Two months ago, I wrote a piece about Marvin Albert writing as “Ian MacAlister’s” Skylark Mission. Strike Force 7 was the third novel under this pseudonym. Another Fawcett Gold Medal paperback from June 1974. Originally sold for $.95 cents. The cover has a distinct pulp atmosphere to it.
Strike Force 7 has a contemporary setting with Earl Jarrell, ex-British Army officer serving a three-year sentence for gun running. His Corsican partner secures his release from prison with a prospect of a job to revive their fortunes.
A revolutionary in Morocco has kidnapped the wife and step-daughter of a very wealthy American business man. It is a race against time to rescue the women before the clock runs out.
Jarrell and his partner Marcel put together a team of mercenaries with a woman journalist in tow who had interviewed Bel Zaara, the Moroccan rebel. They hope she can get in contact to give them a lead.
The tension increases as the team get closer to their quarry in the Atlas Mountains. There is plenty of action with some good weapon porn. The last 30 pages is non-stop excitement.
This novel would have made a great action movie. It still would make a great movie. You could see Jason Statham as Jarrell.
I am on my third Albert as MacAlister novel right now. The pacing is impeccable, dialogue is very good, characterization is three dimensional with likeable (and unlikeable) characters. What happened to the traditional men’s fiction market?
“What happened to the traditional men’s fiction market?”
Well, it certainly wasn’t just the advent of TV and video games. You had generations of boys grow up with an overwhelmingly female force of teachers who actively discouraged reading “violent trash” and, instead, pushed crap like A WRINKLE IN TIME on boys who wanted no part of it. They were hell-bent on turning boys away from the “violent paradigm” that had supposedly brought on things like the Vietnam War.
I had to actively defy my teachers (and mom) to read stuff like Burroughs and REH when I was a preteen. Many boys just learned to hate reading. It’s no mystery why tween and teen girls now read MUCH more than boys of the same age, despite the allure of TV and video games. That didn’t used to be the case. Now, we have women trying to emasculate video games as well. They simply will not let us enjoy what we like in peace.
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So much this. I had to read “Their Eyes Were Watching God” THREE TIMES from high school to college. I don’t even have anything against the book but that’s more than anything else – more than any Shakespeare play, classic novel, Homeric epic, whatever. Meanwhile the teachers were constantly running down guys like Edgar Allen Poe. WTF?
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Yep. Social Engineering 101. They don’t WANT us to read Shakespeare, Homer etc. At least not before a long lecture on how WRONG those Stale Pale Males were about so many things.
Apparently, girls/women are still getting what they are looking for from books, otherwise, romances and urban fantasy wouldn’t be moving SO many units. Also, studies wouldn’t show a far higher percentage of girls reading than of boys.
What I described going on in the past was just the start. Now you have publishing houses that basically refuse to publish books that would truly interest boys. Girls are being given what they want. Boys are not. Unless you’re saying that girls just naturally read more than boys, which isn’t historically the case. -
My apologies, Andy. That last sentence wasn’t directed at you. I’m carrying on another conversation regarding this topic elsewhere. I decided to copy & paste one of my comments (only so many minutes in the day). Should’ve left that last sentence off.
I would have sworn that Ian McAlister was Alistair MacLean
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He chose that name as tribute to his two favorite British thrillers Ian Fleming and Alistair Maclean