From Pinnacle, the publisher that brought you the Executioner, the Penetrator, the Destroyer and the Death Merchant, comes...the Butcher. The Butcher's real name is Bucher, an ex-Mafia chieftain who grew a conscience and left the mob...which nobody does and lives. With a $1 million bounty on his head, the Butcher is recruited by a super-secret government agency known as White Hat, which not even the FBI or the CIA is aware of. Turning to White Hat as a way to atone for his sins, Bucher doesn't even take a government salary, living off his blood money stashed away in Swiss bank accounts and traveling the world righting wrongs and killing a whole lotta bad dudes.
In 1980's SEPTEMBER SLAUGHTER (also known as SLAUGHTER IN SEPTEMBER), written by Stuart Jason (who may be prolific paperback author Michael Avallone), the Butcher is in Reno, where he teams up with lovely red-haired CIA agent Susan Raintree to investigate labor uprisings across the West. Someone, presumably mobsters, is inciting union strikes and rioting in an attempt to knock off small businesses and leave the field wide open for their own fronts to thrive. After a shootout in Nevada, Bucher and Raintree hop a cab driven by avuncular Turkey Tomlin to Stockton, California; who woulda guessed that Stockton was such a hotbed of crime?
A lot of shooting and a little bit of sex gussy up this fast-moving thriller, which seems little more than "Executioner Lite." It's a breezy read, however, and, like most of its ilk, can be zipped through in just a couple of hours.
As you have probably already noticed, among the best parts of these novels are their painted covers. This one is by Fred Love, whoever he is.
I can confirm that this one was written by my dad, Michael Avallone. He tended to knock out the Butcher books in under a week. They were life-savers at a low point in his career.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I read evey Butcher book your dad wrote, however, they were all destroyed in a fire. I loved them... Do you know where I can get them replaced, at a decent price?
ReplyDeletesjones1941@cox.net
Try eBay and used book stores. That's where I found mine, and I have almost the whole series.
ReplyDeleteHey sjones, I know you. Still living in Vegas?
ReplyDelete