Double Kill

Jock Sargent #1

by Daniel da Cruz

Crime fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

US writer, formerly known for numerous men's action-adventure tales, who began publishing sf with The Grotto of the Formigans (1980), a novel about African grotto Monsters, and who came to more general notice with his Ayes of Texas sequence: The Ayes of Texas (1982), Texas on the Rocks (1986) and Texas Triumphant (1987). The political premises underlying the series – in the late 1990s the USSR, having hoodwinked the supinely liberal US media, has come to dominate the world – have dated, though the American assumption that its media are liberal is still conventional wisdom; the exuberance of the tales themselves remains winning. The protagonist, a triple-amputee World War Two veteran from the newly free Republic of Texas, arms an old battleship (itself called Texas), and sails off to fight the Russians. Much blood is spilt, and a good time is had by all; by the close of the third volume, however, a genuinely sophisticated dubiousness about the nature of the USSR/USA Cold War conflict complicates what might have seemed an unduly simplified picture: the sequence merits revisiting. F-Cubed (1989) is a less entrancing Technothriller; but Mixed Doubles (1989) enjoyably depicts the attempts of a contemporary failed composer who travels back in time to steal Music from those more talented than himself. [JC] - See more at: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/...

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daniel da Cruz put out four men’s action novels in his Jock Sargent series: (1) Double Kill (1974); (2) Deep Kill (1975); (3) Sky Kill (1976); and (4) Fire Kill (1976).

In “Double Kill,” Sargent is in prison facing a 15 years to life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit. He pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty with the unshakable evidence arrayed against him, including a bevy of eyewitnesses. But like every other inmate in the penitentiary, he claims he’s innocent — that some other dude did it.

Occupied for three years, first fighting his way to the top of the pecking order in prison and then learning economics from some masters of the craft, Sargent is shocked to find he suddenly has an attorney fighting to get him a new trial named Evelyn with the best pair of legs he’s ever seen and that she’s finagled half of a $26 million inheritance banked on his being the only surviving relative of a recluse and keeping him out of prison.

The catch – he has to find and marry one of the eyewitnesses to keep her from testifying at a retrial. She is a hippie girl who has to be chased across the country to Northern California and Sargent has to have a death match with her Paul Bunyan of a boyfriend.

Indeed, Evelyn keeps Sargent so busy with her plans that Sargent barely stops to wonder who set him up with the murder or why, a point that will be picked up once more towards the end of the novel.

It’s hard to see where de Cruz takes off with three more novels in this series, but apparently he does.

[Shayne Reynolds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts of well and gets slow, boring and stupid towards the end

[Kendall Park · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't recommend this to anyone, as this book was SUPER boring. I didn't even want to know what the ending was like. :(