I Want Camellion Dead

In Joseph Rosenberger's MANHATTAN WIPEOUT, #11 in Pinnacle Books' Death Merchant series, the godfather of New York City's most powerful mob family, Salvatore Giordano, has put out a contract on the Death Merchant's life. Giordano had a supporting role in the previous novel, THE MAINLINE PLOT, and MANHATTAN WIPEOUT is basically a direct sequel, as Richard "Death Merchant" Camellion continues to battle the same mobsters. As such, it's also quite repetitive, as most of the book finds the Death Merchant mowing down dozens of Italians with a variety of firearms--none of them as far out as MAINLINE PLOT's Blaster, a 3000-shot submachine gun that fired explosive bullets. Rosenberger doesn't stint on the gore, as mobsters lose their faces, arms, legs to Camellion's gunfire. I even learned where the perineum is located on the human body, as one of the Death Merchant's .357 Magnum slugs penetrates one belonging to some unlucky bastard.

Even though MANHATTAN WIPEOUT felt like "same ol' same ol'" on the heels of MAINLINE PLOT, it's still a decent, violent pageturner that you can kill in a night or two. Later entries take the Death Merchant into more far-fetched plots that sound more appealing, including a journey into the jungle to battle an ex-Nazi and an adventure in Africa where he must fight clones of himself!