Seeing Red by David J. Schow

Author:David J. Schow
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horror, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
ISBN: 9781930235052
Publisher: Babbage Press
Published: 1990-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

It could have been mucho worse.

The Book Bin's amiable clerks suspected I was the one responsible for boosting their back wall sections dry for some months now. The back wall sections—reference and novels M-Z—were the most difficult to monitor from the front counter. One employee or another hovered perpetually at the rim of my vision, watchdogging, maybe wondering what the hell I was doing, branching out into a new section of the store. I kept my eye on them, too. This was research.

I was introduced to Brock deSade: Spy Crusher in the company of the baddest and the best—The Eviscerator, The Annihilist, Commie Stomper, and The Mutilation Squad all stood erect in their wire pockets, with the inevitable salting of Doc Savage oldies in their hairy, masculine company. The Death Merchant was still going strong alongside The Rat Bastards and The S.O.B.s. Some series ran to fifty-plus volumes. Don Pendleton had a whole shelf all to his lonesome.

The first, Spy Crusher I saw was #7: The Kill Cadre. I plucked it and gobbled up Tensor's promotional gambits.

Brock deSade, Spy Crusher, locks horns with a fanatical gang of barbarian zealots, the Kill Cadre! By Ingram Gunn.

So this was fame. All the sister series had "authors" as cute as their titles—Bruno Groin, Christian White, Hawk Hunter, Turk Thrust, Buff Rigid—and the advertising squibs dealt out as many monosyllables and hard Germanic glottals as possible. Everything was calculated to sound not just tough, but primal.

Sex is his middle name! Death is his trademark. Unbridled ACTION and gut-ripping TENSION as seething maniacs plot to napalm AMERICA! Only ONE man stands against them: BROCK deSADE, international troubleshooter, chameleonic specter of intrigue, hard and cold as a.44 Magnum, a keenly honed killing machine with a computer mind! It's a hit-and-miss cross-country juggernaut as dynamiting radicals try to make the SPY CRUSHER EAT FLAMING DEATH!!

Well, okay.

Apparently the Kill Cadre was composed of pussies, since Brock deSade creamed them in time to tackle his next assignment, #8: Deathtrap of Terror. Even more obvious was deSade's healthy showing on the racks you should pardon the expression. There were plenty of cockeyed and vacant pockets. Other hooks in the series had sold briskly. Part of the reason—a cunning strategy on the part of Tensor Books—was that Spy Crusher, at $2.25 per book, was the cheapest violence series on the rack. That explained the doghouse advances.

My pocket was full of bus-fare change from my kitchen's Dunes Hotel ashtray. Actually paying money for a book was part of my strategy. In my mind Tensor was giving it back to me two-thousand fold. The piddling two-percent royalty promised by the fart joke that was their boilerplate contract meant that I'd never see any cash beyond the first whack . . . unless Spy Crusher sold better than Lose Weight with Cocaine, or whatever was currently number one according to the New York Times.

SpyCrusher #7 was worth the out-of-pocket expense just for me to see the Book Bin's overlord grimace his way through a mock coronary at the sight of real money in my outstretched hand.

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