Fight Card #2: The Cutman - Jack Tunney (Mel Odom)

THE CUTMAN, by Mel Odom writing as Jack Tunney, is the second installment of the new Fight Card series, and it's every bit as good as the debut novel, Paul Bishop's FELONY FISTS.

This one is narrated by Mickey Flynn, brother of Patrick Flynn, the hero of the first book.  The Flynn brothers are orphans who grew up at St. Vincent's Orphanage (better known as Our Lady of the Glass Jaw) in Chicago, where they were taught to box by the priest Father Tim. Mickey travels the world as a sailor on the cargo ship Wide Bertha, and as THE CUTMAN opens, the ship is docked at Havana, Cuba, where Mickey and his colorful friends among the crew quickly run afoul of gangsters who have moved in and taken over Havana in those pre-Castro days. The friction escalates until Mick finds himself in the ring battling a vicious boxer who works for one of the local mob kingpins, with the fate of his ship riding on the outcome.

That long, epic battle is a classic, and Mickey Flynn would be right at home next to some of the "iron man" characters who populate Robert E. Howard's boxing stories.  There's plenty of local color and tough-guy action, and Odom keeps the story moving along at a great pace. The best thing about this novel, though, is Mick's voice, which is just about perfect.

Like FELONY FISTS, THE CUTMAN is pure entertainment, and Fight Card is shaping up to be a great series.  Highly recommended.

Smoker - Mel Odom

Mel Odom gives you a lot for your money in SMOKER. This original e-book set in 1952 is a boxing yarn with action like you might have found in the pulp FIGHT STORIES, a hardboiled crime story that would have been at home in MANHUNT, and then . . . something else. I can’t go into detail without giving away too much of the plot, but it’s a very nice twist.


Terry Farrell is in the Merchant Marine, and as the story opens he gets the news that his father, a former prizefighter who raised Terry alone after his wife abandoned the family, has died in Los Angeles. When Terry gets back to L.A., he finds out from the neighborhood priest that basically his dad was murdered, beaten to death in a “smoker” fight set up by a mobster. Terry sets out to get revenge and in the process settle his conflicting emotions about his father. However, things don’t turn out exactly like you might expect.


SMOKER is very different from THE AFFAIR OF THE WOODEN BOY, the last Odom e-book I posted about a week or so ago, except in the most important aspect: it’s very entertaining. Crisp, hardboiled prose and a great pace make this pulpish yarn fly by. Fight scenes aren’t that easy to write – how many different ways can you describe a couple of guys slugging each other – but Odom does a fine job of it, and his dialogue is very good, too. SMOKER captures the feel of the early Fifties, too. It’s the precursor to the FIGHT CARD series being developed by Mel and our mutual friend Paul Bishop, and if the stories are anything like SMOKER, I’ll be there for every one of them. In the meantime, for less than a buck you can get some great entertainment. Highly recommended.