Showing posts with label Bronson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bronson. Show all posts

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Bronson: Switchblade (aka Bronson #3)


Bronson: Switchblade, by Philip Rawls
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

Believe it or not, the Bronson “series” wraps up with a volume that actually continues from the one before it! There goes my theory that the three books in this series were each standalones; I’d known from Len Levinson, author of the second volume, that he’d never read the first volume, the phenomenal Blind Rage (and I’m still wondering who wrote that sick masterpiece), so I just assumed that the author of this third volume, Joseph Chadwick, had never read Len’s.

Turns out I was wrong, as Chadwick demonstrates throughout Switchblade that he’s read Len’s Streets Of Blood…while at the same time he proves that he also has not read Blind Rage. Series protagonist Richard Bronson here is the same character as Len’s version, with the same background and same history – Chadwick even reminds us that Bronson’s wife and kid were murdered in October 1972, the same date Len presented. The events of Blind Rage are now relegated to what is for the most part a standalone novel, unrelated to the two books that followed it. But Chadwick appears to have studied Len’s novel, bringing back the same characters Len introduced in his; all save for Bronson’s model girlfriend, Natalie, whom we’re informed this time is on an extended vacation in Europe.

Chadwick also appears to try to write the book in Len’s style, or perhaps the authors just have similar styles. It’s just a hunch, but given the way Switchblade is written, I’m willing to bet that Joseph Chadwick was the mystery author who turned out the odd volumes of Ninja Master, starting with the third volume. Switchblade is written in almost the exact same style, with a sort of casual flair to the narrative, more focus on dialog and daily incidentals, and less focus on action, suspense, or violence – indeed, when the action does happen in Switchblade (and in those Ninja Master books), it’s quickly over. (“Bronson got him in the gut with the switchblade,” is a perfect example of the extent of violent carnage you’ll encounter throughout.) Chadwick was a very prolific author, mostly given to writing Westerns, but he also did a lot of ghostwriting on various non-Westerns, and I’m betting he was the guy who traded writing duties on Ninja Master with Ric Meyers.

At least Switchblade opens with some bloody violence, as Bronson takes out a trio of young rapists-robbers-murderers who have been hitting stores in Times Square. Chadwick quickly brings us back into the scene developed in Streets Of Blood, with Bronson’s cop pal Detective Jenkins basically giving Bronson carte blanche and leaving the job to him. Bronson is all excited to try out his new vigilante toy: a custom-made switchblade, which he promptly uses to kill the trio of criminals. He catches them while in the process of raping a woman who owns a shoe store, her wheelchair-bound husband meanwhile having been beaten by the sadists. Bronson guts one, slices the other’s throat, and kills the final one with his bare hands.

Unfortunately the leader of the goons was a white punk named “Herbie the Brain,” who we learn was the son of mega-wealthy international banker Herbert Vincet Mardin. Chadwick will spend time – too damn much time – with Mardin senior and Mardin’s hotstuff young wife Carole. The novel runs to well over 200 pages of small print, too long for a piece of men’s adventure fiction, and Chadwick proves his uncertainty with the genre by spending most of that time dwelling on the thoughts and worries of minor characters. Bronson himself disappears for long stretches of time, and his actual vigilante affairs are relegated to a handful of situations, most of them quickly dealt with so Chadwick can return to the soap opera stuff with minor charactres like Carole Mardin or Detective Harper, an uptight square of a cop determined to bring Bronson down. This sort of genre-uncertainty was also prevalent in those odd volumes of Ninja Master, by the way, but at least those books were a lot shorter.

Switchblade instead just sort of plods along. The stuff with Bronson is good, though, with Chadwick bringing back a sort of grimness to the character that was lacking at times in Len’s version – though, to be sure, this Bronson is still nowhere in the psychotic realm of the character in the first book. He gets jumpy when he doesn’t hit the street, and this time he likes to get a little more close and personal on his kills, that switchblade in particular mostly being his chosen tool of the trade. Chadwick opens up the character a bit with the introduction of Nora Foster, gorgeous younger sister of Miriam Foster, ie Bronson’s murdered wife; Nora shows up at Bronson’s plush penthouse suite shortly after his first kill in the book, basically announcing her plans to screw him.

Nora, who it should go without saying has never been mentioned before, is a dead ringer for her departed sis, but she lacks that one’s charm or maturity (at least, so Bronson muses – we readers have never gotten to meet Miriam, not even in the first book, where she was already dead when the novel began). This doesn’t stop Bronson from banging her, though. Indeed the two have sex posthaste, though Chadwick doesn’t provide details. That being said, there are occasional sex scenes throughout Switchblade; the first one he actually writes featuring Bronson and Nora is pretty explicit. But after this Chadwick instead provides the sleaze mostly through dialog or introspection, usually from Carole Mardin’s perspective, given her nymphomania. She also gets the best line in the book, trying to sway her notoriously-unhorny husband with the unforgettable line, “I’ll let you screw my backside.”

But whereas the first two volumes were sleazy, violent thrillers about an unhinged protagonist taking out street scum with impugnity, this one just gets bogged down with too much melodrama. Pretty much all of the material with Carole Mardin and her growing horniness for Bronson could’ve been cut from the novel. Indeed Chadwick shows himself to be so disinterested with the title character that he spends more time with deadbeat detective Harper, not to mention arbitrary, time-wasting details like Harper’s weird sex life (a veritable shut-in, he has sex with a lady now in her fifties who took his cherry when he was a teenager). Midway through Herbert Mardin, looking for vengeance for the murder of his “misguided” son, makes use of his impressive contacts and calls in a CIA team, led by an ex-spook named Matthews. These characters too take the spotlight from Bronson.

To tell the truth, those who enjoyed Blind Rage and Streets Of Blood would be well advised to check out the Vigilante series by Robert Lory, which picked up the “street vigilante” thread much better than Chadwick does here. Because Switchblade limps whereas the first two Bronson books hurtled; Chadwick is also guilty of telling us the same stuff over and over, like for example where Bronson confronts Herbert Mardin, putting the fear of god in him…and then we read a long scene as Mardin runs home to Carole and tells her everything that just happened – everything we just read. It’s this sort of thing that ultimately makes Switchblade a chore to read at times.

Also, whereas those first two books were all about Bronson’s street vigilante activities, this one gets more into the CIA stuff…Matthews, working with Harper, quickly figures out who the myterious vigilante is, but they have no evidence. They try to set Bronson up but end up planting a piece of “evidence” that doesn’t even belong to Bronson, let alone have his fingerprints. While it’s all cleverly plotted it’s ultimately underwhelming because, for one, it takes up a lot of pages, and more importantly two, Bronson gets off scot free just through sheer dumb luck. A hero should always have to struggle to escape danger. Chadwick does pull some unexpected bits here, like the person Matthews choses to kill in his frame-up for Bronson. We also get a payoff on Nora’s growing horniness, with her offering Bronson sex in exchange for insider info on what Herbert Mardin is planning – and assisting Bronson when he goes to Mardin’s place to finally settle matters.

Chadwick also develops an interesting relationship between Bronson and Nora, but unlike in the previous two books our hero doesn’t tell his lady what he does at nights. Instead Nora constantly asks Bronson what he’s hiding from her and then tells him the cute recurring line “I love you – sort of.” This being said, Chadwick plain just drops Nora from the book in the end, first having her take a sudden trip to Hawaii near the finale, and then coming back to New York long enough to say “so long.” Seems clear Chadwick might’ve figured he would have to write another installment and thus didn’t want to saddle his protagonist with a steady girlfriend. At any rate Nora at least points Bronson in the direction of his last kill in the book, constantly complaining about the random criminal acts perpetrated by sleazy ambassador Rodridgues of San Cristobal.

Taking advantage of his “diplomatic immunity,” Rodrigues is known for raping girls and leaving them half dead, even running over people in the street. Early in the book Bronson runs afoul of the man, roughing up one of his security men, but by novel’s end Bronson has decided the bastard needs to pay; he’s no different than the street scum Bronson normally disposes of. Thus Switchblade – and the series itself – caps off with Bronson carjacking Rodrigues, tying him up, and blowing up his car.

And that was it for Bronson, a wildly uneven series for sure, and one of these days I’m going to find out who wrote Blind Rage!

Monday, September 29, 2014

Bronson: Streets Of Blood (aka Bronson #2)


Bronson: Streets Of Blood, by Philip Rawls
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

Not picking up from the incredible first volume, Bronson: Streets Of Blood has nothing to do with Bronson: Blind Rage and indeed doesn’t even feature the same protagonist, even though this one also happens to be named Richard Bronson. But then, I knew that going in, as “Philip Rawls” this time is in reality Len Levinson, who told me a long time ago that he had never even heard of Blind Rage, let alone read it.

In fact, I mentioned this Bronson novel the first time I spoke to Len on the phone. His reaction was a slight pause and then, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that one.” In some ways, Streets Of Blood is like the fourth Sharpshooter installment Len never wrote, and sometimes picks up from elements in Headcrusher. This is mostly in the nihilistic feel of the protagonist, who knows his days are numbered, but vows to keep killing scum no matter what.

Now, Streets Of Blood might have a nihilistic feel, but it’s nowhere as caustic, violent, or sadistic as the first volume of this “series.” I rank Blind Rage as one of the best ‘70s pulp crime novels I’ve ever read, mostly due to its insane vibe, in its “fight fire with fire” mentality. Of all the revenge novels I’ve read, I think it best captures how a man could be pushed to insane lengths after his family has been murdered, and how the man himself could become even more murderous than the scum he’s hunting.

Len’s Richard Bronson is grim and dour, but not insane. Well, comparitively speaking so far as the previous novel’s Richard Bronson went. Len’s Bronson moved to NYC two years ago, after his wife and two kids were murdered. He owns his own engineering firm and lives in a penthouse suite in Manhattan, but at night he goes out and kills muggers and rapists. Bronson has been celibate since his wife was killed two years before (the novel clearly takes place in 1974, as October, 1972 is often mentioned as the date in which his family was killed).

This celibacy causes some issues with Bronson’s hotstuff next door neighor, Natalie Taylor, who happens to be a model. She starts hitting on Bronson as soon as she’s introduced into the narrative, practically demanding he come next door for some hot sex. Bronson constantly puts her down, and poor Natalie has to go back to her apartment to bake banana bread in sublimation and pine over Bronson, the first “real man” she’s met in the city in years.

There isn’t much action per se in the novel; Bronson goes out in his trenchcoat, armed with a Browning with silencer, and guns down muggers and rapists. He isn’t very smart about his methods, though, as within the first several pages he’s already been figured out by a cop. This is Detective Ronald Jenkins, who responds to a call about a shooting in Central Park, and happens to see Bronson walking out of there. He stops him and gets his business card in case further questioning arises, and when the witness, a girl who was almost raped before Bronson descended upon the scene, gives Jenkins her description of her rescuer, Jenkins immediately realizes it was Bronson.

Len goes an unexpected route with this, having Jenkins and his boss Lt. Levine pondering if they should bring Bronson in or let him continue his private war – just as long as he never harms the innocent. Meanwhile Bronson continues to kill, while getting closer to Natalie, but he runs afoul of her when he tries to get her to lie for him, in case increasingly-nosy Jenkins ever tries to check Bronson’s whereabouts. It all comes down with Natalie pissed at Bronson; when she demands Bronson tell him what exactly he’s trying to get her to cover for him for, he lies that he was having an affair with a client’s wife on the night in question.

Midway through the novel stops being a Death Wish riff and becomes that fourth Sharpshooter novel Len never wrote. Bronson kills a couple punks, one of whom happens to be the nephew of Big Frank Scarletti, a Mafia boss who runs his mini-empire from a bar. The novel becomes more of an anti-Mafia pulp crime deal, with Scarletti sending hitmen after Bronson, and Bronson taking them out, after which he vows to kill Scarletti himself.

Meanwhile Jenkins has fully come over to Bronson’s side, protecting him. In a way Jenkins is a lot like Len’s version of Ryker, in The Terrorists, a tough cop who isn’t dirty but doesn’t mind bending the rules to see justice done. For example, there’s a goofy part where Bronson shoots down a Mafia torpedo and demands to talk to Jenkins when the cops arrive on the scene; Jenkins merely sets up and falsely backdates a gun permit for Bronson and takes responsibility for “forgetting” to renew it. Jenkins even teams up with Bronson in the finale, both of them wanting to see Scarpetti dead.

Also, Natalie Jones comes back over to Bronson’s side; she inadvertently saves him from that mob torpedo, seeing the hitman raise his gun at Bronson while he’s walking down the street, and though she never does find out for sure that Bronson is the mysterious crime fighter the news is always talking about, she does find out that he was lying about having an affair. Thusly she forgives him, leading up to one of the more explicit sex scenes I’ve yet read in one of Len’s novels, complete with Natalie’s endearing request, “I want you to come inside me.”

The finale again calls back to The Sharpshooter, with Bronson (who in Len’s version is a former ‘Nam hero) breaking out a sniper rifle like a regular Johnny Rock and lying in ambush with Jenkins. And by the way our hero cop also sees some bedroom shenanigans, despite being happily married, going undercover in the Scarpetti-owned bar and scoring with the busty, “nymphomaniac” bartender there, who ends up falling in love with him. But all such subplots are obliterated by the finale, which has Bronson and Jenkins blowing away Scarpetti and goons from afar, after which Bronson can happily continue with his war on the streets. 

Wrapping up, I can sort of see why Len had pretty much forgotten Streets Of Blood when I spoke to him on the phone. While it’s entertaining and fun, it lacks any truly outrageous or unforgettable moments. It does though have that “Levinson Element” I enjoy, with characters who seem to exist off of the page, and I like how he didn’t waste the reader’s time with Detective Jenkins trying to bring in Bronson. It was a lot more interesting and unexpected to have the two team up.

I didn’t pester Len to write up a piece on this one, mostly because at the time I was writing this review he was on vacation in New York, and also because he already wrote a piece on it for Jack Badelaire’s Post Modern Pulps blog.

And I’d still love to know who wrote Bronson: Blind Rage!

Monday, August 20, 2012

Bronson: Blind Rage (aka Bronson #1)


Bronson: Blind Rage, by Philip Rawls
No month stated, 1975 Manor Books

This was the first of three novels about a "street vigilante" named Bronson. I suspect that Manor Books just outsourced a Death Wish ripoff idea to a handful of writers and lumped it all together as a "series." For the Bronson books are a series in the loosest sense; each volume was written by a different author, and there's no continuity between the novels. No one knows who wrote this incredible first installment; the second one, Streets of Blood, was written by my man Leonard Levinson; the third, Switchblade, was written by Joseph Chadwick.

Levinson has told me he was just contracted by Manor to write a vigilante novel about a character named "Bronson," with no guidance from Manor to follow any series template or continuity. Joseph Chadwick was probably told the same for Switchblade. Given this, I consider Bronson moreso just three separate, standalone novels, related only by the fact that the protagonist in each is named "Bronson," and also the covers for all three volumes were drawn by the artist Raymond Kursar. Even Bronson himself is a different character in each book, ranging from the sadist of this first volume to a more considerate sort of vigilante in Switchblade, as Marty McKee has noted.

But on to the novel at hand, Blind Rage. Simply put, this book is incredible, and easily one of the best men's adventure novels I've yet had the pleasure to read. But make no mistake, this is a brutal novel, not for the squeamish, a novel of raw and nihilistic violence. And yet for all that it is written with a deft, literate hand; whoever this version of "Philip Rawls" was, he was a hell of a writer. His characters spring to life, such that you actually care for them, his narrative is masterful, and he doesn't POV-hop a single damn time.

The only failing (at least, I thought it was a failing at first) is the character Bronson himself. He is a sadist of the first order in Blind Rage, and the problem is we never get a sense of the man he was before the murder of his wife and children. In fact we never even meet those characters; Blind Rage opens with the murder of Bronson's wife, as two hoodlums rape her and kill her, before moving on to the kids (this part thankfully is not described). When we pick up with Bronson he's dealing with the fact that the courts let the murderers off scott free; it turns out they were twins, notorious sickos from California, and due to their influence over powerful people the brothers were able to escape justice due to some legal manuevering.

Bronson, we briefly learn, married into the upper crust of society, and his wealthy friends implore him to just let it go and move on. Bronson meanwhile tracks down the culprits, determined to get vengeance. But nowhere in the novel do we have any flashbacks from Bronson to his wife or kids; in today's world this of course would be played up to maximum maudlin effect, with Bronson frequently in tears at the memory of playing catch with his kids or holding his wife. There's none of that here -- Blind Rage is as lean and mean as you'd expect a piece of '70s pulp to be. My mistake though was thinking this was a miss on the author's part. I was wrong; instead, Rawls was merely setting us up to truly gut us later in the novel.

The author brings to life the dark underbelly of Cincinnati, not to mention that of his protagonist. Bronson discovers that he has a hell of a mean streak -- not that he pauses to reflect on it. But within a day of beginning his search, he's already acquired a 9mm pistol with silencer and blown away a few people, including an innocent floozie. As he tracks around, picking up the pieces that will lead him to the rapist-murder brothers (their names are Bennie and Bernie, he discovers), Bronson continues to kill in cold hate, especially those who could later identify him. In particular there is the first of many disturbing scenes where Bronson coldly murders a defenseless young streetwalker, merely because she's provided him with information on where the "Bs" (as the brothers are known) are temporarily staying, and Bronson's afraid she could later identify him to the police.

But the violence he dishes out to the guilty... Anyway, the way the violent life of the lone wolf goes in these novels, you know Bronson will be picking up a woman soon. And it's another feather in Rawls's cap that the female character, a pretty Hispanic named Teresa, is without question the strongest in the novel, leaping right off of the page. She's only 17, an orphan in all but name (her dad, who hates her for not being a son, has kicked her out), and much wiser than her years would imply. She comes on strong to Bronson, who has rented a room in the rundown tenement building where Teresa lives. Soon she's living with him, and Rawls develops a touching rapport between the two. I mean, no kidding, these characters really get to you, and Rawls handles the relationship with aplomb.

Bronson further arms himself with a shotgun, leading to another violent scene where he takes on some hoodlums. Teresa proves her worth here, backing up Bronson with the 9mm. Not because she's the cliched "tough chick" of action pulp, but because she's in love with Bronson, and again it all comes off very well. Even better is a later scene where Bronson and Teresa are attacked by some Hispanic gangsters during a blizzard, and Teresa slices the hell out of one of them with her pocket switchblade. She's one tough cookie for sure, and her dialog is almost like street poetry. Is it clear yet how much I loved this novel?

Our "hero" Bronson though is something of a schizophrenic. The quiet scenes with Teresa are touching because it's obvious they're developing feelings for one another, and Teresa, who eventually learns who Bronson is and what he's doing, commits herself to his cause and wants to stay with him through thick and thin. Bronson meanwhile begins to realize he too is falling in love. But when he gets to the associates of Bennie and Bernie, he's all business, even if it's people who only know the brothers tangentially.

The stuff Bronson pulls throughout this novel is insane, from gunning people down in cold blood to stripping a woman, tying her to her bed, dousing her with kerosene, and setting her on fire -- putting the lighted match to her pubic hair, naturally. I haven't even mentioned the part where he literally emasculates a guy with a shard of glass, then proceeds to eviscerate the guy. Or the scene where he ties down another guy, builds a wire cage around his hand and head, and sets hungry rats loose into the cages, where they slowly gorge themselves on the guy's bodyparts! Or how about the part where he pours Drain-O on another guy's exposed genitals? Yep, that's our hero.

As mentioned, though, Bronson never once reflects on this sadism. Maybe once or twice, early in the novel, he thinks back on how he murdered someone, but it's always with the concern that he might get caught. It soon becomes a bit of recurring dark comedy that every time Bronson kills someone in a brutally sick fashion, Rawls will write how Bronson methodically wipes away his fingerprints. It soon becomes the punchline to a morbid joke.

Rawls crams every lurid, exploitative thing he can into this book. The villains are thoroughly despicable, and the crazy thing is -- they all deserve those sadistic deaths! They make snuff films, they put children in sexual bondage, the works. And of course they get away with it all, due to the uselessness of the courts as is mandatory in '70s pulp, but also due to their influence over important people, who apparently go to the twin brothers for all their lurid needs. Bronson sets out to even the score on this point as well.

Blind Rage works as a standalone novel, and one does not get the impression that it is leading into a sequel. It comes to a fitting end, Bronson's entire tale fitting within one novel. My groundless suspicion is that some author sent an unsolicited manuscript to Manor Books and an editor there decided to turn it into a series. Really though, it's not. And really, I'd love to know who this version of "Philip Rawls" was. As far as the genre goes, he's a master, well above the average. I don't believe he's someone I've read before. The narrative style was not familiar from any other books I've read.

The author left some clues, though; he likes to use the word "pillow" as a verb, for one; ie, "He pillowed the shotgun to his shoulder." I've never seen that done before. Also, in one instance he refers to a bullet in the narrative as a "pellet;" the only other author I've seen do this is Russell Smith. But this clearly isn't the work of Smith, despite the focus on rats. And speaking of focus, Rawls spells the word "focused" as "focussed," which I believe is the British fashion. So who knows, maybe he was British. If he was, he certainly had a handle on inner-city American slang. But the book itself doesn't read like any of the British pulp I've yet encountered, which always seems a bit too "pristine" for me. At any rate, the writing here is incredibly strong and I can only hope to come across more work from this author someday -- not to mention to find out who he was.

I've read a lot of these novels over the years, so it takes something really special to get to me. Blind Rage did. In fact this is one of the few books in the genre that unsettled me, not just due to the graphic sadism but also the impact of the characters and their fates. It's miles beyond the usual output of the men's adventure genre, and it's a shame it's so obscure. I recommend it without reservation -- this is one hell of a great novel.