THE PENETRATOR #30: COMPUTER KILL

Hadn’t read one of these in ages, so I picked it up off the shelf, dusted it off and gave it a go.  Now I remember why I liked this series so much when I first discovered it in my late teens.

“Lionel Derrick” was actually two people: Mark Roberts, who told me that he originated the series and wrote every odd-numbered book and Chet Cunningham who, of course, did the even-numbered ones.  Consequently, COMPUTER KILL is one of Mr. Cunningham’s contributions to the series.

As Mark Roberts passed on to the Action Writer’s Book Hub in the sky some years back, I can tell you that Mark had a loathing for Chet Cunningham.  It was never clear to me why this was or if the loathing was mutual.  It could be that Mark felt that THE PENETRATOR was his baby alone and would have resented ANYONE writing every other book. 

Mark mentioned, too, that he hated every book that Chet wrote in the series.  I didn’t feel that way because I enjoyed the series as a whole and found relatively little difference from book to book.  It was just storytelling and a pleasant way for me to pass a couple of hours.  I’d always like the “knight errant/vigilante” kind of books anyway.  Plus, Pinnacle was doing a bang-up job back in the day of packaging them as you can tell by the cover.

But, be that as it may, THE PENETRATOR was a Vietnam Vet who discovered a black market racket thing going on and was beaten nearly to death by the perps.  He recovers in the desert with the help of an Indian Medicine Man and becomes the vigilante that he is in the books. 

COMPUTER KILL is one I’d never read, even though it was from 1979.  It concerns Hector Lattimer, an embittered ex-employee of a high-powered firm.  He is fired from the job even though promised it for life as a result of an injury to his hand.  Things escalate and Hector gets a hold of transfer codes for the company and begins to drain the account of its money. 

Mark Hardin, aka, THE PENETRATOR, gets wind of this and goes after Hector.  It’s all pretty predictable, but silly, goofy fun.  That’s not a bad thing.

You’ll notice on the book cover that it mentions “Featuring the Penetrator’s Combat Catalog”.  This was just an illustrated gallery of only a few of the weapons that Hardin uses in the books.  The Combat Catalog idea probably sprung from “The Executioner’s War Book” which was a special inside look at the Mack Bolan books that Pinnacle was also publishing at that time.  THE PENETRATOR never got a special companion handbook to the series, so perhaps this was just a way to give the reader insight over several books. 

Chet Cunningham is one of the busiest writers we have out there today.  I’ve seen many series come and go and he manages to stay afloat and turn out some quality work.  Some of his early PENETRATOR work found its way to a new publisher but I don’t know how long the books were out there or if all of his volumes made it to reprint. 

THE PENETRATOR survived until book #53, CITY OF THE DEAD, wherein Mark is killed.  Fitting ending to a nice series.  It went under just before the original Pinnacle did.