The Specialist #8 One Man Army
John Cutter
Berkley, 1987
ISBN: 0-425-10546-6
Big ‘ol guns. Vigilante vengeance. Tough guys. Dangerous dames. Numbers on the covers? It’s the world of Men’s Adventure paperback fiction. The whole mess was started by Don Pendleton back with The Executioner #1: War Against the Mafia in 1969. After that the floodgates opened and every publisher had to have at least one man-of-action in their midst and on the spinner racks. They morphed from sleazy, violent action crime tales in the 70s to fairly hoorah, go-America action stories in the 80s before fizzling into techno-thrillers in the 90s.
A lot of authors got their starts in Men’s Adventure (or their ends) like Joe R. Lansdale or Nelson DeMille. Then there’s a ton of virtually unknown authors toiling away producing fast, pulp fiction just like it was the 30s or 40s. It was steady work if you could get on a series, writing volume after volume usually with a stable of other writers doing the same thing. You could make a living writing and hone your skills to hopefully break through. Profitable as it was, it was still a “gutter field” to be writing in.
Sort of like Horror.
John Shirley writes about anything you can think of. Novels, short stories, songs, TV episodes, movies, tie-in books, songs for Blue Öyster Cult. He’s an early practitioner of the cyberpunk movement and produced a fair amount in the horror field, a lot of which could be filed in the splatterpunk sub-genre. He’s a punky writer. Then for a while in the 80s he was John Cutter with The Specialist series and he was also D.B. Drumm with the post-nuke-pulp series, The Traveler. Within his tie-in work he’s written everything for Batman to The Predator to Halo. Nowadays he’s moved to writing westerns, the last bastion of the paperback writer.
The Specialist is Jack Sullivan, an uber-tough guy with a dead family who hires himself out to dish out justice for the little guy. He’s sort of your bone-stock paperback hero mold, someone much like The Executioner or even The Punisher. Shirley wrote the whole eleven volumes of the series, so at least the character stays pretty consistent throughout. He’s so tough and resourceful that it’s hard to imagine him being into too much trouble. So, the circumstances of the individual books sort of dictate how much you might enjoy the book. Some are fairly standard action tales while some, well, get a little funky.
One Man Army starts out like a good B-movie 80s action flick. Our hero is saving his lady friend with a big gun, starting with a firescape, going through an apartment and ending up on a rainy rooftop. Sullivan is in town to help out his private eye lady friend Bonnie save the tenants of an apartment building from the machinations of the evil Legion, a one-eyed bad dude out to empty the apartment. This sets off a solid story of defending a place against an on-coming threat, waves and waves of bad guys to take out and eventually a deadly hitman named The Chill out to kill Sullvian. There’s armored vans with rocket launchers, grenade attacks, gunshots in gory detail and even a five-story death-trap maze for Sullivan to get through.
But where’s the horror? Okay, if all that wasn’t enough there’s The Precious Ones. The Precious Ones are basically satanic sewer-dwelling mutant C.H.U.D.S. who live down there eating rats but who aren’t above being hired to kill Sullivan. So, our rugged-hero is lured down into The Precious Ones sewer lair and there’s not a ninja-turtle around to help. The Precious Ones are also made-up of a lot of escapees from the insane asylum and like to feed their victims to giant rats, like you do when you live in the sewer. After a big ‘ol action scene with Sullivan mowing them down with his guns he’s forced to mostly take them on with his THROWING STARS. Gah, did I write this when I was 14 and awesome?
Obviously, Shirley’s love of horror creeped into his fairly straight action novels, maybe pulling a little inspiration from his own subterranean horror novel, The Cellar from a few years before. The horror part of the novel is where Shirley lights up and shines, it is pretty clear he had more fun writing this chunk then the more “normal” parts. After the wild sewer-horror the rest of the book is sort of a let-down. But I don’t know how you can top that section. Sullivan is an okay hero with a nice snarky touch but he’s almost superhuman with his abilities that you rarely feel any danger for him. Except when you put him up against some C.H.U.D.s. Even still Shirley is a great writer even tied up in the genres conventions and One Man Army is a fun way to spend a few bloody hours. I do wish it was a whole novel of Sullivan versus The Precious Ones though.
Roy Nugen is an award-winning writer, producer, property master, plus actor. He comes from a family of musicians, engineers, wildcatters, cops, lion tamers, and carpet salesmen. Evil Dead II changed his life and he once partied with Lloyd Kaufman.
He has written 15 short films including Bag Full of Trouble, Potboiler, Handle With Care, Death in Lavender, Hole in the Ground, and the feature film Arrive Alive, many of which have played across the country. He has been the property master on 17 short films and 2 feature films.
Roy is also a prolific book reviewer and collector of vintage pulp paperback books. You can read his reviews on his blog Bloody, Spicy Books and multiple magazines including Paperback Fanatic, Hot Lead and Sleazy Reader. He has also written afterwards for novels and for various websites. He lives in the only city that once arrested L. Ron Hubbard with his wife and cats.