I first heard of Patrick Clay’s “Sgt. Hawk” book series from the Paperback Warrior blog last year. The series is about a tough United States Marine the Pacific portion of WW2. What intrigued me was Patrick Clay was “fascinated with the epic style of author Robert E. Howard.”
Belmont-Tower Books under the Leisure imprint published four Sergeant Hawk books from 1979 to 1982. Clay had written a fifth novel that was not published due to the collapse of Belmont-Tower Books.
I added Patrick Clay’s novels to my list when visiting used bookstores and E-bay searches. Nothing showed up. I happened to mention to James Reasoner that his Rough Edges Press should reprint the series. You know what, that is what he did.
Sgt. Hawk starts in the aftermath of a beach landing as Hawk’s platoon tallies their losses. They are summoned to HQ for an assignment. The depleted platoon is to make their way to another part of the island and guard a Dutch plantation until relief arrives a few days later.
The platoon embarks on a jungle odyssey through swamps and snakes to the rubber plantation. The Dutch family, the van Speers are not too happy with arrival of the leathernecks.
Marines start dying while on guard duty at night. There is a mystery element in addition to a romance element between Sgt. Hawk and Gretchen van Spoor, daughter of the plantation owner. Another problem is the Japanese are being pushed to this section of the island.
The action ratchets up with a Japanese assault as the mystery of the dying Marines is revealed. The van Spoors are not Dutch.
At first I thought the setting was in the Netherlands East Indies due to the Dutch plantation. The U.S. Marines never made a landing on any N.E.I islands. The island is fictional but vaguely like New Britain where the Marines did land at Cape Gloucester. The Bismark Archipelago was a German colony before WW1.
Patrick Clay knows his weapons. Some of the Marines are still carrying Springfield ’03 rifles and one of them is using a Reising sub-machine gun. Another has an M-3 “grease-gun.” I was once told by a Marine that the M-3 sub-machine gun was never officially adopted by the Marine Corp but they had some stolen from the Army.
The action scenes are good. The novel is epic in its own way. Sgt. Hawk is not exactly Conanesque as he is not a long timer Marine but joined up after Pearl Harbor. He is also from rather humble origins from the Mississippi Delta.
I knocked this novel off in short order. Stay tuned next week as I look at book # 2.
Thank you for your kind words about Sgt Hawk. After 40 years of silence, I assure you they are much appreciated. They say Howard was not a great writer, but I don’t quite agree. He had a great style, but just didn’t have time to master it with plotting and story telling. I also think Edgar Rice Burroughs was underrated. He certainly proved that people wanted read what he wrote.