The Butcher 07 - Death Race

Death Race
The Butcher 07
by Stuart Jason
1973 Pinnacle

I'm calling horse hockey on this one.  What the hell was this, Jason?

Bucher is sent to an Alaskan village to find out if soldiers manning the Dewpoint early warning defense system are being replaced by duplicates.  After the obligatory dispatching-sleazy-mob-hitmen scene, he's off to a tiny village to speak with Sonja Rostov, an Eskimo woman whose brother has been replaced.  Lucky for Bucher, he speaks this particular Eskimo dialect and knows all their customs, because that information was useful when he was the head of the west coast syndicate.

He hangs around the village a bit and sends someone off to relay a message to his handlers at White Hat.  He's attacked by three Eskimo thugs, including the unlikely named Sugar Hazard, and the sight of Sonja disemboweling one of them sends his heart aflutter.  A good half of the book is them being cutesy together, with the sex all off page.

Bucher sees an old school picture of an Eskimo child that he recognizes as Dr. Wan Fu, distinguishable by literally having a second brain on the outside of his face.  Sure.



The head of White Hat shows up to fill Bucher in on the details of the Men's Adventure paperback where stuff actually happens, just not here.  The Dewpoint infiltration was a distraction, the kind that only served to bring attention to Wan Fu. He's distracting someone from something, we're not sure here, but the important thing now is that he has 1700 saboteurs in deep cover under his control.

Bucher, your mission is to go the stronghold and get the list of saboteurs' names and addresses, which he'll be sure to have around.  Here is a transmitter to signal the bombers.  Just make a quick stop to get your new girlfriend shot by a sniper.

And by stronghold we mean cave with two guards that you dispatch off page.  Wan Fu is into having dogs eat people alive, and they are trained to only attack people who are bleeding, which can't possibly backfire on him.

Bang, Bucher shoots his hand, the dogs eat him, the end.  No list of saboteurs, no exciting race to escape before the bombers hit, no idea what his evil scheme was, and hardly a drop of action in the whole stupid book.  There is no death race.