Red
Menace:
Red
and Buried!
By
James Mullaney
I recently read a book called Red Menace: Red and Buried
by James Mullaney. It was an old school adventure/spy novel set in the 70’s.
The book was excellent and thoroughly enjoyable. It had the exact proper mix of
humor and action as well as exotic locales, along with alternate universe endings
for two well-known mass murderers. All in all it was a damned good story well
worth reading and lots of fun.
If the plotting and story itself seemed familiar somehow,
that’s because Mr. Mullaney is no new comer to the adventure genre. He wrote
many Destroyer novels over the past decade along with Warren Murphy, that series
creator. James Mullaney’s writing is fast paced with just the right amount of
snarkiness, and his characters are very real, as well as being larger than
life. There are secrets between the main characters of Podge (The Red Menace) Becket
and Dr. Wainright that have not been revealed in the first novel of this series,
which is fine. Mysteries concerning the main characters should be played out over
several volumes like this.
But the first adventure was self-contained and it was a
blast. Commies in Russia, Cuba and Uganda were touched upon in this excellently
patriotic cold war novel.
I can’t recommend this enough. It was everything I want
out of a novel like this. It was the right length and didn’t drag because of
it. the story was told economically with no bloated plots. I really liked this book.
If you’re a fan of the Destroyer or The Executioner or any other series of
novels in that genre then you are going to be a fan of the Red Menace. I’m
going to start on the second novel right away!
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