder as the guy who busted the dirty cops and found the three million – but for contrived reasons Bolt won’t give him the info until the following morning. Kraft says he’s going to sleep on Bolt’s floor that night. And that’s really how the novel – and the series – comes to a conclusion. So overall, I’d say Kill For It was my least favorite volume of Narc, which is not to say it was bad or anything – just too jumbled with plots, too lacking in action or thrills.

Anyway like I wrote above I really took my time reading this series; I found that, like The Butcher, it was best appreciated if you took long gaps between volumes, otherwise it would get a bit repetitive. I don’t exaggerate when I say a lot of the narrative of this one is given over to arbitrary trips into the thoughts of various one-off characters. The earliest volumes also had this, but they also had memorable action sequences and more-gripping plots, leading me to suspect that Olden was struggling to maintain his writing pace and wasn’t able to give these later volumes as much attention – the deadline was too quickly approaching. That said, the series always appropriated the vibe of your typical ‘70s crime thriller, which is to say it had coolness in spades, and despite the occasional “off” installment I still really enjoyed it overall.

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Narc #8: Death Song


Narc #8: Death Song, by Robert Hawkes
July, 1975  Signet Books

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been on a classic rock kick lately, thus this penultimate volume of Narc seemed to be just what I was looking for – both the front and back cover blurbs mention “hard rock” and imply that D-3 narcotics agent John Bolt is about to get involved in the rock music scene. Only…that isn’t so much what happens, and the novel is of a piece with the previous seven volumes, with the rock stuff barely explored.

As usual there’s no pickup from the previous volume (or any other volume, for that matter), and once again the story occurs in the insane heat of a New York summer. At this point I’m starting to think Bolt is stuck in some hellish purgatory, sort of like Bucher; an endless continuum of humidity, crime, and illegal drugs. About the only recurring character other than Bolt’s erstwhile partners Kramer (the black one) and Masetta (the Italian one) is Bolt’s custom-made shotgun, which is given a curious re-introduction this time, with the reminder that it has a three-foot barrel and was made for Bolt by an old ex-Nazi who still flies his swastika flag high.

With each volume Marc Olden has gotten closer and closer to the style Barry Malzberg seeems to have employed in the Lone Wolf series (which Marty McKee hooked me up with the other year but I’ve yet to read, but I intend to!); a barebones plot stretched thin and padded out with stream-of-conscious asides from the many various characters. It’s getting real outrageous, too, with almost the whole of Death Song comprised of hopscotching POV narration by various characters, to the point that it somehow achieves an almost psychedelic vibe – or at the very least until the reader is just plain confused by the incessant juggling of perspectives from one paragraph to the next. The fact that there’s very little forward momentum so far as the plot itself goes doesn’t help.

But Marc Olden always has a good opening sequence, and this volume’s no exception. We meet Bolt as he’s in Los Angeles, waiting on a building rooftop for an LAPD helicopter to pick up a Mafia prisoner named DiPalma who promises to blow the lid off the mob’s involvement in the rock music business. But when the copter shows up it’s a fake, and the dude on it starts hammering Bolt and his fellow D-3 agents with a grenade launcher. All as so faithfully depicted on the cover, though for some reason the artist has given Bolt blond hair this time. I wonder if this is due to a misreading of Olden’s text, as the guy on the LAPD helicopter with the grenade launcher is often described as “the blond cop,” so it’s possible the cover artist – or whoever gave him his marching orders – maybe gave the text a lazy read and assumed “the blond cop” was the hero of the piece. Hard to believe given that the same artist did the previous covers (I think), where Bolt was given brown hair, so I digress.

Anyway Bolt’s like the lone survivor, blasting back with his shotgun and taking out the grenade launcher guy. And wouldja believe – one of the killed D-3 agents was like Bolt’s best friend ever!! Of course we’ve never heard of him – the only recurring D-3 guys we meet are Kramer and Masetta – but that’s beside the point. Bolt’s desire for revenge gives Olden opportunity for more stream-of-conscious musings from Bolt’s perspective. That is, when Bolt’s even in the book. Once again he comes off like a supporting charater in his own series.

Instead, and again as per previous entries, the brunt of the narrative is devoted to a host of characters: Tom Thumb, the good-looking Mafia enforcer who really enjoys his work; Candyman, drug peddler to the rock elite who is described as like a Jewish Superfly; Richie Roses, Tom Thumb’s obese capo; Curt Crane, boss of mob-run Lina Records; Dutterman, former CIA agent, current Lina Records chief of security; and finally Richard Story, a black drug flunky who snitches on Lina’s illegal activities for Bolt. The rock characters are only peripheral, from a petulant glam rocker whom Candyman entertains with coke and a pair of willing gals, to a wanna-be Janis Joplin named Leslie Sugar who finds out the harsh side of the music biz quite quickly. There’s also a female act called “Silver” (Olden has this weird habit of always putting his band names in quotation marks) who are all sexy black women with silver wigs and lipstick and etc, curiously similar to the character Synne in Olden’s much superior Black Samurai #6, published just a few months before this one.

After the opening action scene things settle down to the borderline padding we know from the series…Bolt goes back to New York, often muses on the miserable heat, and tries to figure out how to bring down Richie Roses. As if worried the rock material isn’t enough to flesh out a full novel, Olden also introduces the subplot that Roses’s mob family recently heisted a million dollars worth of amphetimines and has it stashed somewhere. Really though the entire novel’s more about drugs and drugdealing than the “hard rock” promised on the cover, and other than a peek in a recording studio and a concert or two (used as the setting for action scenes), there’s really not much of it at all. Hell, Bolt doesn’t even bang a rock babe, as one might expect – Bolt’s sole conquest this volume is Chris Cotten, blonde PR whiz for Lina.

Halfway through the book I wondered why I was even paying attention…I’d read enough Marc Olden now to know what to expect. The villains would take the limelight, Bolt would get lost in the shuffle, there’d be a lot of talking and worrying and then the harried action scenes would be over before you knew it, and by novel’s end none of the villains would have paid for any of their ill deeds. And what’s more, all of them would likely have escaped. In particular I saw this coming with Dutterman, who per vague backstory ran afoul of Bolt a few years before, and our hero shot Dutterman in the hand and ear(!?), leaving Dutterman disfigured and permanently pissed at Bolt, vowing to kill him one day.

Strangely though, mob sadist Tom Thumb is given more focus in the narrative, coming off like the main villain of the piece. But then this is also typical of Olden; he busies up his Narc books with so many damn villains that I swear sometimes he himself confuses them. Dutterman is introduced as this bogeyman from Bolt’s past – in fact, sort of like old enemy The Apache in #2: Death Of A Courier (which I think is still my favorite volume in the series) – but he comes off more as a weakling, sort of terrified of Bolt and looking to Tom Thumb for all the heavy lifting. Candyman actually has more run-ins with Bolt than anyone, like an action scene that takes place during a Silver concert – Bolt chases Candyman, and the drug pimp throws his platform shoes at Bolt, almost knocking him out!

Only occasionally does the novel come off like the “VH1 Behind The Music From Hell” story we want; Lina prez Curt Crane (whose recently-purchased “Indian painting” is titled Death Song) has a few “look hard in the mirror and wonder what the hell I’ve gotten into” moments, and poor waif Leslie Sugar finds out the hard way that you shouldn’t consort with dudes who are friends with a snitch – the image on the cover of the blonde being held in an armlock while the guy on the floor is being forcefed amphetimines comes from this scene. Olden really toys with us on this one, as he writes it with such skill that you keep expecting John Bolt to crash in and save the day.

Instead, Bolt’s busy scoring with plucky PR babe Chris Cotten, though as ever Olden doesn’t get too explicit. Bolt hits it and quits it, though, called away when he discovers that Tom Thumb and crew are closing in on Robert Story. This leads to another of Olden’s taut action scenes, each of which are usually barebones so far as the genre goes (usually just Bolt against one or two people, with lots of ducking and hiding). That being said, someone tries to drop steel beams on our favorite narc in this one. But the climax goes back to the barebones style, taking place in a factory in Jersey where Bolt uses a decoy to lure out Tom Thumb, Dutterman, and a few other gun-toting cronies. Even here the vibe is more The French Connection than The Executioner.

And I’m happy to report that for once Marc Olden delivers a genuine, bona fida conclusion – by the end of Death Song all the villains are either dead, arrested, or on their way to prison. I couldn’t believe it! Not that this cheers Bolt up much; he’s probably one of the most dour, pessimistic heroes in the genre. Anyway, despite what comes off like a tepid review, Olden’s writing is as ever skilled, but it’s increasingly evident he was getting burned out by deadline pressure; too much of Death Song is made up of page-filler, and it lacks the spark of the earliest installments.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Narc #7: Corsican Death


Narc #7: Corsican Death, by Robert Hawkes
May, 1975  Signet Books

For once hero John Bolt stays in the forefront of this volume of Narc, though to be sure author Marc Olden (aka “Robert Hawkes”) as ever populates the book with too many supporting characters and their own subplots, many of which abruptly faze out. For that matter, Corsican Death is yet another Olden novel in which, by book’s end, nothing has really been resolved and most of the villains are still alive. I’m starting to think that Olden was trying to make a point that “crime pays.”

This series, like most from the ‘70s, could care less about continuity; there’s no pickup from the previous volume or any other earlier volume. Other than the recurring characters of Bolt, his grizzled boss Craven at D-3 (The Department of Dangerous Drugs), and fellow D-3 agents Kramer and Masetta (the latter only mentioned but not seen this time), there’s really nothing to tie together the Narc series into a complete whole. There isn’t even a developing thread about Bolt himself, who one volume has a steady girlfriend (never before or again mentioned), and the next goes the entire novel without a woman (as is the case this time).

Olden knocked out both this series and Black Samurai within the span of a year or so, and one can clearly see that he was writing to an aggressive deadline. While I’ve still only read one volume of Black Samurai, I’m going to wager that it was closer to Olden’s heart than Narc was, not the least because that one was actually credited to Olden (though Olden also held the copyright to the Narc books). But I need to get back to the Black Samurai series (which I had to resort to buying the instalments I was missing in eBook form like some barefoot peasant, given the increasingly-exorbitant prices of the original paperbacks), to see if that series too suffered from Olden’s egregious page-filling and constant stalling of forward momentum.

Corsican Death, like the other Narc novels, is positively filled with scenes in which this or that character will mull or worry or fret over some action they’re about to do…over and over again…and when the actual moment comes Olden will either breeze through the action or skip it altogether. It gets to be annoying. I try not to be hard on these old series authors, as I know it couldn’t be easy to bang out manuscript after manuscript to a tight deadline, with the perhaps-editorial mandate that the status quo must never be affected. But when you come to the seventh Narc novel in which hardly anything happens, and indeed in which the page-filling is so egregious that nothing really comes to a head until the final eight pages, you start to get a little annoyed.

To me, Olden has the tendency to get a little too far into the headspaces of his characters, with some of the most blatant POV-hopping you’ll ever encounter, resulting in a bumpy read – one paragraph we’re in the fevered thoughts of one character, and in the next paragraph, with no warning whatsoever, we’re in the fevered thoughts of another character. Action is constantly held off, and when it does go down it’s harried and chaotic. In this way Olden is a bit similar to fellow Signet Books series author Jon Messmann, with the caveat that Messmann delivered more satisfying novels, at least in that they had actual plot payoffs. (Plus Messmann wrote The Sea Trap, one of my favorite men’s adventure novels of all time.)

In this one Bolt goes up against the Coriscans, basically the French version of Sicilians. We’re informed at length how the Corsicans have cornered the heroin market in France – and this is yet another Olden novel, by the way, that takes place in Paris. Even the Black Samurai volume I read, mentioned above, took place there, so I guess Olden had an affinity for the place. While he doesn’t go out of his way to bring Paris to life, he does make it sound like a crime-ridden cesspool, and when Bolt does get there he mostly spends it in the palatial villa of this novel’s main villain (well, one of two main villains): Count Napoleon Lonzu.

Proclaimed on the back cover as a sadist of all sadists, Count Lonzu actually spends the majority of Corsican Death off page. In reality the true sadistic main villain of the novel is Lonzu’s sometimes-partner, most-times enemy Remy Patek, a fellow Corsican drug kingpin who is known for his brutal and wanton acts of violence. Remy is especially incensed these days because his brother Claude has just been killed – by Count Lonzu’s younger, bodybuilding brother Alain. In a sort-of flashbacked opening action sequence we learn that Alain and Claude were in DC to broker a big heroin deal, with four million dollars on the line, but in a raid led by none other than John Bolt, the two Corsicans were captured.

But Claude jumped out of a second-story window in his escape attempt and broke both legs. Alain, fearing his “best friend” would spill the beans about the deal and also about the Coriscan contact within the Justice Department, strangled Claude to silence him. Now Alain is free, escaping Bolt and his fellow D-3 agents in another action scene – one which sees a redshirt D-3 agent killed – and absconds onto a ship which heads off into the Atlantic. The question is where Alain is going – London or Paris – but at any rate he won’t get where he’s going for five days.

So Bolt badgers Craven into letting Bolt pose as a rep for a “Black Mafia” drug dealer and go to Paris, where he’ll try to set up a fake deal with Count Lonzu or Remy Patek before Alain’s ship arrives in Paris. Meanwhile Patek vows revenge on Count Lonzu and begins to set his sights on the Count’s vast heroin empire. These are the essentials of the plot, but understand that for the most part Corsican Death is comrpised of almost stream-of-consciousness seques into the minds of the various characters; in particular the opening quarter is made up of these ongoing thoughts written in second-person from Bolt’s perspective, going over the rigors and dangers inherent in the life of a D-3 agent. 

In Paris Bolt hooks up with two French cops he’s worked with in the past (I couldn’t recall if they’d featured in a previous volume): Jean-Paul, an obese dude who has an apartment filled with dogs and who, despite his obesity, has slept with scads of incredibly gorgeous women, and Roger, a calm-natured quiet type who is uber-devoted to his wife, which Bolt thinks is an uncommon tendency among French husbands. These guys don’t factor into much until the finale. Instead Bolt, surprisingly, stays for the most part in the lead, setting up a deal with a grungy American expat who tries to burn Bolt but gets beaten up for his efforts.

Olden is as ever at pains to make the action in Narc realistic. John Bolt is no superhero and gets nervous in fight scenes, even complaining about his skinned knuckles afterward. While the average men’s adventure protagonist wouldn’t bat an eye at a long-haired slimeball wanna-be drug dealer trying to rip him off, Bolt frets over the act and takes a few pages of frantic combat to bring the slimeball down. But he does get his meeting with Remy Patek, which is busted up by some Lonzu assassins – and Bolt, unarmed, crawls on the floor panicked that he’s about to buy it. He’s hauled in as part of his cover, with Jean-Paul keeping up the charade that Bolt is really an American drug dealer, something the obese French cop will pay for.

Dog-lovers beware: there’s a grisly bit toward the end where Patek, who has discovered that Bolt is really an American agent, sends his goons to Jean-Paul’s house to teach him a lesson for his treachery. The goons go about slaughtering all the dogs in the place, Olden detailing it as one of them slits the throat of a little puppy! It’s so arbitrarily brutal that you can’t help but marvel at Olden’s cajones for even writing it – especially given that, when Jean-Paul gets his own vengeance, it’s rendered off-page! Yes, this is another Narc installment where the “main” villain, Count Lonzu, is alive and well by novel’s end, but the secondary villain, Remy Patek, meets his maker – however, not at the hands of the series protagonist. Nope, ol’ Jean-Paul abducts Remy and feeds him to a zoo lion! 

Bolt himself spends the final quarter of the book a prisoner of Count Lonzu. The Corsican kingpin is keeping Bolt as a “guest” until Bolt’s “Black Mafia” backer can arrive in Paris – this is Kramer, returning from previous volumes, posing as a loud-dressing gangster. But then Bolt’s cover is blown, just as Bolt himself is making his escape. As if he hasn’t killed enough dogs in print, Olden has our hero in mortal combat with one of the Count’s guard dogs, a moment captured on the typically-accurate cover painting. But it’s more of a tension deal as Bolt sneaks his way out of the Count’s heavily-guarded monastery on the outskirts of Paris; the sole action scene is when Bolt picks up a dropped pistol and shoots at a few people, killing at least one.

The finale as mentioned is so hurried as to be humorous – Olden, no lie, blows through all the events he’s been building toward in a scant eight pages. Immediately after escaping Lonzu’s monastery, thanks to the rescue of Jean-Paul and Roger, Bolt, along with the just-arrived Kramer, says so long to his French pals and hops a flight to London, where it’s been determined that Alain Lonzu was headed, after all. And there we get a perfuncory wrap-up where Bolt finds the guy hiding in the apartment of his London girlfriend, and Bolt makes his arrest.

Corsican Death ends with a warning from Kramer to Bolt that Count Lonzu now knows who John Bolt is and will no doubt come after him, not only for making the Count appear a fool, but also for arresting his little brother. Bolt shrugs it off as the usual dangers a D-3 agent must face. More than likely Bolt’s just reflecting on the fact that the main villains escaped unscathed from the previous six volumes, and given that none of them have ever come after him for revenge, it’s more than likely that the Count won’t, either.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Narc #6: The Beauty Kill


Narc #6: The Beauty Kill, by Robert Hawkes
March, 1975  Signet Books

The sixth volume of the Narc series is full-on blaxploitation; hell, Superfly is even namedropped on the cover. Yet again our hero, John Bolt, is lost in the colorful shuffle, Marc Olden focusing more on his vast cast of street-wise villains.

Also as usual, The Beauty Kill has no pickup from previous volumes; the Narc series has never really had much continuity, other than the recurring characters (none of whom ever mention the incidents of previous volumes, anyway). Like Narc #4, this one takes place during a hot summer, right in the middle of July, and again Olden reminds us so forcefully of the oppressive heat that we break out into a psychosomatic sweat. But then, I read the book late in August in Dallas, so I didn’t need much help.

The title is in reference to Black Beauty Saxon, an uber-handsome Superfly type who makes his money heisting drug dealers and other criminals. Beauty (as he’s usually referred to by Olden and the others) dresses to the nines in mid-‘70s wardrobe, in particular a light blue jumpsuit which he leaves open to the navel so he can show off his Zodiac medallion! (And once again the cover artist has perfectly captured the characters in the book, as well as a handful of the incidents that occur within.)

The aftermath of a Beauty heist starts off this particular volume, as Beauty and his three goons have made off with $850,000 and lots of heroin, stolen from Harlem drugrunner Calvin “The Blue Star” Otis, who got the money from his rich white male kingpin, Charles Kingsley, aka King Charles. Another series motif is John Bolt getting hurt quite often, and The Beauty Kill opens with our hero half dead, shot twice (and his partners killed) after stumbling upon the heist, which takes place in Washington, D.C.

Bolt’s head wound is just a “scratch” and the side wound he bandages up, dragging himself into his boss’s office and demanding he be allowed to handle the case. After getting his way, Bolt is again connected with the two fellow narcs who have helped him in the past books, Masetta and Kramer. The trio go around New York trying to determine who was behind the opening heist which left two narcs dead. This entails many scenes where they go into Harlem and Bolt is fearful of starting riots.

Olden per tradition places a lot more focus on the villains. In particular we get the tension among Beauty’s goons, mostly caused by Joe Heston, a white convict who is sick of Beauty’s preening and just wants his money from the score, pronto. Calming Heston is Noah Amos, another white guy, and the one who recommended Heston as being part of the job. Finally there’s Clay Cooper, a black member of the group who later on inadvertently allows Bolt to infiltrate the group, posing as a former cop looking to make it big.

There isn’t as much action in The Beauty Kill as in other volumes of the series, with more focus on plotting and planning. There isn’t much sex, either, with most of it shown as yet another plotting/planning move, like how Beauty sleeps with a plump black lady who works for Calvin Otis, preparing his cocaine and heroin. When Otis deduces that this woman is likely the person who blabbed about the drug deal which lost him the $850k and the heroin, he sends some thugs over to her apartment, while Beauty happens to be there; this leads to a crazy scene where Beauty blows the poor girl away and escapes naked.

Actually, naked black men fleeing through the streets of New York City is a recurring theme in The Beauty Kill; it also happens again later, this time to Clay Cooper. Makes me wonder if Olden had recently read James Mills’ Report to the Commissioner (or had seen the movie, which would’ve been released around the time he was writing this), which climaxes with a similar incident, of a naked black drugdealer running through the streets and holing up in an elevator.

Meanwhile Bolt puts clues together, soon figuring out that Black Beauty was behind the $850k/heroin steal, and that Otis and King Charles are looking for him. In particular the narcs are looking to bust King Charles, whom they have never been able to pin anything on. There are a few chase scenes, but really no action until toward the end, when Bolt and team capture Clay Cooper, a former cop himself, and convince him to play along. Cooper, injured by Otis’s thugs, lies to Beauty that he was hurt in a car wreck, and recommends fellow “former cop” Bolt as a perfect replacement.

It’s all like Miami Vice ten years earlier and in a different city as Bolt, undercover and unarmed, tries to both convince Beauty that he’s legit and also to figure out where Beauty’s big upcoming heroin deal’s going to go down. Meanwhile King Charles has hired a pair of gunmen to kill Beauty. But this is a Marc Olden novel, where no character follows a straight line, and soon enough the gunmen are looking to cut in on the action themselves. It all leads to a tense firefight in a stinking tenement building, and believe it or not for once the villains are actually disposed of, either killed, injured, or arrested. This seldom happens in the world of Narc, where the villains escape and are never mentioned again.

Speaking of never being mentioned again, each volume Bolt’s had a different lady love, and it’s kind of funny that they’re never women he meets while on the current case; instead, they’re women who are presented to us as already being a part of Bolt’s life, and very important to him. This lends the series a bit of unintentional comedy, as these women only appear for one volume and are never mentioned again!

This volume’s “Bolt girl” is Doreen Priddy, a “sexy bitch” (!) who apparently is a bit of a feminist; Olden puts more focus on her ten-year-old son, who is a brainiac who consistently beats Bolt at chess. Olden serves up a regular “happy family” image for the three, adding more unintentional comedy to the series by informing us that Bolt and Doreen have been together for a year! So I guess he just forgot about her in previous volumes, or who knows, maybe Bolt is in multiple serious relationships. The novel does take place in the ‘70s, after all.

The Beauty Kill was okay for the most part, but didn’t pull me in like some others in this series have, and I wish there had been more focus on Bolt and action and less on the internecine stuff among Beauty’s followers – though this part does feature a memorable (but goofy) scene where Beauty, “hiding” underwater, drowns one of his men in the deep end of a public pool, and no one notices!

Monday, September 30, 2013

Narc #5: Kill The Dragon


Narc #5 Kill The Dragon, by Robert Hawkes
December, 1974  Signet Books

The fifth installment of the Narc series doesn’t pick up from any earlier volumes; as I guessed, John Bolt’s lady love from the previous volume, Anita, doesn’t appear and isn’t even mentioned. As a matter of fact Bolt gets it on with some random lady while on his latest case, and doesn’t once even think of Anita, so I guess she’s gone for good, despite being so built up in the previous book. But anyway Kill the Dragon comes off like a standalone installment, so could easily serve as an introduction to the series.

This volume at times also comes off like Olden’s superior Black Samurai series, what with its focus on martial arts fights and whatnot. Bolt isn’t the one doing the fighting, though; it’s Peter Joe, one of the novel’s many villains, an 18 year-old Hong Kong orphan who has come to the US to climb the ladder of the New York tongs. Peter Joe works for Gabriel Ling Tsu, aka “Sweet Sue,” tong godfather of New York. Gabriel is currently working a deal with mob boss Johnny Fist; Gabriel’s Red China heroin contact The Monk is about to import a huge shipment of heroin, and Fist wants to buy it to corner the market.

Of course Bolt, as top agent for D-3, gets involved; we meet him already on the case, as he’s being dragged along a concrete floor somewhere in Washington, DC by a speeding car. One thing that can be said for Olden is he knows how to start his novels with exciting scenes, and this is yet another example. Bolt is in the process of capturing the Monk, and for his pains he’s left with an injured left arm and shoulder which plague him through the rest of the novel.

But for all of that the Monk is let go within the hour, sprung by Mercer Mannering, a new-to-the-series government VIP who is very friendly with Red China. Although Richard Nixon resigned in August of 1974, it’s obvious Kill the Dragon was written long before it, as though Nixon’s name is never specified it’s constantly driven home that “the current president” is trying very hard to sow peace with China, hence arresting a visiting notable like the Monk would sour the peace negotiations. Mercer is also very hostile toward D-3 in general and Bolt in particular, and Olden makes it clear that Bolt has made yet another enemy.

This particular volume took a while to read; although it’s only 159 pages, those pages are filled with small print and barely any white space. Once again Olden really fills up pages by jumping into the perspectives of his huge cast of characers, to the point where snatches of the book come off like streams of consciousness. I’ve complained about this tendency of Olden’s before; in a way he’s like the reverse image of Joseph Rosenberger. Whereas Rosenberger page-fills with endlessly detailed action scenes, Olden sort of does the same with lots of extended peeks into the minds of his characters, to the point where the book can become a trawl.

There are a few action setpieces, though, just not as many as previously. There’s the opening fight in DC, and a better one later on where Bolt and his two fellow narcs Kramer and Masetta (both reappearing from previous volumes) launch a raid on Peter Joe and his men in snow-filled upstate New York. Masetta takes a lot of damage here, but doesn’t die, Peter Joe tossing grenades at the narcs. The novel finishes with a similar setpiece, as Bolt again leads an assault on the tongs and the mafia; here Bolt unleashes his specially-made shotgun, though really you’d think an assault rifle would be better suited for the occasion.

It’s the plots and counterplots that again take up the brunt of the narrative. For one Bolt has to deal with Mercer, who actually sends a trio of CIA goons to rough up Bolt. This bit is a tad too much as Bolt gets free, cripples one of them, and so “scares” the three agents that the CIA backs off and promises to no longer interfere! You’d figure Bolt would be dead within a day. But at any rate Bolt hatches a plan that ends up with Mercer kicked out of office, this whole subplot brimming with the anti-Nixon administration sentiment that was so prevalent at the time, but as mentioned was already moot by the time the book saw publication.

Then there’s Peter Joe, who schemes to take a position of power in Gabriel Tsu’s tong. Peter Joe gets most of the spotlight, so far as the villains go – and you won’t be surprised to know that he gets away in the end, yet another of Olden’s many villains who escape to return another day…a day that never comes. Maybe it’s Olden’s commentary on how villains are never caught, but it’s getting to be frustrating how he develops these bad guys and never gives them their comeuppance, instead saving them for potential sequels.

Bolt is a bit more involved in the story this time, tracking down contacts (there’s a memorable scene where he meets a contact in a movie theater that’s playing a kung-fu flick), talking back to his bosses, and shooting the shit with his fellow narcs. As mentioned he picks up some nameless chick while in upstate New York, and we learn at the end of the novel that his next conquest will be a stewardess “with big tits and bad breath” whom he meets on the flight from DC to New York.

Anyway, Kill The Dragon was entertaining and offered more of what we’ve come to expect from the series, with streetwise crooks and the occasional action sequence, but my favorite volume yet is still #2: Death Of A Courier, mostly because of its pulpish nature.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Narc #4: The Delgado Killings


Narc #4: The Delgado Killings by Robert Hawkes
October, 1974  Signet Books

I’m starting to think Marc Olden could be considered the Elmore Leonard of men’s adventure authors, his Narc series being a case in point. Instead of the over-the-top, gun-blazing thrills customary of the genre, Olden continues to write a grim and gritty series that brings to life the sleazy, dangerous streets of 1970s New York City. Olden once again takes us into a sordid world of drug kingpins and street-level warriors, where only the most vicious survive.

As is customary for this series, The Delgado Killings is mostly an ensemble piece, with hero John “Narc” Bolt just one of the many characters. There’s no pickup from the previous volume, and indeed it appears that we’ve missed a lot between installments. For one, Bolt’s girlfriend of The Death List is not only gone and unmentioned, but he’s managed to find another girlfriend in the meantime. Anyway Bolt’s life has been pretty hectic since we last saw him, and Olden spends a lot of time informing us what we missed via backstory.

But as usual with Olden it’s the villains who get the most narrative time. The titular Delgado for example takes up a goodly portion of the novel; a cocaine kingpin, Delgado is in the sights of Bolt’s agency D-3 and is about to be put on trial. At great cost Delgado has gotten a list of the names of the people who will testify against him. His plan is to kill off these witnesses, and to do so he hires Victor Poland, a former cop who has become a hitman who specializes in helping those in the narcotics industry.

Mostly though Delgado wants Bolt dead. It turns out that Bolt has killed Delgado’s lover – Delgado is gay (he’s actually referred to as “The Snow Queen” on the back cover…man, you can’t get much more pre-PC than that), and this murder has sent him over the edge. Delgado’s homosexuality is often ridiculed throughout the book, and it’s another indication of how the times have changed…vast portions of this stuff would not be publishable in today’s tepid, sterilized, PG-13 neutered world.

Like previous novels, The Delgado Killings takes place over a short period of time, specifically during a very hot summer. We’re reminded, quite often and at length, of the extreme heat and the uncomfortable conditions. But then Olden mentions that it’s 85 degrees out, and I had to laugh…I mean, when it’s 85 degrees down here in the hellish heat of Dallas, that’s when we know it’s finally getting cooler and summer’s wrapping up! Anyway Olden fully brings to life the mire of a New York summer, just another indication of his writing talent.

Poland takes the job and hires his own little band of hitmen, and together they begin killing off the witnesses, making each look like accidental deaths. Bolt himself doesn’t even appear until well into the book, and we learn of his involvement in the Delgado case in backstory, including how Bolt caused the death of Delgado’s lover. Bolt’s the only one to quickly deduce that Delgado is behind these “accidental deaths,” and when a gunman tries to kill both Bolt and one of the witnesses in a staged holdup, he knows for sure that he’s had a death warrant placed on him.

I have to say though that Bolt really isn’t much fun of a character, which is perhaps why Olden spends so little time with him. He has all the standard attributes of your average men’s adventure protagonist, but no sparkle, no charm. In fact he’s pretty humorless, something Olden plays up on with the other characters, so it seems to me that it was Olden’s intent to make Bolt such a grim cipher. What’s strange though is the guy had a lot more pizazz back in Narc #1, including a nihilistic bent, all of which has disappeared – and by the way, what happened to Bolt’s martial arts guru, also unseen since that first volume?

But then, this is an ensemble piece and the minor players are more interesting than the protagonist. Poland comes off as a street-smart warrior with one hell of a mean streak; there’s a Stephen King-esque sequence late in the tale where Poland takes up an axe and hacks off the head and hands of one of his men. Olden really captures the sick horror of this, having another of Poland’s men puke at the sight – in fact there’s quite a bit of puking going on in The Delgado Killings, with even Bolt himself blowing chunks in the finale.

The new woman in Bolt’s life is Anita Rona, a gorgeous young model who worked as a courier for Delgado until she was busted by Bolt, who was working undercover on the case in Paris. Apparently Bolt and Anita became quite serious despite this unusual “meet cute,” but Bolt had to break it off when they got back to the US, much to Anita’s surprise and devastation. Again, all of this is relayed via backstory, and therefore lacks much impact, as we’re supposed to really be worried about Anita and regret the fact that she and Bolt couldn’t be together.

In fact, Anita only appears in a single sequence, a nonetheless taut one where Bolt comes to her rescue as Poland and his men attempt to kill her in a grocery store. But she disappears from the narrative after that, as if Olden only brought her into the tale so he could write a damsel in distress scene. It all would’ve been so much more powerful if Olden had used one of the female characters from a previous book.

There are a few action scenes, but again they’re played out on a very “real world” scale, with Bolt going into combat with nothing more than his .45 or his ankle-holstered Beretta. This in particular is his sole weapon during another taut sequence, where he chases after Bookbinder, the Poland assassin who attempted to kill Bolt in the staged hold-up. Olden does strive to make Bolt human, perhaps a little too much so. There are many, many scenes where we are informed that Bolt is afraid or nervous, and while it’s a welcome change from the traditional ultra-heroic protagonist of this genre, it gets to be a little much after a while.

Despite which The Delgado Killings is still another enjoyable Olden offering, leagues above what you’d expect. I guess my biggest problem with it would be the ending. Bolt’s entire mission here is to ensure the witnesses don’t die, so that Delgado can be put on trial and both his public stature and his criminal empire ruined. But all of this is rendered moot in the final action scene, when Poland, set up by Bolt to believe he’s been double crossed, goes after Delgado for revenge.

Another problem I had was with the resolution – namely that there is no resolution. For one, Poland’s fate is left in doubt and it seems obvious that Olden intends for him to return, but given that he did the same thing in Black Samurai #6 and that villain never returned, I kind of wish he’d just had Bolt put a bullet in Poland’s head. Also the storyline with Anita Rosa is given too much buildup and too little follow-through, especially when you assume that, like every other woman in Bolt’s life in this series, she’ll be gone and forgotten by the next volume.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Marc Olden's Black Samurai and Narc in Ebook format!


As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the biggest fan of Ebooks. But one thing that’s great about the world of Epublishing is that it can bring back forgotten fiction. Such is the case with Marc Olden, easily one of the best writers to ever work in the men’s adventure field.

Mysterious Press has recently released Olden's work in Ebook format, including his awesome series titles Narc and Black Samurai.

The latter alone is cause for celebration, as the price of Black Samurai novels has been so inflated by online booksellers that the series has almost become too expensive to read. Well, now the joke is on those sellers, because you can get each book in the series (as well as the Narc books and the Harker Files series, which I haven’t read) for about $8 each -– pretty cheap when you consider how much the original printings go for.

I often get emails from readers who complain that they can’t find many of the books I review. So, here is a case where one can easily get a copy of these books...and, having read a handful of Olden’s novels, I can assure you they will be solid purchases.

Here’s the complete line of Olden’s Ebooks on Amazon.

Really, it’s great to see this, and a huge thanks to Mysterious Press and Diane Crafford for making it possible.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Narc #3: The Death List


Narc #3: The Death List, by Robert Hawkes
September, 1974 Signet Books

The Narc series continues with another installment from the gifted pen of Marc Olden (here posing as "Robert Hawkes"), who brings to life the grim and gritty inner-city squalor of mid-'70s New York City. The Death List though is a bit less of an ensemble piece than previous books; for once, hero John Bolt is the star of the show. Unfortunately though the careful plotting and character-patchwork of previous volumes is lost, and The Death List settles into a sort of repetitive pattern.

The "list" in question is actually a notebook filled with the names and numbers of a globe-spanning group of heroin suppliers, smugglers, dealers, and buyers. It's owned by a high-ranking gangster in NYC named Mr. Church, who is murdered by another gangster early in the novel -- as usual in an Olden novel, the villains constantly plot against one another and indeed are more responsible for knocking each other off than the heroes themselves. But also as usual in an Olden novel, things spiral quickly out of control for the characters.

Frank Spain is the name of the gangster who ordered the hit on Mr. Church; the hitmen are a trio of brutal, dirty cops. They make the hit as an orgy's in progress; one of the attendees is a busty stewardess named Betsy Kerwin (Olden reminds us quite often that the lady is busty, by the way) who occasionally prostitutes herself for some extra cash. In the bathroom when the hit goes down, Betsy is able to throw a topcoat over her nude body and escapes down the fire escape. Later she discovers that the heroin list has been stashed in her purse -- in a narrative bit that doesn't ring true, we're informed that Mr. Church liked to stash the list in odd places, to keep it safe, and the latest such place happened to be Betsy's purse while the orgy was going on.

The dirty cops give chase and soon a young narc-in-training is dead; not only was the guy Betsy's boyfriend, he was also Bolt's trainee. So now Bolt and his comrades at D-3 are determined to find the culprits behind the hit on Church. Bolt handles the brunt of the mission himself, burning for vengeance. He tracks down Betsy, and in another of those stellar Olden setpieces we have an ongoing action sequence that has Bolt getting hold of her shortly after the hit; Spain's hitmen set in upon them; Bolt and Betsy escape, commandeering a cab; the hitmen crash the cab and chase them on foot through the deserted streets of nighttime NYC; Bolt and Betsy break into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where an unarmed Bolt heads for the Medieval section and arms himself with an ancient battle axe and crossbow bolts. It's a taut, exciting scene, the highlight of the novel.

Betsy escapes, though, and here The Death List sets into repetition. Now the rest of the novel comes off like an endless sequence of Bolt trying to find Betsy, only to lose her. Meanwhile the lady herself tries to make a buck; one of the names in the list belongs to a high-ranking US government official, and Betsy calls him with threats: if he doesn't get her some money, and quick, she'll turn the list over to the media. The official meanwhile calls his contact in France, the main heroin supplier in Church's list. The French contact promises the official that Betsy will soon be dead.

Somehow everyone ends up in Paris. Bolt's there too, posing as a Mafia hotshot; he's brought along a former girlfriend, an actual mob gal who's in love with Bolt but who lives under witness protection. For some reason that didn't make much sense, Bolt has brought this lady out of "retirment" so she can use her famous name to make it seem to the underworld that her branch of the Mafia family is in Paris because they know that Mr. Church's famous list is here, and they are interested in buying it.

What's strange is that the Paris scene is over and done with in a jiffy; we have another fine action scene in the airport, after which everyone flies back to the US. Everyone except for Betsy Kerwin, however, who in a moment of panic falls out of a grounded plane and breaks a bunch of bones. Her character then disappears from the novel and it's as if Olden realized he had too many characters to juggle and so disposed of her quickly, despite having built her up through the first half of the book. I really suspect that Olden made up these novels as he wrote, without the beneficial guidance of an outline, and sometimes the books suffer as a result.

Characters from previous novels return, including a black D-3 agent who works undercover as a pimp, going about in gaudy clothes and a big floppy hat. He and another agent serve as backup while Bolt continues posing as a Mafioso; with Betsy Kerwin out of the picture and the list gone (we learn that she mailed it to herself in Paris and it basically drops out of the narrative), Bolt now pretends that he in fact owns the list, so that the scum will come to him. And they do, Spain sending his trio of cops after it; and the cops, of course, want the damn list for themselves and plan to kill Bolt and set up Spain for the murder. Like I said, everyone's mind is always working in a Marc Olden novel.

So, not the greatest volume in the series, but still enjoyable. Also once again the cover shows events that actually happen in the book -- and look, there's the busty stewardess herself!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Narc #2: Death Of A Courier

Narc #2: Death Of A Courier, by Robert Hawkes
September, 1974 Signet Books

John "Narc" Bolt returns with a new publisher and a new cover artist in a second volume that's even better than the first. With a plot taken straight out of a grindhouse film, Death Of A Courier is just as grim, violent, and nihilistic as its predecessor, with the occasional dash of sentimentality. It's even got a bit of sex amid the violence, and the scene depicted on the cover (sort of) occurs in the novel.

"Robert Hawkes" is really Marc Olden, and again Olden provides a plot that's positively byzantine when compared to the average men's adventure novel. His novels come off more like ensemble pieces than the typical protagonist-driven fare of the genre; here John Bolt, despite being the lead character, is just another of the pieces Olden moves about the board. In all of the Olden novels I've read there are always several characters in play, each with their own goals and drives. This makes for a richer reading experience than most men's adventure novels, particularly given that Olden is also a much better author than the genre norm. Taut prose, lean narrative, good dialog. I especially like the bits of dark humor he adds; each scene with Bolt usually ends with our hero delivering a smart-ass line.

Paris Whitman, Bolt's former partner at D-3 (the fictional "Department of Dangerous Drugs") has gone insane after suffering a major beating at the hands of some redneck cops; Paris was working undercover when he got hauled in, and was beaten by the rednecks for nothing more than being black. Paris survives, but his mind does not; he blames his co-agents for not coming to "save" him. Now Paris works for the mob as a top killer, going under the name "The Apache." He has sworn to kill 7 D-3 narcotics agents and so assembles a team of fellow narc-haters. For money they work for the mafia, killing drug couriers. The majority of the couriers on the east coast now work for the Cubans, in particular Vincent DeTorres; Paris has been hired by mafioso Don Rummo, who wants to bring drug-running back to the Family. Rummo's plan is to murder all of DeTorres's couriers so that the suppliers lose faith in the man and begin to use couriers backed by Rummo himself.

John Bolt is caught up in all of this. D-3 discovers that couriers are being killed and, after a shootout in Central Park while riding a horse, Bolt nails one of Paris's teammates, who reveals that "the Apache" is behind it all. Paris has become a bogey-man at D-3; every agent is aware of his vow to kill narcs, and Bolt knows he himself is at the top of the list. Bolt was once Paris's partner and best friend, and so in Paris's warped mind it's Bolt who is most to blame. After a few more shootouts, Bolt goes undercover into DeTorres's mostly Cuban gang, working with new second-in-command Ortega.

The plot seems simple, but again, Olden fluffs it up with the various plots and counter-plots amid the huge cast of characters. Whereas the average men's adventure writer would've played up the whole Bolt/Paris confrontation, getting in lots of treacle about how they used to be best friends and etc, Olden instead focuses more on Bolt being concerned more about a new shipment of "brown sugar" coming into NYC, supposedly the strongest-cut heroin ever to be imported to the States. But to be sure, the Bolt/Paris dynamic is spun out through the narrative, and Olden certainly delivers on it in the effective finale.

There are many great setpieces throughout: the above-mentioned Central Park battle, as well as an endless battle sequence on a snow-bound airport runway which occurs halfway through the novel. Olden even gets in some sordid shenanigans, mandatory for the '70s men's adventure novel, where three hookers visit Bolt and he realizes they have been sent over to distract him so that hired killers can swoop in while he's otherwise occupied. Bolt takes advantage of the situation by having the girls strip down before using them as part of his escape plan. And Bolt gets a little action of his own, hooking up with a gorgeous redheaded stewardess who worked as a courier for DeTorres's gang.

I also enjoy how Olden peppers the narrative with little details on how the drug world operates. A potential drug dealer in 1974 could've come away from Death Of A Courier with several pointers on how to detect narcs, how to set traps for them, and how to increase his profits. You can tell that Olden had done his research. This lends the Narc series more realism than most other men's adventure novels.

All told, this is one of my favorite series, and I look forward to reading the rest of them.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Narc #1


Narc #1, by Robert Hawkes
1973, Lancer Books

This is the start of a great series. John Bolt is a narcotics agent for the fictional D-3 agency, aka the Department of Dangerous Drugs. A 31 year-old with a running scar along his forehead and a lifetime of experience cracking hoods and international drug cartels, Bolt is the top agent at D-3, going after the toughest assignments. The latest case is a massive shipment of heroin coming into NYC; Bolt must figure out who is behind it, how they are working, and also determine which of his fellow narcs is a turncoat.

The book opens with a gory battle as Bolt and his fellow D-3 agents attempt to arrest high-profile French heroin kingpin Antoine Peray. But even imprisoned in an American hospital (recuperating from the bullet in the thigh Bolt gave him) Peray is still dangerous: he has placed a bounty on Bolt's head, and there are many willing to collect it. Not only that, but a black American heroin dealer named St. James Livingston has been working on a huge shipment with Peray, brining in a thousand kilos of heroin, the largest shipment in history.

Livingston has his own troubles: he's created a draught of heroin in NYC, hoping to make a huge score when he imports the massive shipment of heroin. But Peray's imprisonment hamstrings him. In an attempt to make Peray stay true to his deal, Livingston kidnaps Peray's daughter. Bolt is caught in the middle of all this, going up against two kingpins who both want him dead. Along the way he meets the daughter of a man he killed in self-defense years before, defends himself with nothing but a pot of hot coffee against shotgun-wielding street thugs, and engages in several battles of will against his D-3 boss.

Robert Hawkes was a psuedonym for Marc Olden, who these days is remembered mostly for his Black Samurai series. But if this first volume is any indication, Narc is actually the better series. It has all the Olden staples: sinewy prose, vivid action sequences, dollops of gore, colorful language, and good characterization. It also has more of a nihilistic feel than Black Samurai; Bolt is a die-hard cynic, he believes the world is rotten and is steadily going to hell. The nihilism goes into overdrive in a wonderful sequence in which Bolt flashes back to his training in "The Game," so called by the Japanese karate master who taught Bolt how to detect and deflect danger at every waking moment. (This martial arts bit also harkens back to Black Samurai, but the karate here is only marginal; Bolt mainly kills his opponents with a pistol or a custom-made shotgun.)

The series jumped over to Signet after this initial volume, with better cover art -- in fact, the Signet cover art came from the same artist who did the Black Samurai covers.