Jeffrey Small’s novel is the type of thriller that has a terrific premise and keeps me turning the pages until the end.
What if there is a machine that can make one see visions of God. Whatever God the person subscribes to.
Dr. Ethan Lightman is on the verge of his biggest discovery, one that has haunted him since an epileptic event in childhood. His life work, the Logos machine, should be able to produce a religious ecstasy.
Then his mentor is murdered, his work perverted, and Ethan finds himself with his beautiful research assistant, Rachel Riley, in the middle East caught in a conspiracy that could engulf the region in a Holy War even worse than already happening.
He races to unlock the secret plaguing his machine, not to help those illegally trying to use it, but to stop their insane plans.
I wasn’t familiar with Jeffrey Small’s writing before this one, but was quite impressed. He knows how to plot a tale to keep me interested in what’s going on. I definitely want to read more.
The release date for this excellent thriller is today, April 30th.
With a new interpretation of the Ranger almost upon us, I thought it time to look at another, the one most of us are familiar with: the television version. The Ranger was around long before 1949, but television forever locked most of us that were kids at that time into Clayton Moore and Jay Silver heels as our favorite heroes. This one tells the same story, the origin tale so to speak, in a different manner. The role of Butch Cavendish was played by Glen Strange better known for his bartender role in the Long Branch saloon on Gunsmoke.
And I’m still not sure about Johnny Depp as Tonto and the actor playing the title role, Armie Hammer, gets third billing.
For overlooked movies, telkevision, and related matters, Todd Mason does the gathering on Tuesdays over at SWEET FREEDOM.
1: The Broken Places(ARC) – Ace Atkins: the third Quinn Coulson novel. I like this series so far.
2: Slingshot(ARC) – Matthew Dunn: third in this spy series. Same reaction as above.
3: Raylan – Elmore Leonard: a novel based on the continuity of the FX series Justified.
4: Fire In The Hole and Other Stories – Elmore Leonard: a collection of crime tales. The title story was the basis for Justified.
5: The Mullah’s Storm – Thomas W. Young: a thriller, first novel. that looked good and was cheap.
6: A Hard Day’s Night – John Burke: a novel based on the Beatles first movie.
and the ebooks:
7: The Wizard of Oz series illustrated(review copy): L. Frank Baum: a venture from a new ebook company with the original illustrations. It has Baum’s fourteen Oz novels and a bonus novel by Baum.
8: Crescendo(review copy) – Deborah J. Ledford. crime novel.
9: The Red Menace: A Red Letter Day – James Mullaney: the fourth novel in this series of a spy/superhero from the fifties coming out of retirement in the early seventies.
10: Broken Shield – J.D. Rhoades: the sequel to J.D.’s novel BREAKING COVER. Just out.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I would view this novel as I read it. It’s been years since I read much of anything but genre novels. But ROCKET MAN caught me up in it early and I was disappointed when it ended.
I was immersed in the life of Dale Hammer, a man living the life of the middle class: wife and two kids, big car, a big house in the suburbs, the perfect life.
Almost. He also has the big mortgage, a failing marriage, children constantly in turmoil, a day job about to end, a father thrown out of his third marriage, his job lost, and come tyo live with his oldest son. He’s a mid-list author of four novels, none in the last seven years. Oh, he hasn’t stopped writing, but nothing has emerged worthy.
The pressures of life you know.
Being Rocket Man for the scout troops of the area is one thing he hopes will reignite things. Even there there are problems though. An officious man at the top.
I quite enjoyed this one. I wasn’t familiar with Hazelgrove’s work before, this is his fourth novel, but I think I want to see more.
Technically, THE DESERTER fits the mold of a spaghetti western(and is so listed on the Spaghetti Western Database). A Dino De Laurentis production, it was filmed in Spain, Italy, and Yukoslavia and starred, in the title role, and starred Yukoslavian theater and film matinee idol Bekim Fehmu. But everything else about it screamed Hollywood.
It was filmed in English, the director was American, as was the screenwriter, Clair Huffaker(who wrote western novels and screenplays that starred John Wayne, Elvis, Kirk Douglas among others), the music score had a jazz influence, and most of the actors were American.
The plot can be reduced to one simple phrase: Dirty Dozen in the West.
The title character, Victor Kaleb(Fehmu), is bitter on coming across a mission wiped out by the Apaches while returning from a two week patrol and finds his wife there, still alive, strung up, and partially skinned. He puts her out of her misery and pursues the Apache seen fleeing, wearing her dress.
Kaleb is incensed that a patrol wasn’t sent with her. The Fort Bowie commander, Major Wade Brown(Richard Crenna), insists he had no idea any Apache’s were in the area. Kaleb reply is “How would you know. You haven’t been outside that gate in a year!” He deserts and, when Brown tries to stop him, Kaleb shoots him in the leg and shoulder.
Two years later a new area commander arrives, General Miles(played by movie legend John Huston) and he wants Kaleb found and brought in for a conference. He has a plan and needs Kaleb. Any man that can kill Apaches and stay alive for two years is the man he wants. A patrol is sent out to bring him in, commanded by a wet behind the ears young lieutenant, Ferguson(Brandon deWilde). Though young, he admits finding him may be easy. Bringing him in will be different. And he’s right. They return severely chastened and beat up.
Miles has a different tactic now. He sends the only real friends Kaleb has: two scouts, an Indian named Natachai(Ricardo Montalban) and an old white man, Tattinger(Slim Pickens). to see what they can do. Kaleb refuses until the three are attacked by six Apaches, all dispatched, but not before one puts a knife in Tattinger’s back. The old scout plays it for all he’s worth to get Kaleb back to the fort before the main band gets there.
In his two years in the desert, Kaleb was court-martialed for desertion and attempted murder of a superior officer. The army had stopped looking for him and beleived him dead. Brown is a Colonel by now and seethes over Miles’ plan to pardon Kaleb for a special mission.
Apache chief Mangus Durango(Mimmo Palmara) had been conducting raids into the American southwest. He has a stronghold just across the border in Mexico known as the Devil’s Backbone. Miles’ plan is to send a small force of men, trained and led by Kaleb, into Mexico to wipe out the Apaches. Brown seethes because Kaleb is reinstated and has authority over him. “He shot me! Twice!” Miles points out that if Kaleb had wanted him dead, he would have been.
Kaleb puts together a small band made up of misfits and hard heads. Most hate him, a few want to kill him outright. Each has skills. Chuck Connors is Chaplain Reynolds, who has an affinity for dynamite. Patrick Wayne plays Captain Bill Robinson, an expert in the use of the Gatling gun. Woody Strode is Jackson, a troublemaker who also knows building suspension bridges. Captain Crawford(Ian Brennan), an Englishman who showed up with Miles, in America to learn fighting techniques to apply to Britain’s African campaign volunteers. Young lieutenant Ferguson also volunteers. Some of the other men picked are Schmidt(Albert Salmi), and O’Toole(John Alderson).
His task is to train them in fighting techniques, the use of tomahawks, survival in the desert, climbing in the mountains, and how to die quietly if necessary so as not to give away the rest.
There’s only one way into the Apache stronghold, so they have to make a new one. From the back. It will be hard to get the men through, let alone the horses and equipment. But they have to.
The Red Menace was born in the Communist scare of the forties/fifties. But Patrick ‘Podge’ Becket fought real Communists as a in disguise spy aided by his friend Dr, Thaddeus Wright who was a genius at inventing just the right tool. He also developed a formula that increased Becket’s abilities and was frustrated that it only worked on Becket. Throughout the fifties and into the sixties, The Red Menace fought the good fight.
Then things quieted down and The Red Menace retired.
RED AND BURIED.
In the world of 1972, Patrick “Podge” Becket had gotten rich in the burgeoning world of computers and his Becket Security, providing security for the movers and shakers in the world, as long as they weren’t enemies of America. But back in the fifties, he’d been The Red Menace.
Who was the Red Menace? That question was on the lips of every Communist leader the world over. He was the man who stopped every little effort at world domination.
But things change and he’d disappeared.
Now a ghost from the past emerges in Cuba and his old organization calls him out of retirement. Twelve years older and a lot smarter, his loyalty is still there. A Russian presence so close to America is intolerable.
Along with his partner, Dr. Thaddeus Wainright, Becket re-assumes his identity and sets out to find out what’s going on.
We don’t know a lot about either man at this point, but hints are dropped throughout that neither is an ordinary agent/spy. One assumes that more will be along as the series continues.
The author Jim Mullaney wrote or co-wrote(with Warren Murphy) most of the better novels in the last ten years or so of THE DESTROYER’s publication. This series has that same style and panache.
DROWNING IN RED INK
No one had ever heard of The People’s Brigade before they managed to get into Mt. Rushmore and bring down Thomas Jefferson in a pile of rubble. They began to make their presence known with more acts of terrorism around the country.
Patrick “Podge” Beckett, the recently out of retirement Red Menace, is looking into it. It doesn’t take long for clues to emerge that points him in a likely direction, as in fingerprints from one of the brigade killed in the Mt. Rushmore incident.
He finds they’re planning something big. The trick is finding out what.
At the same time, Beckett’s being called in by the I.R.S. for back taxes, interest, and penalties to the tune of eighteen million dollars. Beckett and his accountant know there’s nothing right about this, but it’s a bad time to be dealing with them.
Another fine novel in this promising series.
The Red Menace has to deal with a religious cult, Realtopia(a thinly, very thinly disguised Scientology), created by a writer in the fifties. They’ve managed to get their hands on a substance that causes madness, people under the influence ripping each other apart.
They want all of southern California and over through Arizona for their own country. The threat is real and Podge Becket and his mentor, Dr. Thaddeus Wainright are charged by their boss to find and settle it before the horror can be unleashed on the entire country.
Recommended
The next novel has just come out. This series and other of his works can be seen HERE.
Quick information: this is the seventh book of the RANCHO DIABLO western series I’m doing with my buddies Bill Crider and James Reasoner under the “house” name Colby Jackson. We’ve done pretty well with it, and we’re proud of what we’ve created. The books are PG-13 because of the violence. There’s no coarse language, no “adult” situations, just an old-fashioned, quick reading Western. Hope you enjoy if this suits your taste.
When Randy Post, a young cowboy riding for the Rancho Diablo brand, gets accused of murdering a saloon girl, Sam Blaylock saddles up to get to the bottom of the matter before they fit him for a hangman’s noose. Sam doesn’t know that the murder has set off a chain of events that will end up with him swapping lead with a murderous gang of robbers eyeing one of the banks in Shooter’s Cross.
In the past, Marshal Everett Tolliver and Sam Blaylock haven’t seen exactly eye-to-eye on things involving the ranch hands. Tolliver intends to hold the peace in town no matter what the cost. But he’s going to need help if he’s going to find out who murdered Jessie Holden in cold blood.
Even after they’ve set their differences aside for the time being, Sam and Tolliver still have to put their lives at risk to hold the line in Shooter’s Cross in a gundown on Main Street that will become a legend.
When I found out there was such a novel, I had to find it. I’m a member of the Beatles generation, just hitting puberty at the same time they hit America.
The movie A HARD DAY’S NIGHT would seem an unlikely candidate for novelization. Most of the movie involved them playing music or being chased by hordes of teenage girls(boy did I want to be a Beatle back then). There wasn’t much of a plot to hang a novel on, but author John Burke managed a reasonable effort here, concentrating on Paul’s grandfather more so than the movie seemed to(it’s been a number of years since I saw the movie so I may be wrong). He’s something of a curmudgeon, a bit of a conman, certainly a rogue.
There’s also a reference to Raymond Chandler in one bit of dialogue. That may have been there though. At that point in my young life, fourteen, I’d never even heard of Chandler. let alone read any of his work.
The book will probably not be enjoyed by anyone out of my generation(these young kids think of them as old fogies), but I enjoyed this trip back to my much younger days.
