Phoenix Force #4: Tigers of Justice
Gar Wilson, Gold Eagle Books/Worldwide Library, 1983
"Nuclear terror hits home - hard
It began as an accident - another "Three Mile Island". But in reality it was the gambit in an unthinkable schedule of KGB-inspired nuclear sabotage.
A group of thirty-seven deadly
ninja warriors were determined beyond reason to avenge Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Where would their next "accident" happen? Iowa? Kansas?
Dozens of peaceful nuclear installations suddenly become sites of potential doomsday. The White House red alert was immediate. The insidious
ninjutsu threat could only be met by a very special force.
Phoenix Force!"
"I should have killed you before," Sakata Fuja sneered.
"You have the opportunity to try," Keio Ohara suggested to the karate-trained ninja death merchant.
He delivered a high side kick to Fuja's face, then slashed with an arm in a cross-body stroke. That blow slammed the terrorist squarely in the throat.
His windpipe burst. He gargled his own blood.The blurb on the back tells you pretty much all you need to know about this one. The Quinton Nuclear Plant is peacefully going about its business, all quite safely and not doing any harm to anyone, when its security guards (one of whom is rather splendidly named Barry Gibb) and technicians are attacked by sinister black-garbed 'ninja death merchants'.
But these aren't just your ordinary run-of-the-mill ninja death merchants, they're a fanatical group of club-footed, hare-lipped ninja death merchants who blame their misfortunes on the American bombing of Hiroshima and, backed by the Kremlin, are hell-bent on revenge.
Clearly they must be stopped - but will Phoenix Force be any match against their insidious 'ninja magic'?
Phoenix Force was an off-shoot of Don Pendleton's
Executioner running for fifty-odd books between 1982 and 1991. One of two such series, the other being
Able Team, which form part of the
Stony Man Mack Bolan spin-off.
Following his war against the Mafia, Bolan headed up The Phoenix Program, a covert security operation countering terrorism and what have you, both internationally and, as is the case here, closer to home.
Phoenix Force at this point consists of;
Yakov Katzenelenbogen, one-armed former Mossad agent.
Gary Manning, demolitions expert - "he thrives on trouble".
David McCarter, "British brawler", ex-SAS.
Rafael Encizio, veteran of the Cuban revolution and subsequently imprisoned and tortured by Castro. Not a huge fan of Communism.
Keio Ohara (already seen in action above), Japanese master of the martial arts - "Unusually tall. Unusually deadly."
Unusually tall and unusually deadly he may be, and his judo and karate skills certainly come in handy against the Tigers of Justice, but it didn't stop him getting killed, like "Yak" Katzenelenbogen, a few books later.
Like the members of Phoenix Force itself, the identity of author 'Gar Wilson' changed through the series. 'Tigers of Justice' is the work of William Fieldhouse, not the original 'Gar Wilson' but probably the author most closely associated with the name.
'Tigers of Justice' is a quick enjoyable read as long as you don't take it too seriously, which let's face it you're unlikely to do. Less than 200 pages, unlike the chunkier 'SuperBolans' and later entries into the Stony Man series, and written in the uncluttered, straight-ahead style of an 'easy reader' ("See Spot's windpipe burst. See Spot gargle his own blood").
I note that this book's dedicated to Ronald Reagan's former press secretary, James Brady, who, after being seriously injured in the Reagan assassination attempt by John Hinckley, became a staunch advocate of gun control. Not much gun control in evidence here, though admittedly people are just as likely to get offed by a throwing star or 'tekagi' tiger claws. The dedication reads;
"Victims of the barbarism of the unhinged are reminders of the high cost of our naivety in the hellgrounds."
I love that, "the barbarism of the unhinged", and a timely reminder to us all never to become complacent as long as the free world continues to be threatened by insidious ninja magic.
