Month: April 2019

Review: Hellfire in Haiti

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Hellfire in Haiti

codysarmy2

If I had to pick a favorite entry in the seven-book Cody’s Army series, Hellfire In Haiti would easily win. Nothing else has the same mix of action, fun, and good villains. I never had as much entertainment out of a Cody’s Army book as I did here.

The entire Cody’s Army series feels to me like the action adventure novel version one of those knockoff fighting games that tried to piggyback on the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat-not bad , but the incredibly obvious influence is still there, and it could only have existed in the middle of a very big pack. Still, none of the Cody’s Army books are unreadable, and this one in particular is a highlight of the entire genre.

Hellfire in Haiti sort of recycles its main plot from an earlier Cody’s Army book, Philippine Hardpunch. There, a former buddy of Marcos plots to reconquer the Philippines. Here, a former buddy of Duvalier plots to reconquer Haiti. The former book simply didn’t punch as hard as it could (I had to say it). This delivers a Mike Tyson haymaker.

Army member Rufe Murphy is kidnapped and subjected to a voodoo ritual, adding to the over-the-topness of this book. The villains in this book are excellent action-adventure fodder. There’s main villain Clairvius Bourreau  the ex-death squad leader and drug lord who enjoys dressing in showy outfits. And there’s his American ally Wes Taggart, a psychotic former Vietnam unit-mate of protagonist John Cody. That brought a smile to my face as Taggart reminded me of some of the sort of dubious “hard man who breaks the rules” “protagonists” of more recent war-fantasy novel.

And the final battle featuring the Army vs. Bourreau’s stronghold stands as the literary version of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando. It’s easily one of the best climaxes I’ve read in an 80s action-adventure book. Cheap thrillers, especially ones of the time, don’t get much better than this.

Review: Eye Of The Storm

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Eye Of The Storm

eyeofthestorm

The first book in the “Black Eagle Force” series by Ken Farmer and Buck Steinke, Eye Of The Storm is a delightfully cheesy exercise in Mack Maloney-style military melodrama.

Starting a Super Secret Task Force With Super Tech and Super Planes, the men, women, and high-tech aircraft of Black Eagle Force battle a Mexican billionaire whose last name is an obscenity in Spanish (uh…) and who has a private island with a pyramid-lair and a gigantic arsenal of soldiers and military equipment (ok…).

I was impressed. Oh, it’s not the best ever. Even beyond its cheesiness, cliche-ness, and dubious character names, it’s about a hundred pages too long. But its downsides are thankfully much fewer than its upsides. I just really like Mack Maloney-esque “over the top but not really science fiction” military action, and when the action happens, it happens well.

The nature of the story means any “errors” or “contrivances” are easily forgiven. The BEF gets opponents of an appropriately challenging nature-no small feat. It has just the right amount of threat and “look at ’em go.” This is an excellent “popcorn book” and one I was overjoyed to uncover.

Review: Death Run

On By coilerxiiIn Review1 Comment

Death Run

deathrrun

It was inevitable that my run of at-least “decent enough” later Mack Bolans would come to an end at some point.

The blurb was promising enough. To stop a nuke, Mack Bolan gets caught up in the world of motorcycle racing. It felt like the kind of zombie sorceress plot I enjoy, and I was wondering “So, how are these going to connect?” It reminded me of one of those missions in Grand Theft Auto games everyone hates where the boss-of-the-week forces you into this linear, nonsensical set-piece with dubious mechanics where a more direct approach is seemingly better. Something like:

“Ok, Claude/Tommy/CJ/Niko/Michael/Franklin/Trevor, the nuke is in a shack with only three guards. Last mission you killed thirty armed people, but you can’t just grab your minigun and storm the shack. No, you first have to win a motorcycle race against computer opponents who do everything but throw blue shells at you. What, that’s unfair? Well, we could have put trains in! Be lucky we didn’t do that!”

The actual book is not nearly as amusing as that hypothetical thought. The motorcycle racing plot is mostly just A: A way to set up the various Macguffins, and B: A way for the author to talk about motorcycles and motocross. Cue some of the most generic, third-rate action possible to defeat some of the most generic “evil terrorists” possible, and conclude with one of the most stereotypical “defuse the bomb” scenes.

It’s kind of a little hard to even criticize because of how shallow and generic it seems. But yeah, in short it’s shallow, generic, and the motorcycle racing plot isn’t taken advantage of in an amusing way.