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.

THE DEATH MERCHANT



Published in 1971, THE DEATH MERCHANT launched a series of books that would survive even its publisher, Pinnacle Books.  After Pinnacle folded, the series was picked up by Dell Books until the books met their eventual demise.

Other than some interesting and fantastic plots, THE DEATH MERCHANT books never really had that much to keep me interested.  However, I stayed with the series off and on – mostly off.  Some books were better than others. 

This first volume was released at the time that Pinnacle was starting to make some publishing hay with THE EXECUTIONER.  Therefore the “Gee, let’s kill mafia goons” books were coming into vogue and everyone wanted to get their piece of this publishing pie.  Most series of this type, deservedly, went the way of the dodo bird.  However, THE DEATH MERCHANT lingered.  Like bad gas.

The cover of the book claims that it is “The most inside, the most accurate, the most incredible account of the syndicate that has ever been published.”  Sorry, I’m not buying into that. 

What can I say about the book other than to mention that I believe it to be atypical of novels of this type in that there is virtually NOTHING really about this character that is likeable.  Yeah, he gives a woman 5 K to pay for plastic surgery after her boyfriend throws scalding coffee in her face.  Then, too, as he later executes the boyfriend, he says, “Edie Boland wants you to know that she made all this possible.  She came and told me about your little ambush.  You should have kept your mouth shut around her, Charley, and you shouldn’t have thrown hot coffee into her face.  Are you looking into the barrels, Charley?”  Other than that, Richard Camellion is quite charm-free. 

Another thing that bugged me (and in some way still does) is Camellion’s/Rosenberger’s absolute contempt for anyone who has religious beliefs.  Anyone can believe what they want to believe in this country, but I don’t subsidize the idea that someone should be allowed to hammer/insult you about your own beliefs.  Unless one’s beliefs are stupid – like a cult I learned of one time that worships what they believe is a battery from extraterrestrial spacecraft.  Wail away on those cats if you want to!

Disturbing thing #2: “The Cosmic Lord of Death”.  Rosenberger dedicated one of his books to this entity, saying that it was the best friend mankind could ever have, or words to that effect.  Fairly screams of someone in the throes of depression, doesn’t it?  I’m no psychiatrist, but if someone I knew said something like that, I’d suspect they were suffering from some form of mental illness. 

Disturbing thing #3: The one and only “Super” (double length) Death Merchant novel, called “Apocalypse” featured America going into nuclear war, much to Camellion’s glee.  Mental illness via the author?  Again?

If Mr. Rosenberger is still alive these days, he would be right at 86 or 87 years of age.  If not, I guess his best friend, The Cosmic Lord of Death, paid him a final visit.  Hope they were very happy when they both walked/floated off together into the sunset.  

By the way, for those of you who are interested, Joe Kenney recently posted a 1981 interview held with Rosenberger from a magazine called SKULLDUGGERY on his blog http://glorioustrash.blogspot.com.  The interview is disappointingly short and doesn’t really make Rosenberger come off as anything other than borderline obnoxious.  But perhaps I’m reading something into it that wasn’t intended. 

COMPANY MAN

Just like the cover says, it’s another of those literary attempts to cash in on the success of Robin Moore’s book, THE GREEN BERETS.  As I remember nothing at all about this book, I’m going to guess that it failed to meet its burden