Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Tower of Blood by Spike Andrews - CAT (Crisis Aversion Team) 1


Tower of Blood
by Spike Andrews aka Duane R. Schermerhorn
CAT (Crisis Aversion Team) 1
1982 Warner Books
Men of Action Book



Two cops stop the son of a failed industrialist from committing acts of revenge against his competitors.  Weirdly, this may be the first Men's Adventure book I've read that had regular cops doing their job.  I know there are plenty out there, but I think the marketing starts to slide over to detective and police procedural territory.

The whole thing gave off a strong 70s buddy cop show vibe, to the point that I had this playing in my head through most of it.



The characters interacted OK, but I couldn't tell you anything about them.  One cop is married, the other isn't.  Not that I'm minding, as for once this book filled up the page length with action scenes.  Lots and lots of long, competently written action scenes.

What really impressed me with Tower of Blood is how skillfully crafted the action scenes were.  Some of them went on for 30 pages or more and didn't drag.  You got an excellent sense of place and could visualize every movement in your head.  This may have the only decent, drawn out foot chase I've ever read.  There's a reason nobody writes chase scenes - they're hard to write.

I ended up studying this one for how it was put together.  For instance, different writers use different tactics when there's an extended fight scene with unnamed opponents.  Here, he just uses "the guy" throughout.  Like an admission that it's prickly and he's just going to ignore it.

By the ending things started to drag a bit, as our two cops break up a hostage situation in a high rise restaurant and have an extended fight around and in a helicopter.

There were three in the series.  The second was written by George "Crime Minster" Ryan, the third by Schermerhorn again.  As far as I can tell, Schermerhorn wrote these two and a crime suspense novel "Hard to Kill" as James Marcott.

The Men of Action Books line from Warner Books had the worst logo.


Currently available for Kindle.

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