I’d seen Eric Beetner’s work pop up as recommended on the Men’s Adventure Paperbacks Facebook Page, but had never actually pulled the trigger. That, my friends, was a mistake, as I found out when I finally got around to reading The Devil Doesn’t Want Me.
One part "The Mechanic" and one part "The Professional"—and if that description doesn’t get your juices flowing, you may be visiting the wrong blog—Beetner’s kickoff to the Lars & Shaine series is violent, action-packed crime fiction done right. The kind of novel that Quentin Tarintino could make into a killer—uh, no pun intended—movie. Cast Mel Gibson as Lars and Chloe Grace Moretz as Shaine and you’ve got cinematic gold.
I had a devil of a good time reading this book. I went in with my expectations low—no reason why, it just happens sometimes—but came out the other side with those expectations seriously exceeded. Usually the hardboiled genre doesn't get me whipped into a lather due to a lack of action—I am primarily an action-adventure reader/writer—but Beetner serves up plenty of shootouts and fisticuffs that make this more of an action-crime novel than a straight-up hardboiled entry. And for that I say, God bless and pass the ammo. Hollowpoints only, please.
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The pace never flags—some crime novels move slower than a turtle crawling uphill through molasses, but Beetner is way too good to let that happen—and the dialogue is smart, crisp, and laced with dark humor. The reluctant relationship between Lars and Shaine provides an emotional hook for the reader without resorting to Hallmark sappiness. Again, think of "The Professional" and you’ve got the general gist of things. And then there's the endgame twist ... yeah, I never saw it coming. Well played, Beetner, well played. Sucker hit me like an uppercut and I was happy to be hammered.
Anyway, stop reading this review and start reading The Devil Doesn't Want Me. You can thank me later. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see where I put Tarintino’s phone number…
After a nearly quarter-century hiatus, I have resumed reading The Executioner series, jumping back and forth between the early Mafia War years (not without its flaws, but still pretty damn good) and more recent offerings (which are wildly hit ‘n’ miss … unlike Mack Bolan himself, who almost never misses).
Unfortunately, Murder Island is one of the misses. Not completely off the target, but definitely a long way from the bulls-eye. Entries like this not only make me more appreciative of the skilled prose of series creator Don Pendleton, but are the reason I stopped reading The Executioner 20 years ago. They had become rote and formulaic, and it appears that particular problem has not been completely rectified in the interim. Of course, in the publisher’s defense, with such a long-running series, keeping things fresh is undoubtedly a bit of a challenge.
That said, while Pendleton created a fascinating character in Mack Bolan, far too many recent authors have settled for churning out generic action-adventure novels under The Executioner banner. Hey, it’s a paycheck and I don’t fault them for it—hell, I’d probably do it if I was asked—but Murder Island feels like just another soulless, assembly-line entry in the series. No disrespect to author Joshua Reynolds, but it just felt like his heart wasn't in it this go-round. The last Reynolds-penned Executioner novel I read (Arctic Kill) was superior to this one, so perhaps Murder Island is an anomaly, not the norm.
The plot is yet another homage/variation of "A Most Dangerous Game," with humans being hunted for sport. Nothing wrong with that; if you’re going to borrow, why not borrow from the classics? Normally I enjoy these kind of man-hunting-man tales, but it all just seemed so perfunctory and lacking any semblance of tension, suspense, or even style. Even the action came across as lackluster ... despite Bolan wrestling with saltwater crocodiles in an eye-rollingly ludicrous scene. That said, more such ludicrous, pulp-flavored shenanigans might have helped lessen the generic feel of the book.
Bottom line, this one isn't worth hunting down unless you absolutely have to read every Executioner novel ever written. Murder Island certainly wasn’t subpar enough to make me abandon the series again, but it did make me reach for a Pendleton-penned entry (Battle Mask, in case anyone was wondering) to remind myself how good an Executioner story can be. There are many reasons this series has lasted so long … but Murder Island isn’t one of them.
1. At one point, The Assassin’s Prayer was considered by
Showtime for a direct-to-cable movie. Through my agent at the time, I was told that a 5-person board would make the final decision; alas, the vote was 3-2 in favor of not optioning the book and my dreams of premium cable stardom died. It’s probably because I told them I wanted the lead actor to sport a mullet even better than Chuck Norris’ in The Hitman…
2. I wrote “The Killing Question” for no other reason than I wanted to (*spoiler alert*) kill a child molester via shotgun up the ass. I’ve written a lot of violent death scenes in my time, but this still ranks as one of my favorites. I probably need professional help…
3. The Assassin’s Betrayal started out as an action-comedy screenplay titled Killing Guppies. The script had a more Tarintino-esque tone and featured a female psychologist/hit-woman whose gimmick was that she never actually assassinated anyone, but instead used her psych skills to convince them to kill themselves. Hey, I never said all my ideas were gems…
4. Chunks of Hell was originally going to just be called Hell Chunks, with a cover designed to look like a box of kid’s cereal, but with horror imagery. “0% Sugar! 100% Blood!”
5. “Resurrection Bullets” started out as The Crow fan-fiction and was originally called “Hell’s Harvest.”
6. My single biggest influence while writing “Warlock #1: Autofire Blitz” was the movie Commando. None of my quips quite match the classic “Let off some steam, Bennett,” but Locke telling a scumbag bartender, “You look like an elephant’s dick,” gets the job done.
7. Vesper Falls, the fictional town in Gristle, is modeled after the actual town of Vermontville in the Adirondack Mountains, which is where I reside. Vesper Falls is also mentioned in the short story “Gurgles” (featured in Chunks of Hell) and my work-in-progress “Warlock #2: Kill ‘Em All.” Basically, Vesper Falls is my version of Castle Rock…
8. Jack Reece, the vigilante private eye from “The Killing Question,” makes a cameo appearance in “Warlock #1.” There’s a very good chance I’ll have the characters team up somewhere down the road. And I don’t mean “team up” in a Brokeback Mountain kind of way…
9. Despite having co-written several projects together, Derric Miller and I have never met. But if we ever do, we will instantly bond over our mutual hatred of cats.
10. Malakai and his handler meeting in an abandoned church (The Assassin’s Betrayal) was a deliberate homage to the opening scene in John Woo’s The Killer, one of my all-time favorite action movies.
11. The original title of Chunks of Hell was It’s Always Darkest Before You Die. I think it would have been a big hit among Death Row inmates…
12. I never use blasphemous language in my writing. Plenty of other four-letter words get tossed around like candy on Halloween, but you’ll never see “Jesus” or “Christ” used in a profane manner.
13. “Warlock #2: Kill ‘Em All” (currently being written) takes place in the same remote region of the Adirondack Mountains as Gristle. First cannibal mutants, now murderous, meth-cooking biker gangs … no surprise that my books are not endorsed by Adirondack tourism groups.
14. More people have requested a sequel to “The Killing Question” than any of my other stories or books. Something about the smart-ass vigilante private eye apparently resonates with readers. That, or they just want to see if I can top that villain death…
15. The sickest thing I’ve ever written hasn’t been published yet. It involves morbid obesity, deviant copulation, and some of the strangest cats you’ve ever met. You can read all about it if “Mudslingers 2: The Bloodletting” ever sees the light of day … which my wife is hoping never happens.
16. In addition to writing dark, nasty, mega-violent fiction, I also dabble in spiritual essays/meditations. Yeah, there’s kind of this Jekyll & Hyde thing going on in my noggin…
17. The Assassin’s Betrayal was deliberately designed to be both a stand-alone novel and a pseudo-sequel to The Assassin’s Prayer. However, the 3rd book will be a true sequel, tying together the events and characters from both novels. It’s called (for now) The Assassin’s Revenge and at my current writing pace, it should be available somewhere around the year 2027…
18. The events—and locale—of Gristle are referenced in “Cycle of Savagery,” a work-in-progress werewolf novella co-written by me and Derric. Tonally, it falls somewhere between Silver Bullet and Dog Soldiers. If you’ve never seen either, please stop reading this and go rectify your oversight immediately.
19. Tyler Cunningham, the charmingly weird protagonist of fellow Adirondack author Jamie Sheffield’s mystery series, makes a cameo appearance in Gristle. And no, the cannibals do not slurp out his intestines like slimy Lo Mein noodles from a bad Chinese restaurant…
20. Though he doesn’t know it yet, someday I want to co-write an action-comedy with Adam Howe. Or Shane Black. Whichever one returns my calls first…
Zeke Mitchell is part of the new wave of indie authors keeping the action-adventure genre alive, paying homage to the past while injecting it with fresh blood … and in Zeke’s books, there is a lot of blood. God bless him and pass the hollow-points.
Mitchell follows up his top notch debut novel (Kill Zone) with Lethal Strike, a hard-hitting sequel that once again features blistering autofire action reminiscent of those pulpy action paperbacks from the '80s and one-man-army movies like Rambo, Cobra, or Commando. In other words, you’re not going to find the answers to life’s deepest questions in this book … unless the answer is “kill ‘em all and let the bodies hit the floor.”
With its stripped-down, barebones plot and minimal dialogue, this sucker moves with the speed of a sniper's bullet and hits just as hard. Every ounce of flat and fluff has been carved away, leaving behind nothing but a rapid-fire guns ‘n’ guts bonanza. Matt Thorn, The Specialist, sets his crosshairs on an ISIS scumbag and blasts his way through a shooting gallery of villains (plus scorpions and cobras) on his way to execute the Big Bad Guy. Because in books like this, there’s always a Big Bad Guy and he must always reap his just desserts at the end of the hero’s gun … or blade … or rocket launcher … you get the idea.
Let's face it, the story is nothing more than a line on which to hang a series of mega-violent action sequences and that is exactly why you pick up a book like this. Those seeking anything other than gunfights, explosions, and dozens of dirtbags getting their guts redistributed should probably look elsewhere. In other words, plot takes second place to gunpowder here. Mitchell clearly demonstrated with Kill Zone that he was catering to action fans who like their fiction served high velocity and maximum carnage and that formula has not been mucked with in Lethal Strike. Mitchell knows what his target audience wants—namely, a triple digit body count—and he gives it to them in spades. Or rather, corpses.
Needless to say, this sort of stuff ain't for everybody. And that’s okay; if we all liked the same thing, we’d all be married to the same woman, and that would just get awkward. But for those who like their novels "all action, all the time," Lethal Strike delivers the bloody goods.
When you release a new book, you’re supposed to blog about it, right? So that’s what I’m doing. But not in the typical “please buy my book because it’s the greatest thing since auto-reverse cassette players” post. Nah, this time around, I’m just going to chat about what made me decide to write Warlock #1: Autofire Blitz and give some insight into how the character came about.
When I wrapped up The Assassin’s Betrayal, I found myself wanting to write something simpler, shorter, with the emphasis on crazy, over-the-top action. In other words, I wanted to write a Chuck Norris movie. But I wanted it to be splatterpunk gory. My inspiration was the Piccadilly Cowboys, a group of British authors who turned the western genre on its head back in the ‘70s by casting anti-heroes as the protagonists and ramping up the violence to extreme levels. I wanted to be a Piccadilly Cowboy, only in the action genre.
For inspiration, I looked to ‘80s action cinema, the gold standard of “minimal plot, mega-action” entertainment. My primary muse was Commando, mixed with a healthy helping of Rambo. (Some readers have detected a Sin City influence, and while that’s perfectly okay, I’d be lying if I said I thought about that movie even once while writing Warlock.) Simply put, I wanted to create an ‘80s guns ‘n’ guts action flick … but on the written page.
While most action heroes during the Reagan era were righteous, noble warriors, I wanted Damien “Warlock” Locke to be significantly less than a white knight. In my head, Locke is an amalgam of Snake Plissken, Dirty Harry, and Joe Hallenbeck (The Last Boy Scout). Some folks have drawn comparisons to The Executioner, hands-down the most famous action-adventure book series of all time, but truth is, Mack Bolan is a righteous warrior of justice, while Locke is just a smart-mouthed, death-dealing mercenary who sells his lethal skills to whoever can afford his fee (though he is not without his own barebones code that keeps him a sliver above the savages).
As stated above, I wanted this to not only be a violent series, but a graphically violent series. None of this weak, sterilized “the hero fired and the bad guy went down” rated-PG crap. No, I wanted craniums to explode and eyeballs to burst and guts to fly everywhere as bullets ripped apart human bodies. Again, if you’re familiar with the work of the Piccadilly Cowboys, you’ll know what I was gunning for. Warlock was deliberately designed to be ultra-gory and make a lot of splatting noises. If you read Jack Reacher novels and think, “Man, this is some really violent stuff,” then Warlock probably isn’t for you.
In my useless opinion, the modern day men’s action-adventure genre needs more short, punchy novels as well as some good old fashioned guts to go along with all the guns. There was a time when this genre reveled in testosteronic ultraviolence and personally, I would love to see that style of hard-hitting, throat-cutting, brain-blasting action make a comeback. Seriously, “splatter-action” needs to be a thing again.
Can I singlehandedly resurrect the quick-read, graphically-violent action novel? Of course not. But make no mistake, I intend to do my part and even if it never catches on, I’m going to have a blast doing it. A grenade blast, that is … usually after Warlock has rammed it down some bastard’s throat.
WARNING: This blog post contains major spoilers for both the ending of my novel, The Assassin’s Prayer, and the season one finale of the TV show SIX (History Channel). If you plan on reading/watching either of those, pretend I just posted naked photos of Donald Trump and look away as fast as you can.
OK, with the spoiler alerts dispensed with, let’s buckle down to business…
To this day, I can still hear the voice (well, if you can “hear” a “voice” via Facebook Messenger) of one of my most trusted beta readers, Stan Mitchell: “Mark, The Assassin’s Prayer is fantastic, but you have to change the ending. Seriously, bro, I’m begging you not to go with that ending. Reader backlash will be epic.” (I may be paraphrasing … or not.)
You see, at the end of The Assassin’s Prayer, Travis Kain dies in a hail of gunfire as he sacrifices himself to save the woman he loves. It was not the ending I envisioned when I conceived the novel, but it came about organically, the natural progression of the story unfolding. It also played nicely into one of my favorite themes: redemptive sacrifice. You see, Kain is a contract killer, and while I make it clear that he never targets innocents, he still kills for cash. Nobody is going to mistake him for some kind of saint, so what better way to atone for his sins than an act of sacrificial love?
Problem was, it was not what readers expected and for damn sure was not what they wanted. Nobody cared if it was the “right” ending … it was not the ending they expected. After a brief burst of skyrocketing sales, the negative reviews started popping up and the “epic backlash” Mr. Mitchell had predicted started to take its toll and The Assassin’s Prayer gradually downgraded from bestseller to meh-seller.
The “artist” in me knows Kain’s death was the correct ending, but it wasn’t until I watched the season finale of SIX that I fully realized what I had done to readers. Because SIX had the audacity to make me root for the redemption of Richard “Rip” Taggert, a former Navy SEAL who got all twisted up inside and executed a man in cold blood, and then after Rip earned that redemption, ended the season by having him gunned down. As I watched the bullets strike the character in whom I had become invested, I wanted to grab the producers/screenwriters by the throat and yell, “Why would you do that to me?”
Because making Rip Taggert pay for his sins in blood was a ballsy, righteous move … but it was definitely not how I wanted his story arc to close. At that moment, I understood how many readers felt as they read the last few pages of The Assassin’s Prayer and discovered there would be no happy ending.
So how ‘bout it? Do authors have some sort of obligation to give readers what they want? From a purely commercial viewpoint, the answer is probably yes. These days, gratification is the name of the game and challenging readers with grim, downbeat, nontraditional climaxes will, more often than not, piss off those readers because you failed to give them what they want. And angry readers do not make the best fan base.
That said, there is an argument to be made that authors should just tell the story as it’s meant to be told, to follow the ebb and flow to whatever conclusion is logical and appropriate, even if that runs counter to readers’ wants and expectations. Then again, even as I type the previous sentence, I detect a whiff of latent pretentiousness in my own words, an unwanted and unintended insinuation that what readers want is less important than what the author wants. Ultimately, a balance must be struck.
Sure, anyone can be an author. But if you want to be a read author, then you need readers, and that means factoring their wants into the equation. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Does that mean writers must always cater to reader demands? Not just no, but hell no. But authors who ignore reader expectations—as I did with The Assassin’s Prayer—do so at their own peril.
Then again, Jack died at the end of Titanic and it still made almost $2 billion, so you just never know…
There will not be a better pure action movie this year than John Wick: Chapter 2. There, I said it, and if anyone disagrees with me, I challenge you to a duel with pistols. Or a thumb-wrestling contest. Your choice.
For this second go-round, our titular assassin rips apart Rome when a specter from his past—one of those smirking villains that you desperately want to see deep-throat a hollowpoint—shows up and cashes in a marker that forces Wick back into the killing game. And director Chad Stahelski makes ample use of the exotic locales, setting the action against one stunning backdrop after another. Seriously, you haven’t fully lived until you’ve watched a world-class trigger-puller destroy dozens of dirtbags with a shotgun in the catacombs.
Just like the first movie, Chapter 2 nails the violence, eschewing the inexplicably popular shaky-cam gimmick in favor of fluid, choreographed—dare I say, balletic?—action sequences. Not since the glory days of John Woo has brutality looked so viscerally beautiful. And speaking of brutal, this flick earns its R-rating with a triple-digit body-count, with a significant percentage of the targets receiving point-blank, blood-splattering headshots. My inner gore-hound gleefully appreciated the carnage. I may or may not have hollered, “Hell yeah!” a time or two in the theater. The old lady sitting next to me did not approve…
The mysterious world of the Continental, part of the reason the original John Wick was so entertaining, is expanded upon, which is something I think we all craved. That said, it is taken to ludicrous extremes, with every other person on the street—from panhandlers to pedestrians—revealed to be part of this shadowy underworld. But it’s all done quite niftily, with tongue-in-cheek panache. And speaking of ludicrous, where can I get one of those Kevlar-lined suitcoats that stops bullets better than Superman’s cape?
Keanu Reeves reinforces his reputation as one of the best action heroes of the decade with a straight-faced, taciturn, and totally killer (no pun intended) performance. If you’ve seen any of his training videos on YouTube, you know he fully invests himself in this role and it shows on the screen. You believe this guy could actually kill three men in a bar with a pencil. And while there’s no dead puppy this time to provide us an emotional anchor, the movie does briefly (for about all of three heartbeats) pause to reminisce about Wick’s deceased wife, reminding us that the man is, indeed, human.
Bottom line, for fans of the guns ‘n’ guts cinema, this is a near-perfect film, with a staggering kill-count, slick direction, eye-popping cinematography, deadpan humor, and bundles of badassery (is that a word?). Yeah, I’m thinking John Wick is back, and action junkies are all the better for it.
Let’s get one thing straight—this is not a list of the top 10 action flicks I think are the best, it’s a list of my top 10 favorite action flicks. And yes, there is a difference. I freely admit that action classics like Lethal Weapon, Terminator 2, and Raiders of the Lost Ark are technically superior to many of the movies on this list, but I’m just compiling a rundown of my personal faves, the action bonanzas I come back to again and again, the ones that put a big ol’ grin on my ugly mug each and every time. So, without further ado and in no particular order, here they are:
John Wick (2014)—this slick action flick exploded from out of nowhere and wowed pretty much everyone I talk to … which, admittedly, is only 3 or 4 people. With a bare bones “you killed my dog, prepare to die” plot, a cool-ass trigger-puller for a protagonist, and smoothly choreographed “gun-fu,” this film delivers everything action junkies crave.
Die Hard (1988)—really, is there anything else that can be written about this classic? Until the day I die, I will probably never bear witness to a better action film. The movie by which all other action movies are judged. Yippee-ki-ay, indeed.
The Killer (1989)—back in the day, nobody merged melodrama with poetically-stylish violence better than director John Woo. Chow Yun Fat was the epitome of Hong Kong cool and the two-fisted, slow-motion gun-play delivered the bloody goods. The climactic shootout in the church is killer in every way.
Bad Boys II (2003)—most action cinema junkies will think I’m smoking crack including this bad boy (uh, pun intended) on this list, but it just pushes all the right buttons (or rather, pulls all the right triggers) for me. The perfect switch-off-your-brain-and-and-enjoy-the-insanity popcorn flick. Yep, it’s loud and dumb and non-PC and slathered in that Michael Bay aesthetic and I love every second of it. (OK, maybe not the stupid rat sex scene.)
The Crow (1994)—true love never dies, but sometimes, just sometimes, it comes back from the dead to kick some evildoer ass. With a breakout performance by the late Brandon Lee and the Gothic direction of Alex Proyas, this midnight-black revenge actioner deserves its cult classic status.
Rambo (2008)—John Rambo returns to the silver screen and kicks bad guy butt in gloriously bloody fashion. ‘Nuff said.
Hard Target (1993)—Hong Kong action maestro John Woo brought all this trademarks—copious slo-mo, double-fisted guns, white doves, etc.—for his first foray into Hollywood and applied them to a Van Damme film. The result? Awesomeness. And the best mullet to ever grace the action genre.
Taken (2008)—some fathers buy their daughters a pony to show their affection. Other fathers use their particular set of skills to rescue them from sex slave traffickers. Liam Neeson is a badass daddy in this surprise action hit. Forget the neutered PG-13 version and go straight for the uncut edition. You’ll thank me later.
Robocop (1987)—I still remember all the hubbub about how violent this movie was when it came out. But the theatrical version ain’t got nothing on the X-rated (it would be NC-17 nowadays) brutality of the uncut edition. “Guns, guns, guns!” And plenty of guts.
Road House (1989)—Patrick Swayze was never cooler than his starring role in this underrated fisticuffs flick. “Pain don’t hurt,” he says at one point, and you know what else don’t hurt? Watching this movie—or any of the movies on this list—over and over again.
I can hear it now (because some have already asked)—a revised edition of a 3 year-old book? Why bother? Surely you could find something better to do with your time, like clean the fish tank or organize your sock drawer.
Traditional wisdom tells authors to never look back, to release their novels into the wild and move on to the next one. Traditional wisdom says tinkering with a previously-published manuscript wastes time better served working on a new project. And traditional wisdom is right … except when it’s not.
Simply put, this was an itch I had to scratch, an itch that kept me from giving new projects my full attention. Until I went back and revisited/revised The Assassin’s Prayer, I wouldn’t be able to really buckle down on a new book. (Or books, actually—Warlock #1: Autofire Blitz and Chunks of Hell: A Horror Anthology. But we’ll talk about those at another time.)
Call me a perfectionist (not that my novel, or anyone’s novel for that matter, is perfect) or accuse me of OCD—I won’t deny either charge—but the fact that I knew I could improve The Assassin’s Prayer gnawed at me. Sure, the book sold like weed at Woodstock when it was first released, but reader feedback and reviews made it clear there were some issues that could easily be remedied with some tidying up of the narrative. It wouldn’t take much effort to make the book better, so why not do so?
Make no mistake, we’re not talking a major overhaul here. For example, a decent chunk of readers dislike, despise, or downright loathe the ending of the novel, but I refuse to change that, even though doing so would probably make the book more commercially viable. (That either makes me a stubborn fool or a damn fool …you decide.)
No, pretty much all I did was trim some of the melancholy fat from my main character’s—Travis Kain—angst. You see, when I set out to write The Assassin’s Prayer, I was determined to give Kain greater emotional depth than the typical action hero (or in this case, antihero), so he’s a bit of a grumpy bastard with more than his fair share of baggage. As some reviewers noted, (in the original version) Kain spent too much time crying in his whiskey.
In this revised edition, those kind of “emo assassin” (to borrow a phrase from my buddy Jack Badelaire) scenes have been scaled back. What used to be a paragraph of internal torment is now just a sentence or two. The story moves faster and Kain—while hardly a sunshine and roses kind of guy—is less sullen and morose. Heck, I think I even let him crack a joke or two this time.
Listen, despite a streamlined narrative and a spiffy new cover, I don’t expect sales to skyrocket, but that’s not why I revamped the book. I revamped it for me, to exorcise that whiny, nagging voice in the back of my brain that kept whispering, “You can make it better.” Because sometimes the only way to make your demons shut the hell up is to do what they tell you.
Truth be told, I’m actually not a big fan of westerns, save for those written back in the ‘70s and ‘80s by the so-called Piccadilly Cowboys, a pint-drinking pack of British authors who took the American western formula and turned it on its head by casting antiheroes as the protagonists instead of white-hat good guys and reveling in the kind of graphic violence usually reserved for splatter-punk horror. Alas, those kind of ultra-violent westerns have seemingly gone out of style, much like dueling with pistols and disco, so I rarely pay attention to new western series when they debut, generally finding them too stale and sterilized for my liking.
But when Piccadilly Publishing announced they were releasing a brand new hard-hitting action-western series, my literary taste buds started salivating like a starving wolf eyeballing a crippled lamb. The fact that it was being put out by Piccadilly Publishing (named after those aforementioned Piccadilly Cowboys), the cool cover art, the fact that they were advertising it as a violent series … all these factors combined to jack my hopes higher than the tallest cactus in Texas that at long last a new western would capture the flavor of those old Piccadilly Cowboy books.
I hoped Drifter would be in the same vein as Edge, Breed, Steele, Claw, Jubal Cade, etc. and I must confess to a smidgen of disappointment when I started reading and realized that Drifter lacks the explicit violence of those old series. It's not tame by any stretch of the imagination—folks are killed and blood is spilled, and the killin’ and spillin’ happen fairly frequently—but it does not go for the gore with gusto. So, for better or worse (depending on your personal proclivities), it’s not a Piccadilly Cowboy styled western. That said, you most definitely will not mistake Drifter for a Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey western either. It’s much more violent than that, thank the god of six-guns, even if that violence isn’t spelled out in gruesome detail.
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The best thing about Drifter is that the story moves with the speed of a rattlesnake strike, the plot stripped down to the bare-bone essentials like a vulture-picked carcass. No lofty themes. Nary a whiff of pretentiousness. No interest in naval gazing. A man tangles with a pack of mangy cutthroats. Pack of mangy cutthroats rape and slaughter man's wife. Man vows revenge, hunts down the pack of mangy cutthroats, and blows them all to Hell. End of story. (Hopefully I didn’t need to post a spoiler alert…)
As you can tell, it’s a classic tale that’s been told a thousand times before, but that doesn’t dull its entertainment value. Much like fine whiskey and voluptuous women, there is just something comforting about reading a traditional story-line told with surefooted skill and that’s what author Brent Towns (writing as Jake Henry) brings to the table. His style is deceptively simple, eschewing fancy words and purple prose in favor of lean, mean writing. He never uses twelve words when ten will do just fine, trimming all the fat and letting nothing stand in the way of all the gun-blazing action.
Bottom line, Drifter #1: "Savage" is packed with hot bullets and cold vengeance, so action-western fans should gobble it up. If you glance at your bookshelf and see titles like Slocum, Longarm, and Gunsmith sitting there in all their dog-eared, paper-backed glory, then you should definitely give Drifter a shot.
