Al Wheeler investigates an accident with a suspiciously high insurance payout. I appreciate how Wheeler isn't a particularly smart detective, he just waits for the bad guys to try and kill him, or waits until he runs out of characters for suspects. At least in this era of Brown, each story has a woman Wheeler recruits and/or sleeps with, putting her in danger.
From Amazon https://amzn.to/44ubQ9P
A college student wants to know who her father is. Many, many pages later she's targeted by a figure from her past, then the book ends. We have many, many pages of astrology and placing want ads to fill out the length.
A couple of slit throats, not enough to be horror, more of a thriller that never gets started. Exposition heavy as always, Russo solves the mysteries either before or right after they're introduced. We know about the father from the opening sequence, and other elements that might have been a surprise, such as the transgender/split personality business, was just spelled out, with the characters themselves never learning about it.
There's an astrology based, feminist secret society, sometime intimated that controls sections of society, but ends up being 13 women who barely manage to cover up their own murders that they commit to cover up other murders. They don't play much in the plot either.
For the exciting conclusion, our heroine is kidnapped (off page), rescued (off page), and learns of the fate of her tormentors from the newspaper. The worst of Russo's that I've come across.
From Amazon https://amzn.to/3YJVhWe
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One of the worst novels I've ever read by one of my favorite authors. Not even any camp value, just a dull grind to a word count.
Butler is a CIA agent who gets fired for his objections to the agency's interventions in South American. He's recruited, via plot convolutions, to join a secret international conspiracy The Bancroft Institute to oppose a secret international conspiracy Cobra. This takes the first half of the book.
The second half has Butler being hired as head of security for a billionaire, getting involved in a military coup, and defusing a nuclear bomb. Butler occupies a weird place on the spectrum between le Carré and The Man From B.O.N.E.R. - the plot is too sparse and bad to be serious espionage, not enough sex to be a farce, and not funny enough to be parody.
Speaking of sex, three scenes, the first two fade to black shortly after beginning. Not enough for a spank book or sex farce, but present and creepy enough to overwhelm the other elements. To say it doesn't age is well is an understatement, as Butler's main seduction move is to hope she doesn't press charges.
The writing, especially the first half, felt like the author was blocked, kept typing through it, and didn't go back to revise. Butler wanders around not doing anything, conversations go in circles with speakers repeating things back to each other for pages, just completely aimless.
The series ran twelve books, with Levinson doing the first six. The later ones are strangely more collectible, probably smaller print runs, but I'm guessing it's more for the covers than the content.
Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/3rrlKex
An earthly radio operator zaps himself to Venus, where he is captured by and assimilates with ant people and people people. Kept waiting for the admin to get out of the way (learning the language, customs, getting a job, etc) so we could get to the adventure, but I suppose all that was the point of the story. More planetary romance than sword & planet.
The titular gore is a surveying term for a slice of land which goes unclaimed due to surveying mistakes. We start off with what I remember most from one of Citro's other books, a depiction of depressed rural Vermont and miserable men drinking themselves to death. Some stones are brought to the attention of the university, there are a some mysterious deaths, and finally bigfoot sightings around an abandoned hotel.
Pretty early in the process the bigfoots are revealed to be...
What's better than a battle royal? Five battle royals!
Introducing World War X!George Fielding Eliot claims the Cruiserweight Title.
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Westlake slips and Garton takes the advantage, becoming our new World Champion and first double crown winner.
A group of vampiric lot lizards (sex workers who hang around truck stops) travel with a bestial queen vampire in the back of a truck driven by fat, sleazy trucker familiars, the Carsey brothers. Trucker Bill Ketter, a trucker turned reluctant vamp, hunts the group, finding them at a truck stop where his ex-wife and kids happen to be stranded.
Sleazy, violent, and fun. My only complaint is the short length, as there was a lot of room in the story to expand.
