by Tiny Boyles and Hank Nuwer
1981 Playboy Paperbacks
"He's part grizzly, part mountain lion - and all _mean_"
"He's like a bounty hunter from the old, wild west...
And he's hell on goddamn wheels. He's 6'6", weighs 389 pounds and favors machine guns, magnums and big buck knives. That 12 gauge looks kind of like a Tonka toy dangling in his huge hairy paw. So if you want to jump bail, be our guest. He'll cross seven state lines, then drag you back every inch of the way. Then it's bail or jail and there's nothing you can do. Only now he's met his match. He's sworn to bring back Satan Himself: A mass-murdering sexual psychopath hiding down in Mexico with a fanatical band of killers and a bevy of beautiful but deadly women who will do anything for him. If he asks them nicely, that is."
I was prepared to dislike the real Tiny Boyles for reasons I might go into later, but Nuwer starts him off as being a criminal sack of fertilizer from the get go, and makes him charming enough to get away with it.
Nominally based on a real bounty hunter, The Deadliest Profession has Tiny Boyles hired to wipe out a Mormon splinter cult. He recruits several of his friends, arms up a Winnebago, and drives out into the desert. Before you know it, they're mowing down fleeing women, shooting them in the backs with machine guns.
The book is kept aloft by the witty banter, which actually works, rather than the clumsy action sequences.
By the end, Nuwer just kinds of give up. He starts the final melee between Boyles and the cult leader, only to have the baddie struck down by lightning, presumably because that's more plausible than Boyles engaging in prolonged physical activity.
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