Sunday, July 12, 2015

The Executioner pursues me across California, finds me in Philadelphia

Selfie at California Citrus State Historic Park,
Riverside. All photos by Peter Rozovsky, your
not so humble blog keeper.
Don Pendleton's first Executioner novel, War Against the Mafia, turned up free as an e-book earlier this week.  In honor of the discovery, here's a post from my trip last year to that mecca of action-adventure stories, Southern California, where I could not, however, find a copy of War Against the Mafia. Early chapters suggest that the book might make interesting collateral reading to Richard Stark's The Hunter and The Outfit.
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Not much to note from yesterday's crime reading, except that Don Pendleton's second Executioner novel, Death Squad, takes its hero and his cast of associates on a path through Southern California nearly identical to that I have followed in recent days. Yesterday that took them to the citrus groves around Riverside, where I had just spent the day, and let me tell you: Having one's steps dogged by Mack Bolan and his gang of Mob-hating, authority-snubbing, police-respecting gang of expert killers gives a jasper a screwy feeling.

Mission Inn Riverside
Yesterday's book yield, from the Downtowne Bookstore in Riverside: a collection  of secret wartime cables between Dwight Eisenhower and George C. Marshall.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

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6 Comments:

Blogger Fred said...

Peter,

Have you heard that P. D. James died today?

November 27, 2014  
Blogger Unknown said...

Creepy photo, Peter. Why do I think I am seeing the shadow of a guillotine at a Citrus Park?

November 27, 2014  
Blogger seana graham said...

Thanks, Fred. I hadn't heard.

Peter, that is one creepy photo

November 27, 2014  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

Fred, I had not heard that. Thanks. She lived a long, productive and, as far as I could tell, reasonably happy life. Here's a photo of her I snapped at Crimefest in Bristol a few years ago.

November 27, 2014  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

R.T. and Seana: I had thought of that shadow as just a an atmospheric visual element. Your macabre imaginations help me understand why, though maybe a gallows would be more appropriate that a guillotine for the setting.

November 27, 2014  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

If Blogger is functioning again: By God, that shadow does look look a guillotine, though the "Executioner pursues me" headline is a happy coincidence.

November 28, 2014  

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