Review: Soldier of Fortune #1: Massacre at Umtali - Peter McCurtin

I’d read quite a few of Peter McCurtin’s novels before and always enjoyed them, so I expected to like SOLDIER OF FORTUNE #1: MASSACRE AT UMTALI even though I’m not a very big fan of mercenary yarns. The protagonist/narrator is Jim Rainey, a Texan and a Vietnam vet who has become a soldier of fortune. This is the first book in the series, but it’s not an origin story. The impression I get is that Rainey has been working as a mercenary for quite a while when it begins.

McCurtin starts with Rainey arriving in Rhodesia, where he’s hired by the government to head up an anti-terrorist squad going after a brutal warlord who calls himself Colonel Gwanda. The reader becomes acquainted with some of the other members of the squad, just as Rainey does, and then, without wasting much time, they’re off to the wild country along the border between Rhodesia and Mozambique to hunt down and capture Colonel Gwanda. The authorities want him brought back alive, if possible, so they can make an example of him by hanging him.

Rainey and his men pick up their quarry’s trail at the site of a massacre where Gwanda and his followers have wiped out an entire town. The plot is really pretty simple: Can they find Gwanda and capture him, and if they capture him, can they get him back to the capital alive?

This is a fairly short novel, and the action really races along, to boot. I read it in two sittings, which is very fast for me even when I’m enjoying a book. And I enjoyed MASSACRE AT UMTALI a lot, considerably more than I expected to. Most of the appeal comes from Jim Rainey’s narrative voice. He may be a cold-blooded killer when he needs to be, but he’s also a very likable guy. McCurtin wasn’t a Texan or a country boy in real life, but he does a great job with Rainey’s character.

The Soldier of Fortune series was created and edited by McCurtin and all the books were published under his name even though a few of them were ghosted by Ralph Hayes and Paul Hofrichter. This debut novel was published in 1976, and it’s very much a product of its time, meaning it’s so politically incorrect that it might give modern readers the vapors. I thoroughly enjoyed it and plan to read more in the series.

You can find used copies of the original paperback editions of MASSACRE AT UMTALI (it went through at least two printings with different covers, and I own one of them), and it’s also available on Amazon in an e-book edition from Piccadilly Publishing. That’s the version I read, and it has an excellent, informative “About the Author” section at the end that’s well worth reading. For a long time, there was some debate among paperback fans as to whether Peter McCurtin was a real person or just a house-name. I remember being part of that conversation. Now we know that he was real, even though other authors sometimes wrote under his name and he wrote under house-names, too. I’m glad we know more about him now, and I look forward to reading more of his novels.

Forgotten Books: Trail of the Macaw - Eugene Cunningham

Despite the good Sam Cherry cover that I'm convinced first appeared on the cover of some Western pulp from the Thrilling Group (although I haven't been able to find out which one), the cover copy, and the fact that Eugene Cunningham was one of the top Western writers of the pulp era, TRAIL OF THE MACAW is not a Western.

Actually, it's a war/adventure novel set in the fictional but real-sounding Central American country Nicamala in the 1920s, roughly contemporary to when it was first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1935. There is a Texas cowboy in it, however, soldier of fortune Morg Conner, who has fought in several Central American and South American revolutions and who is looking for action again after spending some time in the States and getting bored. On his way to visit an old comrade-in-arms in Nicamala, Morg encounters a revolutionary whose colorful outfits have led him to be dubbed The Macaw. Morg quickly befriends The Macaw, who is half-bandit, half-statesmen, and becomes involved with a revolution against the country's corrupt government. He also meets a beautiful young aristocrat who supports the revolutionaries and falls in love with her, although any sort of romance between them seems doomed.

From there, TRAIL OF THE MACAW becomes a series of military engagements broken up by the occasional romantic moment, culminating in an all-out battle in the country's capital for the future of Nicamala. Cunningham's books have a reputation for violence and this one certainly lives up to that, with frequent wholesale slaughter on both sides of the conflict. The action scenes are gritty and very well-done, the best parts of the book as far as I'm concerned.

Cunningham has a bit of an odd, clipped style that takes some getting used to, but it's very effective. Morg Conner is a likable protagonist and The Macaw makes a good sidekick. The rest of the characters are interesting as well, although some of them aren't developed as well as they might have been. Cunningham's emphasis is on the headlong pace of the story, though, and there's nothing wrong with that. He actually spent time as a mercenary in Central America after serving in World War I, so the book has a ring of authenticity about it.

TRAIL OF THE MACAW would have made an excellent 1930s adventure movie with, say, Randolph Scott as Morg Conner. While I think I prefer Cunningham's more traditional Western work, this is definitely a well-written, entertaining novel and has put me in the mood to read more of Eugene Cunningham's books. (The scan of the paperback cover is from the copy I read, purchased from Recycled Books in Denton, Texas. I couldn't find a scan of the original hardcover edition.)