Signalz by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2020: sixth book in the Adversary Cycle, aka the Nightworld Cycle)

 

From the back cover

“Twilight has come. Night will fall.

“It will begin in the heavens and end in Earth.

“But before that. . . the rules will be broken.

“The Change is coming, and the world as we know it is ending. Sixteen-year-old Ellie Tate has changed. She looks the same, but her mother detects someone else looking out through her blue eyes. Ellie builds a ‘shelter’ in her room with an entrance that leads. . . elsewhere.

“And what of the convoy of tractor trailers Hari Tate watches drive up to a mountain road and return without the trailers. . . leaving nothing on the mountain. What are they shipping?

“And the writer who finds a hole in the floor of his NYC apartment and tumbles through into. . . elsewhere.

“They will all find each other and find their answers in the electromagnetic pulses piercing the Earth from Out There, pulses that no one should hear, but some do. But they are not simply pulses. They are Signalz.”

 

Review

Nicola Tesla, or at least his legacy, again plays a part in Wilson’s work, with electronic pulses, heard by a few, taking them to scattered, faraway places, most of them within our terrestrial realm. This is a fun science fiction/horror, nightmares-melting-into-reality-and-back work, with interesting characters (e.g., Hari Tate, a tough forensic accountant) and a no-going-back, semi-cliffhanger finish that made me excited for the next and (thus-far) final Adversary Cycle book, Nightworld.

Money Shot by Christa Faust

 

(pb; February 2025. First book in the Angel Dare series.)

 

From the back cover

“THEY THOUGHT SHE’D BE EASY. THEY THOUGHT WRONG.

“It all began with the phone call asking former porn star Angel Dare to do one more movie. Before she knew it, she’d been shot and left for dead in the trunk of a car. But Angel is a survivor. And that means she’ll get to the bottom of what’s been done to her even if she has to leave a trail of bodies along the way.”

 

Review

Faust, with her gritty and pulp-veracious execution, penned a quick, reader-hooking read when she wrote Money—it has human warmth in unexpected places, sleaze, greed, violence, lust, gore and even a quick rape scene that’s not gratuitous and lends appropriate-but-succinct emotional weight to that last crime. Just as importantly, Faust brings together dark/wry humor, an insider’s view of the porn industry with the natural sleaze factor that makes pulp so palpable and worth reading. This is a great, if overlong novel (its last quarter could’ve been shorter, more action-intense gritty and genre effective). Worth owning, this. Followed by Chokehold.

Hatchet Girls by Joe R. Lansdale

 

(hb; 2025: fourteenth novel in the Hap and Leonard series)

 

From the back cover

“When Hap and Leonard are called in on a strange request (subduing a meth-hopped hog) by a desperate young lady, they quickly learn this woman is part of a fringe group: The Hatchet Girls, who have pledged their allegiance to a crazed and grudge-bearing leader bent on bloody societal revenge. The timing couldn't be worse to be caught in such a vile, sticky wicket of a case: both boys are wrapped up in their domestic lives: Leonard is in the midst of wedding planning with fiance, Pookie. And meanwhile, Hap and Brett are hard at work on their new home. Homemaking bliss will have to wait as Hap and Leonard are driven to stop the danger in its tracks and better understand the group's mission and the plans they have already set in place for helter-skelter-esque mayhem.

“Life changes, midnight sneaks, and dark encounters with misguided dames who yell ‘Chop, Chop,’ lead Hap and Leonard into one of their darkest adventures yet.”

Review

Hatchet, as with other Hap and Leonard [H&P] works, finds the colorful, quip-exchanging duo (as well as their friends and family) taking on  another “simple job” only to have it metastasize into bigger, uglier, offbeat, timely and infinitely more dangerous situations. Unlike Sugar on the Bones, the previous H&P book, Hatchet feels downsized storywise, with only a few H&P core characters (Brett, Hap’s wife; Pookie, Leonard’s fiancé; Justin, the newest local sheriff; etc.) involved in the action—a nice offset from the excellent, warm Sugar, making for a more intimate, equally warm, occasionally nasty and (at times) hair-raising follow-up.

There’s a lot of meditation about getting older in Hatchet, a relatively lighter tone that further shows the maturation of Hap and Leonard, as well as those around them. I love this series; every entry inspires a sense of visiting old friends within me. Another great read from Lansdale, worth owning.

Reprisal by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1992: fifth book in the Nightworld Cycle, aka Adversary Cycle.)

 

From the back cover

“In The Keep, a squad of Nazi soldiers unleashed a terrible life force far more monstrous than the Third Reich.

“In Reborn, a human embryo struck fear in the hearts of the chosen few who could feel its power from the womb.

“Now, in Reprisal, bestselling author F. Paul Wilson resurrects the ancient, vampiric evil in a young man born of flesh and blood. A young southern college student named Rafe hides his true and secret identity. But soon the whole world will know. All of humankind will suffer. And Rafe will feed, forever, on their tears and pain.”

 

Review

Reprisal is a relatively straightforward (with a few big twists, fewer than usual) read. A good number of its characters, e.g., former Jesuit priest Will Ryan, now going under the name Will Ryerson, are returnees from Reborn, and two of them—Mr. Veilleur, aka Glaeken and Glenn; Rasalom, aka Molasar—appeared in the first Nightworld Cycle novel, The Keep.

But things are different now for them. Veilleur/Glaeken is a septuagenarian man, whose wife (Magda, from Keep) now has Alzheimer’s. Rasalom, who’s gone through a few incarnations, is now Rafe Losmara, a collegiate edgelord-type who’s in tune with his dark, murky-world powers—powers he means to unleash upon the world in full, once he’s accomplished his current mission, something that has to do with Ryan/Ryerson and those around him.

An easy-to-gauge-its-“secrets” novel, Reprisal is a fun-blast offset from some of Wilson’s more ambitious works. I enjoyed it for its almost B-movie-simple plot, its tight editing, and straightforward pushing-toward-a-Rasalom-Glaeken-climax writing.

One of my favorite Wilson books, this. It’s not a wrap-up—it has a semi-cliffhanger-ish finish—but it’s a satisfying and hard-to-set-down bringing together of familiar characters worth rooting for or loathing. Followed by Signalz.

Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin

 

(pb; 2025)

 

From the back cover

“A cursed film. A haunted past. A deadly secret.

“The Baroness, an infamous [1935] exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer―deeply closeted and pathologically repressed―begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.

“As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real and is happening to her―and that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control.

“Until it all fades to black, and all that remains is a voice asking a question Ellen can’t answer but can’t get out of her mind: Do you want it? More than anything?”

 

Review

Set in New York (Staten island, Brooklyn), New Jersey (Clifton) and Delaware (Dover) in 1983, this only-for-die-hard/gorehound and LGBTQ+ friendly readers is a fiercely feminist, button-pushing read that slips seamlessly between Ellen Kramer’s nightmares and reality, rife with antisemitism, body horror, rape and sexism, bringing to me (at least for this reader) Poppy Z. Brite’s (aka Billy Martin) 1996 queer- and body horror-centric Exquisite Corpse as well as Clive Barker’s early to mid-career works.

Making Black even more horror-giddy, truly-cinematic fun is Felker-Martin’s love of film—explicit, fond mentions of Alien (1979), Halloween (1978), director/screenwriter David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Ira Levin’s 1967 novel Rosemary’s Baby. Black’s finish brings to mind the following films: Demons (1985), Knife + Heart (2018), The Lords of Salem (2012) and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009). Real-life piece-of-fecal-matter Sen. Strom Thurman and a delightful Rodney Dangerfield (he’s filming Easy Money) make an appearance in this nunsploitation-flirtatious and tightly written, ambitious work, one worth owning.

S by Koji Suzuki

 

(pb; 2012 – English translation release: 2017: fifth book in the Ring Cycle. Translated from Japanese to English by Greg Gencorello.)

 

From the back cover

“Takanori Ando, son of Spiral protagonist Mitsuo, works at a small CGI production company and hopes to become a filmmaker one day despite coming from a family of doctors. When he’s tasked by his boss to examine a putatively live-streamed video of a suicide that’s been floating around the internet, the aspiring director takes on more than he bargained for. His lover Akane, an orphan who grew up at a foster-care facility and is now a rookie high-school teacher, ends up watching the clip. She is pregnant, and she is. . . triggered.

“Sinking hooks into our unconscious from its very first pages with its creepy imagery and rewarding curious fans of the series with clever self-references, here is a fitting sequel renown for its ongoing mutations.”

 

 

Review

S, whose storyline plays out, template-wise, like that of Ring, is truly a “mutation” (Suzuki’s word) of its source novel. This time, though, it’s not Sadako—at least not directly—whose will births a variable and updated cycle of strange deaths (in this case “suicides”). Eerie and compelling (again) like Ring, S ably mixes science fiction and horror as well, imbuing its reader-resonant vibe with a sense of societal sin(s) and history. This is a great read, worthy to be called a sequel to the landmark Ring. Followed by Tide (2013).

Conspiracies by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 2000: third book in the Repairman Jack series)

 

From the back cover

“Repairman Jack, F. Paul Wilson’s vigilante hero from 1984’s The Tomb and 1998’s Legacies returns in a thriller that thrusts Jack back into the weird, supernatural world that he thrives in. Looking for clues to the mysterious disappearance of leading conspiracy theorist Melanie Ehler. Jack attends a convention of bizarre and avid conspiracy theorists. It is a place where aliens are real, the government is out to get you, and the world is hurtling toward an inevitable war of good versus evil incarnate. Jack finds that nobody can be trusted—and that few people are what they seem. Worse yet, Jack’s been having vivid dreams that make him wonder whether he’s headed for a clash with his own past—maybe The Tomb’s evil rakoshi beasts are through with him quite yet.”

Review

Conspiracies takes place almost immediately after the events of Legacies, with Jack searching for a missing woman (Melanie Ehler) at an unusual conspiracy theories convention where danger, human-based and supranatural, threatens its attendees. Then there’s the nightmares—not just Jack’s, which center around the terrifying and fierce rakoshi, whom he thought he’d vanquished in The Tomb, leading Jack and others to wonder: why are its other attendees having nighttime terror visions as well?

 

Stephen King fans may especially enjoy Wilson’s vivid, cinematic writing (with its affectionate and pulpy-at-time descriptions of New York) as well as Conspiracies’s often suspenseful multicharacter B-storylines and neo-noir/conspiracy thriller elements. Conspiracies, lots of humor and Lovecraftian fear dominate Wilson’s prose and characters as they try to make it without losing their minds—and their lives.

 

Conspiracies, which runs long at times, expands on the characters, storylines and Wilson’s “secret history of the world” (which unifies his published work), while setting up future vigilante action and (possible) villains in later Repairman Jack books, the next one All the Rage.

Sugar on the Bones by Joe R. Lansdale

 

(pb; 2024: thirteenth novel in the Hap and Leonard series)

 

From the back cover

“Minnie Polson is dead. Burned to a crisp in a fire so big and bad it had to be deliberate. The only thing worse is that Hap and Leonard could have prevented it. Maybe. Minnie had a feeling she was being targeted, shaken down by some shadowy force. However, when she’d solicited Hap & Leonard, all it took was one off color joke to turn her sour and she’d called them off the investigation. Wracked with a guilty conscience, the two PIs—along with Hap’s fleet-footed wife, Brett—tuck in to the case. As they look closer, they dredge up troublesome facts: for one, Minnie’s daughter, Alice, has recently vanished. She’d been hard up after her pet grooming business went under and was in line to collect a whopping insurance sum should anything happen to her mother. The same was due to Minnie’s estranged husband, Al, whose kryptonite (beautiful, money-grubbing women) had left him with only a run-down mobile home. But did Minnie’s foolish, cash-strapped family really have it in them to commit a crime this grisly? Or is there a larger, far more sinister scheme at work?”

 

 

Review

Sugar, Lansdale’s follow-up to the last Hap and Leonard [H&P] novel, The Elephant of Surprise (2019), finds the longtime friends, along with Brett (Hap’s wife) investigating a suspicious arson-murder case, with (possible) help from friends (or frenemies) from past H&P novels and stories. These characters include: Jim Bob, Vanilla Ride, Veil and Kung Fu Bobby.

Reading a H&P story is like visiting old friends—they’re raw, sometimes salty and scary, but always interesting and sincere in their intentions, and Sugar is no exception. There’s plenty of quip-quotable dialogue, raw action, hissable villains, fully realized and often warm frenemies/friend, though this time out it feels like it “H&P and friends” reunion, with a few new characters. It’s also, like other books in this series, a burn-through read, tonally falling somewhere between darker and recent lighter H&P fare. If the last third ran a bit long for me, it might be because I listened to this an audiobook and wasn’t doing my usual series-beat-familiar fast/physical book read. Worth owning, this, as are other H&P works, book- and television-wise. Followed, in book form, by Hatchet Girls.

Conan the Barbarian: Marvel Treasury Edition #4 by various artists and authors

 

(oversized pb; 1975: Marvel Comics graphic novel. Based on two of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories: “Rogues in the House,” originally published in January 1934, and “Red Nails,” originally published in July-October 1933. . . This oversized graphic novel is a collected reprint of several Marvel Comic comic book issues: Conan the Barbarian #11 [1971: “Rogues in the House”] and Savage Tales #2 and 3 [October and December 1973: “Red Nails”].)

 

Review, story by story

“Rogues in the House”: Betrayed by one of his many women (Jenna) after he “revenged” himself on “that priest of Anu,” Conan finds himself chained in a dungeon. An opportunity presents itself in the form of Murilo, a nobleman who offers to free Conan in exchange for the Cimmerian’s services as an assassin. Murilo’s stated target: Nabonidus, “red priest” and “master” of the unspecified city they’re in.

Conan accepts the offer, unaware that his liberator (Murilo) also has snuck into Nabonidus’s castle to make sure the targeted “man of science” meets a violent end—a mission further soured with a just-discovered horrific twist: Nabonidus is also a “wereman,” a giant ape creature calling itself Thak. Conan and Murilo immediately decide it’s best to flee the castle, as dealings with the supernatural rarely result in a survivable, positive outcome, something Conan knows all too well. They quickly find out escape is not an option for them.

Further twists in this illustrated tale make themselves known, making this fun, tightly penned and fast frame-paced comic, based on Robert E. Howard’s tale of the same name, originally published in Weird Tales magazine, January 1934.

Fans of Howard’s oeuvre might especially appreciate “Rogues”’s explicit reference to another Howard-penned Conan story, “The Tower of the Elephant,” originally published in Weird Tales in March 1933.

The artwork, perhaps because it was blown up for the oversized edition, has linework that is hazy, not solidly defined as well as slightly washed-out colors. This is not a complaint; I note this so readers of The Savage Sword of Conan magazine, which sports stellar, highly defined black and white artwork, don’t compare Savage to this more mainstream, less adult Marvel Treasury version.

 

“Red Nails [henceforth referred to as “Red”]”: Conan, trying to get into the loin cloth of a loath “Aquilonian she-pirate” (Valeria) he met in Sukmet, stalks her—he’s beguiled by her sword skills as much as he is by her wild beauty.

Just as she becomes aware of Conan’s creepy attentions, they sight a walled city in a barren plain. About the same time, Conan and Valeria fend off a horse-eating “dragon” (which looks like an uncommonly aggressive stegosaurus), compelling them to enter the mysterious, fortress-like city.

Upon entering the city-fort, Conan and Valeria encounter complicated dangers: they get caught in an intrametropolitan conflict between two feuding factions: the superstitious Xuchotl and the magick-wielding Xotalancs, whose long-term, internecine warfare is rooted in a broken brotherhood (Tecuhltli and Xotalanc’s), further betrayals and a seemingly ageless “witch,” Tascela.

“Red” is one of Howard’s most ambitious and character-complex Conan stories, even with its basic Hatfield/McCoys feud structure. Its original, print 1933 version, while impressive in intention, felt “weak. . . part of the reason for its disappointing delivery is because of its extended length—it’s a novelette, not a short story” (so I thought on 8/23/11, in my review of the print/story collection, Red Nails).

This Marvel Treasury Edition comic book version trims “Red”’s print-only excessive verbiage and length to its core, between its storytelling (if line-hazy and color faded) artwork and concise descriptions and dialogue. This makes the Marvel version of “Red” a better, more fun read, one that makes me appreciate Howard’s expansion of Conan’s world, along with his more fully realized characters, namely Valeria, whom even Conan recognizes as more than a beddable conquest by tale’s upbeat end.

(Valeria appears in director/co-screenwriter John Milius’s 1982 classic, Conan the Barbarian. Sandahl Bergman played the fierce “Aquilonian she-pirate.”)

This is a good, worth-owning read if you’re a Conan and/or early-1970s comic book fan.

“Red Nails” originally appeared in Weird Tales (July – October 1933, published in three serial parts).

Legacies by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1998: second book in the Repairman Jack series.)

 

From the back cover

“Repairman Jack isn’t your average appliance repairman—he fixes situations for people, often risking his own life. Jack has no last name, no social security number, works only for cash, and has no qualms when it comes to seeing that the job gets done.

“Dr. Alicia Clayton, a pediatrician who treats children with AIDS, is full of secrets, and he has just inherited a house that holds another. Haunted by painful memories, Alicia wants the house destroyed—but somehow everyone she enlists to help ends up violently killed. The house holds a powerful secret, and Alicia’s charmless brother Thomas seems willing to do anything to get his hands on that secret himself.

“But not if Repairman Jack can find it first!”

 

Review

Legacies, with its multicharacter B-storylines and neo-noir/conspiracy thriller elements, continues almost directly after the events of The Tomb. Gio DiLauro, his love interest in that book, becomes an indirect conduit and constant ally in this corporate, sometimes sorrow-laced thriller where a world-changing piece of technology leads to a strange cycle of killings, every one of them a corpse closer to Jack and those he cares about. Was glad to see Abe Grossman, also from Tomb, play a vital part in the novel’s fast-paced, swift-reader-immersion events and characters, with plenty of layered story to go along with its strong action sequences. As is often the case with Wilson, the writing elements feel deftly balanced and melded, making for a sequel entry that matches, and expands upon, its source work. Worth owning, this.

Followed by Conspiracies.

Where's There's a Will by Rex Stout

 

(pb; 1940: eighth book in the forty-six book Nero Wolfe series)

 

From the back cover

“Why did the late multimillionaire Noel Hawthorne leave his sisters, April, Maym and June, a peach, a pear, and an apple? And why did he will the bulk of his considerable estate to a woman who was most definitely not his wife? Now Nero Wolfe, able, astute, and unscrupulous detective that he is, must get to the bottom of a will that’s left a whirlpool of menace. . . and a legacy of murder that’s about to be fulfilled.”

 

Review

Will is a fun, roller coast ride of a Wolfe book, with inconvenient, plot-complicating corpses, lively, complicated and could-be-dangerous characters, Stout’s clever writing, Goodwin’s ego-puncturing humor and Wolfe’s brilliance in the face of blustering deception, death and others’ frustrations. It’s not my favorite Wolfe work, but Will is entertaining, smart, with some memorable lines and characters, which makes me excited for the next Wolfe entry, Black Orchids.

Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks

 

(pb; 1974: first book in the Dr. Who series. Based on Louis Marks, Terry Nation and Sydney Newman’s screenplay.)

 

From the back cover

“Exterminate! Exterminate!

“The Daleks. Doctor Who’s oldest and most ruthless enemies, have one goal—total world power. Their prime weapon is time travel. In the late Twentieth Century, they attacked the Planet Earth. Their plan: alter the course of history. Start World Wars. Wipe out the human population. They were very effective.

“Can Doctor Who, trapped in the Twenty-Second Century, reverse history’s course in time to save our planet and every living thing on it, including himself, from the devastating and evil force of the Daleks?”

 

Review

Day is a fun, fast-moving and action-blunt adaptation of the four-episode Doctor Who storyline, which aired between January 1, 1972 and January 22, 1972 on England’s BBC channel. Jon Pertwee, father of actor Sean Pertwee, was the titular, time- and space-traveling Gallifreyan at this point in the series, and the book succinctly captures the spirit of Pertwee’s portrayal of said character, as well as the cold malevolence of one of the Doctor’s key nemeses, the Daleks.

Breezy and overall entertaining, this adaptation is worth reading, especially during this estival season. Followed by Malcolm Hulke’s adaptation of Doctor Who: The Doomsday Weapon.

Escape from New York: Volume Four by Christopher Sebela and various artists

 

(pb; 2017: fourth graphic novel in a series of four. Alternate title: Escape from New York: Escape from Cleveland. Collects issues #13-16 of the limited-run Escape from New York comic book. Publisher: Boom! Studios.)

 

From the back cover

“After Snake Plissken gave the President his comeuppance in incredibly public fashion, he retreated to a quiet life, away from the battlefield. That lasted for years, until Federal forces attempt to seize his land via eminent domain, which brings Snake once again at odds with his nemesis—the U.S.P.F. This time, Snake’s got a plan to strike back. . .”

 

Review

The fourth and final volume of Escape takes place fourteen years after the events of Volume 3. Snake has settled down in Ohio, with his faithful dog (affectionately called “Dummy”). But then the day he suspected would come: federal agents come for him after he repels two agents trying to foist an eminent domain order on him. Snake, with help from a few fellow bandits, embarks on a blitzkrieg cycle of robbery, death and other mayhem that leaves few in his sphere untouched.

As with the three previous Escape graphic novels, there’s plenty of humor, twists, explosions, dead people (many of them deserving of their fates) and Snake’s taciturn resistance to those “taking what they think is theirs.” The ending leaves Snake’s journey open to future adventures while providing a character- and story-true denouement of sorts. Excellent, fun wrap-up to a bang-up graphic novel/movie tie-in series.

Locked In by Jussi Adler-Olsen

 

(hb; 2023, 2024: tenth book in the Department Q series. Translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight.)

 

From the inside flap

“On the day after Christmas, head of Department Q Detective Carl Mørck finds himself handcuffed in a police car headed for Copenhagen’s Vestre Prison. After fifteen years, a violent case from his past has caught up with him. Charges of drug trafficking and murder threaten to destroy his life and career. Buthe is being framed. Someone has a million-dollar bounty on his head to make sure he doesn’t talk, putting him in grave danger among the prison’s incarcerated criminals and corrupt officers. The question that remains is: Why?

“Carl’s colleagues at the Copenhagen Police Department instantly turn their backs on him, leaving the ever-loyal Department Q team as his only hope. In search of answers, Rose, Assad, and Gordon must disobey direct orders from way up the chain of command to try to unravel the case. With only one another to trust and Carl’s battle against the unknown mastermind’s henchmen worsening by the day, they must work faster than ever before if they are to clear his name—and save his life.”

 

Review

Locked keeps with its predecessor novels’ slick, entertaining police procedural thriller execution, with well-written characters worth hissing at or rooting for (or somewhere in between), making for a deft suspense and action book worth not only reading but owning. Not only that, Mørck’s high-tension dilemma directly deals with  events that led to the formation of Department Q, and a series entry that will decide Mørck’s immediate, life-or-death fate—as well as the fate of this overall series. Great, wild-ride of a mainstream police procedural.

The Lost Valley of Iskander by Robert E. Howard

 

(pb; 1934—1936, 1974. Three-novella/prequel fantasy anthology to Son of the White Wolf. “Introduction” by Darrell C. Richardson.)

 

From the back cover

“It lay hidden from the world, beyond the far ranges of the Himalayas. Yolgan! Forbidden city of unspeakable vengeance and unimaginable treasure, where the goddess Yasmeena waits for the only force on earth that can free her—the curved and thirsty blade of the blue-eyed desert warrior El Borak!”

 

Overall review

Caveat: Iskander sports an amplified sense of colonialism, racism and sexism that was bold-face inherent in the 1920s and 1930s, but it’s not quite as repellent/intense as one might see in Sax Rohmer’s fourteen-book Dr. Fu-Manchu series and H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. It’s downplayed in these Francis X. Gordon stories but it’s still there. In short: If the concept of appropriate context (judge a work by the standards during which it was created, not by modern standards), you might want to skip Howard’s work as well as those mentioned earlier in this “Caveat.”

Iskander is one of the better Howard collections, more tightly edited than some of his other works (notably certain Conan stories and books), with Howard’s ever-present focus on machismo, bloody and savage action, constant twists, the overall superiority of Caucasian culture, and all-caps PULPY prose. There’s less focus on Howard’s usual display of sensual and/or treacherous women in these Gordon stories than one might see in one of Howard’s Conan works.

Iskander is worth buying if you’re a fan of older pulp, can look past/stomach its biases, and appreciate its hyperbolic, action-packed stories and Howard’s clear love of bordering-on-poetic-prose language.

The remainder of Howard’s Francis X. Gordon stories are collected in Son of the White Wolf.

 

Review, story by story

“The Daughter of Erlik Khan”: Legendary, American adventurer Francis X. Gordon (aka El Borak) and his small army of savage Turkoman face treachery, supernatural elements, physical deprivation and constant violence on the way to (and inside) Mount Erlik Khan after Gordon’s tricked into guiding two Englishman (Ormond and Pembroke) through wild lands to satisfy their secret, murderous greed. Within the walled, gold-rich and mountainous city of Mount Erlik Khan, he must also confront the priests of the god Yolgan, who threaten his former lover (thought by some to be a goddess), Yasmeena!

This twisty, cinematic-rich, action fantasy tale is a constant-endorphin-hit work that succeeds in its epic-tone ambition, a great read if you can get past its inherent, imperialist racism.

 

“The Lost Valley of Iskander”: Gordon, pursued and shot at by Gutsav Hunyadi, the wily and “satanic Hungarian,” and his Central Asian hoards, carries Hunyadi’s proof-of-future-invasion letter to Hunyadi’s Central Asian allies—Gordon means to warn Hunyadi’s initial prey (those commanding Fort Ali Masjid) of the incoming threat. But first Gordon must elude and, if possible, stop his devilish foe and his men!

While fleeing said invaders, Gordon encounters newly met Bardylis, a blue-eyed blond young ally and one of many “Sons of Iskander”—the descendants of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian soldiers who, left in this isolated location thousands of years prior, built the Grecian-influenced, walled town of Attalus. . . which is now Hunyadi’s new target.

As is often the case with Howard’s better-edited works, “Iskander” bristles with vivid images, machismo-fueled intensity and immediate threat/action, woven through with a fantastic sense-melding of real-world and imagined-realm history. Great, short-for-Howard story.

 

“Hawk of the Hills”: The Himalyas. After some of Gordon’s Afridi friends are betrayed and slaughtered by Khorouk Orakzai and his Pathan henchmen in a “holocaust of murder,” Gordon must escape their bloodthirsty numbers and regroup his surprising allies who’ve been scattered. Can he do so in time to defeat the treacherous Orakzai and Afdal Khan, who controls the region?

As in “The Lost Valley of Iskander,” the tale begins in the middle of the action, this time with the legendary “High Scotch and black Irish” adventurer hanging off the side of a cliffside while his enemies stand below him. In the middle of all this crazy scramble plotting and intense fighting is an Englishman, Sir George Willoughby, who’s been sent by his government to quell the expanding dispute between Khan and Gordon’s forces.

“Hawk,” like Iskander’s other stories, is a fun, fast-paced, and plot- and character-twisty read.

Trading Bullets with the Devil by Kirsten Cross and Mark Steensland

 

(oversized pb; 2024)

 

From the back cover

“Former Marine Rebecca ‘Beck’ Tibbet needs help.

“Her ex-husband has taken their daughter to live with The Lightbringers.

“But what seems like a harmless bunch of Jesus Freaks is actually a devil-worshipping doomsday cult bent on igniting Armageddon.

“And with less than 36 hours to go, Beck must reassemble her squad and lead them on one mission, deep into the cult’s hideout in an abandoned gold mine where she will soon be trading bullets with the devil.”

 

Review

Trading is a fast-paced, tightly edited novel, a fun, genre-true read, with its 1970s cinematic devil cult-meets-Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan action books** (I’m a fan of both genres and Pendleton in particular). I hadn’t read Trading co-author Cross before, but I have read Steensland’s other, excellent works, and I’m looking forward to reading further works from them. Trading is a good read, worth purchasing.

(** = Pendleton created the Mack Bolan/ “Executioner” character, writing the first thirty-eight novels detailing Bolan’s initial “Mafia War,” starting with The Executioner #1: War Against the Mafia, 1969; ghost writers penned the rest of the 600+ novels, put out by HarperCollins’ Gold Eagle imprint, to whom Pendleton sold his Bolan/character rights in 1980, according to Wikipedia.)

Cruel Jaws by Brad Carter

 

(pb; 2020, 2024: movie tie-in novel, “based on the [1995] screenplay by Bruno Mattei, Robert Feen and Linda Morrison.” Publisher: Severin Films/Encyclopocalypse Publishing.)

 

From the back cover

“New terror surfaces.

“Something sinister has come to the coastal town of Hampton Bay. Something horrifying and colossal that refuses to stop killing until the white sand beaches are blood red. Now, a renegade shark expert and a down on his luck lawman are all that stand between a genetically engineered killing machine and thousands of blissfully unaware tourists. It’s a race against time, bureaucratic red tape, and the mafia to stop a homicidal shark from turning a holiday weekend into a nightmare of carnage.

“. . . Includes a foreword by Stephen Scarlata, director of Sharksploitation [2023].”

 

Review

Cruel, based on the screenplay for director/co-screenwriter Bruno Mattei’s 1995 film, is a wildly entertaining, story- and character-improving expansion on its silver screen counterpart. The book’s characters are more fleshed out, their often-sleazy motivations more clearly spelled out in a way that doesn’t slow the action of the story or its sleazed-up, abbreviated Jaws rip-off plot points; Carter also smooths out the choppy editing of the film version, makes the story flow better, in a more organic way, its genetically engineered shark storyline (something that isn’t in Jaws) expanded upon as well—with an ending that’s more fleshed out, distinctive and horrifying than the generic finish to the film version.

Yeah, it’s a Jaws rip-off but don’t hold that against Cruel. It’s just Italians doing their distinctive, cinematic exploitation thing and, when combined with Carter’s genre-true, all-around-good writing, it’s a worthwhile summer read for fans of sharksploitation works.

The film version was released in Italy on September 26, 1995. Its official stateside release was on April 28, 2011.

Cruel can be purchased directly from the publisher here.

The New York Ripper 2 by Stephen Romano, Alex Sarabia and others

 

(pb; 2025: limited release, for mature audiences only graphic novel. Graphic novel-only sequel to director/co-screenwriter Lucio Fulci’s 1982 film The New York Ripper. Publisher: Eibon Press/Vinegar Syndrome.)

 

Review

Caveat: spoilers in this review if you haven’t seen The New York Ripper (1982).

Ripper 2 picks up seven years after the grisly, especially nasty and sexual serial murders shown in Fulci’s 1982 source film. The Ripper (Peter Bunch) is officially dead, killed by the world-weary Lt. Frederick Williams near the end of Ripper. Now, it seems someone—a somehow-not-dead Bunch?—has resumed a relentless, similar spate of gut-spilling, crudely surgical killings, sometimes boldly executed in front of the cops even as they’re helpless to stop them. Nobody is safe in this lots o’ nudity, character- and plot-twisty tale, certainly not Paul Davis (the academic psychiatrist who helped hunt Bunch) nor Fay Majors (Bunch’s ex-girlfriend). A new player is equally traumatized by the Ripper’s offal-stench rampage also: Bob Hansen, Williams’ younger, thirty-something partner, whose life is about to seriously go off anything resembling rails.

Ripper 2 is a "for mature audiences"-fun, Times Square sleazy, gory and wild story, with over-the-top extreme horror illustrations (often involving a big knife ripping through red-splatter flesh), one that lives up to the source film’s screenplay, penned by director Lucio Fulci, Gianfranco Clerico and Vincenzo Mannino. This is a “Video Nasties” flick in graphic novel form, worth purchasing you’re into that sort of thing. One of my favorite reads of 2025.

Ripper 2, a limited release, can be purchased (in three package options) here.

The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1984, 2004: fourth book in the Nightworld Cycle a.k.a. the Adversary Cycle. First book in the Repairman Jack series. Re-released in 2004 under its original title, Rakoshi, by Borderlands Press.)

 

From the back cover

“Much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Gia, Repairman Jack doesn’t deal with appliances: He fixes situations—situations that too often land him in deadly danger. His latest job is to find a stolen necklace, which, unknown to him, is more than a simple piece of jewelry.

“Some might say it’s cursed, others might call it blessed. Jack’s quest leads to a rusty freighter on Manhattan’s West Side docks. What he finds in its hold threatens his sanity and the entire city. But worst of all, it threatens Gia’s daughter, Vicky, the last surviving member of a bloodline marked for extinction.”

 

Review

Tomb, with its realistic-neo-noir-meets-supernatural-thriller elements, is an immediately immersive novel, one of my favorite Wilson books thus far. Like the best thrillers, it’s timeless (in its underlying themes and character motives) and (especially) timely, with interesting and relatable characters (even, initially, its main villain) and Wilson’s dependable, better writing: fast-paced, with salient, not-too-detailed emotional scenes and a main protagonist worth remembering. Excellent fourth entry in Wilson’s Nightworld/Adversary Cycle, one that serves as the first book in the Repairman Jack series as well. Followed, chronologically speaking, by the second Repairman novel, Legacies. (The events in the fifteen-book Repairman series take place between Adversary/Nightworld Cycle’s The Touch, 1986, and Nightworld (1992, revised and republished in 2012.)

Reprisal, a Nightworld Cycle sequel (minus Repairman Jack), follows The Tomb as well.

The Fifth Profession by David Morrell

 

(pb; 1990)

 

From the back cover

“Two masters of protection.

“Savage, a former Navy SEAL and American state-of-the-art security specialist. Akira, Japan’s most brilliant executive protector and a master of the samurai arts.

“Their mission: the retrieval of Rachel Stone, a beautiful American woman whose ruthless millionaire husband is out to destroy her. But quickly Savage and Akira realize they are trapped in a mission more far-reaching than the protection of one person.

“For they are bound together in a common nightmare, a set of horrifying memories, a terrifying past that never happened., but is somehow inextricably real. Only together can they confront the mystery. Yet when they do, an even more chilling scenario awaits them—one with the power to shatter not only their world but ours as well.”

 

 

Review

 

Fifth is one of my favorite Morrell novels, as excellent and gripping as his Abelard trilogy (1984-1987:The Brotherhood of the Rose; The Fraternity of the Stone; and The League of Night and Fog). Like them, Fifth is a top-notch action/conspiracy thriller, with interesting, deeply realized characters (I especially liked Akira, whose Japanese background was fascinating). Morrell’s use of and respect for Japan’s history is also evident, with Akira and his home country adding new and exotic layers to Morrell’s oeuvre. This is a stunning read, the work of a culture-expansive author, a standalone novel worth owning, and one of my favorite reads of the year.