Mondo 2: Cocaine Kill by Anthony DeStefano

Mondo 2
Cocaine Kill
by Anthony DeStefano
1977 Manor Books

We open in the hospital where Mondo died and is now recovering. He faces his attacker from the first installment, Chan Ho Lee, and after defeating him he follows the pan Asian triad/samurai code and agrees to finish Lee's last mission, to take out drug kingpin Jacque Ku Khan, though he only takes up the mission because he hopes some money will be involved.

Mondo operates through the underworld of New York, recruiting former colleagues and cellmates, shaking down prostitutes, and coming up with a half-baked plan to borrow enough money to pretend to be a big time drug dealer. The plan falls through and Mondo is captured, tortured, and shot up with heroin.

Mondo escapes, chains himself to a tree to kick the junk, and gathers his forces for a final attack, including the mad dog who will clearly double cross them and the retired boxer who is clearly going to die. Mondo faces off with Kahn's bodyguard Turk while the rest of the conflict resolves itself off-page.

The book is strongest in the depictions of the sleaze of the streets, the lowlight being the mob boss who got back at his cheating gal by forcing her to do a sex show before slitting her womb open with a machete, ripping out a fetus, and stomping it into the ground. The plot tends to run aground a bit, and the fight scenes weren't much.

The story itself is pure blaxploitation, and would have been better with a Black protagonist. The only second person pronouns used are racial slurs, which goes down a bit harder with an Italian lead.

There was no cocaine.

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