BOOK REVIEW: "Kill Zone" by Zeke Mitchell

Buy on Amazon

They say to never judge a book by its cover, but many readers still do and sometimes—just sometimes—it pays off. For example, when I saw the cover of Zeke Mitchell’s Kill Zone, with its assault rifle and flame-kissed fonts, I judged that it would be a hard-hitting action novel with a serious ‘80s vibe and that’s exactly what I got.

You remember back in the '80s when noble one-man-armies like The Executioner rampaged against the evildoers, killing them mercilessly? When Chuck Norris and others of that Uzi-toting ilk stormed across the silver screen putting buckets of bullets into scumbags? Yeah, so does Zeke Mitchell and he expertly captures the vintage spirit of those old action-adventure series, writing in the same "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" zone that made those books such (not) guilty pleasures. Seriously, if this novel had been written back in the glory days of the genre and then turned into a movie, the producers would have immediately called Schwarzenegger and offered him the starring role. (Well, unless it was being produced by Cannon, who probably would have settled for Michael Dudikoff.)

The plot is minimal, just enough to hang a series of ceaseless action sequences on, and our stone-cold yet honorable protagonist (Matt Thorn) wastes more villains in this book than all the Rambo movies combined (OK, maybe a slight exaggeration ... but just a slight one). The carnage count is wildly absurd in all the right ways. Everywhere Thorn turns, there are bad guys popping out of the woodwork to waste him ... only to get wasted themselves instead. Sure, the thugs are piss poor shots while the hero rarely misses, but that's all part of the genre. You want realism, stick to Schlindler’s List or something. Me, I just kept on grinning as I watched (read) one enemy gunman after another get chopped to bits by auto-fire.

The level of graphic violence merits mention. This ain’t no PG-13, watered down, sissified action. This is hard-R stuff, with exploding heads, ripped flesh, splattered brains, popped-out eyes, gushing blood, and enough body parts to fill a butcher shop. None of that “the enemy target clutched his chest and fell to the ground” bloodless bullcrap here.

Bottom line, Kill Zone is a great kickoff to what should be a killer action series. If you enjoy nonstop shoot-‘em-up action, then prepare to be impressed. This one is all guns 'n' guts and loaded with so much auto-fire action, I could practically smell the cordite seeping out of my Kindle.

REVIEW: "The Kill Fever" (Wolf #1) by Dean Breckenridge

Buy on Amazon

If you like your action-crime fiction the same way you like your women—short, no fat, hard-edged, and packing a wicked punch—then you’ll be in hardboiled heaven reading this short story by Dean Breckenridge. The first in a planned series, “The Kill Fever” introduces us to Wolf, a shadowy protagonist who roams the gray wasteland between the law and the lawless. Wolf’s enigmatic appearance is summed up with this brilliant economy of prose: “Callaway knew him only as Wolf. Nobody knew his first name. Nobody knew where he had come from. Callaway didn’t think he was a bad guy; wasn’t entirely sure he was a good guy.”

This kind of sparse, stripped to the bone style suffuses this story from its first syllable to its final pronoun. Breckenridge wastes nary a single word; in fact, if there is a flaw—and that “if” is certainly debatable—it’s that setting and description take a back seat (actually, they take the trunk, right under the spare tire and the dead hooker) to dialogue, pace, and action. There is a vibe about “The Kill Fever” that is reminiscent of Richard Stark and in the hedonistic halls of hardboiled, there may be no greater compliment.

In fact—and forgive the imminent blasphemy—for action fans, “The Kill Fever” may actually be superior to Stark’s stuff, because Breckenridge ensures Wolf gets into plenty of gun scrapes over the course of a 51-page story. Hardboiled writers frequently fail to include enough gun-slinging to attract carnage-craving action aficionados, but Wolf packs plenty of heat and isn’t afraid to blow holes in the bad guys.

 

Granted, if you want graphic kills, this may not be up your dark literary alley. This is not that kind of story. You don’t write a lean, mean, pared-to-the-bone thriller and then go excessive to describe what a bullet does to human anatomy. So you get lots of “the bullet hit the man and dropped him,” but not so much “the bullet exploded deep inside his chest cavity, shredding the heart and blowing chunks of cardiac tissue into dripping rags of sodden meat as blood-fueled bone splinters shot across the room in a red, wet geyser and painted a crimson Picasso on the opposite wall.” See the difference? One is classic hardboiled. One is action splatterpunk. Nothing wrong with either one, but “The Kill Fever” is the former, not the latter.

 

I don’t read much hardboiled because of the aforementioned lack of action, but of the few authors I do follow in the genre, Breckenridge might just be my new favorite because he found a way to insert action-adventure tropes into the framework of hardboiled crime-thrillers. It’s not as easy as it sounds—I gave it a try (successfully or not is for the reader to decide) on “The Killing Question”—and I hope he continues to impress as this series continues. Because wolves are dangerous yet noble, fierce yet captivating … and so is Wolf.