Domino Lady: Sex As a Weapon

After the murder of her DA father, beautiful socialite Ellen Patrick dons a white dress, black cape, and black domino mask to fight crime as the Domino Lady. Despite not a lot of original material, the Domino Lady has become one of the most iconic characters in pulp fiction. In Domino Lady: Sex As a Weapon, eight authors write all-new stories about Domino Lady's adventures. Her adventures also give her opportunities to team up with other pulp icons such as the Phantom, Airboy, the Black Bat, and even Sherlock Holmes.

The collection begins with K.G. McAbee's "The Domino Lady and the Crimson Dragon". An Asian girl escapes from a white slaver boat and by a lucky string of fate, runs into the Domino Lady, who agrees to help rescue the other girls on the ship. This was pretty standard fare, although quite enjoyable as Domino Lady had to use her wits (and her physical assets, naturally) to take on a large group of adversaries.

C.J. Henderson resurrects the Black Bat to help Domino Lady foil more white slavers in "Blondes in Chains". This took more of a sci-fi bent, and the resolution was a bit contrived.

Not content with Domino Lady working with the police, Bobby Nash frames Domino Lady for murder in "Target: Domino Lady". Again, Domino Lady is forced to use her brains to prove her innocence and bring the real murderer to justice.

Chuck Dixon teams Domino Lady with Airboy in "Stealing Joe Crick". I've never found Airboy very compelling, and he's more or less useless in this story. I had some higher expectations from Dixon, but with Airboy, he didn't have much to work with.

Ron Fortier presents a dumb little tale called "The Claws of the Cat" about some idiotic cat-nappers (yes, really). If this had been played more for laughs, I might have liked it more, but played straight, it was just silly.

Conjuring the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Nancy Holder presents a tale of Sherlock Holmes teaming up with Domino Lady in his late years. While the plot wasn't anything spectacular, the scenes between Holmes and the Domino Lady were rather enjoyable and provided a lot of entertainment in the couple's banter.

James Chambers's contribution, "The Devil, You Know" was probably my favorite story in the collection. An underworld contact betrays her and Domino Lady finds herself aboard a yacht of Satanists with her identity fully exposed.

Martin Powell finishes out the book with "Masks of Madness", where Domino Lady washes adrift on the Phantom's island. Normally, this wouldn't have been too bad of a story, but the decision was made to reveal the killer of Owen Patrick and end with Domino Lady getting her revenge. This denouement fell a bit flat to me, and I think a revelation that was more conventional would have been more suitable to the character.

As with all anthologies, some of the stories are better than others, but overall, all of the stories were fun reads and maintained the proper tone of the pulps. I would've like solo stories more than the team-ups, but that's really more of a personal preference.


Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Things From Another World, and Moonstone

Title: Domino Lady: Sex As a Weapon
Editor: Lori Gentle
Authors: K.G. McAbee, C.J. Henderson, Bobby Nash, Chuck Dixon, Ron Fortier, Nancy Holder, James Chambers, Martin Powell
Year: 2009
Pages: 222

My Fake War

In a dystopian near-future, Saul Dressing's evening is interrupted to discover his forty-something, overweight ass has been drafted. Given no training, only a gun that can do everything, he is air-dropped into a desert country he's never heard of with orders to declare war on the population. Now, if he could only find someone...

From the way it started out, I was expecting a satire of the current U.S. geopolitical situation. The United States of Everything declaring war on every nation on earth provides a perfect analog to the U.S. government's policy in recent years to engage in as many
warskinetic military actions as it can handle. However, once you get past this bit of irony, the book goes nowhere quickly and resulted in a completely anticlimactic dud of an ending.

This is a trend I'm seeing in the four bizarro novellas I've read: The author comes up with a few unique, creative, and weird ideas, expands on these a bit, but then has no idea what to do with the actual plot, so s/he just rushes out an ending to finish the tale. This probably explains why most bizarro novels run in the 75–150 page range. I guess it comes down to whether or not you're a fan of the genre. If you are, then you'll probably love this book. If not, well... you probably won't be too surprised.

Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million.

Title: My Fake War
Author: Andersen Prunty
Year: 2010
Pages: 112

DEAD(ish)

I loved B&N's description of the book:

Linda's had a bad day. First her boyfriend killed her. Then she woke up, still on this boring plane of existence, and with an odd obsession about her missing body.

It turns out Linda can't cross over until she gets reunited with her body. Because she doesn't know where it is, and her boyfriend Mike isn't telling, Linda starts playing cruel pranks on Mike while hiring a P.I. to track down her missing body.

Told from a rotating first-person point-of-view, the plot takes a few twists and turns, including an improbable love quadrangle(?) between Linda, Mike, and the gay couple next door.

The best part of this book is the mischief Linda commits against Mike. The plot itself takes some completely improbable turns, and the ending is completely forgettable. In addition, the dialog is entirely too expletive-laden and distracts from the message being conveyed.

If you've got a NOOK or the NOOK software, you can get this book for free from the Barnes & Noble link above. Amazon is charging only 99¢ for the Kindle version. I don't believe the book exists in hard-copy format. Frankly, that's about what this tale is worth.

Title: DEAD(ish)
Author: Naomi Kramer
Year: 2009
Pages: 100

Bloodfeud: The War of the Fang

Around 1000 A.D., a group of exiled Scotsmen lands on German shores. Deciding they didn't want to travel all the way to uninhabited lands, they find a developing barony and begin raiding the populace. The baron fights back, and each skirmish escalates the level of atrocity committed against the other party. Finally, the two parties draw the wrath of God and both are cursed into becoming creatures of the night. At this point, the fight is taken to an all-new level.

This book is a little slow getting started, taking a lot of time to set up the Scots' presence in Germany and the pre-curse violence. However, once the transformations occur, it turns into a pretty good (although somewhat predictable) vampires vs. werewolves story. The author blurb indicated this is a prequel to a series Fackler has in mind and reads as such.

The speech was a little too modern for the 10th Century, but this may have just been an attempt to keep the book easy to read. However, the characters are fairly well-developed and the personalities of each show through, despite there being a lot of characters for a sub-300-page book.

This is a light, fun read and is worth your time even if it doesn't tread any new ground.

Available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

Title: Bloodfeud: The War of the Fang
Author: Jason Fackler
Year: 2010
Pages: 280

361

Recently discharged from the Air Force, Ray Kelly and his father spend some time in New York City. One day, as they're driving down the road, some men pull alongside and open fire. Ray wakes up in the hospital with only one eye, a stiff ankle, a dead father, and a chip on his shoulder. Discovering his sister-in-law was also killed recently, Ray recruits his brother into a scheme of revenge that takes a wicked twist when they abduct the man who they thought orchestrated the attacks.

Westlake is well-known for his easy-reading style. It takes nearly no effort to read this book, and you'll be surprised how many pages you can flip through in an hour. However, Westlake's trademark twists keep the reader guessing throughout the entire story.

Considering this is one of Westlake's earliest books, it doesn't quite have the polish of his later work. If you're a fan of the Hard Case Crime novels or just hard-boiled crime/detective fiction in general, you'll enjoy this book.

Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million.

Title: 361
Author: Donald E. Westlake
Year: 1962
Pages: 208