STEVE CARROLL WRITES

The Last Ranger #9:   The Damned Disciples  (1988) by Craig Sargent (Jan Stacy) Jan Stacy was a post-apocalyptic series juggernaut, penning not only all 10   volumes of  The Last Ranger   series but   also co-creating and co- authoring many of  The   Doomsday Warrior  series with Ryder Syvertsen under the pen name of Ryder   Stacy.  The Last Ranger  centers on   Martin   Stone, a young man whose father had the foresight to build an   impregnable underground mountain fortress prior to an obliterating nuclear   attack   by the Soviets. It’s from this high-tech compound that he trains young   Martin in survival, martial arts, and weaponry so he can emerge after the   old   man’s death to search for his kidnaped sister—a quest that stretches across the   series. He is always accompanied by his faithful pit-bull,   Excalibur.  In  The Damned Disciples ,  Stone is summoned   to the village of  La Junta  where he’s   told his sister, April, is being held.  La   Junta  is home   to a mad cult

Play Dirty   (1969)   by Zeno Zeno (real name Gerald Theodore La Marque) was a veteran of the 1st Airborne Division and wrote 5 books, nearly all of which were authored while serving a 10-year prison sentence for homicide in London.  Play Dirty  is a novelization of a screenplay by Melvyn Bragg and Lotte Collin for the film starring Michael Caine.  This is a classic “men on a mission” type story of a ragtag group of soldiers forced to work together to achieve a seemingly impossible task during the North Africa campaign of WWII—blow up a heavily protected German fuel depot in the desert.  Our main protagonist is Captain Douglas, an employee of British Petroleum serving in the Royal Engineers, who is strong-armed into leading a raiding unit of criminals on what could be a suicide mission. His second-in-command is Leech, a sociopathic (and potentially psychopathic) convicted murderer whose job is to lead the field operations. Unknown to Douglas and Leech is the fact that they are intended

Commando #1:   Operation Arrowhead  (2019) by Jack Badelaire Author Jack Badelaire describes this series as military adventure pulp fiction, and what a fitting description that is. Set during Hitler’s blitzkrieg across Europe,  Commando  deals with a crack unit of elite light infantry raiders capable of taking the offensive to the Nazi troops in occupied territories.  The action in this first installment takes place in France with very little backstory or history beyond a prologue that grounds us geographically and explains the formation of the Commando units. Our main character is Lance Corporal Thomas Lynch and we’re introduced to him and his team in heavy action as they engage the Germans immediately.  From there the entire book is virtually a non-stop minute-by-minute account of battle with small but tense reprieves. There’s not a lot of character arc, but that is not to say that the cast is not effectively distinguished. And the action is so well done!  This kind of thing can easi