#5: Boston Avenger by Mike Barry

Burt Wolff is a VietNam vet and narco cop whose girlfriend is purposefully overdosed as a warning to him; he snaps and goes on a one-man war against the drug trade in Mike Barry's Boston Avenger.

This is the third novel featuring the Lone Wolf, a hardboiled Men's Adventure-style series from the 1970s that was apparently written by Barry Malzberg at a prodigious clip.  They are about as quick to read as they probably were to write, full of a strange intensity.

I thought this volume improved on the last, which had Wolff blowing up various things on the west coast, whose geography seemed ill-fitted to his persona; now we find Wolff back on the grimy east coast, a surer footing for Malzberg, as Wolff chases a seemingly cursed suitcase full of drugs around New England. 

This edition also digs a little deeper into Wolff's fractured psyche and shows that he really isn't someone to cheer for, despite his efforts to clean up the streets.

I have enjoyed these via Prologue Books for my beloved Kindle and am sure to pick up the next one.

#33: Bay Prowler by Mike Barry

Wulff is an ex-cop and former Vietnam vet driven over the edge when his girlfriend is killed by drug dealers; now his one-man war against the drug trade takes him to San Francisco in Mike Barry's Bay Prowler.

Barry (actually author Barry Malzberg) wrote a big chunk of these Lone Wolf Men's Adventure novels at a blistering pace in the 1970s.

This follow-up to Night Raider misses the decaying New York setting brought so vividly to life in the first novel but benefits from introducing a young girl, in the clutches of addiction, who (mistakenly) sees Wulff as an avenging angel.  A slam-bang ending on a burning ship is also a highlight.

Although not as strong as the first novel, Bay Prowler is pretty grim and gritty, and interested me enough to download the third volume from Prologue Books for my beloved Kindle.

#28: Night Raider by Mike Barry

A VietNam vet turned NYC narcotics cop gets too close the exposing corruption, and finds his girlfriend dead as a warning; something snaps, and he becomes a one-man war on drugs in Mike Barry's first Lone Wolf novel, Night Raider.

Mike Barry--actually sci fi writer Barry Malzberg--passed into legend by writing a big chunk of this series of Men's Adventure novels in a single year in the early 70s.  And Night Raider has a hastily-written quality to it, with characters' names and personalities shifting and an instance of someone getting on the subway and arriving shortly thereafter in a cab.

But there is a feverish intensity to the novel as well, and a vivid depiction of the decaying Big Apple of the 1970s, before the clean-up of Times Square and elsewhere.  Barry also uses an interesting plot device amidst the carnage as the Lone Wolf of the title picks out a dealer on the street and becomes determined to follow a single thread as far as it will go, with death a constant companion.

Like a lot of Men's Adventure-type novels there is a lot of attention paid to guns and weaponry but also a rather curious fixation on engines and cars and muscle cars in particular.

I got this cheaply for my beloved Kindle and read it quickly, then downloaded the next one in the series from Prologue Books.  A quick read, but not entirely undemanding, for discerning readers.