Where It's Rough but It's Entertaining

California Hit by Don Pendleton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was surprisingly entertaining and readable. I'm no literary snob, but I'll admit I expected this to be super dull, badly paced and plotted, and probably just a mess. Nope. It's a brisk read, for sure, and cuts to the action quickly, but it's a solid novel, and I found it entertaining. More than expected. They sold something like 200 million of these, so I shoulda known...

When I was a kid, one of my much older brothers--the brother who died a few years ago--always had books in this series (and a few like it) laying around his house. He never talked about them and I never saw him read them, but I'm sure he did, and through the years I have always associated the titles and covers with him. They looked pretty fun if not quite up my alley. I realized that they were men's pulp action/adventure novels, and since I leaned from an early age toward LOTR-type fantasy and old science fiction, I never picked one up for myself.

Recently, I bought a few old copies of these on a whim, probably more out of a sense of nostalgia and fondness for a lost brother than anything else, and this is the first one I read. I was most struck by the difference in sensibility between 1972 and now. I'm not surprised that there's a pretty big dose of 70's-style misogyny and cringe-worthy language, with terms like "china doll" and the like, but I was pleased to see that the author was purposely steering clear of the genuine racism that we associate with the 50s and 60s, and he gives us good guys and bad guys of every ethnicity. It's not a mannered book, though; it's very sex-positive in a macho way, and the language is raw, with plenty of f-bombs and even the c-word. (I wasn't expecting that.) But then, that tracks; the movies of the time, IMO, were rougher than movies now. In any case, I found it more refreshing than off-putting. I could just about smell the cigarettes.

Mack Bolan, the protagonist, is all about clearing out the mafia, and here he is taking on a few families in San Francisco. This is book 11, but I guess what happened in earlier books is that people he cared about were killed by the mafia, so he has a take-no-prisoners approach to the mob and is on a crusade. He doesn't set guys up for arrest--he straight-up kills them. Basically, it's a revenge fantasy where all the bad guys deserve to die, without question, and the books wouldn't work if you harbored any sympathy for the villains. Nevertheless, Mack Bolan worries about people getting hurt that don't deserve it, and he worries about people that help him because they'll become targets, and he shows more thoughtfulness than one might expect from a vigilante.

All in all, it works better than I thought it would. No wonder so many people bought so many copies. It's fun to read, it's not too long, and the pacing is like a movie. I cautiously recommend the series, or at least this one that I read. However, it definitely isn't for everyone.

For those who think a mix of 007, Rambo, and John Wick going on a deadly campaign against the mob sounds kinda good, actually, then you might wanna find the pulp shelf in the back of your favorite used book store.

No guilty pleasures. You either like it or you don't. I liked it.

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