The Penetrator: The Quebec Connection
Written by Lionel Derrick

Short pulp fiction is a genre little seen in modern bookstores, unless you kick about in the second hand sections.  Even the crappist hack these days writes a solid centermetre and a half of boring prose.  How I long for the 1970s, when pulp fiction writers knew their limits, and wrote short, snappy novels with big print, fast paced action and simple characters. Such a book is The Quebec Connection, Book 15 of The Penetrator series by Lionel Derrick.

Novels from the 1970s had a more diverse range of plots, storylines or whatever you want to call ‘em than today.  Communists (Chinese, Soviet, you choose!), left wing guerrillas, drug cartels, South Africans, trade unionists, neo Nazis, Arab terrorists, resurgent militaristic Japanese, I could go on all night.  Now all we have is Islamic terror, which frankly is boring me to tears, oh and that anti-globalisation bunch of cry-babies.

Mark Hardin is the Penetrator, one man fighting against evil where he finds it, a vigilante for the World.  A likable chap who is a hit with the ladies, not that he has time for messing about with them, what with fighting the bad guys.  Such restraint! Truly he is a role model for our children. His first thought is to end evil where he finds it, bullets or fists, whatever is best for the job. He travels the world, fighting for justice in 173 pages.

The 28th May group is fighting for a Quebec free from the oppression of English Canada, apparently living in a first world country with clean water and enough food to eat isn’t enough for these chumps.  To make things worse they are selling drugs to finance their war! Is it too much to ask that we only watch the death of innocents, not their intoxication? It was therefore a joy to see their plans foiled by the skilled shooting of Hardin, his Cheyenne honed skills too much for the fanatics of the north.  I will note that aside from the occasional attempt, the terrorists do come across as being slightly one-dimensional.  It is not a big point, given the constraints of the novel.

In a neat plot twist it turns out there is more to the story than fighting a bunch of angst ridden French Canadians.  The French criminal underworld who has been supplying the 28th May group is being used by a cabal of dwarves, bitter at their status in the world of normal sized humans.  They wish to remake the world in their image, and have included an additive in the drug that induces dwarfism in the babies of addicts.  I was kind of freaked out by this plot twist, freaked out in a good way.  A group that rise above petty squabbles of nationalism, religion or ideology, that fights for a future race of dwarves that my friends, that is entertainment!  Derrick played me like a piano, the glorious bastard.

Any humour aside, this book is a good example of action pulp fiction, and more importantly it shows that it is possible to write a readable novel in under 200 pages.  Modern authors would do well to remember this.

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