Specialist 5: Zombie by Errol Lecale

Specialist 5
Zombie
by Errol Lecale (Wilfred McNeilly)

1974, New English Library

Eli Podgram is The Specialist, a wealthy occult investigator who was once a vampire for a couple hours. That fact isn't relevant to the story but takes up a big chunk of the prologue. He's joined by mute virgin psychic Mara and his French servant Hugo. The Chill series also had a woman psychic assistant/potential love interest, don't know how often that comes up in occult investigators of the era.

They go to Haiti to assist a man whose wife had been resurrected as a zombie. Not much plot wise, but things turn real nasty. The wife is gang raped by voodoo cult members in a ceremony to return her soul to her corpse so that she may suffer more for it. Packs of zombies roam the countryside cannibalizing everyone they come across.

Podgram spends a good chunk of the book in astral form snooping around. In a particularly chilling sequence he comes across a man being roasted alive and helps guides the terrified spirit to the afterlife.

Lecale is a pseudonym for Wilfred McNeilly, one of the most common users of the Peter Saxon house name.

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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.

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Mr. Confidential by Samuel Bernstein

Mr. Confidential: The Man, His Magazine & The Movieland Massacre That Changed Hollywood Forever
by Samuel Bernstein
2006,  Walford Press

Biography of Robert Harrison, publisher of scandal magazine Confidential, as played by Danny DeVito in LA Confidential. Not much to it, and if you came for the gossip there's a running theme that the scandals were mundane. The only piece new to me was Orson Welles allegedly being a biter.

A lot of page length went towards redeeming Confidential for breaking through taboos and social barriers, and minimizing Harrison being a scumbag. Enough here for a decent article, but not enough meat on the bone for 300+ pages.

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The Guvnor by G.F. Newman

The Guvnor
by G.F. Newman
1977, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon
1978 Panther edition

Detective Chief Superintendent John Fordham tracks a gang of robbers in hopes of implicating the high society figures that back them. His plans go sideways when a Scottish cop is killed and the police crack down hard on the London underworld.

Cynical and miserable without getting particularly sleazy. Fordham is the closest to a white hat in the book, but the premise behind his crusade doesn't ring true. If you're a royal connected corporate head making millions off crooked contracts, why would you deal with multiple cutouts to involve yourself in a mail train robbery? There was little sense to how the proceeds of the robbery would trickle up.

Also dubious is the idea of a criminal occupation of the draftsman, someone who puts the team together and plans robberies, but works for a flat fee on a contract basis for a third party. Someone in that position can just plan robberies on their own with less risk and more reward.

This was originally a screenplay, and it could have made a decent episode of the Sweeny or Target, but not enough to sustain 334 pages.

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Diamondback: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time by Derrick Ferguson

Diamondback: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
by Derrick Ferguson
2021, Pro Se Productions

Believed dead, gunman Diamondback Vogel returns to the gang run city of Denbrook and inserts himself into a war of organized crime and corrupt police. It has a near future setting, just enough to account for societal decay and the occasional technological advancement. Solid action, but too many pages of gangsters telling each other what happened in other scenes.

There's a subplot involving a wife looking for her missing husband and whether Vogel is who he thinks he is, but that will sadly be left dangling.

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The Fatty Arbuckle Case by Leo Guild

The Fatty Arbuckle Case
by Leo Guild
1962, Paperback Library

Despite the bottle on the cover, this is a fairly straightforward account of the legal case against Fatty Arbuckle in his three trials, concentrating on the testimony provided and less on the yellow journalism surrounding it as more modern accounts have.

A short summary: Fatty Arbuckle was one of the biggest comics of the silent era. A young actress, Virginia Rappe, took ill at a party at his hotel and died shortly after, possibly from a perforated bladder. Arbuckle was accused of rape and murder, but cleared in court on his third trial after two mistrials.

From the contents of this book, it's clear there was not enough evidence presented in trial to make the case, there is no basis for the more salacious rumors that Fatty killed her with a shard of ice or bottle, but outside of the court the accounts were such a mess that we'll never know if Fatty took advantage of an incapacitated Rappe.

There's a zealous prosecutor whose whole case seemed to hinge on "doesn't he look like a pervert" on one side, and the power of the studio system on the other. While the studios weren't afraid to throw Fatty under the bus, they were notorious for "fixing" criminal issues. Witnesses didn't show up, everyone changed their story, people were threatened to say they were bribed or bribed to say they were threatened.

The star witness, who claimed to hear an ambiguous outcry from Rappe, was either a convicted blackmailer according to one account, or Fatty's lawyers reported her for bigamy according to another. It's interesting to see the defense work, bringing witnesses to counter arguments that never actually got presented.

For instance, they brought a half dozen witnesses to claim that Rappe was an hysteric who would spontaneously rip clothing off and scream in pain. This was to counter testimony that her clothes were found ripped and people heard her screaming, testimony that didn't make it to court. The prosecutor hinted that he would have witnesses who said Fatty stabbed her with a shard of ice that never came up, and the defense had a closing witness they claimed was poisoned in the courtroom with a piece of candy given to her by a mysterious man.

According to this account, 27 doctors disagreed on 100 points of medical opinion. No wonder modern armchair true crime buffs can pick and choose to make whatever case they want. One thing that's outlasted the trial was the defaming of the victim. The defense entered that she got medicine for vaginal inflammation eight years previously, which was meant to be damning. Later accounts claim she was a sex worker, stds contributed to her illness, or a botched abortion, or she was on her way to an abortion, all kinds of misogynistic and irrelevant claims. For instance, the dubious claim that she spread pubic lice around the Max Sennett studio years before doesn't have anything to do with her bladder health or if Fatty attacked her.

Even his supporters seem to have a backup position that there might have been consensual sex (with an almost unconscious drunk women in medical distress) and it was just bad timing for her bladder to go out, the assaults on Rappe's character being in service to that notion.

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Dismembered by Jonathan Janz

The Dismembered
by Jonathan Janz
2022, Cemetery Dance Publications

In 1912, a divorced American author travels to England and meets a woman seeking help for her younger sister, who has been seduced by a depraved older Count. After a great deal of talking and atmosphere things ramp up, with the Count and his minions taking prisoners and lopping off body parts.

Less of a short novel and more of a long short story, with only a handful of scenes. Interesting as a genre exercise. The cover evokes 60s gothic romance, he keeps the narration in character throughout, with references to Poe and Shelley, though the story is more shudder pulp than Daphne du Maurier, and the ending is more adventure than horror. Taken on it's own merits as just a story,  the long-winded narrative style went on long enough for me to forget what was happening in the scene, and the lengthy epilogue didn't help with the pace.

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Pool of Radiance by Jane Cooper Hong and Jim Ward

Forgotten Realms
Pool of Radiance
by Jane Cooper Hong and Jim Ward
1989, TSR

A novelization of the 1988 video game, and the most D&D feeling D&D novel I've read yet. Our party meets in a tavern (a spellcaster/warrior, cleric of Tyr, and ranger/thief) and are blackmailed into a series of missions by a crooked councilman to clear out the uncivilized parts of the city.

Our party faces orcs, the undead, and a possessed dragon. In a highlight for me, they clear out a gnoll temple, a human temple defiled like Leatherface redecorated. This is probably the goriest and most violent D&D novel I've read - severed body parts, spurting blood, fat sizzling from lightning spells - which was especially incongruent as the audiobook was read like a children's story.

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