Guilty Pleasure No. 102: The Destroyer Series (by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir)

Posted on January 31, 2026 by Arleigh

The Destroyer series, launched in 1971 by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir and later chiefly associated with Murphy, is the kind of long‑running action franchise that practically defines “guilty pleasure.” Spanning more than 150 paperback entries and various continuations, it rarely pretends to be anything other than what it is: fast, frequently outrageous pulp about a government assassin and his irascible Korean mentor saving the world by killing people who, in the moral logic of the series, really need killing.

At the center is Remo Williams, a former Newark cop framed for murder, executed on death row, and then quietly “resurrected” to become the enforcement arm for a secret U.S. organization called CURE. The first novel, Created, The Destroyer, uses this grim premise almost as a prologue; the series is far less interested in legal nuance than in setting up a clean break from Remo’s past so he can be remade as a weapon. His new life is one of deniability and isolation, and the books lean into that fantasy of the invisible man behind the headlines, quietly eliminating threats that conventional systems can’t touch. It’s not realistic, and it isn’t trying to be; the appeal lies in how cheerfully the series weaponizes that premise for brisk, punchy adventure.

The real hook, though, is Remo’s training in the Korean assassination art of Sinanju, and his relationship with its current master, Chiun. Chiun, drawn from a secretive village of assassins who have supposedly served emperors and leaders for millennia, turns the usual mentor trope into a running act of ethnic, generational, and cultural clash. He’s vain, mercenary, and spectacularly contemptuous of Americans, and a lot of the series’ humor comes from his withering commentary on U.S. culture, politics, and Remo’s stubbornly ordinary tastes. Remo calls him “Little Father,” and as the books go on, the bickering most often reads like a truly dysfunctional but oddly affectionate family argument played against a backdrop of exploding supervillain lairs. That dynamic is where the series unexpectedly finds a core of warmth amid all the cartoon violence.

On the action front, The Destroyer exists squarely in the men’s adventure boom of the 1970s, alongside series like Don Pendleton’s The Executioner, but evolves into something stranger and more openly satirical. Early on, Remo’s feats are at least vaguely grounded in martial arts exaggeration, but as the volumes pile up, Sinanju becomes almost superheroic: running up walls, shredding steel, and dispatching opponents with fingertips and casual nose‑ripping brutality. The series’ foes range from mobsters to mad scientists, corrupt officials, rogue militaries, and outright parodies of real‑world figures, and the books gleefully mix crime fiction with borderline science fiction and spy‑thriller gadgets. A lot of the fun is in watching Murphy escalate the stakes from book to book, then resolving everything with hands‑on mayhem because Sinanju doctrine disdains guns as spiritually unclean. When it clicks, it has the energy of a comic book written in pure pulp prose.

What keeps The Destroyer from feeling like just another relic of that boom is its tonal tightrope walk between earnest action and broad satire. CURE itself, the secret agency that “does not exist,” is a kind of bureaucratic joke: a tiny office, a frail director, and a mandate to do the dirtiest jobs in the name of national security. The series frequently aims its sharpest barbs at American government, media, and corporate greed, using Remo and Chiun as caustic outsiders who see through the patriotic rhetoric. Later installments lean even harder into political and cultural satire, lampooning televangelists, tech capitalism, and global politics in ways that are sometimes genuinely clever and sometimes just loud. Even when the targets feel dated or obvious, there’s a sense that Murphy is using the form of a disposable action paperback to smuggle in a surprisingly crabby worldview.

That said, this is also where the “guilty” part of the guilty pleasure label comes roaring in. By modern standards, The Destroyer is extremely non‑PC; race, gender, and nationality are all fodder for jokes that range from sharp‑edged caricature to material that many readers will reasonably find offensive. Chiun’s constant stereotyping of Americans and others is sometimes framed as a way of turning prejudice back on the majority culture, but the books often indulge in broad ethnic humor far beyond him. Women in many entries are treated primarily as scenery, sexual opportunities, or victims, though there are exceptions where they’re more capable players in the plot. If you’re reading with a contemporary lens, you’re likely to hit passages that stop you cold, and the series doesn’t apologize for any of it. Enjoyment here often requires compartmentalizing, acknowledging that the books reflect their era’s blind spots and biases while deciding whether the action and satire still outweigh that discomfort.

In terms of prose and pacing, the series is better crafted than its garish covers suggest but still rooted in the rhythms of fast‑turnaround paperbacks. The dialogue between Remo and Chiun has a crackling, insult‑laced snap that does a lot of heavy lifting in keeping you turning pages. Scenes of action are clear, efficient, and often imaginative in how Sinanju is used, even as the body count mounts to cartoonish levels. The humor, when it lands, blends deadpan absurdity with savage put‑downs, and the books occasionally deliver a line or a situational gag that feels sharper than their reputation would indicate. At the same time, the sheer volume of entries means unevenness is inevitable; some later volumes feel like they are coasting on formula, recycling set pieces and political targets with less bite. As with many long series, the high points are scattered, and part of the experience is learning which eras and authors click with you.

For readers who love action fiction, The Destroyer remains oddly addictive precisely because it refuses to be respectable. It revels in outlandish violence, outsize personalities, and unapologetic satire, while occasionally brushing up against genuine character moments in the Remo–Chiun relationship. The mythology of Sinanju, with its ancient lineage and mercenary code, gives the series a mythic backbone that most of its peers never bothered to build. At the same time, the dated politics, crude humor, and casual cruelty mean it’s not a series you recommend without caveats; it’s something you confess to loving, then immediately start explaining. If you can navigate those contradictions, The Destroyer offers exactly what its best covers promise: a relentless, often ridiculous, sometimes sharp pulp ride that you may not be proud of finishing, but will probably reach for again anyway.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 101: The Executioner Series (by Don Pendleton)

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Arleigh

The Executioner series by Don Pendleton is one of those long-running action sagas that practically defines the phrase “guilty pleasure.” Kicking off in 1969 with War Against the Mafia, it introduces Mack Bolan, a Vietnam veteran whose homecoming turns into a nightmare and pushes him into a one-man war against organized crime. With an astonishing total of over 600 books across the main series and its spin-offs, it stands as one of the most prolific runs in pulp fiction history, delivering a steady diet of ambushes, car bombs, and last-stand shootouts, all orbiting a hero who lives somewhere between soldier, avenger, and urban legend. It’s even seeing a resurgence lately, with many original titles now available as e-books through Open Road Media, drawing in a new wave of digital readers hungry for retro action thrills.

The hook is simple and primal. Bolan comes back from Vietnam to discover his family destroyed by Mafia loan sharks, their lives shattered by debt, intimidation, and violence. The man who survived jungle warfare as a sniper becomes a domestic insurgent, redirecting the tactics of war onto American soil. In War Against the Mafia and the early novels, there’s a grim, almost workmanlike edge as he stalks mobsters through streets and back alleys, treating cities like new combat zones. Chapters move quickly, with Pendleton leaning into clear, muscular prose: weapons described with fetishistic precision, tactics laid out like field reports, and action beats that rarely pause for introspection longer than a sentence or two.

Those first runs of books form a surprisingly cohesive arc. Bolan’s war starts local and then scales outward: first the hometown syndicate, then larger crime families, then international networks and political entanglements. Titles like Death Squad, Battle Mask, and Miami Massacre escalate the conflict, dropping Bolan into fresh arenas—new cities, new bosses, new layers of corruption—without ever really changing the fundamental formula. Each volume is basically a new operation: recon, infiltration, explosion. There’s comfort in that clockwork repetition, especially if you’re coming to the series for the thrill of seeing how Bolan will dismantle this week’s nest of villains, a pattern that sustains all 600-plus entries.

As pulp entertainment, the series doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is: ruthlessly efficient action storytelling. Bolan isn’t written as a richly conflicted psychological study; he’s a vector. He thinks tactically, talks sparingly, and acts decisively. When he pauses to reflect, it’s usually to reaffirm his personal code—his obligation to protect innocents, his hatred for predators, his sense that the “jungle” followed him home from the war. That stripped-down approach makes the books read almost like mission logs. You don’t linger with him; you move with him, from weapon cache to kill zone to escape route.

The “guilty pleasure” part comes from how unapologetically the series indulges in its own extremes. Villains are drawn in thick strokes: sadistic enforcers, greedy bosses, corrupt officials, each more deserving of a bullet than the last. Bolan is judge, jury, and firing squad, and the narrative rarely questions whether that’s a good thing. The violence is frequent and often spectacular—blown-up cars, shredded safehouses, street battles that leave staggering body counts. It channels the same energy as grindhouse action cinema and ’70s vigilante films, but in prose form that you can tear through in a single sitting.

Taken purely as escapism, this is the series’ appeal: it offers a fantasy of absolute efficacy. Problems are solved through planning, courage, and overwhelming firepower, not through compromise or negotiation. If you’ve ever been frustrated with red tape and institutional inertia, Mack Bolan is the fantasy of ripping all that away and going straight to the source with a rifle. That’s also where the discomfort starts to creep in if you read the books with a more critical eye.

From a contemporary perspective, the vigilante ethos can feel both dated and unsettling. The books largely treat legal systems as ineffectual and police as either helpless, compromised, or quietly cheering Bolan from the sidelines. There’s little space for nuance when it comes to morality. That black-and-white worldview gives the action its propulsive drive, but it also flattens complexity: systemic issues collapse into a handful of “bad guys” to be eliminated. The series reflects the anxieties of its time—post-Vietnam disillusionment, fear of organized crime, distrust of institutions—but it rarely interrogates them.

Characterization is another weak spot, though it’s almost a feature of the genre. Outside of Bolan, most people function as types rather than fully realized individuals: the honorable cop, the tragic informant, the doomed love interest, the sneering mob lieutenant. Women, in particular, often feel like afterthoughts—romantic interludes, victims in need of saving, or temporary allies who don’t really alter the trajectory of Bolan’s mission. If you’re looking for layered relationships, you won’t find many here; the stories are built on momentum, not emotional intricacy.

As the series goes on and other writers take over, the tone and focus inevitably shift. The core template—lone warrior versus entrenched evil—remains, but the enemies expand from the Mafia to terrorists, cartels, rogue states, and shadowy conspiracies. Depending on your taste, that either keeps the concept fresh or dilutes Pendleton’s original blue-collar vendetta into something more generic and interchangeable with other men’s adventure titles. The early books carry a rough, personal edge; later entries sometimes feel more like franchise installments than deeply felt passion projects, stretched across hundreds of volumes.

All of that said, it’s hard to deny the series’ impact. Mack Bolan is a clear ancestor to a long line of fictional warriors and vigilantes, from paperback commandos to gun-toting comic book anti-heroes. You can see echoes of his DNA in countless characters who blend military skill with personal trauma and a private war against evil. In that sense, The Executioner isn’t just a pulpy distraction; it’s a foundational text for a whole corner of modern action storytelling.

Reading it today, the best way to approach The Executioner is with eyes open and expectations calibrated. It is not subtle, not especially nuanced, and not interested in long philosophical digressions about the nature of justice. It is fast, blunt, and engineered to scratch a very specific itch—now even more accessible thanks to Open Road Media’s e-book editions breathing fresh life into the saga. If you’re comfortable with that—if you want a hard-edged, morally stark, action-first series that feels like flipping through a stack of R-rated VHS tapes—then Mack Bolan’s war is easy to fall into and surprisingly hard to quit, even after 600 books.

If you’re curious, the ideal entry point is still the beginning: War Against the Mafia and the couple of books that follow. Those early volumes give you the raw version of the character and the template everyone else later imitates. If they don’t work for you, the rest of the series almost certainly won’t. But if you find yourself staying up late to squeeze in “just one more chapter,” that’s when you know the guilty pleasure has done its job.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 99: Death Merchant Series (by Joseph Rosenberger)

Posted on January 20, 2026 by Arleigh

The Death Merchant series by Joseph Rosenberger is a loud, relentless block of pulp action that feels less like a set of tidy thrillers and more like being dropped into a never-ending firefight powered by paranoia, gore, and fringe theorizing. It is the kind of series where your tolerance for over-the-top violence and unfiltered ideology will decide almost immediately whether you keep going or tap out after a book or two.

At the center of it all is Richard Camellion, the so-called Death Merchant: a master of disguise, martial arts, and “wet work” who usually contracts with off-the-books branches of Western intelligence for the jobs that are too dirty or politically dangerous to be handled in daylight. He is pitched as “a man without a face,” a professional who drifts from mission to mission, changing identities as easily as he swaps weapons, and charging serious money for operations that will leave plenty of bodies on the ground. Over the life of the series, he goes from taking on organized crime in the States to fighting terrorists, neo-Nazis, rogue generals, occult cults, and even plots involving aliens and lost civilizations. The world these books build is an anything-goes playground where paramilitary raids, Cold War spy games, and bizarre pseudo-science exist side by side, held together less by realism and more by sheer velocity and an obsession with tactics, gear, and mayhem.

Camellion, as a character, is deliberately underdeveloped in the conventional sense. There are fragments of backstory—St. Louis roots, an engineering degree, a Texas ranch with pet pigs, hints that he once taught history—but these details feel more like flavor text than emotional anchors. His real personality is defined by efficiency and detachment. He doesn’t agonize over moral lines; the mission objective comes first, and if that means innocent people or even cops get killed, so be it. The series is notably more nihilistic than many of its men’s-adventure peers, going so far as to show Camellion and his team gunning down large numbers of police officers when they get in the way of a job. There are gestures toward a personal code—he donates part of his fees to struggling students and the underprivileged in Texas—but that philanthropic angle never softens the basic reality that you’re dealing with a protagonist who treats lethal force as a casual tool rather than a last resort.

The real appeal, at least for fans, lies in the way Rosenberger stages and describes action. The violence is intensely graphic and highly technical, full of precise talk about trajectories, calibers, anatomy, and battlefield tactics. Shootouts and raids are broken down moment by moment, like a cross between a field manual and splatter prose, and they tend to go on long enough that you either settle into the rhythm or start to feel like you’re stuck in an endless report. Between all the bullets and explosions, the books frequently pause for gear talk—special gadgets, exotic weapons, improvised tech—and this side of the series is surprisingly imaginative, from microwave jammers to bizarre field devices that wouldn’t look out of place in a low-budget spy movie. When the stories drift into science-fiction or occult territory, that same almost deadpan, “here’s how it works” tone is applied to alien relics, psionic warfare, or secret cities, which only adds to the series’ strange charm.

Set against the broader landscape of 1970s–80s men’s adventure fiction, The Death Merchant both fits and mutates the template. It shares the basic chassis with series like The Executioner and The Destroyer: a super-competent operative, a paperback-per-mission structure, high body counts, and a constant churn of global crises. Where Mack Bolan’s saga leans on revenge, wounded honor, and a tangible sense of moral outrage, Camellion’s world is colder and more openly cynical; the emotional framing is thinner, and the books care much more about how an op is executed than about the psychological fallout. Compared to Remo Williams and his mentors in The Destroyer, the difference is tone. The Destroyer often treats its excesses with a wink, using satire and self-awareness to keep the carnage oddly light on its feet, while The Death Merchant plays things straight, even when plots involve cloning the hero, stumbling across Atlantean technology, or battling cults armed with mind-control drugs. In that sense, Rosenberger’s series feels like the genre with the safety off—less polished, less accessible, but also more unapologetic in how far it will chase its own wild ideas.

None of this would be quite so jarring if the worldview baked into the books weren’t as sharp-edged as it is. The series openly reflects the prejudices and anxieties of its time, and not in a subtle way: racism, sexism, and class hostility are frequent, along with a deep suspicion of almost everyone outside the protagonist’s narrow circle. Long digressions into politics, conspiracy theories, and metaphysics often read like the author stepping onto a soapbox, turning scenes into lectures that can be fascinating, infuriating, or simply exhausting depending on your mood. That ideological intensity, combined with the clinical violence and the lack of real emotional counterweight, makes the series a tough sell for readers looking for nuance or heroism in the more traditional sense. At the same time, it is exactly what gives these books their unmistakable flavor and helps explain why they’ve developed a cult following rather than vanishing completely into the used-book bins.

Taken together, The Death Merchant novels are wildly uneven, sometimes ridiculous, and frequently offensive, but they are also distinct and weirdly committed to their own warped vision of men’s adventure fiction. If you approach them as straightforward thrillers with the usual expectations of character arcs and tidy plotting, they will almost certainly disappoint. If you come to them as artifacts from the outer fringes of pulp—paperbacks that push violence, ideology, and high-concept plotting further than their more famous shelfmates—they become a fascinating, if abrasive, deep dive into what this genre looks like when nothing is toned down. For readers who like their action fiction loud, excessive, and unconcerned with respectability, there is a certain grim entertainment to be had in watching Richard Camellion move from one catastrophe to the next.

Below is a list of the main series titles, which gives a good sense of the range and escalating absurdity of Camellion’s missions:

1. The Death Merchant – Richard Camellion versus the Chicago mob.

2. Operation Overkill – The demented leaders of the Knights of Vigilance plan to assassinate the President and overthrow the government.

3. The Psychotron Plot – The Russians and Egyptians team up to use a brain-scrambling device on Israel.

4. Chinese Conspiracy – The Chinese plan to maneuver a submarine into Canadian waters and shoot a US space shuttle out of the sky.

5. Satan Strike – The CIA and GRU combine forces to stop a dictator of a Caribbean nation from using a potent and deadly super-virus.

6. The Albanian Connection – Neo-Nazis, bent on reunifying Germany and restoring the Reich, have assembled seven nuclear bombs to use against the U.S., Europe, and Russia.

7. The Castro File – The Russians plan to gain complete control of Cuba by assassinating Castro and having a lookalike take his place.

8. The Billionaire Mission – Cleveland Winston Silvestter, a paranoid billionaire, believes he is Satan’s chosen disciple and is hellbent on triggering World War III.

9. The Laser War – A Nazi super-laser is pursued.

10. The Mainline Plot – Communists in North Korea have created a super-potent, super-addictive strain of heroin called Peacock-4. By introducing the heroin into the U.S., they hope to enslave a generation of young adults.

11. Manhattan Wipeout – The Death Merchant causes trouble for the four mob families in New York City.

12. The KGB Frame – Flash! Camellion turns double agent. The target of both his colleagues and his enemies, the Death Merchant becomes the object of the most intense manhunt in the history of international espionage.

13. The Mato Grosso Horror – Camellion leads an expedition into the Brazilian jungle to locate a group of Nazis who are perfecting a mind-control drug.

14. Vengeance of the Golden Hawk – The DM is tasked with saving Tel Aviv from a rocket barrage containing a deadly nerve gas.

15. The Iron Swastika Plot – The Nazi organization known as the Spider returns!

16. Invasion of the Clones – Camellion versus five clones of himself in Africa.

17. The Zemlya Expedition – The Death Merchant attempts to rescue a scientist from an underwater Russian city/complex in the Arctic Ocean.

18. Nightmare in Algeria – Camellion battles two terrorist organizations who have joined forces: the Black Avengers and the Blood Sons of Allah.

19. Armageddon, USA! – A far-right group threatens to set off nukes in three American cities unless its demands are met.

20. Hell in Hindu Land – The Death Merchant leads an expedition to a Buddhist monastery in India, where the bodies of aliens (and the secrets of their civilization) may be hidden.

21. The Pole Star Secret – Camellion treks to the North Pole to investigate a possible alien world hidden under the ice cap.

22. The Kondrashev Chase – A highly placed spy behind the Iron Curtain has disappeared while trying to escape to the West, and Camellion must find and rescue him.

23. The Budapest Action – The Hungarians are working with the KGB to develop a hallucinogenic toxin to be released over American cities and the DM is tasked with stopping them.

24. The Kronos Plot – Fidel Castro plans to destroy the Panama Canal.

25. The Enigma Project – Spying on Russia under the cover of finding Noah’s Ark.

26. The Mexican Hit

27. The Surinam Affair

28. Nipponese Nightmare – Japanese terrorists try to frame the CIA for murder.

29. Fatal Formula – Tracking a man-made flu strain.

30. Shambhala Strike – An ancient maze of caverns means China could easily invade.

31. Operation Thunderbolt – A bomb-maker is captured by North Korean forces.

32. Deadly Manhunt – An ally betrays Camellion.

33. Alaska Conspiracy

34. Operation Mind-Murder

35. Massacre in Rome – A civilian seems to be able to predict the future.

36. The Cosmic Reality Kill – A cult leader is targeting kids.

37. The Bermuda Triangle Action – The Russians are drilling along a fault line in the Atlantic, where a few well-placed hydrogen bombs could cause catastrophe for the U.S.

38. The Burning Blue Death – A neo-Nazi group called the Brotherhood has created a device that can make a human being spontaneously combust.

39. The Fourth Reich – A neo-Nazi conspiracy to trigger an atom bomb (twice as powerful as Hiroshima) in Cairo is crushed.

40. Blueprint Invisibility – The Red Chinese have stolen a vital top secret U.S. file dealing with electronic camouflage.

41. Shamrock Smash – Someone is supplying the IRA with weapons and the CIA and SIS call on Richard Camellion to find out who.

42. High Command Murder – At the end of World War II, American soldiers stole 100 crates of Nazi gold and hid the loot in an abandoned mine shaft in northern France. The Death Merchant races the Nazis to find it.

43. The Devil’s Trashcan – Did the Nazis bury treasure at the bottom of Lake Toplitz during World War II? Camellion, et al. plan to find out.

44. Island of the Damned – Soviet forces develop mind-reading technology.

45. The Rim of Fire Conspiracy – The Russians hope to trigger volcanoes on the U.S. West Coast by exploding bombs along fault lines.

46. Blood Bath – Camellion assists South Africa’s ruling whites defeat groups of blacks demanding an end to apartheid.

47. Operation Skyhook

48. Psionics War

49. Night of the Peacock

50. The Hellbomb Theft – Camellion must stop two mini-nukes from falling into the hands of Kaddafi, the dictator of Libya.

51. The Inca File

52. The Flight of the Phoenix

53. The Judas Scrolls

54. Apocalypse, USA! – Libyan terrorists plan to spray deadly nerve gas across the Eastern Seaboard. Not if the Death Merchant has anything to say about it!

55. Slaughter in El Salvador – The Death Merchant heads to war-torn El Salvador, where he tangles with death squads and Communist Sandinista rebels, with predictable carnage.

56. Afghanistan Crashout

57. The Romanian Operation

58. The Silicon Valley Connection

59. The Burma Probe – The Death Merchant teams up with Thunderbolt Unit Omega and Lester Vernon “The Widowmaker” Cole to stop a Chinese territory grab.

60. The Methuselah Factor

61. The Bulgarian Termination

62. The Soul Search Project – Camellion pursues a scientist who can talk to the dead. The protagonist and his allies willingly kill several dozen NYPD officers.

63. The Pakistan Mission – A Communist plan to invade Pakistan.

64. The Atlantean Horror – Camellion is in Antarctica, trying to keep an “energy converter” (buried 70,000 years ago by scientists from Atlantis) out of the hands of the Russians.

65. Mission Deadly Snow – The Death Merchant must destroy a South American drug cartel intent on supplying Fidel Castro with thousands of pounds of cocaine.

66. The Cobra Chase – Camellion tracks the Cobra, who escaped from the cocaine processing plant in the previous book.

67. Escape From Gulag Taria – A Soviet physicist who specializes in weather modification wants to defect.

68. The Hindu Trinity Caper – Camellion tracks down an East German spy who has stolen some parts to a nuclear weapon.

69. The Miracle Mission – The Shroud of Turin is stolen by an Arab terrorist group. Camellion’s job is to get it back.

70. The Greenland Mission – Camellion and his crew investigate a ‘U.F.O.’ in Greenland.

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Horror Book Review: Blood Meridian (by Cormac McCarthy)

Posted on October 24, 2025 by Arleigh

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” — Judge Holden

Blood Meridian initially appears to be a story set in the violent American West, but beneath the surface, it presents a profound exploration of evil—a world where history and cosmic darkness merge in a landscape drenched with blood and despair.

Cormac McCarthy’s novel defies easy classification. It follows the Kid, a teenage drifter who joins the ruthless Glanton gang of scalp hunters during the lawless 19th-century borderlands. Yet this story is not about heroism or conquest; rather, it reveals a brutal, merciless world governed by cruelty and cosmic malevolence.

No traditional heroes emerge here. Every character either inflicts horror or suffers it, trapped in an endless cycle of violence. The Kid moves passively through this brutal landscape, lacking the conviction or agency typical of Western protagonists. This moral ambiguity immerses readers in a narrative saturated by horror at every turn.

Violence permeates the novel—not merely through vivid depictions of scalping and massacres but as a fundamental force governing existence itself. Violence shapes life’s fragile and transient nature. Spilled blood binds the characters and marks a universe where death and cruelty endure indefinitely. The visceral portrayal underscores violence as a relentless ritual as pervasive and elemental as the landscape itself.

At the violent core stands Judge Holden—monstrous and compelling. His towering, hairless, albino form immediately signals his unnaturalness: massive, lacking body hair, and displaying a blank, eerily calm expression that can swiftly shift into chilling ferocity. This physical otherness aligns him with mythic terrors that transcend humanity.

Holden’s vast intellect spans languages, science, and philosophy, making him appear nearly godlike. Yet his worldview exalts war and violence as the universe’s ultimate realities. He declares, “war is god,” and insists everything exists only under his knowledge and consent. He casts violence as the ultimate power and true order, positioning himself both as agent and embodiment of these forces.

He bears striking resemblance to the archons of Gnostic thought—malevolent cosmic rulers who imprison humanity in suffering and ignorance. Holden’s bald, pale form and inscrutable nature make him a living symbol of the universe’s cold indifference to human pain and violence. He embodies cosmic cruelty and indifferent fate, physically manifesting the harsh, uncaring forces shaping mankind’s brutal destiny.

Holden shrouds the narrative with cosmic dread. His mysterious origins, command over knowledge and power, and seeming invincibility elevate him beyond mere man. He becomes an embodiment of eternal evil and incomprehensible cosmic forces that dominate the novel’s bleak universe.

The desert landscape intensifies this cosmic horror. It is not mere backdrop but a symbol of a universe indifferent to life and moral distinctions. Traditional binaries of good and evil dissolve into endless cycles of destruction. Mercy and justice vanish, replaced by an uncaring void that swallows hope and meaning. The environment thus anchors the story’s existential dread.

The Kid’s journey reveals the story’s psychological core—his slow destruction of innocence. Initially barely aware of right and wrong, he sinks deeper into the Gang’s savagery. The line between victim and perpetrator blurs until innocence disappears. This loss exposes a deeper horror: the self’s annihilation through human cruelty.

McCarthy’s prose reflects this mythic and cosmic scale. His dense, biblical cadence challenges readers but deepens the story’s epic tone. Sparse punctuation and sweeping descriptions evoke a vast, harsh world that feels inevitable and overwhelming. This rigorous style immerses readers in a mood of doom and fatalism, amplifying the narrative’s grim vision.

Philosophically, Blood Meridian meditates on timeless cosmic evil. Holden transcends mere antagonist status to become a metaphysical force of destruction, both ancient and eternal. The novel’s final scenes suggest this cosmic power will forever govern human suffering and violence.

The novel echoes ancient philosophies that portray evil as pervasive and intrinsic. Violence weaves into existence’s fabric, turning the universe into a dark battleground where malevolent forces prevail unchecked. The text confronts complex themes of fate, power, and the buried truths beneath history’s surface.

Seen holistically, Blood Meridian transcends its Western roots to emerge as a raw chronicle of violence, evil, and cosmic dread. It offers no solace or redemption—only exposure to a primal darkness where humanity’s basest impulses attain mythic significance.

This potent combination of brutal historical insight, existential horror, and mythic storytelling delivers an intense, unforgettable literary journey. The novel stands as both a frontier saga and profound philosophical inquiry into evil itself—forcing confrontation with humanity’s deepest darkness and the indifferent vastness of the cosmos.

By articulating these themes through complex narrative, striking symbolism, and demanding prose, McCarthy not only reconstructs the American West but also presents a timeless meditation on human nature and the universe—a work that challenges readers intellectually and viscerally in equal measure.

Horror Book Review: Blue World (by Robert R. McCammon)

Posted on October 22, 2025 by Arleigh

“Even in a blue world filled with sorrow, the heart continues to seek love, light, and meaning beyond the darkness.”

Robert R. McCammon’s Blue World is a captivating collection of short stories that showcases his mastery of horror, while also exploring themes that go beyond the usual genre boundaries. Originally published in 1990 and recently reissued by Subterranean Press, this collection serves as a natural companion to Stephen King’s Night Shift. Both authors start with classic horror ideas but make them their own through distinctive voices. For readers who enjoy stories that combine suspense and psychological depth with moments of quiet reflection, Blue World is a deeply rewarding read.

The collection features a wide range of stories that feel connected by McCammon’s strong sense of character and place. In many tales, ordinary settings—such as small towns and suburban streets—become stages for hidden dangers. For example, “He’ll Come Knocking at Your Door” starts off with a familiar neighborhood atmosphere that slowly reveals an undercurrent of menace. McCammon’s ability to turn the everyday into a place of suspense taps into a universal fear: that the safe and known can quickly become threatening.

Themes of change, survival, and the strain on the human mind surface in stories like “Strange Candy” and “I Scream Man!” His characters often face challenges that test not just their bodies, but their minds and morals. McCammon skillfully combines moments of fast-paced action with quieter, thoughtful passages, which make the terror hit deeper because we connect with the characters on an emotional level.

“Night Calls the Green Falcon” stands out for its creative blend of horror and nostalgia. It tells the story of a down-on-his-luck actor caught in the pursuit of a serial killer, echoing the style of old adventure serials with cliffhanger scenes. This story reveals McCammon’s talent for mixing different genres in fresh ways without losing emotional depth.

The most distinct story in the collection is the title novella, “Blue World.” Unlike the other stories, it steps away from supernatural horror and focuses on a very human and emotional tale. It follows a priest who falls in love with a porn star, and both become targets of an obsessed fan. McCammon uses this story to explore themes of love, faith, and redemption, diving into moral and emotional complexities rather than scares or ghosts.

This change in tone creates a thoughtful space within the collection, inviting readers to reflect on themes that contrast with the fear and darkness in other tales. While most stories rely on supernatural or psychological horror, “Blue World” confronts the dangers and redemption found in real human relationships, showing a different but equally compelling side of McCammon’s storytelling.

McCammon’s writing throughout is vivid and sensory, pulling readers into each story’s environment. Whether describing the sweaty tension of summer in “Yellowjacket Summer” or the bleak landscapes of “Something Passed By,” the settings are tangible and emotionally charged. This helps both the horror and the personal stories feel authentic and immediate.

Across the collection, McCammon’s characters stand out because they are fully realized people rather than simple victims or villains. They grapple with their fears and flaws in ways that feel realistic and relatable. Their struggles add psychological weight to the stories, making themes of loss, survival, and redemption more powerful.

Ultimately, Blue World is more than just a collection of horror stories—it is a showcase of Robert McCammon’s storytelling skill and emotional range. Much like King’s Night Shift, it offers a variety of stories from suspenseful shocks to deep, character-focused explorations. The inclusion of the novella “Blue World,” which steps outside the typical horror mold, adds richness to the collection and highlights McCammon’s ability to write compelling stories about human resilience and complexity.

For readers who enjoy a mix of supernatural thrills, strong characters, and thoughtful moments, Blue World provides a memorable journey through fear and hope, darkness and light. It stands as a significant work in modern horror literature and beyond, inviting readers to feel deeply as well as be scared. This collection proves that the craft of horror can encompass more than just fright—it can tell stories about the very heart of human experience.

Horror Book Review: ‘Salem’s Lot (by Stephen King)

Posted on October 9, 2025 by Arleigh

“Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
—Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot opens with an unsettling and bold narrative choice. Instead of introducing the main characters or setting a conventional stage, the novel begins by showing two nameless figures—an older man and a younger companion, burdened by events already passed. These itinerants are fleeing a terrible evil, seeking refuge in a small Mexican village, suffused with mystery and dread. This brief but cryptic prologue hooks the reader immediately with a pervasive sense of unease and unanswered questions: who are these men, and what horror haunts them so far from home?

This unsettling beginning is not only risky but masterful. King, in just his second published novel, chooses to forgo straightforward exposition and instead promises that the narrative will move backward, retracing the dark events that led to this moment of flight and loss. The prologue casts a shadow into the past, preparing readers for a story where the darkness is already present and will only deepen.

Rewinding, the narrative places us in the small New England town of Jerusalem’s Lot—known to its inhabitants simply as “The Lot”—a quintessential small town in 1970s Maine. Here, Ben Mears, a novelist haunted by childhood trauma centered on the forbidding Marsten House, returns home with the intention of writing about the old mansion. The Marsten House is not just a setting; it is a malignant presence perched over the town like an ominous sentinel. Ben’s youth intrudes everywhere in his memory of that house—a place where something unknowable once touched him—and now, as an adult, he confronts both that past and the house again, its shadow casting unease over the town.

Ben isn’t the only arrival. Richard Straker sets up an antique shop, accompanied by his rarely seen partner, Kurt Barlow—an inscrutable figure whose very mention deepens the novel’s pervasive tension. King reveals Barlow’s presence slowly and indirectly, heightening the atmosphere without immediate confrontation.

King excels at immersing readers in the rhythms of small-town life. Through detailed observation of everyday routines, gossip, and personalities, he crafts a believable, textured community. Each townsperson—whether skeptical official, gossip-prone neighbor, child, or elder—is vividly realized, not as a simple archetype but as a living, breathing individual. Yet beneath this surface of normalcy lurks a pervasive darkness: secrets, resentments, and moral frailties accumulate like hidden mildew in the town’s corners.

In this, Salem’s Lot evokes the spirit of Peyton Place, the classic fictional small town where scandal and hypocrisy fester beneath neighborly facades. King’s Jerusalem’s Lot feels like a much darker cousin—a town where those faults and hidden sins once fodder for gossip become the very soil from which real, supernatural evil springs. While Peyton Place explored human failings within social dynamics, Salem’s Lot reveals how those failings create openings for Kurt Barlow’s vampiric menace. The town’s insularity, mistrust of outsiders, and collective denial become liabilities dooming it—not just morally, but existentially.

At the heart of this encroaching nightmare stands the Marsten House, a building elevated beyond mere backdrop into a living entity. Like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, Richard Matheson’s Belasco House in Hell House, and King’s own later Overlook Hotel, the Marsten House is steeped in decades of violence and evil. Its walls seem to soak up past horrors; its windows serve as more than architectural features—they are eyes into the house’s dark soul. This physical presence is sinister and predatory, complicit in the nightmarish events it enables. To enter the house is to step into something corrupt and breathing, an organism as alive and malign as the vampire it conceals.

What makes Salem’s Lot especially powerful is how King integrates the supernatural into the texture of daily life. The fantastical elements do not feel imposed or alien but grow organically from the social dynamics, habits, and vulnerabilities of this small town. The horror is inevitable precisely because it grows from recognizable human weaknesses and communal blind spots. This fluid blending invites readers to experience terror as an intimate shattering of the ordinary, a disruption of the familiar.

Relationships anchor the emotional core of the narrative. Ben’s romance with Susan Norton, the steady wisdom of Matt Burke, the youthful courage of Mark Petrie—their humanity keeps the terror grounded and poignant. As vampirism spreads, these bonds are tested and shattered. Community, which once defined the town’s identity, fractures under suspicion and fear. Friends become threats; homes become prisons.

The looming Marsten House is a perfect emblem of this dual threat: a predator perched within the community itself. As Barlow turns neighbors into monsters, the house’s silent complicity looms ever larger. It is as much a character as any human, a sentinel feeding on the decay of place and spirit alike.

As the novel hurtles toward its climax, King heightens the tension with vivid, claustrophobic scenes inside the haunted mansion. The house’s corridors and rooms twist into traps, its atmosphere suffocating and oppressive. King’s mastery of sensory detail brings a visceral dimension to the horror, blending psychological terror with physical menace.

The conclusion returns to the somber tone of the prologue. Although some survive, the town is hollowed out—a ghostly husk abandoned to darkness. Evil is not eradicated but waits patiently, ready to thread its way back through the cracks. The cycle of horror, loss, and exile continues.

Stephen King’s unique strength in Salem’s Lot lies not only in his richly developed characters and finely drawn community but in how seamlessly he introduces supernatural horror into what reads like a real-time study of small-town life. The fantastical elements grow naturally from the social fabric, making the terror feel inevitable rather than contrived. This synthesis of realism and fantasy deepens the novel’s power.

King’s portrayal of Jerusalem’s Lot as a place rotting from within yet clinging to its veneer of normalcy offers a chilling echo of Peyton Place. But while Metalious’s town suffocated under scandal, Salem’s Lot is consumed by predation—the vampire feasting not only on blood but on the fractures of belonging and trust. It is both eerily familiar and profoundly alien: a place where monsters live not just in shadows, but in whispered suspicions and buried sins.

Through this blend of gothic haunted-house traditions, social critique, and psychological realism, Salem’s Lot endures as a masterpiece of horror. The Marsten House is not merely a setting but a sentinel, symbolizing accumulated evil watching over a doomed community. King’s novel terrifies not only with its monsters but with its intimate knowledge of how everyday life can harbor the seeds of nightmare beneath a calm surface.

A Book To Read This Weekend (6/6/25)

Posted on June 6, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the Tony Awards scheduled to be held and televised on Sunday, this weekend might be a good time to read William Goldman’s The Season.

First published in 1969, The Season was William Goldman’s very opinionated and very snarky look at the 1967-1968 Broadway season. Best known as a screenwriter, Goldman took the money that he made from selling the script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and spent a year going to Broadway show after Broadway show. Many shows, he sat through multiple times. The book features his thoughts on not just the productions but also the culture around Broadway. Apparently, when the book was published, it was considered controversial because Goldman suggested that most Broadway critics played favorites and didn’t honestly write about the shows that they reviewed. Goldman suggested that some performers were viewed as being untouchable while other worthy actors were ignored because they weren’t a part of the clique. Today, that seems like common sense. One need only look at a site like Rotten Tomatoes to see how pervasive groupthink is amongst film critics and also how carefully most reviews are written to ensure that no one loses access to the next big studio event. In 1969, however, people were apparently a bit more naive about that sort of thing.

It’s an interesting book, especially if you’re a theater nerd like me. That said, it’s also a bit of an annoying book. There’s a smugness to Goldman’s tone, one that is actually present in all of Goldman’s books and essays and yes, aspiring screenwriters, that includes Adventures In The Screen Trade. He clearly believed himself to be the smartest guy in the room and he wasn’t going to let you forget it. It makes for a somewhat odd reading experience. On the one hand, Goldman’s style is lively. Goldman holds your interest. On the other hand, there will be times when you’ll want to throw a book across the room. When he hears two women talking about their confusion as to why they didn’t enjoy a show as much as they had hoped, Goldman describes walking up to them and offering to tell them. It comes across as being very condescending.

That said, Goldman makes up for it in the chapters in which he explores some of the more troubled productions of the season. His barbed dismissals of some of Broadway’s most popular performers still packs a punch and it remains relevant today as there are, to put it mildly, more than a few acclaimed performers who have been coasting on their reputations and their fandoms for more than a decade. Goldman passed away in 2018. One can only imagine what he would think of today’s celebrity-worshipping culture.

Finally, The Season does feature one beautiful chapter and it should be read by anyone who appreciates the character actors who carry movies and plays while the stars get all the credit. Goldman’s look at play called The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald features a powerful profile of actor Peter Masterson. Goldman writes about a play that closed after 7 nights and which was not critically acclaimed but he turns the chapter into a celebration of truly good acting. It’s the chapter that makes the rest of the book worth the trouble.

(Click here for last week’s Weekend Book!)

WHY NOT ME (by Lindsay Ireland) – Introducing Bradley’s Book Reviews!

Posted on January 4, 2025 by Bradley Crain

I don’t read that often for recreational purposes. When I do read, it’s usually books about my favorite actors, actresses, directors, or movies in general. But every now and then, a book will pique my interest, and I’ll pick it up. Back in the late spring of 2024, my partner on the “This Week in Charles Bronson” podcast, Eric Todd, made me aware of a book called WHY NOT ME, a memoir from Lindsay Ireland, the niece of Jill Ireland and Charles Bronson. Eric had made contact with Lindsay and the two had some preliminary discussion about her appearing on the podcast. Eric told me that she shared stories of her own life, which included her spending summers as a child on the Vermont ranch of her famous aunt and uncle. As a lifelong Bronson fan, it seemed the book could offer some valuable insight into the life of my movie hero. I figured I could spend some time trudging through Lindsay’s personal life if it allowed me to get those valuable nuggets of information on Bronson and Ireland. I went ahead and bought WHY NOT ME and took it with me when my wife, Sierra, and I were on a relaxing weekend in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I settled in on the balcony of the New Orleans Hotel, which overlooks a section of the beautiful downtown area and started reading. Here’s a quick summary of the book taken directly from Amazon:

“Lindsay Ireland enjoyed an idyllic childhood. She spent her summers in Vermont with her movie-star relatives where she rode horses, played detective with her cousin, and drank ice-cold lemonade. After the summer months, Lindsay returned to her loving family where her biggest worry was getting good grades in school. Then one day Lindsay noticed blood in her stool. Suddenly instead of carefree afternoons swimming in a lake or dressing her Barbie doll, Lindsay spent months in a sterile hospital room receiving intravenous fluids and, eventually, a life-saving ostomy surgery. At age eleven, Lindsay was diagnosed with her first autoimmune disease, and her life was never the same. In this candid memoir, Lindsay evolves from a girl living with an autoimmune disease into a young woman struggling to love a body that has continuously failed her, and, eventually, into a mother and wife who has fought to make herself visible despite her invisible illnesses.”

As alluded to above, I was interested in WHY NOT ME because I wanted to read Lindsay Ireland’s stories about Charles Bronson & Jill Ireland. And I was certainly in awe as Lindsay spoke of her times with her Uncle Charlie, Aunt Jill and her cousins in Vermont. Reading about my movie hero from her perspective was something I appreciated tremendously. But what really blew me away with this book is how connected I became to Lindsay’s personal life events, struggles and triumphs. Lindsay funneled her memories and writings through a lens of “the power of perspective.” It’s through this perspective that Lindsay speaks of how important her family has been to her over the years as she’s faced the fear of serious health issues in both her childhood and again as an adult. She spoke of the importance of making a good match with a therapist, and how that has helped her over the years. She spoke of how important it has been for her to learn to speak of the difficult things in her life, even if they make her uncomfortable. Lindsay’s strength in writing is her ability to share her own insecurities, the ways that she has been able to overcome them, and then make you believe that you can overcome them to! I was able to relate to so many of the things she shared, and I can see how much my own life could have improved if I had done these things earlier.

The one thing that probably stuck with me the most, however, is when Lindsay spoke of how hard it was when she was dealing with some very difficult issues in her life, yet she felt unseen and unheard, even from those people who loved her, wanted the best for her and had good intentions. This is where I decided I need to make the most improvement in my own life. It seems we can get so caught up in our own feelings and concerns that the needs of others, even those we love, can be neglected. Sadly, I know that there are times that I don’t show the concern, empathy or compassion that I should to other people. After finishing WHY NOT ME, I am determined to make sure that the people I love never feel unseen or unheard, especially my wife. I fail at times, mainly because I can be a smartass, and my wife might even roll her eyes or tease me if she reads this, but I truly never want her to feel unseen or unheard again.

If you want to hear more directly from Lindsay, or maybe even hear me or my buddy Eric bare our own souls, I’ve attached our podcast episode again for your viewing / listening pleasure!

Horror Novel Review: The Lifeguard by Richie Tankersley Cusick

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I read 1988’s The Lifeguard earlier today. It’s a fast read, which is always a good thing.

The book tells the story of teenage Kelsey, whose father has just died and whose mother is already getting ready to marry her new boyfriend, Eric. Personally, I think mom is moving a bit too fast but then again, Eric’s rich and he invites Kelsey and her mom to spend the summer on Beverly Island. Kelsey makes new friends. She meets the people who might soon become her stepsiblings. She develops a crush on two of her potential stepbrothers, shy Justin and the intimidating Neale. And she gets involved in a potential murder when Beth, yet another of Eric’s children, disappears. Did Beth drown or did she fall victim to the killer of Beverly Island?

This book was so silly. Can Kelsey solve the mystery? Even more importantly, can Kelsey decide which one of her future stepsibilings she wants to date? Justin seems nice but Neal is so dark and mysterious. Can Kelsey figure out why the mysterious old man keeps yelling at her? Could he be the killer? He seems like kind of an obvious choice but Kesley might as well go ahead and break into his boat just to be sure….

Apparently, this book is considered to be a bit of a cult classic, solely because of the cover. And the cover is pretty cool. The book itself is nothing special but I probably would have appreciated it more if I hadn’t already read countless old school YA books with the exact same plot. I can only guess the R.L. Stine read The Lifeguard at some point.

This book also wins some points from me for having a ludicrously “happy” ending. Everything works out even though, to be honest, nothing should have worked out. Kelsey should have been traumatized for life and whatever plans her mom had to marry Eric should definitely have been cancelled! Seriously, there’s some things that not even the best of relationships can survive! That said, the ending was so over-the-top and — here’s that word again — silly, that I couldn’t help but appreciate it.