The Lone Wolf 3: Boston Avenger by Mike Barry

The Lone Wolf 3
Boston Avenger
by Mike Barry (Barry N. Malzberg)
1973, Berkley Medallion

Ex-cop on the run Wulff heads to Boston with twenty pounds of heroin he scored in the last book. He survives an assassination attempt at a toll booth but loses the heroin to two thugs who run off with it. Wulff tosses a grenade at a memorial at a mob mansion, while the two thugs try to sell the heroin to a Harvard associate professor who sidelines as a dealer.

Wulff is captured by the local mafia who agree to let him live if he recovers the heroin. Wulff goes after the prof, who had turned himself in to the cops. Wulff chases the police and recovers the heroin, but finds himself in a dragnet closing in. His master plan to evade the police involves crashing his car in the woods, walking thirty feet into the forest, and taking a nap. Not sure why he didn't just pull over if it was that easy.

The prof goes home, Wulff follows, the mob shows up, people are shot, the end.

Goes hard into characterizations, which might have worked if the story did. None of the motivations checked out - Wulff, anti-heroin crusader, wanted to recover the junk, to the point of shooting cops over it, for ill defined reasons other that using it for bait, somehow. The mafia don wanted the junk gone, something about avoiding flooding the market and lowering prices, as if storing it or moving it to a different territory wasn't an option. Both of them seem to change their minds.

Wulff's man on the run bit didn't play well with the fact that the mafia knows where he is at all times, even knowing what route he's driving. Four different times the mob just shows up, only twice to try and kill him - if the mob's informant network is that comprehensive, they need better reasons why Wulff is still alive. For part of the story they want Wulff to take care of the Prof, which they can't do themselves for undisclosed reasons.

I liked the tone, the most nihilistic of the Mack Bolan clones, but the actual prose is atrocious. Not quite at Lionel Fanthorpe levels, there is constant repetition, with characters repeating things back to each other and repeating that they don't need to repeat things. Wulff himself is Jimmy Two Times. Probably wouldn't have crossed a hundred pages without the filler

There's a line of opinion that this is subversive satire, or that it's building up to a climax in book 14 that will make it all worthwhile but you have to read the whole series to get the whole effect. I think this is based on Malzberg's positive reputation as a science fiction writer. Whether there's a master plan that pays off at the end or Malzberg's phoning it in at a genre he doesn't respect, there's too much pulp and not enough juice.

From Amazon 

Lone Wolf 2: Bay Prowler by Mike Barry

Lone Wolf 2: Bay Prowler
by Mike Barry (Barry N. Malzberg)
1973, Berkley Medallion

Burt Wulff continues his war on drugs in San Francisco.  He kills a dealer, rescues a junkie, and fights off assassination attempts before he sinks a ship, stealing the cargo of heroin.  The horrible prose of the first novel has improved dramatically.  Not only is it more readable, it gains some depth in places, though sometimes Malzberg climbs up his own ass for a few pages.  Drug distribution networks are like franchise fast food joints.  And fast food is kind of like a drug, when you think about it.  Yeah, man.

Better action scenes, better plotting but only barely.  His assassins just know where he is, while the mob boss pulls a Bond villain and tells Wulff where the shipment is coming in because he plans on killing him anyway.

Best of all, Malzberg manages to evoke a mood, of Wulff being a walking dead man, driven but with no real purpose, like a more nihilistic version of early Mack Bolan.

Available in audiobook from Audible

Paperback from AbeBooks

Night Raider by Mike Barry - Lone Wolf 1

Night Raider
by Mike Barry (Barry Malzburg)
Lone Wolf 1
1973 Berkley



Burt Wulff is a good cop who refuses to go on the take.  His girlfriend ends up dead of an overdose and Wulff decides to kill a lot of people.

"I'm going to kill some people,"
"Take it easy man."
"I'm going to kill a lot of people," Wulff said.

This is rushed out in a prologue that was less fleshed out than most series' recaps.  Wulff then proceed to target random drug dealers and follow to chain up to the big fish.  Not much action, and his last two targets he dispatches by setting the building on fire.

There are some occasional stream-of-consciousness flourishes (though not on the level of the early Butcher novels), but most of the prose is confusing and awkward.  The few dialogue scenes are repetitive, with characters making the same point five or six times in a row.

I've heard a lot of takes on this series.  That is was written purposely bad as satire on the genre.  That it has a character arc that requires reading all 14 volumes to appreciate.  That it's hackwork pooped out to cash in on the Executioner's popularity.

Read on its own merits, this is probably the most poorly written of the Men's Adventure series.  Cliched and derivative, but with the promise of having possibly the most unhinged of main characters.

Critics seem to give the series a lot more credit than I think it deserves, probably based on the respect they have for Malzburg's science fiction.  I wonder if they give the same credit to his erotica novels like I, Lesbian and Nympho Nurse.

Malzburg himself talks about the social vision he had for the series, and how the war on crime mirrored the war in Vietnam.  As if this was unique and profound, and not cliche and omnipresent in Men's Adventure of the time.

I'd be nicer, but he pooped all over Don Pendleton, so screw him.  I might skip forward to the end, as number 14 is supposed to be especially crazy.