Play Dirty by Zeno

-

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 to serve only as an expendable distraction from the real raiding party which has been given a 2-day head start to reach their objective. 

Facing harsh conditions, bitter in-fighting, and hostile desert tribesmen, the men persevere on toward their fate, only to discover several layers of betrayals and twists as they close in on their target. Zeno is certainly a skilled wordsmith and at least the main characters are far better realized than many screenplay-based books achieve. That said, the supporting characters are all stereotypes with no real substance. 

The ending is appropriately exciting and refreshingly unexpected, but ultimately proves to be a nihilistic downer that leaves a bad taste.

Review by Steve Carroll

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Atomic Werewolves and Man-Eating Plants (2023) Edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle

-
Image
Through the tireless efforts of pulp-renaissance men Robert Deis   and Wyatt Doyle, the world is once again a brighter place for those with a predilection   toward the Men’s Adventure Magazines   (MAMs) of a bygone era. The duo’s ability   to mine the depths of the MAM archives to pull together these themed editions   is unparalleled and the riches of their efforts is a gift to those like myself,   who generally missed out on these magazines in their original incarnation. The hook this time around is an entire edition built around   stories that are much more clearly fictional with supernatural overtones. This   makes it similar in some respects to the authors’ earlier   Cryptozoology Anthology . Whereas much of the popular MAM stories at   least dipped a toe into the real world, albeit it in greatly exaggerated tales   of manly men and their adventures, often while at   war, this collection revels   in tales of sci-fi and horror featuring (as announced loudly in a list on the front  
Read more

Men’s Adventure Quarterly Vol. 1 No. 2 (2021): ALL ESPIONAGE

-
Image
If you’ve followed this blog for any real length of time, then you know by now   that I am an espionage junkie. And nothing gets me going more than the   espionage books, movies and television shows of the Golden Age of spies, the   Cold War 50s, 60s, and 70s. Of course, this explosion in popularity at   that   time was tied directly into the superstardom of a single source—James Bond, Ian   Fleming’s indomitable British spy for Her Majesty, and his exploits   in novels   and the wildly successful film series that started in 1962 (and remains a   cash-cow today). Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham created  Men’s   Adventure Quarterly  (MAQ) as a way to preserve and celebrate the Men’s   Adventure Magazines   (MAM) of a bygone era. That MAM era was a post-war phenomenon   that ran from the late 40s through the early 70s. In their earlier heyday, there   was a   huge emphasis on so-called “true stories” of manly men at war (or   post-war), rescuing buxom ladies while crippling the Nazi war
Read more

The Paperback Kung Fu Phenomenon: Part 2 (Standalone Titles, TV, & the 80s)

-
Image
The following column was originally printed in Justin Marriott's Paperback Fanatic 47, which was published in July of 2023. You can buy a copy of it  here. As   I explained in this column last edition, I spent my teen years in the 1970s absolutely obsessed with all things martial arts. I collected magazines, comics, movies, and attempted to acquire every single paperback book or series that focused on this very specific genre. I was less interested in non- fiction books   about the martial arts or individual styles; I was really only interested in   the violent pulp fiction that was anchored in manly men (or sexy   women) fighting   other manly men (or sexy women) in stylized conflict. And thankfully there was   no shortage of it for a decade plus. This time around I want to focus on some additional two-fisted series from that   era, including a TV tie-in, a couple of titles that failed to spawn their own   series, and some that were birthed in the 80s. Kwai Chang   Caine, Master o
Read more