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Soldato #1
Soldato
Pour se venger, il avait enfreint la loi du silence et dénoncé son patron. Ça ne se pardonne nulle part, et surtout pas dans la Mafia. Planqué par le F.B.I. au fin fond de la cambrousse, il s'était cru pénard. Pourtant ces messieurs les tueurs venaient de le retrouver. Il se savait perdu, s'il n'attaquait pas le premier. Mais comment, à lui tout seul, venir à bout d'un "Don" mieux protégé qu'un chef d'État ?
Paperback
First published August 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 5, 2023
Marvin H. Albert (writing as Al Conroy) delivered a very smart mob-centered crime story with his novel Soldato!, published in 1972. This was the first book in a Men's Adventure series, though the novel feels 100% complete and not at all setting up a sequel, much less four of them.
This was the second work I've read by writer Albert. The first one was Driscoll's Diamonds, a good, far more exotic, and "spicier" tale that wasn't as crisp or believable as this one in terms of its plotting and characterizations, but still recommended and fun.
In Soldato!, a mob boss employs a special investigator to find a protected witness and multiple lives become unraveled as a result. Albert delivers two very compelling (and conflicting) protagonists in this book, a believable antagonist, and a handful of other characters, all of whom work their own angles and second guess everything. Every person in this book THINKS. (The titular gunslinger in the author's well-plotted western Clayburn is similarly methodical.)
The immediacy and small scale of Soldato! compare to many works I've read by Charles Willeford, David Goodis, and Harry Whittington, but the characters in this book often behave smarter and more believably. The guy on the the run and those who track him have the verisimilitude of the people who inhabit George V. Higgins books rather than many of Albert's paperback peers and pulp predecessors. These characters' histories are interesting; the tactics they use always make sense and are often extremely clever. Reading this book, you really get the sense of the author playing chess against himself as he wrote each well-conceived strategy or angle.
In addition to the believable characters, Albert created a sustained 50+ page cat-and-mouse action sequence in the wild that is tense, beautifully staged, smart, and continually evolving. This suspenseful tour-de-force was enhanced by some well-chosen changes in perspectives, though such shifts were occasionally detrimental to Driscoll's Diamonds, which had a greater number of characters and lost some clarity as a result. Another extended sequence involving an injured character is vividly and artfully handled--I see now why paperback enthusiasts are very fond of this author.
Soldato! is top-level Men's Adventure/mob fiction with smart people, sharp conflict, and an uncommon level of realism. A publisher should really reprint this one--my weathered copy wasn't cheap, and it literally fell apart as I read it.
This was the second work I've read by writer Albert. The first one was Driscoll's Diamonds, a good, far more exotic, and "spicier" tale that wasn't as crisp or believable as this one in terms of its plotting and characterizations, but still recommended and fun.
In Soldato!, a mob boss employs a special investigator to find a protected witness and multiple lives become unraveled as a result. Albert delivers two very compelling (and conflicting) protagonists in this book, a believable antagonist, and a handful of other characters, all of whom work their own angles and second guess everything. Every person in this book THINKS. (The titular gunslinger in the author's well-plotted western Clayburn is similarly methodical.)
The immediacy and small scale of Soldato! compare to many works I've read by Charles Willeford, David Goodis, and Harry Whittington, but the characters in this book often behave smarter and more believably. The guy on the the run and those who track him have the verisimilitude of the people who inhabit George V. Higgins books rather than many of Albert's paperback peers and pulp predecessors. These characters' histories are interesting; the tactics they use always make sense and are often extremely clever. Reading this book, you really get the sense of the author playing chess against himself as he wrote each well-conceived strategy or angle.
In addition to the believable characters, Albert created a sustained 50+ page cat-and-mouse action sequence in the wild that is tense, beautifully staged, smart, and continually evolving. This suspenseful tour-de-force was enhanced by some well-chosen changes in perspectives, though such shifts were occasionally detrimental to Driscoll's Diamonds, which had a greater number of characters and lost some clarity as a result. Another extended sequence involving an injured character is vividly and artfully handled--I see now why paperback enthusiasts are very fond of this author.
Soldato! is top-level Men's Adventure/mob fiction with smart people, sharp conflict, and an uncommon level of realism. A publisher should really reprint this one--my weathered copy wasn't cheap, and it literally fell apart as I read it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review