Eighteen Wheel Avenger

Rig Warrior #3

by William W. Johnstone

In New Orleans, Barry Rivers fought the mob and exposed traitors inside the U.S. government. Then, when a bomb killed the woman he loved, he started life again under a new identity—with a new mission. Now Rivers travels America’s highways in a midnight blue Kenworth with his dog named “Dog,” and a whole lot of guns, bullets, and bombs packed into the cab.

An attempted hijacking on a New Mexico highway puts Rivers face to face with an unholy alliance of terrorists—and brings him the able-bodied assistance of a female Air Force Special Ops officer who knows how to shift a truck and shoot to kill. Now Rivers and Lieutenant Meri Cutter are driving a rig loaded with top secret, super-explosive transport coast to coast. They’re just waiting for the terrorists to make their next move—so they can strike back hard . . . and hit them where it counts.

Live Free. Read Hard.

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 1988

About the author

William W. Johnstone is the #1 bestselling Western writer in America and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of hundreds of books, with over 50 million copies sold. Born in southern Missouri, he was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. He left school at fifteen to work in a carnival and then as a deputy sheriff before serving in the army. He went on to become known as "the Greatest Western writer of the 21st Century." Visit him online at WilliamJohnstone.net.

Reviews

[Dale]

Barry Rivers is a former arms dealer who now works for the President as a one man death squad. In this installment he pretty much just drives a bulletproof 18 wheeler around and lets terrorist throw themselves at him like lemmings. And by terrorist we mean all of them - black nationalists, Islamic, Irish, they're all in it together.

Barry is joined by Cutter, a female Air Force Special Ops officer who's there for him to have sex with off page, and George, a journalist he kidnaps. They drive around as bait, occasionally taking detours to murder people that are identified as terrorists by a bureaucracy that he doesn't trust.

This is the fourth book of Johnstone's that I've read that has a journalist playing the straw man against Johnstone's halfbaked political philosophy. The purpose of journalism is to be completely controlled by the government, a government which he also mistrusts. Mainly, he hates them because they don't know how guns work. So we get Barry threatening to murder a civilian woman if she doesn't censor the news. But she deserves it because she's Irish. And she let herself get raped by Barry, so who can respect someone like that.

Yeah, the sex is all a bit rapey. As in he'd be doing prison time if the women didn't decide, eventually, that they didn't mind it. Did I mention the racial slurs? Most being variations of camel-fill-in-the-blank-er, though there's a bizarre mistrust of anyone with any Irish ancestry.

Seriously half of the book is Barry whining to George about politics. About how we're finally starting to come out of the liberal hell that was the Reagan era. Barry is a former arms dealer who is moving arms in his truck for foreign sale - remember, this was a time that we were helping arm Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. That worked out well for the war on terrorism.

All this would be okay if any of the fifty action sequences were any good at all. They're not. A car or truck swoops up, Barry points an Uzi out the window, and everyone is dead. No sense of danger and very little sense of what's going on. He stays in the safety of his his invincible truck except for when he pulls over for the sole purpose of letting Cutter get shot up. I would say this was a case of Women in Refrigerators, but Barry wasn't bothered by it, and Cutter disappears from the story aside from some third parties reporting that she was alright.

The wafer thin plot isn't helped by Johnstone writing like the guy in Memento. He wakes not knowing who he is and just starts typing based on the last paragraph he wrote the day before. We start out with Barry deputizing a group of truckers, later warning them that all their families are now going to die, then forgetting about them. The middle is just a series of dull ambushes and Barry berating a reporter, and the final showdown with villains we've never met takes just over a page.

Jerry Ahern is known to jump on a soapbox now and again, and I don't see myself sharing a lot of bumper stickers with him, but he can write coherently and isn't a bigot. Joseph Rosenberger was a bigot, but his politics usually ended with "F- Communism". Neither are necessarily my favorite, but I don't loath them the way I do Johnstone.

As bad as this was, it at least shorter than Ashes, and I think his race baiting fear mongering got worse in later books, but to be fair that might have been after he died.

And the truck didn't shoot any damn missiles. Watch Thunder Run instead.

More reviews at http://trashmenace.blogspot.com/

[Trevor · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few years ago, I read the infamously bad but instant viral/cult hit TRIGGER WARNING by Johnstone (well, actually, technically by his niece, who has taken over his literary empire since his death). As I said in my review of that book, it was one of the worst things I had ever read, but also one of the funniest - a right-wing power fantasy about a conservative, red-blooded college student frustrated by all the teachers and fellow students at his ultra-liberal school, who nonetheless must become their hero when terrorists take over the campus and of course none of those weak-wristed leftie pansies have any idea how to handle it. The book was entirely asinine, but what baffled me the most was the late arrival of the main character's uncle, some retired mercenary known as "Dog" who just comes rolling into the story and saves the day as an ultimate deus ex machina. A little research afterwards revealed that Dog was actually a classic Johnstone character and TRIGGER WARNING was in fact a sort of secret spiritual sequel to the old series featuring the character, the RIG WARRIOR series. So, of course, I knew I had to read these damn things. And now, here we are - I finally got my hand on one of them (the original trilogy is long out of print and copies actually fetch a pretty penny online). It's probably not a great sign that the one I read was the third book but I actually got through damn-near the whole thing before I realized it wasn't the first. Anyway, the RIG WARRIOR series stars the aforementioned Dog, an 18-wheeler trucker given carte blanche by the President of the United States to wage a one-man war on terrorism across the highways of America. If you're thinking to yourself, "well, I don't see how one guy (and his dog, ALSO named "Dog") in a truck with a bunch of guns will really help all that much in the war on terror," well, you're not familiar with the world of RIG WARRIOR - where, for some reason, apparently all terrorism leads back to the highways. Seriously, Dog can't go ten minutes or two miles on the road without constantly running into another car or truck filled with terrorist scum who need his special brand of justice. It also helps that, in this book, it is revealed that ALL of the world's various terrorist organizations have decided to join forces and form a sort of terrorism super-group. That sounds like it would keep them all pretty busy, but in fact they seem to spend most of their time just driving around looking for Dog...which is frankly a bad business decision because this is one of those Men's Adventure series where the author can't bring themselves to ever let the hero meet a situation they can't instantly handle. Seriously, there's just no tension here. Dog is an unflappable bad-ass with government go-ahead to murder indiscriminately that he uses roughly every five pages or so. There's never any fear that he might have finally met his match, or that he's finally in over his head. What, are you kidding? He's Dog, the Rig Warrior! He's such a powerful force for patriotism that when he ends up having to briefly protect two liberal reporters...well, of course, he sleeps with the woman*, but also, they BOTH end up seeing things his way and realizing that liberalism is a dead-end and of course only good-old-fashioned, racist, gun-loving, blood-thirsty conservative values are REALLY gonna save this nation! I'm not sure this book was AS funny or memorable as TRIGGER WARNING, if only because the "Dog runs into more terrorists, Dog murders terrorists" structure gets a little too monotonous about halfway through. But it's still goofy enough that I enjoyed my time with it on the same sort of ironic level. It's pretty wild to read something that reads so much like a parody of right-wing fantasy, but is actually dead-serious. And yeah, I'm probably gonna try to read the rest of the series...in fact, Johnstone's niece just recently published the long-awaited(?) fourth RIG WARRIOR book, probably off of the "success" of TRIGGER WARNING. Could a RIG WARRIOR movie or TV show be far behind? Does Ben Shapiro still have that production company? This sounds like a job for Dean Cain or Kevin Sorbo.

Probably not a great sign when your sex scene between the your hero and the young woman he seduces opens with the lines "It hadn't been rape. Not exactly."

[Nolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Third book in the series. Haven’t read the first two, hard to find and the library doesn’t have them. Not a big deal after reading this one to do so. Barry Rivers in a tricked out Kenworth semi-truck hauling government supplies around the 48 states and four terrorist groups working together to get the load and/or kill Barry who also does by the name Dog. He also has a dog that goes by the name, Dog. Barry travels with a (of course) hot sexy female Air Force Special Ops officer who knows how to shift a truck and shoot to kill. Of course, they have sex. But also there is a male reporter and a female camera gal who travels with them in a souped up Bronco and of course, Barry has sex with her too. Surprise, surprise.

A lot of repletion of the terrorists going after Barry and the truck. The author makes these terrorists really stupid. Not one thinks to just pull up, pass and shot out the front tire of the truck or the rears or the trailer tires. No, they have to sit back and after several miles Barry figures out, they are following him, then the terrorists go up and get shot to death. Over and over again. Pretty stupid. I was able to finish the book, but barely.

[Terry A. Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Preposterous. Have always enjoyed Johnstone's Mountain Man series as well as some of his westerns but this book was way over the top. First of all, it couldn't happen. Too much death and destruction by a government sanction kill team within borders of the United States. And for Johnstone much too simple writing. Nothing complex about the story or the characters. I, for one, won't read another of this series.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Johnstone was always my choice for President

I have been reading his books since the eighties. I first read this series in the eighties, while waiting for next book in the Ashes series to come out. He had a moral code that always showed in his main character. He wrote horror, westerns, terrest, and military. I have read every book he wrote most more than once. ON A SCALE I WILL GIVE HIM A 100. Be like Mickey you'll love it.

[blanche moates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Johnstone at his best.

All the adventure you could want, along with libral doses of blood and the bad guys getting what they deserve. There are f few typos but the story is good enough to overlook them.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barry Rivers , code named "Dog" and his dog, named "Dog" travel the highways, working for the government, hauling sensitive equipment, explosives, etc. Dog doesn't hesitate to get into trouble, or to help others out of trouble

[Yale Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

.Different but Good

Always like Johnstone and this is different. Thought It was juvenile and nearly put it down at the start (and often within the book) but stayed with it and enjoyed it. Corney at times but I was always looking forward to what was next. Very glad I read this.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read. I have really enjoyed this series of books. Thanks to author.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Formula writing but entertaining brainless read.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good men's adventure series. If you like big rigs, guns and violence you will enjoy the series. Recommended