Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Book Report: <i>The Enforcer</i> by Andrew Sugar (1973)

Book Report: The Enforcer by Andrew Sugar (1973)

This is not the paperback rendering of the Dirty Harry movie (this is). This is the first in the Objectivist-themed 70s paperback pulp series The Enforcer (I read the third book in the series, Kill City, in July).

It's more of what that one was about:

I mean, imagine Atlas Shrugged if, instead of a cipher for Ayn Rand's fantasies of the perfect man, John Galt was an author who died somehow and was now living in a series of cloned bodies that deteriorate in 90 days while he works for the John Anryn Institute using his wits, his special power over his own life force (ki), and judo to take on all the Tooheys of the world (sorry, wrong book). But it's pulp fiction with a definite Objectivist theme.

In between bursts of violent action, we have Penthouse letters sex scenes, the most graphic I've seen depicted in any paperbacks I assume were sold at drug stores. I mean, in some pulp, you get the "they're going to have sex" paragraph, "they're having sex" paragraph, and then the "it was good" paragraph. In this book, you get the he did that and she did this to his that and it was good thing. It starts graphic to the N-degree and then goes into the metaphorical several paragraphs later. Conforming with Ayn Rand's theory of sex, I reckon.

Also, we get the speechifying, but in small doses, where the protagonist and his Institute compatriots go on about the power mongers who would rule over men. Nothing comparable to Galt's Speech, though, so the narrative is not impaired too badly.

What fun!

Author Alexander Jason is dying of inoperable stomach cancer at 38, but the John Anryn Institute has a solution and a means for him to chear death (the aforementioned cloning). On his first of his indentured service Enforcer missions, he's sent to a Caribbean island to blow up some oil wells, but the training wheels come off in a big hurry as he is inserted on the wrong beach and is captured right away. He awakens from weeks of torture to endure weeks more of torture before a second Institute mission arrives with a change in plans; instead of the oil wells, their primary focus is a secret lab in the jungle. And Jason has to deal not only with the new mission, but also a traitor in the midst and the breakdown of his clone body.

Probably the most possible fun I can have with this sort of pulp book, but your mileage may vary if you're not into Objectivism.

Books mentioned in this review:

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:25 PM