Butler #6: Killer Satellites

 

Butler #6: Killer Satellites, by Philip Kirk

No month stated, 1980  Leisure Books

This was the last volume of Butler written by series creator Len Levinson, and it’s clear that Len intended Killer Satellites to be the final volume of the series, as it wraps up the storyline of hero Butler, essentially taking him full-circle from where he started in the first volume. There is also a focus on telling us more about Butler this time – we even learn his first name! – as well as giving him a Happily Ever After. Which of course makes it all the more frustrating that Leisure Books continued the series in 1982 – without Len’s involvement or awareness – farming it out to some unknown writer(s) for an additional six volumes. 

But honestly, I have no intention of seeking out or reading those later Butler books; this was Len Levinson’s series, and his volumes are the only ones that exist in my world. So basically there’s a “Len six” and a “Ghostwriters six” for Butler, and curiously it’s the latter six volumes that are the most overpriced on the used books marketplace, indicating that they had scarce print runs. It’s funny that they even exist, as Killer Satellites is clearly a send-off for Butler, courtesy his creator. 

This one picks up a few months after the previous volume, and Butler is still with the CIA. In fact there is no mention whatsoever of the Bancroft Instititute, and as mentioned above it’s the first volume of the series that is most often referred to in the narrative – particularly, that Butler was fired from the CIA by series regular FJ Shankham in that volume, “two years ago.” (Though in the typically-poor editing of a Leisure publication, on the very next page we’re told this happened “a year ago.”) But now with this sixth volume, Butler is so ingrained in the CIA that he’s spent six months studying how to speak Russian (and curious spoiler alert, but he never even gets a chance to speak Russian in the course of the novel!). The Bancroft Institute setup is dropped, as is recurring enemy organization HYDRA. 

The back-cover copy as usual tries to heighten the “thriller” elements of the story, but more than any previous volume Killer Satellites is less concerned with action than it is with Butler’s soap-opera life. When we meet him he’s boarding a small plane for a vacation in nearby Cape Cod. As I’ve mentioned frequently in past reviews, Len Levinson’s protagonists are unique in the men’s adventure field in that they try their damnest to pick up women; an inversion of the usual pulp template of the lady throwing herself at the protagonist. Butler hits hard on an attractive young woman on the plane (she looks, we’re informed, like Faye Dunaway), as usual saying stuff that would get a guy at least slapped in the real world. For instance: “You’re rather attractive, and I’m rather horny.” 

And, as usual for Butler, he’s rebuffed; the girl, Mary Ellen, has no interest in him, and just wishes to read her novel. In a curious miss on Len’s part that drove me crazy, we never learn what novel the girl is reading, despite Butler incessantly asking her what the title is! I was hoping Len would do a little in-joke and have Mary Ellen reading one of his own books. Anyway, it’s not that they have much time to really talk, as the front of the plane explodes and it crashes into the ocean – moments after we’re informed Butler is afraid to fly. But Butler’s able to keep his wits and swims to safety, rescuing the girl as well. The plane was intentionally crashed – though how is curiously never stated – and Butler soon learns that a host of his CIA colleauges have also been killed. Oh, and Mary Ellen vows that she will be Butler’s “slave” for having saved her life. 

Soon Butler is made the director of the CIA by whiskey-sipping President Smith; there’s a super-goofy part where Smith, in the bunker beneath the White House, bluffs on the phone with Premiere Brezhnev in the USSR about a satellite being shot down. This part again confirms that Butler is essentially a comedy series,with the assembled joint chiefs of staff even taking off their hats and yelling “hooray!” when the Soviet satellite is shot down. All this, by the way, is in retaliation for a US satellite that was destroyed, and I love the way Len has these heads of state calling each other directly and bluffing one another, making idle threats, etc. There’s also a goofy recurring joke about the Albanians. 

I really get the impression Len was winging his way through this one; the plot changes willy-nilly, with Butler thrust from one crazy situation to another. So he’s made director of the CIA because everyone else was killed, and his first act in this capacity is to call back onto duty the love of his life, Wilma B. Willoughby, who quit after the caper in the previous volume and now teaches at UCLA. In the meantime we are almost casually informed that Butler’s first name is Andrew – his full name is Andrew P. Butler – by a radio announcement Butler listens to while shaving in the shower, announcing that he’s been made the new director of the CIA. Butler’s first name has always been a mystery and no mention is made here that Butler hates it, something that was often remarked upon in previous installments. But the very fact that we’re told Butler’s first name this time could be another indication that Len intended Killer Satellites to be the series finale. 

Meanwhile, Mary Ellen has come to Butler’s home in Georgetown to be his slave, leading to the typical XXX-rated sex scene of the series. I found myself laughing out loud, though, because even in the sex scenes Len goes for laughs – in particular Mary Ellen bluntly asking Butler, “Do you want me to kiss your dicky?” To which a shocked Butler responds, “I beg your pardon?” Len has a lot of fun with this sequence, as it’s a reversal of the earlier scene betwee the two, when Butler was hitting on Mary Ellen on the plane; here it’s Mary Ellen who must convince Butler to have sex with her. Finally he does, in full-bore detail – only for Wilma to come in and catch them together and throw a hissy fit, calling Butler a “pig” and leaving. 

Again we get indication that this is the final volume when Mary Ellen explains to Butler that Wilma is only upset because she clearly loves Butler. Otherwise why would Wilma be so angry to find Butler in bed with another woman? Butler realizes this must be true, but meanwhile Wilma is kidnapped on her way to her hotel. When Butler finally figures out she’s been captured the following day, he decides to make none other than FJ Shankham the deputy director of the CIA, to handle the administrative side of the job while Butler goes out in the field to find Wilma. Here’s where we have the reverse setup of Butler #1, with Butler reflecting on the irony of his being in charge of the man who fired him “two years” (or was it one year?) ago. 

But man, it seems evident that Len was winging his way through Killer Satellites. Subplots are brought up and cast aside within a few pages. Like for example Mary Ellen. Despite pledging herself as Butler’s “slave,” she’s quickly removed from the narrative, Butler insisting that she go home so he can figure out who has been killing his fellow CIA agents. Then next thing you know, Butler is in his red Corvette and driving cross-country; his goal, apparently, is to act as bait for the people who kidnapped Wilma, but still…I mean he literally just drives across the country. We even get more of Butler’s random attempted pickups when he hits on an attractive female bartender who (per the template) turns Butler down, given that she’s married. But if you haven’t noticed, this is how the plot constantly changes in Killer Satellites; just a few chapters ago he was conferring with the President on how he could stop the “killer satellite” business, and now he’s on a cross-country road trip. 

Even what appears to be the big villain reveal is brushed aside after a few pages; Butler does indeed get captured by the same people who took Wilma captive, and they turn out to be…right-wing Canadian extremists. From their hidden location deep in the wilds of Canada they have a missile silo and have been taking down US and USSR satellites in the hopes of causing a war between the two superpowers…but man, like just a few pages after all of this is revealed, US planes come out of nowhere and bomb the place to the ground and Butler and Wilma escape into the snowy forest. The entire “Canadian radicals” development only takes up a handful of pages, and again the focus is placed more on Butler’s love life. 

But still, it’s very funny. Butler and Wilma hide in a cave and Wilma makes it clear that she has no intention of sleeping with Butler, even though we know from the scenes in her perspective that Butler’s the best lay she ever had, and she still dreams of the previous times they made it, etc. But as usual Wilma plays it tough, not wanting to look a “fool” for Butler, and she makes him sleep on the other side of the cave. Butler, sure that Wilma will shoot him with her machine gun if he tries to go over to her, decides to jerk off…no mention is made, by the way, of the “vow” Butler made to himself to never masturbate, as stated back in the fourth volume. Meanwhile Wilma, who is impatiently waiting for Butler to come over to her, looks over and sees “a piston” pumping beneath Butler’s sleeping bag, and angrily realizes he’s jerking off. So she has to take matters into her own hands, so to speak, leading to a sex scene between the two that takes up several pages of text. Even here it’s a payoff on those earlier sex scenes between the two, with Wilma finally giving herself in full to Butler and not pretending like it all was a “mistake” or etc. 

More finalities – on the morning after their idyllic tryst in the cave, Wilma informs Butler that she is saying goodbye to him forever, because she’s too crazy about him, and knows she’ll do nothing but have sex with him all day. (This after Butler asks her to marry him!) We also get the interesting backstory that Wilma was a hippie in the late ‘60s and dropped out of school to screw her boyfriend all the time, and she’s afraid she’ll do the same with Butler, because she likes him even more. So again, despite the “killer satellite” setup and Butler being in charge of the CIA and whatnot, it’s more about Butler moping around and wondering if he’ll ever find true love – not that this stops him from scoring again. In another humorous XXX passage, Butler goes up to Canada to look into the leader of the Canadian radicals, and ends up banging the secretary at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police HQ. 

Here we have another of Butler’s don’t-try-this-at-home pickup lines: “You’re the kind of woman a man would love to go down on.” This is stated mere moments after the woman happens to sit by Butler in the park, and soon enough Butler’s gotten it out of her that no one’s ever gone down on her and etc. So they go back to his hotel where they go down on each other, then have sex, all of it in the usual explicit detail of the series, but again a lot of it’s funny because of the dialog Len gives the characters throughout. But also, none of it has any real bearing on the plot, and is another indication of the ever-changing nature of the storyline; just twenty or so pages ago Butler was the captive of some right-wing Canadians in the woods, and now here he is dining at the Y with a slim secretary who looks “like the actress Lee Remick.” 

It all moves so quickly that Len has to go for a finale that is more out of a mystery than an action thriller, with Butler exposing who secretly funds the Canadian satellite-killing radicals. SPOILER ALERT, so skip this and the next two paragraphs if you don’t want to know, but given that Killer Satellites appears to be so scarce I thought I’d be comprehensive in my review for the people who can’t find a copy. Anyway, it turns out that FJ Shankham has been behind the plot, financing the Canadian radicals – and here we have a reprisal of the first volume, with Shankham again the manipulative bastard who holds Butler’s fate in his hands. But in another strong indication that this was intended as the final volume of the series, Butler literally blows Shankham’s brains out, blasting him point-blank in the forehead with his pistol. 

Even in the final pages subplots are brought up and cast aside within the span of a few paragraphs. Butler meets with President Smith again, and none other than Brezhnev calls in and offers Butler an all-expenses paid trip to Moscow as thanks for preventing WWIII, insisting that Butler come to Russia within a few weeks, and Butler accepts. Meanwhile President Smith floats the idea of making Butler the ambassador to Russia (and curiously, at no point in this entire exchange is it mentioned that Butler now speaks fluent Russian)…but a page or two later Butler’s already decided he’ll turn down the offer. 

The biggest indication that Killer Satellites was intended to be Butler’s send-off comes next: Butler goes back to his pad in Georgetown…to find Wilma waiting there for him. Wilma tells Butler she loves him and would “rather go crazy with him than without him,” and the book – and series – ends with the two having sex. In fact the last line of the novel is Wilma’s “OOOH!” as Butler gives her the goods – and speaking of which, we’ve learned earlier in the book, courtesy a ruler Mary Ellen puts alongside Butler’s erection, that Butler measures eight-and-a-half inches; which is “only two-and-a-half inches more than the average,” Butler argues! 

This of course is a fitting finale for Butler, given the strong focus on XXX-rated sex since the beginning, not to mention that Butler’s been hooked on Wilma since the beginning. (And apparently vice-versa.) For decades Len Levinson thought this was it for Butler, until I happened to mention to him when we talked on the phone in 2012 that the series had continued on for six more volumes. I still recall how flabbergasted Len was; “That was my series!” he kept saying. A commenter named TrueAim left a note on a previous Butler review that at least some of those non-Len volumes tried to retain the feel of the original six books…so if anyone else out there has read them, please let us know. I’m curious if Wilma even factors into the books. 

But again, I’d say those latter six installments are alternate-reality Butler. The series clearly comes to a close with Killer Satellites, and I’d say overall I really enjoyed these books. Again, the cover illustrations and back-cover copy are all misleading; Butler is more of a humorous affair than an action thriller. As usual with a Len Levinson book, it is the personality of the author that most stands out, and no doubt given that Butler was his own creation, Len’s personality is very evident as the series progresses. Indeed, parts of Killer Satellite, in which Butler reflects on his life or the sad state of his romantic affairs, could almost come straight out of Len’s decades-later autobiography, In The Pulp Fiction Trenches. I also appreciated the glimpse into Butler’s personal interests; this time he has a sudden interest in jazz music, with mentions of The Jazz Crusaders and Ramsey Lewis…I got a chuckle out of this, given that Len had to patiently wait while I shopped for Jazz LPs when I met him in Chicago in 2016. 

If I recall, only the first few volumes of Butler were reprinted as eBooks a few years back. Hopefully the time will come when all six volumes will be available again as paperbacks. Personally I’ll miss Butler and his madcap adventures, but I’m happy that Len gave him a proper send-off.

7/25/24 Update: I received the below email from Len himself, and he asked me to post it here for him!

It is very interesting to read a review of a novel I wrote circa 1979 and barely remember.  So I read the first chapter again to re-familiarize myself, and thought this first chapter simply terrific.

What a great writer I was!  I should have won a Nobel Prize and the National Book Award.  I should be rich and famous and living on the French Riviera with a movie star or supermodel, instead of the small cluttered apartment where I now reside alone in a tiny town way out here on the Great American Prairie.

Many of my books were written very quickly under two-month deadlines.  That’s why they read as if I was “winging it”.  Actually I was winging it, which probably explains why subplots don’t go anywhere and why important characters suddenly disappear.  I also had a tendency to write graphic sex scenes, which probably caused many readers to not take me seriously.

My Butler books were written toward the beginning of my literary career.  I think I got better as I became more mature and gained more experience as a novelist.  Thank you for this very insightful review.  You always understand my books better than I do.

An Interview With Len Levinson

A big thanks to Gayne C. Young for sharing this interview he recently did with Len Levinson. The interview originally ran in two parts, in the July 27th and August 3rd issues of the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post, a newspaper in Fredericksburg, Texas: 

Len Levinson is the author of 86 novels, most of which were considered “Pulp” and aimed at men starting in the 1970’s. I got the chance to visit with Mr. Levinson about his work, what it means to be a man, and his new autobiography, In The Pulp Fiction Trenches.  

I just finished your autobiography and really enjoyed it. It was a great read, very entertaining, informative and brutally honest. What prompted you to write it and why now? 

In the Pulp Fiction Trenches began as a series of articles I wrote at the request of Joe Kenney for his Glorious Trash blog. He asked me to comment on certain novels of mine that he was reviewing. After Joe published the articles, I decided to post them on Facebook. Several Facebook friends praised the articles and suggested I collect them into a book. A few publishers on my Facebook friend list expressed interest in such a book. How could I ignore interest from publishers? So, I gathered the articles into a book, added new articles about some of my other novels, and included material about the complicated life of the strange character who wrote 86 published novels. Why write such a book now? Because the chain of events led to now. It was my karma, man. 

Some of the honesty I’m referring to in your book is your telling of the very lows of being a professional writer, of troubles in your love life, and admitting yourself to a mental institution for suicidal thoughts. Why’d you decide to include stories such as these? 

While compiling articles for the book, I thought information about my background would deepen and broaden the narrative. I assumed readers would be curious about the person who wrote the novels, and how his adventures, misadventures, love life, triumphs, defeats and crises affected his novels. 

You researched a great number of your books by going to the library and reading book after book, article after article. Today, authors just go online. What are the upsides and downsides to the way you used to research versus the way it’s done today. 

I have not thoroughly advanced into the modern age, and never read an ebook or Kindle. I doubt that I ever will. I was living in Manhattan when writing nearly all my novels. I enjoyed going to libraries and reading old books that were long out of print, sometimes out of print over 100 years. My favorite research location was the Main Reading Room, also known as room 315 on the 3rd floor of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. My second favorite was the New-York Historical Society on Central Park West at 76th Street, where I even became a member. I also schemed my way into libraries at Columbia University and New York University. I enjoy research because I have loved reading since childhood, and also love the pursuit of knowledge. Intellectual stimulation is a legal high for me. 

Thanks to streaming services and the internet, more writers are employed now than ever before yet it seems hardly anyone reads. What are your thoughts on this and what does it say about our society? 

I don’t think it’s true that “hardly anyone reads”. There always will be people who enjoy reading good fiction, no matter what twists and turns the world takes. Many people nowadays read ebooks, which I’m told sell better than paper books. 

Many people also read journalism and other writing on the internet. The internet is the raw bleeding psyche of humanity. Everything imaginable is on the internet, from the most vicious vituperation to the most noble and beautiful sentiments. There’s something for everyone on the internet, which is good and bad because people with bad intentions with have their hatred reinforced by the internet, and occasionally they become mall and school shooters. Law enforcement should monitor the internet and detain people who threaten violence. I can’t understand why this isn’t being done already. 

Shark Fighter is my favorite book of yours. The main character, Sam Taggart, is about as Un-PC as they get. He drinks, smokes, is violent, is a womanizer, and has a hell’uva lot of fun. Take him out of 1975 and drop him into 2022. What do you think Taggart would think of today’s society and of our ideas of what being a man means? 

Shark Fighter also is one of my favorites of all my novels. You understand of course that Taggart is partially me. But also partially not me. So what would Taggart think of today’s society? And what being a man means? 

My understanding of Taggart is that he wouldn’t even contemplate these issues. He’s so disillusioned with humanity that he’s escaped to a small Caribbean Island where he focuses on scuba diving, women, booze, drugs, and enjoying himself to the extent that he can, while coping with corrupt government and police, and local criminals. 

He understands that he has no political power, and no one cares about what he thinks. He knows what is a man and a woman, and doesn’t give the matter much thought analytically. Taggart is a live and let live kind of guy, just like me. The expression “society” has no real meaning for Taggart. He’s mainly interested in making the most of his little world, and to hell with society. 

Let’s pretend Hollywood comes calling and wants to adapt one of your books. Which book would you choose to adapt and why? 

I think that Cobra Woman is my best novel. It would make a fabulous movie starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, or Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler. The story is about a volatile insane multicultural love affair and marriage between a male gringo advertising copywriter, and immigrant Cuban former showgirl, based loosely on my dizzy first marriage, sort of like Lucy and Desi in reverse, but much more sophisticated and geared toward modern intelligent adults. The plot is set in New York City and Miami. I think Cobra Woman would make a hilarious blockbuster movie. 

I also think my The Last Buffoon would make a great movie. It is about the misadventures of a demented pulp fiction writer, also based loosely on me, and would be a great vehicle for an actor like Ben Affleck, Denzel Washington, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, etc. 

I also think Shark Fighter would be a phenomenal movie. Actually, to tell you the truth, I think ALL my books would make fabulous movies, but Hollywood has shown no great interest YET!!! 

What’s the nicest fan comment you ever received? 

Some people say they like my books. Others say they love my books. But one evening several years ago I received a phone call from a young lady who somehow had tracked down my land line number via methods not clear to me. 

She told me that she grew up in a house in a remote rural area in one of the Rocky Mountain states, and occasionally travelled with her family to the nearest big city, where often she stopped at bookstores. At the age of sixteen, in one of these bookstores, out of curiosity, she bought a lurid crime novel called Without Mercy by Leonard Jordan, who in real life is none other than me. 

She read this book and discovered a world that she never knew existed, which inspired an intense desire to move to New York City someday. And when she was old enough, she actually did relocate to New York City, lived the Manhattan life, walked the Manhattan walk, talked the Manhattan talk, had a few disastrous love affairs, got married and divorced, and finally moved back to her home state, an older and much wiser young lady. 

She said that I had changed her life forever, and referred to me as her “writer hero”. That was the nicest fan comment I ever received. I volunteered to drive out to the Rocky Mountains so that she could meet her writer hero in person, but she didn’t think that was a good idea, because she had become a very smart young lady and knew trouble when she heard it in the earpiece of her telephone. 

It all goes to prove that a novel can change a person’s life. It even happened to me. I read I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane when I was 16, and like the young lady who phoned me, it inspired in me a desire to live in New York City someday. So finally, I arrived there at age 26, worked in advertising and then entertainment publicity, became a novelist, married twice, had many highs and lows, left when I was 68, and now I live in a small Midwestern town population 3000, way out here on the Great American Prairie. 

Literature is not just words on a page. It can be very powerful, like an earthquake in the lives of readers.

The worst? 

Some think my books are trite, shallow, vulgar, juvenile and excessively violent. Recently I read a line by the once-famous critic Edmund Wilson: “No two people ever read the same book.” In other words, different people have different reactions to novels. Most people say they like or love my books, which makes me feel wonderful. 

As I stated earlier, you’re very open about all the ups and downs of being a professional writer. Given the chance, would you have changed anything about your choice in careers? 

I don’t know what I could have changed. I’ve had a compulsion to be a writer of fiction since the 5th grade. That compulsion never went away. I wish I’d had the compulsion to become an engineer, chemist or get an MBA, because I’d be better off financially today, but I could only play the cards dealt me. 

Sometimes I wish I’d joined the Air Force, become a pilot, retired after 20 years, and become an airline pilot. I think that would have suited my temperament perfectly. 

But I've always had that infernal compulsion to write stories, and could not deny or ignore it. Perhaps it is a neurotic compulsion. Or maybe I’m mentally disturbed. Or possibly I simply was born with the soul of a novelist. 

In the immortal words of the great Maria Callas: “Destiny is destiny, and there’s no way out.” 

About Gayne C. Young: If you mixed Ernest Hemingway, Robert Ruark, Hunter S. Thompson, and four shots of tequila in a blender, a "Gayne Young" is what you'd call the drink! 

Gayne C. Young is the author of the Red Frontier Series, Murder Hornets, the Primal Force series, The Troop, Sumatra, Bug Hunt, Teddy Roosevelt: Sasquatch Hunter, Vikings: The Bigfoot Saga, Editor-at-Large for Field Ethos Journal, former Editor-in-Chief of North American Hunter and North American Fisherman - both part of CBS Sports -and a columnist for and feature contributor to Outdoor Life and Sporting Classics magazines. His work has appeared in magazines such as Petersen’s Hunting, Texas Sporting Journal, Sports Afield, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Under Wild Skies, Hunter’s Horn, Spearfishing, and many others. 

In January 2011, Gayne C. Young became the first American outdoor writer to interview Russian Prime Minister, and former Russian President, Vladimir Putin. 

In The Pulp Fiction Trenches

In The Pulp Fiction Trenches, by Len Levinson

June, 2022  Rough Edges Press

I’m sure I’m going to get even more long-winded than normal in this review, so I’ll start off with the big finale: In The Pulp Fiction Trenches is one of the best books I have ever read. This memoir, detailing “The Tumultuous Literary Career” of Len Levinson, is a heatbreaking work of staggering genius. You can forget about Dave Eggers; this is the real deal. It is the book Len Levinson has been working toward since he ventured into his writing career in the early 1970s. It is at turns hilarious, poignant, insightful, and at times even touching, without ever once getting maudlin. If you have even a passing interest in men’s adventure novels, or war novels, or pulp fiction in general – or even life in general – then you owe it to yourself to head over to Amazon and get yourself a copy. 

But In the Pulp Fiction Trenches isn’t just a memoir about Len’s writing career, though it does spend much of its time on that. It’s also about the sometimes-insurmountable troubles Len has encountered over the years…troubles he managed to surmount regardless. And even though the overwhelming theme of the book is the series of crushing “low sales” and cancellations of his vaious writing ventures, there is still a note of dogged optimism throughout the narrative. This I think is one of the main things that appeals to me about Len’s writing; he is clearly an optimist, and despite being “crazy” by his own admission, he is clearly a nice guy. This is also evident in how, despite writing action novels for much of his career, he’s never delivered a purely loathsome villain; even his bad guys have their reasons, and never come off like cliches or stereotypes. 

Len and I have been planning to do an audio interview where we talk about his books, and I’d put it up here as the first (and perhaps only!) Glorious Trash Podcast, but I’ve yet to figure out how the hell to record a phone call. If anyone out there knows a good (and free!) app for doing that, or for doing a podcast, please let me know. But in the meantime I’m just going to list here what I was going to open that podcast with. I’ve read many of Len’s novels over the years and I think I’ve narrowed down what exactly it is that appeals to me about his work. First and foremost, it’s his unique style. No one can write a Len Levinson novel like Len Levinson. This unique style permeates the narrative; even for stuff like his Sharpshooter novels, it’s clear that we don’t have an anonymous author just turning in a mob-busting action novel. There’s always more going on, with a focus on characterization, witty dialog, and occasional dollops of philosophy. Whereas a lot of those series writers of the ‘70s turned in dry, professional books without a wit of personality, Len’s books are all about the personality. 

The other thing, which I’ve noted before, is that Len is literally the only action-adventure writer I know of who has his male protagonists hit on women. This is one that took a few years for me to realize. Whereas the genre staple is for some hotstuff babe to throw herself into the arms of the studly hero, Len Levinson’s protagonists have to work for it. Take for example his Butler series, which is the Len Levinson take on James Bond; Butler spends the majority of his novels trying to put the moves on various women. And often failing. It’s such an inversion of the genre that, like I said, it took a while for me to even realize how different it was…not to mention how much more realistic it is. Not that Len’s action books were bogged down by realism! 

Another thing I love about Len’s work is tied into the optimism I mentioned above; he’s a true believer in various things, like the ideal of love, or that a macrobiotic diet might lead to a breakthrough of zen understanding, but he always undercuts the sap with a joke or a dose of gutbucket reality. The best way to describe this would be a direct quote from Trenches. Early in the book Len describes the few years he spent in the wilds of Canada, in the mid-1970s, living off the land in a hardscrabble but rewarding existence, and he ends the chapter with his comments on how he’d “love to live that way again:” We cannot recapture the past except in our minds, although I’d certainly try if I had the bucks to bring it off. I laughed out loud when I read that. That’s Len’s style in a nutshell: he sets you up with a profundity and ends it with a punchline. And there are gems like that throughout In The Pulp Fiction Trenches. 

The book is mostly told sequentially, with Len starting off with how he decided to quit his job as a PR agent and become a writer. One thing he doesn’t note in the book is that the 1970s would have been the perfect time to attempt this; there were a glut of paperback houses and publishing outfits at the time, so quitting your job to become a writer wouldn’t have been as risky a proposition then as it would be now. This is not to minimize Len’s gamble, of course. I’m just noting this because the 1970s was a much different era so far as the publishing world went. From there Len details his earliest novels, from a porn paperback to those three Sharpshooter novels, and his standalone books like the incredible Shark Fighter. These chapters started life as the essays Len wrote for my blog years ago, though he has revised and expanded some of them. In some cases he has also included excerpts from my reviews, which flattered me. Except in the case of my comments on Cabby; I was embarrased to see how critical I was of that book. I’m sure if I were to read it again I’d be more positive about it. 

On a pedantic note, one book Len does not cover in Trenches is Streets Of Blood, his installment of the short-lived Bronson series. However, Len wrote his thoughts on that book for Jack Badelaire’s Post Modern Pulps blog back in 2012, so you can read them there. Len covers each book with a chapter, some just a few pages long. These are great windows into a forgotten era, where Len would sit beside the desk of his editor Peter McCurtin and get his latest writing assignment, as if Len were the Bond to McCurtin’s M. Occasionally Len sprinkles in some details of his own life, but really In The Pulp Fiction Trenches isn’t a straight-up autobiography. Indeed, important events in Len’s life are only mentioned in passing, like his two (relatively short) marriages, and the fact that he has a daughter. He focuses more on the writing of the books themselves, and what thought processes formed their narratives. These are great bird’s-eye views into a creative mind at work. 

Other memorable chapters include Len’s tenure as a cab driver, very early in his writing career, and also his thoughts on his first-published book, a hardcore sleaze novel which I’ve been meaning to read and review on here. There’s also great material on Lin Carter, with whom Len worked in the early 1960s at Prentice Hall. There are also chapters here in the early part which do get outside of the writing process, and they’re just as fun, if not more so. One of the highlights of the book is the chapter on Len meeting none other than John Lennon. In his capacity as a PR man, before he quit the game to write, Len was called at a moment’s notice to do the publicity for one of John and Yoko’s bed-ins, and Len well captures the heady air of the times. In just a few sentences Len brings John Lennon to life, and the chapter is interesting because it shows a direction Len’s life could have gone in. Len relates how John took to him, based off Len’s familiarity with a macrobiotic restaurant in New York. Later on, Len is calling radio stations for publicity when John strolls in and starts strumming his guitar, a sort of solo performance for Len. But John somehow detects he’s making Len feel nervous, so he leaves. Len then tells us that, months later – after he’d quit the firm – his old boss told him that John was actually asking about Len. I’ve read a few books about John Lennon, and it seems to me that this is not standard behavior for him; I think it’s clear that he liked Len, and the two of them could have become friends. Who knows, maybe Len could have become Lennon’s assistant/best friend, instead of Frederic Seaman. As if Fate were really trying to get Len’s attention on this, he tells us that years later he passed by a store in the Village in which John and Yoko were shopping, but Len kept on walking despite his momentary consideration to step in and tell them hello. 

But then, Len had his own life to live, and Trenches proves how colorful his life has been. Despite the disappointment that ultimately settles into the narrative, the subtext is quite clear that Len has lived this colorful life precisely because he turned his back on the standard setup of job and family. After all, who will remember you for being a PR agent, or spending your entire life working for a company? Another great chapter is the one mentioned above, where Len lives in a remote cabin in the Canadian woods; I had forgotten that this was where he wrote The Bar Studs and Hype!. Here Len talks about his lifelong friend William Kotzwinkle, who himself provides a chapter for In The Pulp Fiction Trenches, sharing his thoughts on Len. When I first talked to Len, back in 2012, I mentioned to him that The Last Buffoon reminded me of Kotzwinkle’s The Fan Man. This really blew Len’s mind, as of course he was friends with Kotzwinkle, something I was not aware of at the time. 

As the narrative moves into the ‘80s, Len talks about his various WWII works, like The Sergeant and The Rat Bastards. It’s the former through which I first discovered Len, when I was a kid; the little library in th town where I grew up had a spinner rack of action paperbacks, and as a kid in the ‘80s I vividly recall bringing home a few volumes of The Sergeant to read. Len spent the majority of that decade writing WWII yarns, before moving into Westerns. Even though I have never been much interested in Westerns I’m sure I will read Len’s novels in this genre, and also his pieces on them here in Trenches are some of the best parts in the book. In particular his chapter on the origins of his Pecos Kid series is one of the book’s highlights. Here, late in the book, Len talks about his childhood, how his mother passed away when he was only four years old and how Len was unceremoniously dropped into foster care by his dad. It’s hard not to read this section and feel bad for little Lenny Levinson, but Len is not one to wallow in self-pity. Indeed, he sees his dad’s later abusive behaviour as a way to teach Len “coping skills.” 

Another thing I’ve noticed about Len’s overall work is that his protagonsts are generally strong-willed men who are determined to make a name for themselves. As if they were trying to prove themselves. It’s such a consistent theme that I’m certain it’s some sort of subconscious thing on Len’s part. I’d known about his childhood, of his mother dying when he was very yong and his father not being around, and over the years I’ve figured that is the core of the theme: perhaps those protagonists are driven to prove they are worth it, that they matter. In this regard the chapter on The Pecos Kid is almost a skeleton key to Len’s work in general, and it’s also a wonderful indication of how he uses his own experiences to fuel his fiction…I loved the part of how the young Pecos Kid’s plans for his future were inspired by the young Len Levinson’s plans in Miami. Again, this chapter is one of the highlights of In The Pulp Fiction Trenches; Len clearly cared about his Western books (in fact it’s clear he cared about all his books – he never just turned in a lazy first draft), to the extent that his enthusiasm for them is enough to make one want to read them. 

Despite his unflagging devotion to his Westerns, Len was still dumped and canceled, thus had to go back to driving taxis and working various odd jobs. I mean a guy who had spent two decades at this point as a published author, and he had to go back to driving cabs. As if that weren’t depressing enough, Len also details a chapter in which a good friend commited suicide, ultimately leading Len to have a crisis which had him contemplating suicide – and willingly checking himself into an insane asylum. What I found interesting is that this chapter comes right after a chapter in which Len relates how, after the cancellation of his latest Western series, he was desperate to come up with a new novel idea, something that would finally put him in the big leagues. He ended up writing a story about an intelligent parrot, one that was owned by a go-go dancer, but Len was unable to sell the manuscript. What I found interesting is that Len’s bout in the insane asylum was the “bestseller story idea” he was looking for. Wasn’t there like a big-selling “novel” a couple years ago where some guy wrote about his time in drug rehab, and it all turned out to be fiction? Len could’ve been the person to write that story, with the caveat that his story actually happened. 

But as In The Pulp Fiction Trenches draws to a close, Len’s focus turns away from writing, due to his lack of success. He works for a few years in a child-care facility in New York, and Len is so overwhelmed by how poorly-run the place is that he writes an expose which is published in The Village Voice. Len includes this piece in the book, also noting that he wrote an unpublished book about the experience. The most grueling chapter in the book soon follows, in which Len relates his bout with prostate cancer. Len is incredibly candid in this chapter, and manages to take what could be a sad story and makes it poignant, touching, and even funny. There is also a fascinating bit of life imitating art. I won’t get into all the details, but post-surgery Len finds himself unable to perform in certain capacities…and he relates all of this with that same bittersweet humor. But he is told by his doctors that there are various gizmos he could use to provide assistance in these capacities, and not only does Len find them “grotesque” but he also laughs at the idea of hauling these gizmos out from under the bed, to the puzzlement of the woman he happens to be in bed with. Well, I’d recently read Len’s Love Me To Death, which featured the recurring gag of Butler hiding his gun in his pants…and carrying the bundled-up pants into bed with him, to the puzzlement of the women he happened to be in bed with. 

Len’s medical problems aren’t over, though: soon after we have a chapter detailing his 2012 heart attack, and again the incident is treated more with humor than with self-pity. I recall when this happened, as it was shortly after I first contacted Len; at the time, he wrote an essay about the experience, which he has revised for this book. One thing he did not mention in that original 2012 essay, which he does state here, is that he happened to be high on marijuana at the time of his heart attack! Both the original essay and the chapter in this book feature Len’s doctor telling Len that, within a year of the heart attack, Len’s heart would be even stronger. I can personally attest to this. When I met with Len in 2016, we spent the majority of the day walking across Chicago. And we walked a lot. Even though I’m 40 years younger than Len, I was the one who wanted to stop to rest, whereas Len just wanted to keep walking. 

One thing that floored me about In The Pulp Fiction Trenches is how Len subtly changes his tone throughout the book. The early sections capture the wild-eyed (and possibly drug-fueled) optimism of his early writing career, and Len comes off like the real-life Alexander Frapkin, of The Last Buffoon. As an acquaintance tells Len: “You’re the craziest person I know. But you seem normal.” (Len is so flattered by this comment that he tells us about it a few times.) There are funny Frapkin-esque moments, like when Len momentarily loses the ability to speak when a publisher tells him he could become a millionaire. As the book progresses, though, the constant tide of rejections and cancelations take their toll, and a note of disillusionment permeates the chapters. Ultimately Len questions his choice to become a writer, that his “so-called literary career” was really just a joke, and that at the end of it he was just a loser. He is especially disappointed that his newly-published novels (ie Web Of Doom, Grip Of Death, and Cobra Woman) and his various reprints (ie the reprints through Destroyer Books and various eBooks) have not been selling very well. 

After I read Trenches I had a revelation on why Len has yet to achieve the literary fame he deserves: it’s not because he’s a poor writer, or a deluded fool, or any of the other things he occasionally calls himself in the book. It’s because his agents and his publishers did him a disservice. The simple reason is that his books, starting at least with the Butler series, should have been published under his own name. Or even under his standalone novel pseudonym, Leonard Jordan. That way Len could have established and maintained a core following for each of his ventures. But the way things played out…say someone read and loved The Last Buffoon in 1980, and then a few years later came across an installment of The Rat Bastards at a bookstore. Unless the reader actually purchased the book and read it – and noticed the similarity of the writing style – he never would have known that “John Mackie” was also “Leonard Jordan.” But the publishers were more concerned with anonymous house names so they could continue publishing the various series with different authors; Len’s career was clearly not a concern. Again though this is short-sighted. One of the many profundities Len notes in Trenches is his response to an agent in the ‘90s, when yet another of Len’s series is about to be canceled due to “little profits,” as the publishers now demand “big profits.” To which Len responds, “But little profits add up to big profits.” It’s such common sense that it comes off as genius, but obviously didn’t change the minds of the publishers. 

As for why Len’s reprints aren’t selling well, just speaking as a collector of vintage paperbacks, I think people are more willing to pay more for the original item, even if a modern reprint would be more affordable. But there are many cases where the original paperback is either impossible to find our just priced out of reach. So then why wouldn’t the reprints of such books sell well? I think it comes down to the presentation. I don’t mean to criticize those publishers who are bringing men’s adventure novels back into print; I’m just speaking from my own opinion. But all of them reprint the books either as eBooks or as trade paperbacks with Photoshopped covers. This I feel detracts from the experience. I think those reprints should be mass market paperbacks, and to the exact physical dimensions of a 1970s paperback. This is how Tocsin Press books are printed, by the way – to the point that your copy of The Psycho Killers will fit right beside your vintage copy of The Thrill Killers on the shelf! It’s like how vinyl records sells better than compact discs today, even though the vinyl is more expensive and is itself sourced from digital, same as the compact disc. Collectors are willing to pay more for a special medium, and I honestly believe that if Len’s Butler novels were reprinted in paperback, to the same dimensions of a ‘70s paperback, they’d sell a lot better than they would as eBooks. Well anyway it’s just my opinion, but maybe one of the reprint publishers out there might come across this and give it a shot – after all, most of them use Amazon’s KDP service, and KDP can publish mass market paperbacks to those dimensions. That’s how Tocsin does it! 

I would read In The Pulp Fiction Trenches at night, and there were some nights I was so keyed up after reading that I couldn’t sleep. I had a particularly sleepness night after reading the chapters on prostate cancer, Grip Of Death, and Cobra Woman. But whereas a sort of pragmatic acceptance overtakes Len’s narrative in these latter chapters, I instead found myself getting pissed off – that Len had been so ill-served by his agents and his publishers. I mean how in the hell could an agent worth his or her salt not have sold The Last Buffoon in the ‘70s? The book could have easily become a cult classic along the lines of The Fan Man. Hell, it could’ve been a bestseller, with the right marketing. But instead it was rejected and then ultimately released years later by Belmont Tower, probably in a scarce printing and certainly without any marketing or publicity. It boggles my mind. I mean the upmarket imprints were publishing total shit in the ‘70s, like The Mafia’s Virgin Daughter. But The Last Buffoon is rejected. 

But then, as you get older, you gradually learn that people in positions of authority rarely know what the hell they are talking about. A case in point: in the chapter on Grip Of Death, Len notes with clear bitterness that the novel started life due to his agent. In the ‘90s, when Len was looking for a new project after the latest cancellation, his agent suggested, “How about a novel about the Civil War?” I almost wanted to reach into the book and knock on the agent’s forehead: “Helllooo! Who the hell is reading books about the Civil War in the 1990s?!!” But then maybe this was around the time Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain was published, and the agent was looking to get on a bandwagon. But even if that were so – did she expect Len Levinson to write a book like Cold Mountain? I mean I’m not saying that Len couldn’t, I’m just saying that this errant comment comes off like an agent completely unfamiliar with the work of her client. The fact that she even refused to read Len’s manuscript – which she herself suggested he friggin’ write – only made me want to reach into the book again…and do more than knock on her forehead. 

So Len, no – you aren’t a terrible writer, you were just served poorly by those who could steer your career. I mean I can understand why Len’s early books were under house names, but by the time of Butler he should have at least been credited by one name, whether his own or Leonard Jordan, and one name only. This would have established a readership that would have followed him through the various series. I mean this is how sci-fi authors survive, isn’t it? I’m not talking about the bestsellers; I’m talking about the ones who turned in a book a year and made a career off that. And speaking of sci-fi, at one point in the book Len notes that he was riding high at the time, as he was confident that he could write in any genre. Unfortunately the one genre he never wrote in was science fiction. This is why I’ve always said that Venus On The Half-Shell is the closest thing to a “Len Levinson sci-fi novel” we ever got. 

I first got in touch with Len in early 2012; I’d just read The Last Buffoon for the second time, after discovering it in 2005 in a Half Price Bookstore in Dallas. The copy was signed “Leonardo Levinson,” and after a bit of research I discovered that this was the real name of the “Leonard Jordan” credited on the cover. I read the book then and really enjoyed it, but when I read it again in 2012 I loved it, given that I was once again into the men’s adventure novels I’d read as a kid. But at the time Len did not have an online presence, at least one I was aware of. I think I even asked James Reasoner about him – and I have gone all this time without mentioning James, who should be thanked for bringing In The Pulp Fiction Trenches into print for everyone to enjoy. James, who also had read Len’s books, didn’t know what happened to him, or whether he was still alive. Then I came across a comment “Len Levinson” had left on Amazon for a review of The Last Buffoon. At that time you could comment on reviews, something I think Amazon has now disabled. And also, Len commented on this specific review because it had been posted by a woman – we discussed this years later, and he was surprised because it’s not a book you’d expect a woman would read, let alone enjoy. But anyway, in his comment Len noted his location, and I did some real-deal Big Brother searching and tracked him down via an online phone catalog for that Illinois town. There was of course only one “Len Levinson” in that phone book, so I figured it had to be the same guy – and luckily, it turned out to be him. 

I bring all this up because shortly after we got in contact, Len had his heart attack, and while he was convalescing I suggested a book I’d recently read and enjoyed: Jean Dutourd’s The Horrors Of Love. This is a super-long novel (almost as long as this review!) that was published in France in the early ‘60s, and then translated and published in the US in the late ‘60s. It was a Book Of The Month Club selection and etc, but it must’ve gone over like a lead balloon because there was only the hardcover edition, and it’s completely unknown today. I got my copy for a dollar in an antique store in 2005 and couldn’t believe how good the book was. It’s about two guys walking around Paris, discussing the murder-suicide affair of a colleague, and the entire novel is rendered in dialog. In fact, I always thought that the day Len and I walked around Chicago, talking the entire time, was like our own version of The Horrors Of Love. Well anyway, back in early 2012 I suggested Len read the novel, and in an email to me dated June 26, 2012, Len wrote: “I finally finished reading The Horrors Of Love and really enjoyed it…Dutourd’s insights were remarkable. Compared to him, I feel like a featherweight writer and thinker.” 

With In The Pulp Fiction Trenches, Len proves the fallacy of his own words. A “featherweight writer and thinker” could not have written a book with this kind of impact. And it is filled with plenty of remarkable insights. It is a book to be read and enjoyed, and then dipped into again and again. Since “finishing” Trenches I’ve picked it up at least five more times to read a section again. That’s how good it is. So long story short, I recommend In The Pulp Fiction Trenches probably more than any other book I’ve ever reviewed on here. You all should know, I’m never pushy about telling you to buy books. I mean the blog isn’t even monetized. I write these reviews for fun, because I’m reviewing books I enjoy. But I’ll be pushy about this one – please head over to Amazon and purchase a copy of In The Pulp Fiction Trenches. Len has been ignored for too long in his career. The best way we can show him he matters is to buy this wonderful book.

Butler #5: Love Me To Death

Butler #5: Love Me To Death, by Philip Kirk

No month stated, 1980  Leisure Books

This fifth volume of Butler was a lot of fun and definitely my favorite one yet. Len Levinson specifically mentioned Love Me To Death when I met with him the other year, and we talked about it again just the other week when I gave him a call. So clearly this one was important to Len himself, which makes it odd that it turned out to be his penultimate volume of the series. 

As I mentioned in my review of Butler #1, Len only wrote the first six volumes of the series, the last being 1980’s Killer Satellites, after which Butler went on hiatus, returning in 1982 for six more volumes. Len was unaware that Butler continued without him until I informed him of the fact in 2010; he always saw Butler as his own series. It looks like who served as “Philip Kirk” for the post-Len volumes is still unknown, but honestly I have to wonder what the point of reading those volumes would be, as Butler is so ingrained with Len Levinson’s personality that I don’t see how the series could exist without him. I mean, this is a zany series, with a zany mindset, and again the action-centric cover art is quite misleading. It would be one thing if this was just any other action paperback series, but Butler is more Marx Brothers than The Executioner, and it would be disappointing if Belmont just turned it into just your average action series after Len’s departure. 

Speaking of which, I asked Len when I recently spoke to him why he left Butler after this volume. Len seemed to recall it might have had to do with new writing possibilities he’d gotten from another publisher – which would lead him to The Sergeant and ultimately The Rat Bastards. Butler then is the line of demarcation between Len’s ‘70s work for Belmont-Tower and Leisure – crime thrillers with a modern setting – and the WWII-themed material he would be focused on throughout the ‘80s for other publishers. It was an interesting conversation, because I was over halfway through Love Me To Death and thus closer to the world of Butler than the author himself – but then, Len wrote the book 43 years ago. Interestingly, the main thing he recalled about Love Me To Death was an otherwise incidental sequence featuring an otherwise incidental character: Pierre, an old French Foreign Legion solder Butler meets in Morocco. 

This one picks up immediately after the previous volume, with Butler when we meet him flying back into California from Hong Kong, but Len doesn’t much refer to the previous book other than vague mentions that Butler had a mission there. In other words, you don’t need to have read that one to read this one. And indeed, Love Me To Death almost sees a series reset for Butler; at the airport, Butler is approached by a former CIA colleague named Frank Sullivan, who tells Butler that the “right-wing maniacs” who have controlled the Agency are now being opposed by Sullivan’s own left-wing group. Sullivan, who knows Butler hated the right-wingers and the CIA in general, wants our hero to rejoin the Agency and help take on the right-wingers – we’re told even the President is in favor of this idea. 

So after talking over the idea with the mysterious Mr. Sheffield, who runs the Bancroft Institute for which Butler works, Butler decides to rejoin the CIA. And he’ll work in this capacity for the entirey of Love Me To Death. Indeed by novel’s end he’s still a CIA agent, and even requests a vacation from his new boss Frank Sullivan. So what I’m trying to say is that with this volume Len seems to drop the “Bancroft Institute” angle of the preceding four volumes, and now Butler’s back to being a CIA agent. Why Len decided to go this route is a mystery, and I look forward to seeing if Butler returns to Bancroft in this next volume (which is advertised in the back of the book, by the way, with the note that it will be published in March of 1980). 

That said, Len has fun with a discombobulated CIA that is so fractious the agents have to walk and talk in the countryside outside the headquarters in Virginia because their offices have been bugged by “the other side,” ie the right-wingers vs the left-wingers. Curiously FJ Shankam, that other old CIA colleague of Butler’s who has appeared – and plagued – Butler in the previous four volumes, is given short shrift in Love Me To Death. He appears in but a sentence, serving as Sullivan’s “assistant,” and Shankham doesn’t even exchange any dialog with Butler. In fact not much is made of Shankham at all, and other than his name being specifically mentioned you could assume he was just some random agent…not someone who has appeared in the previous volumes. Again, the impression is that this volume sees a sort of series reset, as if Len had grown bored with the overall setup of the series. If that is the case, then there’s little mystery why he jumped ship after the next volume for new writing pastures. 

I haven’t even gotten to the main plot of the novel, and it’s the best one yet in the series – essentially, pretty women are literally “fucking to death” various industrialists, politicians, and other VIPs. This phrase, “fucking to death,” is used repeatedly in the novel, and indeed this is the most sleazy and explicit volume yet. Which is of course to say it’s my favorite yet. The opening is an indication of this sleazy nature, as a beautiful blonde picks up a fat millionaire in New York, goes back to his place, and proceeds to ride him in explicit fashion. But the incredible thing here – and I still recall Len talking about this in the hotel foyer that day I met with him – is that the girl has a “special technique” which causes the fat millionaire to have a fatal heart attack. 

Butler is informed by Sullivan that a ring of beautiful women is possibly killing all of these men, and given that all the victims are American men of influence the CIA suspects some foreign power must be behind the plot. Sullivan wants Bulter to handle the situation because, in Sullivan’s opinion, Butler is an “utter sex degenerate” and thus would be perfect for the assignment. Butler’s idea is to bring in none other than Wilma B. Wiloughby, his archenemy/true love, last seen in the third volume. Auburn-haired Wilma is “a slender young woman with nice boobs” and “one of the most beautiful rear ends in history,” and when I spoke to Len on the phone the other week he described Wilma as his “dream girl.” Here we learn the interesting note that Wilma is sort of in love with Butler, and he gave her such an incredible orgasm in their sex scene in the second volume that she’s afraid to be around him because she knows she will become his sex slave. And Wilma has too much self-respect to debase herself for any man. Thus Wilma treats Butler like shit, hence their constant spatting. 

Despite the hostility she accepts Butler’s offer to join the CIA; she is just as much a left-winger as Butler is, though again be aware that what passes for “Leftism” in Butler would mostly be considered “Conservatism” today, something which Len also agreed with when I spoke to him recently. Wilma is sent off to New York to infiltrate the Women’s Lib movements. Again, this series is zany to the core, so Wilma promptly finds success when she hooks up with a women’s lib gang calling itself The Society To Utterly Destroy Men, and of course one of the members is familiar with the “Killer Fuck Squad” (as Butler refers to the mysterious group of women who are killing American VIPs). But as part of her undercover role, Wilma not only has to pretend to fervently hate men…but she also engages in some hot lesbian action with one of the women. Per the series template, this entails a few pages of extra-explicit material as the two women go down on each other…and after which Wilma decides that she just might be a lesbian! 

As stated in every one of my Butler reviews, while this series might have been conceived as “socialist” by Len, or even perceived as overly “Leftist” by readers of the day, it could not be seen that way today. Yet more indication is given when Wilma meets up again with Butler, Sullivan, and a fellow CIA agent named “Len Vinson” (our author again appearing in his own book – Vinson being 44 years old with a “bald head” and a black beard), and she declares herself to be a lesbian…and is promptly hassled and ridiculed by the men. Take that, identity politics! Another thing I enjoyed here is that Len Vinson claims that he’s always felt that Butler was “a stand-up guy;” this after Wilma and Sullivan have gone one about how Butler is a degenerate. In other words Butler’s creator himself appears in the novel to defend Butler! 

The book goes exactly where you were hoping it would when Butler tangles with one of the Killer Fuck Squad – the same gorgeous blonde who “fucked to death” the millionaire in the opening scene. This part is interesting because Mr. Sheffield returns to the narrative long enough to agree to pose as bait for the killers…but the real Sheffield goes into hiding while Butler disguises himself as the older man and goes to DC amid much media hoopla. In other words, if the killer women are looking for rich notables to off, then Mr. Sheffield should be prime bait for them. Of course the plan quickly succeeds – but first Butler is propositioned by a young “celebrity fucker,” who engages Butler in several pages of explicit shenanigans. Since Butler is unsure if she’s one of the squad, there follows some humor in how he’s hidden his gun in his pants…and keeps bringing the pants to bed with him, much to the confusion of the girl. 

There’s actually a lot of humor amid the sleaze, in particular how the women are shocked that the “old man” is actually so muscular and well-hung. This latter element really throws the blonde killer for a loop; she has her turn with Butler soon enough, and can’t believe how big this guy is compared to the other old men she’s killed in bed. Another recurrring element in Love Me To Death is that Butler’s “big dong” is enough to make these avowed “lesbians” question their entire sexual identity; again, a far cry from anything that could possibly pass as “Leftism” today. Here Butler gets a first-hand view (actually it’s not his hand, but still) of the “occult sexual techniques” these women use on men – basically, they work their inner muscles to access the pineal gland, via the nerves of the man’s penis, and force the men to “fuck faster” than their heart can keep up with. Hence, the old men are compelled to keep thrusting away, even if they want to stop due to chest pains, until it’s too late. However the technique is no match for young stud Butler: 

The action moves to Morocco, where Wilma has learned the woman behind all this is currently located: Kyra Deeb, an Iranian who runs a whorehouse and, given her hatred of men, trains a select group of beautiful women in the “ancient occult sexual techniques.” This part is like a sleazy sci-fi yarn as Kyra has Wilma screw a male dummy that’s hooked up to a scoreboard: 

Meanwhile Butler is engaged in a 23-page sequence that doesn’t have much at all to do with the rest of the novel, and seems to be there to help meet the excessive word count Belmont apparently demanded (the book, like the others in the series, comes in at 224 pages). Basically Butler grills an Arabic guy about the “barbarous” ways of the Middle East (again, impossible to see a Leftist attempting anything like this today) and finds himself challenged to a duel. Meanwhile Butler’s befriended an old Legionaire named Pierre, the character Len mentioned when I recently spoke to him. Despite having not much to do with the plot per se, this sequence is still pretty fun and has a nice recurring joke of how no one thinks Butler will survive the duel – the taxi driver even asks for the return fare ahead of time. 

Len does find a nice way to tie the unrelated plot into the main plot; a victorious Butler is pressured into going to the best whorehouse in town to celebrate, and of course it’s the one Kyra Deeb runs. An undercover Wilma is under suspicion due to all her questions, and to prove herself she’s forced to pose as a prostitute in Kyra’s whorehouse and screw the first man she sees. The reader can see exactly where this is going – and of course it’s none other than Butler himself. Their ensuing boff runs nearly as long as the one in the second volume, and is just as explicit:

You’ll note I haven’t mentioned much action; again, the cover art for Butler is very misleading. Len does deliver an action-packed finale, though, with Butler and Pierre leading the charge into Kyra’s headquarters and Wilma zapping people with her special CIA pen-laser. There isn’t much gore at all, and humorously the book is pretty tame in the violence department…humorous when compared to the explicit sexual material, I mean. Curiously no mention is made that Wilma has been trained in those occult sexual techniques – one would think Butler would be chomping at the bit to try them out. However by novel’s end Wilma has returned to her frosty exterior, and she and Butler are again enemies…with the vow from Frank Sullivan that the two of them will never be teamed up again. 

And that’s correct, both Butler and Wilma are still CIA agents by the end of Love Me To Death, with the implication that they will be reporting to Frank Sullivan – and not Mr. Sheffield of Bancroft – in the next volume, Killer Satellites. I’m curious why Len made this change to the series setup. But as mentioned he only wrote one more volume, so maybe he really was getting a little bored with Butler and just wanted to try something different. If so, that’s not apparent in the novel itself; Love Me To Death is a lot of fun, and Len is fully invested in the tale. And once again he channels his own personality through Butler, making for an always-entertaining read, with Len’s usual gift for entertaining dialog on full display throughout.

Random Record Reviews, Volume 5

’70s Jazz:

About twenty years ago I abruptly became a jazz geek, and obsessively started collecting jazz lps, to the point that I accumulated a few hundred of them. But it was specifically ‘70s jazz I was into, ie electric jazz. My two favorite subgenres were cosmic jazz (now known as “kozmigroov”) and jazz-funk, the latter the funky, occasionally Blaxploitation-esque jazz that I’d become aware of thanks to the Pulp Fusion CD releases. At the time I had cheap plastic fantastic automatic turntables, and I knew that I was missing out on the full sound of these records. But by the time I’d upgraded to a “real” turntable (a Pioneer PL-518) and gotten a much better cartridge (a Nagaoka MP-110), I’d lost my interest in jazz. 

Well, just as abruptly as way back then, I’ve become a jazz geek again. This time though, instead of hunting online or in shops for “new” records, I decided to randomly pull out records from my own collection and give them a spin on my new setup. The following are my thoughts on the ones I’ve played, with links to where you can hear some of them online if you are so inclined. I’ve also included the pedantic info of where and when I got them, and how much they cost me, if only to gauge how prices have changed over the years. Please to enjoy! 

1.Joe Henderson: Black Is The Color 

Milestone, 1972 

Reviewer DW at the Kozmigroov Connection site states that this is “the holy effin’ grail of this era,” and one can certainly see his point; Black Is The Color is one of the most out-there “jazz” albums ever, filled with more sonic trickery than even Herbie Hancock’s three “Mwandishi” albums. Per a note on the back cover, saxophonist Henderson relentlessly overdubbed each song with a variety of instruments and textures, resulting in a supreme head-trip of an album. I’ve always found it interesting that by the time the rock groups were moving away from psychedelic and into more rural pastures a la The Band, the jazz musicians and soul groups were starting to get far-out. And in most cases they went further out than the rockers ever did. I mean, just check out Miles Davis’s Agharta (1975), the high water mark of the entire kozmigroov era: a relentless onslaught of heavy psychedelic jazz-rock…and recorded live at that! 

Rather than the heavy metal onslaught of Agharta, Black Is The Color is more of a sonic din of swirling overdubbed noise, with Henderson’s distorted sax wailing in the murk. Sure, it can get a little strident and atonal at times, but other times it’s lost in the chaos of overdubbed “electrobleepage aplenty,” as DW so memorably put it.  Parts of Black Is The Color could be the soundtrack for a bad trip. Here is the entire LP uploaded to Youtube. 

My copy is the 1973 repress, with the solid red label. It’s a good pressing, nice and deep soundstage, and centered as well – ie no annoying “background echo” like you get with off-centered pressings. I ordered this one from DustyGroove.com in 2012, a “Very Good +” copy which per the sticker on the plastic sleeve cost me seventeen bucks. Money well spent! I’m not sure if I even played it on my old cheap-o turntable; I was probably afraid I’d damage it. But man it sure does sound great on my current turntable; I liked this album so much at one time that I even got the remastered CD. One of these days I should compare it to the vinyl. 

2.Bayete Umbra Zindiko: Seeking Other Beauty 

Prestige, 1973 

Now this is one heavy, wah-wah crazy album. This is one I seriously wanted on vinyl, it just took me a while to find a copy. I first discovered Seeking Other Beauty when I got into jazz in a major way, around 2005 or so…an MP3 rip of a scratchy copy I downloaded off some blog somewhere. To say hearing a mint-condition copy of the actual vinyl is a more rewarding experience would be an understatement – this album rivals Agharta as one of the heaviest pieces of cosmic psychedelic heavy metal jazz-funk. And there aren’t even any electric guitars on it! What sounds like fuzz-wah guitar is actually Bayete’s heavily treated Rhodes, but it might take a listen or two to even realize this. The album’s heavier, funkier, and more evil than early Funkadelic. 

This in fact might be the great lost jazz-rock album; I don’t mean jazz-rock in the “fusion” sense of later years, but a melding of the heavy progressive vibe of the early ‘70s with jazz sensibilities, plus the occasional vocal. Actually there really aren’t “vocals” per se, just the titles of some of the songs are shouted repeatedly until it takes on a hypnotic effect. And have I mentioned yet that Seeking Other Beauty has the most fuzzed-out monster bass anywhere ever? The fuzz-bass on this LP is insane, nowhere more notably than on the mindbending 10-minute epic “Don’t Need Nobody,” the definite highight of the album. Other tracks are nearly as heavy, and the album closes out with a long soul jazz number that backs off on the heavy wah and fuzz effects. Carlos Santana clearly dug the music of Bayete (aka Todd Cochran); his live album Lotus (1974 – another one I have on vinyl) features a cover of “Free Angela,” from Bayete’s previous LP (which was much more of a jazz affair than this one). 

There was only one pressing of Seeking Other Beauty, so it’s accordingly rare and overpriced; I spent $33 for my Near Mint copy at Dustygroove.com back in 2010, and I know I never even played it on my old setup for fear of damaging the vinyl (though studies indicate that those plastic turntables, despite the high tracking force and conical stylii, don’t really damage the grooves). I usually don’t spend nearly this much for vinyl, so Seeking Other Beauty was one of the few times I actually paid a bit more for a record…and it was certainly worth it. And thirty-three bucks is a bargain compared to how much copies go for now, it appears. 

3.The Cannonball Adderly Quintet: Pyramid 

Fantasy, 1974 

This is one of the last jazz LPs I bought, in June of 2016, before my interests finally moved on, but man did I want it, and had wanted it for a while – the first track on the LP, “Phases,” is such an awesome chunk of kozmigroov funk…if ever there was the theme song for a Blaxploitation sci-fi flick, this would be it. Produced by David Axelrod (more on whom anon), Pyramid has this sort of far-out vibe throughout, melding kozmigroov with jazz-funk. This is another I ordered from DustyGroove.com, a “Very Good +” copy of the original pressing that cost me fifteen bucks. Of the jazz records I’ve played on my new setup, this is the one where the difference in sound quality was most immediate; on the Pioneer with Nagaoka stylus there is a definite impact with deep bass that my old Audio Technica AT-LP60 couldn’t hope to match. 

I’ve mentioned Dusty Groove quite a bit here, and I started ordering from them in 2001 or thereabouts. They’re based out of Chicago, and I’d never thought of visiting their brick and mortar store, but then in June of 2016 my wife had to go to Chicago for work, so I went along and planned to visit the store one day. As it turned out, I walked to Dusty Groove with none other than Len Levinson, the day of course being the one where I got to meet him in person. On a personal note, that was one helluva far walk, folks. I told Len my plan to go there, and he was like, “Let’s walk there.” So we walked and talked…sort of like the two protagonists in Jean Dutourd’s 1963 novel The Horrors Of Love, which I’d recommended to Len some years before and which he ended up enjoying. But man we just kept walking. I often asked Len if he wanted to get a taxi or get on a bus, and he was like “nope, it’s a nice day to walk.” I looked at it on a map later and, from the hotel to the store and back again, we walked a little over six miles that day. And as it turned out, the Dusty Groove store was a lot smaller than I thought it would be…and had the exact same selection as their online store! In other words, no special “discount bin” section or anything… 

Well anyway, I’d ordered Pyramid along with some other records before the trip, but selected “in store pickup.” So this is one I got while I was there, among some others – I recall Len looking through the bins and marvelling over the prices of some of the records. He also told me he had a ton of jazz LPs at one point but had gotten rid of them, stuff that would no doubt be worth a pretty penny today. (He also stopped off at a cowboy clothing store on the walk and bought himself a nice cowboy hat!) Okay, at this point I’ve written about everything except the record in question. Axelrod was known for spacy production that included deep bass, plentiful drum breakbeats, and sci-fi synth soundscapes, and that’s abundant in Pyramid. But it never divulges into crazy, out-there, rhythmless muck, as for example Black Is The Color sometimes does. It’s for this reason why I think I’ve always been more into jazz-funk than kozmigroov; I like rhythm more than experimentation. 

Another cool thing about ‘70s jazz is that older vets like saxophonist Adderly weren’t afraid to let it all hang out and get wild and funky, and that too is apparent throughout Pyramid. But then, Cannonball did that throughout the ‘70s, for example on his 1972 double album Soul Zodiac, with its fuzzed-out guitars. But as with most ‘70s electric jazz Lps, there’s still the “traditional jazz” numbers here, closing out side 2…I swear these were put here to appease the “why must everything be electric?” crowd of the day. That said, the closing track is an incredibly moving piece of music. Otherwise Pyramid is one of the best jazz albums I have, even if it took me a while to acquire it…and also “Book-Ends,” the last song on side 1, opens and closes with a sort of pulsing bass motif that sounds for all the world like the opening section of the theme from Superman. 

4.David Axelrod: Seriously Deep 

Polydor, 1975 

Axelrod was a producer whose work is very popular with beatheads of today, given the deep bass and open drum breaks that proliferate on the albums he produced. He also released a few solo albums in the ‘70s, this being the most highly-sought of them. And it’s clear why, as Seriously Deep is my favorite jazz-funk album, and definitely lives up to its title. Returning the favor from Pyramid, Cannonball Adderly produces Axelrod this time, but the sound is very much the same, if a little less frenetic and experimental. Rather this one’s all about the deep groove, a veritable proliferation of head-nodding beats and funky bass from beginning to end, with occasional fuzzy electronics. Super cool stuff throughout, and there’s some great fuzzy bass too, and plentiful open breaks, as for example on the track “1000 Rads.” The LP’s comprised of 6 tracks, all but one of them over 5 minutes, each establishing a funk groove and riding it for the duration, with soloing overtop from the assembled cast of all-star players. But it never devolves into pointless soloing a la “fusion,” and the focus is always on the groove. My favorite track is “Ken Russell,” named after the director, which is appropriately soundtrack-like and at times sounds like DJ Shadow a few decades early. 

I first heard this one many years go via an MP3 rip of a scratchy vinyl copy, then later bought the remastered CD on the Cherry Red label. But I had a hankering to get the original vinyl for myself. It took a bit of searching, but I finally found an original US pressing for a reasonable price (and the US release was the only vinyl pressing the record ever received). Judging from the prices Seriously Deep goes for now, this must be one of the more rare and valuable records I have. I got my “Very Good” copy from a seller on Discogs.com back in 2015 for $25, but even then it was a steal – the cover was a little beaten and water-damaged, but the vinyl is okay save for a couple annoying skips on the first bands of each side. Sometimes I see why CDs caught on so well in the ‘80s… And speaking of which, while the Cherry Red CD sounded fine to me, there’s a more open sound to the instruments on the original vinyl, and of course a much deeper bass impact. 

5.Jack McDuff: Magnetic Feel 

Cadet, 1975 

This one didn’t floor me like some of the others on the list, but it’s one I randomly listened to while I was going through my jazz collection so I thought I’d include it. This album is one I hunted down because the title track appeared on Pulp Fusion: Revenge Of The Ghetto Grooves (Harmless Records, 1998), which was the first Pulp Fusion CD I ever bought, probably around 2001 – I got it because it was the only place I could find Dennis Coffey’s “Theme From Black Belt Jones,” one of my favorite songs ever, and a track I’d been obsessed with since I got Black Belt Jones on VHS in college, in the summer of ’94…I even taped the theme song off the video onto cassette and played it on a bus through Japan in the summer of ’95, true story. 

Well anyway “Magnetic Feel” is the last track on that third Pulp Fusion release, and it was one of my favorites on there. It just took me some years to actually track down the album it had come from…this was another I got from DustyGroove.com (man I sent those guys a lot of money over the years), a “Very Good +” copy that set me back twelve dollars in 2015. And as it turns out, the title track is by far my favorite on the album. McDuff, often credited as “Brother Jack McDuff,” was an organist, and at times turns out some vintage synth sounds that are pretty cool, most notably on the title track. There’s a cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t Mess With Mr. T” (from the Trouble Man soundtrack) that’s kind of cool, if a bit easy listening-esque, and also a somewhat cool funky number called “Won’t You Try My Love,” but of course there are the expected “tradjazz” numbers to appease the traditionalists. Overall I can see why Magnetic Feel was a bit overlooked, only scoring this original LP release on Cadet (with a repress the following year), and still no CD release to speak of. 

6.Bobbye Hall: Body Language For Lovers 

20th Century Records, 1977 

I picked this one six years ago, played it once, and forgot about it. But one thing I’ve learned from record collecting is that first impressions rarely count when it comes to music. Some of my favorite albums were ones I didn’t immediately connect with, and this would be a case in point. I recently took this record off the shelf with absolutely no memory of it, played it, and found myself playing it again and again. An astute reviewer on discogs.com states that this is the sort of album Mike Oldfield might’ve made if he did soul-jazz instead of progressive rock. The vibe is very much like Oldfield, with each track seguing into one another and creating an overall tapestry of sound. The title has you expecting some sort of swank funk a la the latter-day Mystic Moods, but the vibe is more mystical than sensual. With the occasional cosmic harp and wordless vocals combined with hypnotic drums, the listener at times almost gets the impression of floating over the Sahara under a full moon. 

But then, the Mystic Moods isn’t that bad a comparison, as there’s a bit of that sound here; not the Mystic Moods of the mid-1960s, with the orchestral sap remakes of pop hits, but the later Mystic Moods – the funky studio outfit that did albums like Erogenous (1974) and Being With You (1975). Occasionally the tracks on Body Language will sound similar, with a bit more of a jazz overlay; the Mystic Moods meets Miles Davis would be my shorthand description. The cover proclaims “Soul-Jazz from 20th Century Records,” and while this is a jazz record there’s none of the pointless soloing you might encounter in the average jazz record. Again, it’s more about a unity of sound, a flowing suite of songs that evokes a certain mood. Sometimes funky, sometimes ethereal, but always enjoyable. It also sounds great both on headphones and on speakers. The production quality is stellar, and the LP’s been mastered incredibly well, resulting in a full, layered sound (with very deep and funky bass) that rewards multiple listens. 

Bobbye Hall, usually credited as “Ms. Bobbye Hall” so everyone would know she wasn’t a dude, was a jazz drummer…but this is not a drum-heavy album. In fact, there’s nary a break in sight. What’s curious is that she’s credited as “Featured Percussionist” on the back cover, but the album also features Dorothy Ashby, known for her own soul-jazz records. That’s her on the harp which pops up occasionally. But again, there’s never a part where one of the players takes over the song, soloing relentlessly; even the fuzzy guitar which abruptly pops up on the first track gradually fades away, never to return again. And in fact it’s that first track that sounds most like early ‘70s Miles Davis, also featuring as it does a muted, Miles-esque trumpet. Hall’s percussion work peppers most tracks, usually spiralling across the sound spectrum and adding an extra layer to the funkier numbers, like on “Copula,” the third track on side 1 and probably my favorite cut on the album. 

This was one of the best “finds” I’ve made since rediscovering my jazz collection. This is a great album, and highly recommended. But Body Language For Lovers clearly didn’t resonate with listeners of the day, only receiving this original LP pressing. There isn’t even a CD release. Luckily, copies appear to be relatively inexpensive (my Near Mint copy, which I ordered from DustyGroove.com, cost me ten bucks), and also the entire album’s been uploaded to Youtube.