This was a short-lived series initiated by Robert Skimin which, after a few books, switched hands to the now-late Mark K. Roberts. I can’t honestly say that I’ve read any of them thus far, but there is an interesting story behind this that I can now tell you.
SOLDIER FOR HIRE only went 8 or 9 books, I believe. Mark Roberts had told me that the Kennedy family (yes, THOSE Kennedys) apparently got wind of a Ted Kennedy insult that was written into one of the books (by Mark). According to Mark, a Kennedy Family representative made a call to the publisher, Zebra Books, and effectively killed the series because of it.
I asked a Zebra editor later about this and he remarked that the Kennedy comment was taken out of the book simply because it was in bad taste. The series was killed only because it was not meeting sales expectations.
Mike, I was happy to discover this post. I've been interested in checking out Mark Roberts's contributions to this series for quite a while.
ReplyDeleteI first learned of it via Michael Newton's 1989 book How to Write Action-Adventure Novels. Newton went to pains to deride this series throughout the book, in particular #8: Jakarta Coup – first, going on about its right-wing slant, secondly about its unbelieveable sex scenes, and finally about its “poor taste” combination of sex and sadism (in particular with a female torturer who shall we say enjoyed her work a bit too much). The Ted Kennedy analog was a definite source of Newton’s wrath, in that he claims Roberts bases him too clearly on the real person. But then, Newton also says there is a part where hero JC Stonewall yells at the sea because it nearly drowned him – he yells at it because it nearly kept him from killing more Commies!
Now, this sounds very obviously like satire. I’ve been reading Mark Roberts’s contributions to the Penetrator series (and reviewing them on my blog: http://glorioustrash.blogspot.com/search/label/Mark%20Roberts) and it is clear to me that the guy had a great sense of humor. In each of the Penetrator books I’ve read by Roberts, he has always included an in-joke or two.
So then, do you know if his installments of the Soldier for Hire series were intended as parodies of the right wing slant of most action-adventure fiction? I’m also interested to hear that you knew the man…I’d love to know more about his work on the Penetrator series, in particular the fate of the Penetrator himself in the final volume, #53: City of the Dead. Curious if it was Roberts and co-author Chet Cunningham who decided to end the series that way, or if it was publisher Pinnacle.
Anyway, thanks for this post!