April 16, 2025 • 59 mins
Nick from The Book Graveyard and Bryan from Bad Taste Books drop in to help me out with a review of THE TERROR TRUCKERS, a 1977 vintage men's action-adventure paperback starring former Mafia hitman The Butcher. We dig into the series conception, writers, origin story, and the definitions of various CB radio slang terms.
Be sure to visit Paperback Warrior for vintage book reviews, videos, podcast episodes, and articles.
Be sure to visit Paperback Warrior for vintage book reviews, videos, podcast episodes, and articles.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello. Hello, I'm Eric and I represent the Paperback Warrior podcast,
YouTube channel and blog. Every few weeks I do a
special episode under the banner of Conversations. This is a
collaboration with authors, publishers, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, pretty much anyone
foolish enough to waste away their valuable time talking about books,
(00:22):
you know, make believe stuff, mostly old books at that,
so that's even worse. But today I found two people
who enjoy wasting valuable time as well. They like to
talk about old books. My guests today are YouTubers. Two
of them here, I've got Nick from the Book Graveyard
and Brian from Bad Taste Books. Yeah, guys, why don't
you tell viewers and listeners a little bit about your
channel and why they should tune in and waste time
(00:44):
with you? Brian want you?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Why don't you go First's good question. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, I just kind of hang out talking about books.
I like all kinds of genres, from crime and men's
adventure and horror and sci fi and fantasy and just
old old paperbacks. I think they're fun. If you've ever
watched Nick at the Book Graveyard, I kind of think
of myself as like the Dollar Store version of his champ.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Okay, all right, I'd like, okay, that's cool. Thanks, all right, Nick.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
You well, I thought I was already on the clearance rack.
I didn't know if you did any lower.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
So yeah, I like to waste my time, your time.
I'm talking about vintage genre fiction. I enjoy old paperback books.
I don't really read too much new stuff. I like
old stuff. I like the pre Internet and uh yeah,
(01:46):
the more exploitive the better, more schlocky, the better. I
I enjoyed, uh B movies and that kind of led
me down the path to this unending wealth. Osrie.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Very cool, very cool. And you like Ghostbusters and The
Golden Child because you talk about those movies a lot.
That's your jam, it is, it is, okay, all right,
all right. Well, today's episode is a collaboration review to
discuss the nineteen seventy seven novel The Terror Truckers. And
(02:24):
this is book number twenty six in the Butcher series.
There you go, Brian's got it. He's got the paperback
right there. We'll talk about the main character, his origin
so forth, because the very first chapter of all the
Butcher books has his origin and how he's conceived in
(02:45):
that kind of thing. But so obviously the name of
this book, the Terror Truckers, means that it involves truckers,
you know, tractor trailers, eighteen wheelers, whatever people want to
call them. Optimus Prime isn't in the book, I guess,
because he wasn't invented at this point. So no Optimist Prime, unfortunately.
But to make up for it, there is trucker LINGO.
(03:07):
I guess our CB radio slang. I guess that's what
you call it. I don't even know, but uh. In
one scene, the butcher gets like the lowdown on CB
slang and what some of the different definitions are. So
I wanted to kick us off with like asking you
guys some funny little terms for that I that I've
either seen in the book or that I just researched.
(03:27):
And I was gonna ask each of you, like to
guess what these things mean. Is that cool?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I thought would be fun. I had no idea what
some of these words. I don't even know if any
of this stuff is actually even true, but I don't know.
But all right, So, Brian, I'm gonna hit you first,
and if you missed the guest, then Nick, you can
chime in, But Nick, what does having a seat cover
refer to If the trucker says he has a seat cover,
(03:54):
what does that refer to me? Yeah, yeah, you can
go se cover.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, he picked up he picked up a hitchhiker?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Close but wrong, Nick, you want to go?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Is it? Is it? Is it a hooker? I?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
No, not really?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
A lot lizard? Is it a lot lizard? Eric?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
This means it's a female passenger. So just a female passenger.
So that's what it means. Nick. How about what is
the term shaking hands with shorty mean shaking hands? Was
shorty shaking hands with shorty?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Does it mean they have to down shift or something?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
No? No, Brian, what do you got.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Shaking hands? I don't know. They're being tailed by a
by a cop.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
No, it means peeing.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Okay, it makes my that's.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Kind of insulting, huh.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
For some people. All right, Brian, what's your guess on
what and on what? An angry kangaroo is an angry kangaroo?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I don't even know where to start with that one.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Maybe just a driver who's you know, blaring their horn
at them.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It could be I guess, but no, kind of kind
of sort of it not really. How about you, Nick,
which what's your best guess on that angry kangar?
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yeah? That was gonna be my guest too, an angry kangaroo.
What else could it be?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah? Yeah, we think it would be boxing, like an
angry kangaroo boxing. But yeah, it means that it's a
tractor trailer with one or both of its headlights out.
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Yeah, in what way does that represent a kangaroo?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I don't know. Maybe it's the boxing the kangaro is
there's one length, there's two. I don't that scene just
make sense? Nick? How about the term bear in the sky,
bear in the.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Sky, thunderstorm, bad weather, tornado?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Brian, how about you take a guess at it with
think about smoky and the bear, so bear smoking in
the bear so bear in the sky.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
There's smoke in the sky nearby?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, Nick, cop, Yeah, aircraft or helicopter doing a radar
in the sky. So bear in the sky can also
mean eye in the sky. Yep, let's see, Brian. What
about smiling? Comb your hair? You better smile and comb
your hair.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
That means the CoP's gonna get you, right, Yep?
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Means there's a there's a there's splits up ahead. They're
gonna a radar. It's just so dumb, Nick, What is
go Go Go go girls on the dance floor? Go
go girls on the dance floor?
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Does it mean it's really Wendy that's shaken all around?
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I mean you would think so, but no, No, I
don't know, Brian. What do you think.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
There there are uh, there's a car driving with some
attractive ladies in it nearby.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Nope, it's I do I like that though, but no,
it's a livestock truck hauling animals. How that figures into good?
Go Go girls in the dance floor? Is a livestock
truck hauling animals? All right? Brian, take a guess on
this one.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Because the animals are having a hard time standing up straight,
like you know, yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Know, yeah, maybe there's just yeah that makes sense. Okay,
I got I can see that, then, Brian. A pregnant
roller skate. Pregnant roller skate?
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Uh, large man on a motorcycle.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That's awesome. That's actually that's not it. That's not it. Nick.
You want to.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Guess is it an oversized load?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
No, it's a Volkswagen beetle car better? Yeah, yeah, yours
this better? Yeah? All right, last couple, Nick, what's a
pickle park? Pickle park containing rest up containing if you were.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
I don't know, I don't know what's allowed on your
channel here, Eric.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
You could just go for it. I would say, if
you're going to park your pickle, the rest stop has
yeah those yeah, yeah, So that's as opposed to just
a regular rest stop, it would be a pickle park.
And then let's see, Brian, if I said to you
you're on one's donkey, what would that mean? You're on
(09:20):
one's donkey?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
You're tailing someone too close on there?
Speaker 1 (09:24):
There you go, there you go. You got it. That
that one makes That's probably the only one here that
really makes a who lot of sense. All right, Nick,
you're getting the last one because this last one plays
into the book at the very beginning. The bad guy
tells Butcher thermos bottle. What's thermos bottle mean?
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Thermost bottle is the uh the tanker with the gas
in it?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yep, you got it. Yep, tanker truck, tanker truck. Oh
let me do, let me do one more. Because Brian
texted us like a few weeks back, I don't know
if Brian still remembers this, but he said, he said,
Haircut Palace. Do you remember what hair her cup houses?
What's that I do?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
That was one of my favorite ones I've been.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
I told my wife that the other day when we
were driving, they watch over hair Cut House. It's uh,
when the the low hanging overpass because it might kind
of cut the top of your truck off.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, a little off the top? Yeah, all right cool.
So yeah, so let's jump into this book again. It's
Butcher number twenty six, The Terror Truckers, published by Pinnacle
in October nineteen seventy seven. My wife gets a kick
out of the Butcher in general, because for this was
probably like two or three years, I had every Butcher
(10:35):
paperback except one. So every time we would go into
a bookstore because she always goes with me, and she's
got like a list of books that she always checks
for me that she's always looking to see if they
have the Butcher. So she gets a kick out of
the Butcher. She's always like the Butcher number whatever. But anyway,
there was the books have Stuart Jason on the covers.
(10:56):
Of course, Stuart Jason's just a house name. Most of
the first twenty six books the Butcher were written by
a guy named James Dockery. I think Lee Foran wrote
a couple, but this book that we're talking about today,
Tara Truck or Tara Trucker's, was written by James Dockery.
And it was interesting. I was reading on Joe Joe
Kenney's Glorious Trash website that it would take Pinnacle almost
(11:20):
two years or just a little over two years to
resume the series because this was Dockery's last Truck or
last Butcher installment and he left the series. So Pinnacle
takes two years to try to find out who they
want to write the series, and they finally they tapped
Michael Avaloni to start writing the books in December of
nineteen seventy nine, so about twenty six months later they
(11:43):
finally resumed to write publishing these books. Michael Avaloni wrote
the last nine installments and then if you've read the
review of I think this is number thirty. I think
it's thirty four. I think on the blog the series
just ends like there's no resolution, there's no John, you know,
pay out or anything like that. The book just ends,
so there's nothing really special about it. But every Butcher
(12:07):
book always begins the exact same way. It's with the
origin story at the very beginning of chapter one, and
then it'll kind of go into his whole mission. But Nick,
I think you've you've read Butcher book or two before this.
What's the general idea behind Butcher.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Well, Butcher was an orphan. He was left on the
doorstep of a orphanage in Tennessee, and then at the
age of ten, he falls asleep in a railroad car
and wakes up in Chicago. He's a street kid and
he befriends the son of a syndicate man, a mafia man,
(12:55):
and the mafia man's son has leukemia and dies, so
the kid, yeah, the kid dies, and then Booker is adopted.
So he is raised by the syndicate and becomes muscle
and rises through the ranks until he's at the top.
(13:17):
And then when he's at the top, he decides that
he looks back on his life and has decided that
he doesn't like what he's done and all the ways
that he's gained his wealth and riches. So he decides
to quit the syndicate, which they don't allow, but he
doesn't care because he's tough, right, And he's approached by
(13:43):
a secret government government organization named White Hat and they
ask him to come join the organization. Yeah, and he says, sure,
why not. I'm gonna, you know, make up for all
this bad stuff I did. But two things is you're
not awed to pay me. I will not be paid.
And I do things my way, so he's not going
(14:05):
to follow any rules. He has three names. The first
is his real name, Booker, which is the only he
only has one name. He's like, share, do you think
I don't know? There was a weather guy on the
news here and that was his last name, and that's
how they said it. So that's how I see it.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Okay, I pronounced butcher. They just put a T in
there to make it the real word butcher.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, now they say Booker.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
But it's but it's a meteorologist. I mean, if you're
a meteorologist, you really want to go out there telling
people about a tornado, your name's Butcher.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
They could have changed it, who knows, So he was
named Booker. I see, Hey.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Wait aboute what if it What if it could be Bobby,
like Bobby Bouchetchet like that could.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Be that'd be the uh yeah, the Cajun version of it.
But he was named after a sixteenth century German Protestant
and herbrist named Booker.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Who knows so.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Then in the mafia his name is the Butcher and
in white Hat his code name is Iceman.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
And he only has one name because his original adopted
parent like forgot to give him.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
No, it was the reverend. He was an alcoholic. He
was an alcoholic, and he was he was wasted, and
the welfare guy came in and he was like, what's
his name? And like, I just I don't know Booker whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Do you guys know of any other series, like long
running series like this that literally says the exact same
thing in the first chapter of every book. I mean,
you get this whole spill. It's like fifteen pages in
every book.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
A word for word or do they change minor details
to make it pertinent to the current story.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I don't think it's word for word, but I think
it's pretty much the exact same thing every single book.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
I do know that the Anamorphs series that like what
middle grade series from the nineties, the first chapter of
every book is not word for word the same, but
it's pretty dang close as they set up the whole
because they wanted it to be standalone.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, but in reality, you can't read those standalone. They
wouldn't make sense, but they do that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Can imagine like if if they like Batman, like the
comic book Batman, like for you know what, eighty years
of every little issue, like the first two pages, that's
the origin, that'll be crazy.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Yeah, And they explain Hawk's background in everyone, but it's
not right away like that, it's not just obvious, but
they do. They do drop it in there. It reminds
me of Quantum Leap. Did you watch Quantum Leap?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Yeah, well they had to, like they had to explain
it at the beginning of every before the music would start.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yes, yeah, stepping into the bottomly accelerator. Yeah, yeah, that's
what I mean. Shows ever that's great. Yeah. So every
every first chapter also includes at least one or two
syndicate guys trying to cash in on the money the bounty.
So they try to kill Butcher at the beginning of
(17:23):
every book, and in this case, the same thing. And
they always have like stereotypical names always, so it's like
Pete Mazzoli in this one, it's Stud Lorenzo and Stud Lorenzo.
They both show up to try to kill Butcher, and
of course he has a Walther P thirty eight, which
he's always talking about, and it shoots nine millimeters dumb
(17:43):
dumb bullets, which just means he's taken the bullet and
he's carved an X on the end of it, so
it kind of spreads out when it hits someone. But
it's written in a pulp style because every time he
kills someone, it says koushe it says yeah in italics
with a like an explanation mark or I don't know. So,
(18:06):
so basically, you guys have anything else? But chapter one
is is that? And then he kills the two guys
that are trying to kill him, and that's pretty much
it for well, then he also the last guy, the
second guy that he kills, He kills off Mizzoli and
Stude Lorenzo, who have no bearing on the story whatsoever.
But one of those guys, I think it's a Missouri
says thermos bottle to Butcher. Butcher's like, what is he
(18:28):
talking about? Thermist bottle? But later we find out that
that plays into the actual story, right.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I do like how nonchalant he is after he kills
those two guys and then meets his boss at the
diner's you're a little late and he's like yeah, he's like.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
No big deals.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
I like that he describes one of the guys as
a sweaty hog stuffed with red spaghetti.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yes, I took I actually took a picture of that page,
because like, that's I've never seen that before.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
I have a question. I don't are we talking spoilers here?
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Might as well. I mean, anybody who's going to read
The Butcher pretty much knows what's going to happen anyway, right, So.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
I have a I have a question. I kept waiting
for Thermos Bottel to come back around. How this mob
guy was right? What is he? Was he warning it?
How does he even know? It has nothing to do
with the syndicate at all?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:31):
No, how would this guy even know? Why would he care?
This is a stone cold killer, he's dying and his
last words save the children. Butcher, I don't care.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
The whole book, he keeps wondering, is this time to
the syndicate? And then they don't really.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
That doesn't ever say yeah not really. I mean I
guess we're supposed to just make the leap that, you know,
with with all the trucker unions and stuff, we're supposed
to just tie that into the syndicate in some fashion,
I guess, but it's never really there's a lot of
things in here that we'll talk about this. Does that
make a whole lot of sense? But like basically when
(20:10):
chapter two, he's he's meeting up with the guy from
White Hat and they give it. They give him the assignment,
which they say is right outside of Nick's home there
in Dayton, Ohio. There's been a there's been a mysterious
gas spewed over the community, killing one hundred people and
(20:34):
thousands of heads of livestock. So white Had wants a
butcher to go to Ohio to investigate the gas attack.
But you know, we're not going to send the FBI
or the CDC. We're not gonna send any of those people.
We're just gonna send the butcher, which totally makes sense.
And he's gonna drive it, but I don't know, I
don't know that area, So how far is it really
for They want him to drive. They don't want him
(20:55):
to go by plane. They want him to drive the
Turnpike from New York over to Dayton, Ohio. I mean,
isn't that like a ten or fifteen hour drive or something?
How long is that?
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Yeah, it's probably like ten.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I mean it's a long drive, yeah, but it.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Gives them time to warm up the CB.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Well, so you're talking like this ten hour drive or whatever.
And then it just so happens along the ten hour
drive that the truckers, the Terror truckers, spot Butcher on
the road and try to run him off the road
right outside of Dayton, right, I mean, because he's literally
like was he like nine hours and forty five minutes
into the trip, and then they finally spied him outside
(21:37):
of Dayton, and like, we're just run him off the road.
That's so what happened the other nine hours and forty
five minutes just nothing?
Speaker 2 (21:45):
He just listen to audiobooks.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Listen to The Butcher on audio. I guess, yeah, I
don't know. I just thought that was But what's really
interesting about this one is that he normally never has
a partner, so they're at they're actually in signing him
a partner named Philip Carey, which I thought was really
weird because in all the Butcher books that I've read.
He's never had anybody help from white hat. Can you
remember anytime that that's ever happened? Right? I guess I
(22:11):
should ask have you ever read a Butcher book before this?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
First one?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Okay, first one, but Nick, the book that you read,
I don't remember him ever having a partner?
Speaker 4 (22:21):
No, No, I read the Whodoo Horror?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, who do Horror? I've read like maybe four or
five of them, and he's never had a He's never
had a partner. So this was kind of weird that
they would just have this weird Philip Carey guys show
up and yeah, I think Butcher's been sent to like
Afghanistan and all over the world into these horrible places.
They've never sent anybody with him. But he's going to
a small farming community outside of dight't o Hi, Like
he's got to have a partner, Like, he just has
to have somebody with him.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
He's he has to have the partner because the partner
used to live there. And he understands these farm people.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Oh that's right, that's rights Afghanistan where he makes a
local time text.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
He's got that. But these crazy hicks back here, Yeah, okay, you.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Respect something about him then right away.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, I mean it started to be weird that he
hadn't shown up yet. I was thinking, like, Okay, why
is he not? Because as we get further into the book,
the Butcher's waiting to meet up with this Philip Carey
guy so they can talk about the mission, but he
never he doesn't. He starts not showing he's not showing up.
So Butcher's starting to wonder what's going on. But the
show chapter two, like I said, Butcher's driving down the road.
(23:30):
He gets ran off the road by tanker truck and
then he gets a lift into this little town called Burton,
which apparently is is there Is there a real Burton, Ohio?
Is that like a real place like outside of Dayton
or is that they just.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
I don't Yeah, I don't remember Burton. No. I thought
it was unnamed, the unnamed farm town.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
No, it's so small.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
It says it was named, and I don't think it exists.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Okay, he doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
He doesn't describe like sort of doesn't.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
He say it's like east of the northeast of Dayton
in alskirtsers.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I think so, yeah, and he ends up checking Yeah,
I think so. He ends up checking into this little
town of Burton, and he checks into the Dayton Motor Lodge,
So keep that in mind. The Dayton Motor Lodge, and
the guy that's running the front desk there tells him
that he should go to this local truck stop and
inquire there about the gas attacks or whatever is happening,
(24:24):
and he should go to this truck stop called Carter
Truck Stop and so and so he goes there next
and he thoughts on everything so far, Well, Nick, you.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
Go to Carter's trucks up all the time, right, Yeah, yeah, No,
I don't. I don't know what they're talking about. There
are some places that exist in this book that are real,
the Dayton Mall.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
So you're telling me there's a real Pittsburgh. There's a
real place called Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
There's a real town called Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Wow. So, like every Butcher book has to have the
origin story in the first chapter, I guess there's also
a requirement from the publisher that there has to be
at least one graphic sex scene in every book. Sometimes
there's two, but there has to be at least one.
(25:21):
And it's so it's so ridiculous how this starts I'm
trying to get through this, but it's just so stupid.
So he goes to the truck stop and he's like
trying to figure out who he wants to serve him
I guess or whatever, and he's like, I don't want
the fat He goes, I don't want the fat one
that's stumpy with bright yellow hair and round pink cheeks,
(25:45):
because I don't want that one. So I'm going to
go to this young girl who looks like she's eighteen
or nineteen. So he gets this girl named Sharon Carter,
which so happens. I guess her dad owns the truck stop.
So dumb. And he's talking to her and he has
the audacity he asked her out on a dinner date.
And he has the audacity to say to her, please
(26:07):
bring a toothbrush because quote, I'm most likely going to
ask you to spend the night, like I don't know
who you are. But that's pretty that's pretty bold. I
mean that's pretty.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
The whole really like scene with with him and her
is the most insane part of this book. I wish
I had like gotten more quotes, but it's within seconds
he's just like all in and he's all about it and.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Its yeah, it's like the second sentence and he just
starts off by looking her up and down like very
obviously basically like let's.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Go, Yeah, you're so funny. Well, when she's like.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
How often do you take none back? Or something depends
on the man, and he's like, how about this on herself? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Well she was he So she gets there at the
here's the other thing that makes no sense? So she
comes to the well at the truck stop. After he
asked her out, she says, yes, she's gonna meet it
for dinner. Later, he goes outside and realizes that there's
a trucker out there that's got the name Easy Trucking
(27:25):
Company Eli Edwards Z like Zebra Trucking Company out of Akron, Ohio.
And he ends up chatting with I guess the bad
guys on the CB radio and he disguises himself as
an Easy Trucking employee. So now he knows that the
trucking firm is the one behind the gas attack and
they're based out of Akron, or at least that's one
of their locations. And then when he gets this was
(27:48):
also kind of weird. But once he gets back to
the motor lodge. When he leaves the truck stop, he
goes back to the motor lodge waiting for Philip Carrey.
Philip Carey hasn't arrived yet, but he ends up finding
two Syndica guys there at his room, kind of just
rummaging through his stuff, and he ends up shooting both
of them, so you get the koushe as he kills it,
kills both of these guys and just leaves them for
(28:09):
dead in the in the motel room, and then he
calls the police and it's like, hey, these two people came,
I shot both of them, and the obviously the police
chief arrest him, so he has to go to jail.
But I mean, imagine this. You're first, you're only allowed
one phone call, supposedly, so you're you're allowed one phone call.
He ends up calling White Hat and White Cat's like,
(28:31):
he's our guy. Just let him go, Like he's killed
two people in your little farming community, but just let
him go. And the police chiefs are like, what this
you We can't just let him go, but yeah, he
has to. They just have to let him go, and
there's no questions asked. But in the book, in the book,
the police chief is described as being gross and overweight.
(28:52):
Now they described the police chief, but.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
There's a lot of that in.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
This Ye.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Have had something against large people.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yes, I noticed that as well. Any thoughts on him
killing these two guys and then just getting out of jail.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, even right afterwards when he hears the cop coming,
he's just like, oh, this is going to be a
deuce sence, he knows he's just going to get out
of it, and he's like, what a minor inconvenience?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
This is going to be pretty much. And they don't
really explain it, but I guess he gets a new
room because he's got he's just killed these two people.
They're probably there's probably blood everywhere, so I guess he
gets a new room. They don't really say, but anyway,
he just goes about his his day. He gets ends
up getting a call. This is where things get really weird.
He gets a call, as if they aren't already weird,
(29:46):
but he gets a call from when he gets out
of jail. He ends up getting a call from somebody
who says that they've got Philip, the guy he's yet
to meet. They've got him captured and for him to
come there, asked for ask for a guy named Robert,
and ask for a horse, so he can't get get
(30:09):
through the farm like he can't. Just I don't know
what what the purpose of the horse was exactly, but
he's supposed to go ask for a horse and ask
a guy named of Robert in order to get Philip.
But there's not gonna be any funny business, so don't
don't contact anybody. Just come here, get a horse, go
talk to Robert, and then we'll figure what's going on
with Philip. I mean, where do you guys think? What
(30:30):
were you guys thinking he was gonna end up happening here?
Do you think Philip was alive? Dead?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Like?
Speaker 1 (30:36):
What do you? I mean, obviously it's gonna be some
kind of trap, right.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
I yeah, I don't I don't remember that part. I
take notes of the main key points. For some reason,
I didn't take that down, and then I wrote afterwards
like something about a horse farm. And it almost feels
like a fever dream that happened because it didn't really
have been much to do with the story or anything,
and it was really weird and just shoved in there.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, I don't remember. I don't remember what I thought
was gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
I just remember thinking it was amusing that he shows
up and this horse guy like some old man and
he starts talking to him, like who are you? And
is this a trap? And what do you what is
this going on? He's like, yeah, old Man's like, I
don't know. They just told me to wait here, someone
asked Robert, and give him my horse.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yes exactly, that's literally what they told him. They said,
just wait here, and this guy's gonna show up and
ask about a horse. And Butcher goes there. I guess
he I guess he parks his car. I don't know.
He parks his car somewhere on the farm and then
he gets out. He goes over and asks the guy
for a horse, but the guy gives him. He gives
him the horse named red Wing. So the horse has
(31:40):
to be called red Wing. And he says that it's
a pretty frisky devil. And apparently there's a I guess,
a no no spot that you don't touch the horse on.
So there's like a no no spot, don't touch this
patch or else the horse will like lose its mind
and so on the trail. Butcher's riding his horse on
the trail and to ambush by these two guys. It's
(32:01):
always two, it's always two guys. So he gets ambushed
by two guys. They tell Butcher this whole thing was
a trap and that Philip's already dead, and then they
asked Butcher to get off his horse and to and
basically just stop asking questions. And one of the guys
goes around the side of the horse to I guess,
tie up Butcher or whatever, and Butcher already has a
switchblade out. He just like and just stabs the guy
(32:24):
immediately with a switch blade. And then the other guy's
like a and then he walks around as well. Butcher
reaches up to the no no spot on the horse,
and then the horse literally kicks the bad guy, and
the bad guy just goes flying, and then Butcher goes
on top of him and stabs him. And it's the
only time that I know of in any Butcher book
(32:46):
where a bad guy has been killed by horse.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Those statements, like, as soon as he starts telling him
about the horses, like little Button, I was like, this
is the most obnoxiously obvious.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah, don't yeah, just it's like a it's like a
little like a game button. It's like it's like a
special power. It's like in Mike Tyson's Punch Out when
you get the star and you can press a star
and starting and to hit the guy. That's what he's touched.
This little spot horse will do a special move and
and the horse doesn't stop kicking because Butcher's back there
cleaning off his knife and the horse almost kicks his
(33:25):
face off. So there's there's that as well. But at
the beginning of chapter five, they kind of give us
a summary that the Butcher has been in town two
and a half days and he's already killed six human beings.
Two and a half days, he's killed six people. So
that's like, I mean, it's like Jack Reacher. And then
(33:46):
next to sex. So Sharon calls Butcher from the lobby
and Butcher politely tells her to be a good girl
and asks the clerk to have room service send up
some drinks. He's at the motor lodge. Have you guys
ever been to any kind of motor lodge that has
a lobby that offers room service. It's not it's not
the taj Mahal here. It's a motor lodge. This doesn't
(34:10):
happen but Butcher decides to take a bath. I guess
after he's killed these two people at the farm, he's
he goes back, he takes a bath, and he gets
up and he's got his robe on, and she's he
just literally goes to the door with his robe on,
and she she has drinks. They start drinkings the drinks,
and he immediately, like Brian said, he immediately like goes
(34:33):
all in and she she reaches under his bathrobe and
she shivers and looks deeply into his eyes and says,
you're quite a man, mister Butcher. And then you and
then you get two pages of nasty, nasty, and then
and then Butcher's all done, and and he leaves. He
leaves Sharon unsatisfied because Sharon's like, wow, you are really fast.
(34:55):
And he's like, normally this like he's like, normally this
doesn't happen. He's like, I'm going good for two or
three rounds. But jeez, I mean it's just like this
whole like Brian, I think you were kind of looting this.
This whole thing was just really awkward. I mean, it's
just the whole part of it was just really weird.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
You know, I've been reading through the beginning of the
Executioner series two, like the first four or five I've
read now, and I don't know if this is like
a trend in these men's adventure books, but they just
they describe it the same way, like there's always a comment.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Like you didn't last very long.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
He's like, oh, like it doesn't matter in these books.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Like why it doesn't matter? Yeah, like, yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
I think he got his Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
The the bathroom scene, I like how it's a conscious
decision on his part. He's like, should I get dressed? No,
I wanted to see my hot body in this bathroom
when she comes up. I wish she has less of
an opportunity to be like, let's go to dinner first, right, Yeah,
And it works, it works, and he says, uh, says, oh,
(36:13):
I was hoping she was that kind of girl. She's
not one of them women's livers, not a lady with
hearts and flowers approach.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Yeah I saw that too. Yeah, yeah, he's he goes
right after it, and she's fine with it. And later,
as we find out, because they're going to go out
to dinner, so they're taking her car to the roadhouse
on the border of Ohio and Indiana. She has a
CBE radio, so she gives Butcher this bogus story about
(36:42):
her father running this trucking company and coordinating a bunch
of stuff. But ultimately when they arrive at the roadhouse,
Butcher realizes that she's involved in the whole thing, and
the roadhouse is empty, and that Sharon Carter is a
terror trucker the horror and well, two things. First, does
(37:04):
Sharon Carter have to put out at all? Like what's
the point of her even putting out at this point?
Like there's no point in it, And they could have
just easily, I guess just went to dinner or something.
There's another way that she could have done this to
get him killed or whatever she's trying to do. But
did you guys see that Sharon Carter was going to
be a bad girl, like that kind of bad girl.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
No, I didn't. I didn't expect it.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, I don't think I did either.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
But then, of course when they're driving to that place,
they have the silly scene in the car where she's
talking to the on the CB using all the trucker
lingo and he's like trying to understand what.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
They all mean.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, I kind of suspect. I was thinking, like maybe
it would be her dad that was behind it all,
and he would have to rescue her and she would
have to confront her dad as a bad guy, and
that would have been kind of cool. But they didn't
really go there. Road So, but she explains, she explains
(38:09):
that the whole plan is, which is just bonkers. But
she explains that the whole plan is that this little
terror truck or business is domestic terrorism. The idea is
to start with Dayton, Ohio. They're going to topple the
US government in Washington, DC by upsetting the entire economy.
And the reason I was just reading this, I was
(38:32):
certainly there's got to be more to it than that.
But the reason is, the reason is that they're sick
and tired of the high cost of living in America.
They're they're tired of eggs costing, you know, fourteen dollars
a dozen for eggs or whatever it was back then.
So she also says that something kind of I don't know,
it's kind of interesting in a way. She says, she's
that they're tired of the higher cost of living, and
(38:54):
she says something that's kind of like a hot debate
right now this year. I mean especially, it's something that
we've seen like the President talk about and other people
talk about. She explains that she's angry because there's like
billions of bushels of wheat and other farm products that
are made here in the US, but then they're exported
(39:16):
to other countries, some of them which are hostile countries,
are even what we would consider it to be like
enemy countries. But here at home, Americans are then forced
to pay extra for goods and even the food that
they grow right here. So the whole thing she feels
like is lopsided, and her only recourse is to destroy
the farming community, which will then let it be built
(39:36):
back in a proper way. I mean, I don't. I mean,
what she sounds like she's saying is she wants tariffs. Right,
So she's saying she wants tariffs in place to make
the prices equal out so they're not ripped off. But
I ain't touching politics on this show, so I'm going
to skip all that unless you guys want to touch that.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
But I thought, yeah, I was confused about it. I
was I read that when she was explaining. I was like,
it sounds like they were mad that they were selling
the food to other nations, so they're gonna kill all
the farmers. What are they talk about?
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, I mean her beef is that is what a
lot of people are talking about now? Is that? Like? Well,
like let's say I don't know, you grow we grow
oranges in Florida and we ship the oranges to like Germany. Well,
in turn, you know, Germany's government charges the tariff on
the people that made the ranges and ship them there.
(40:34):
Vice versa. Let's say Germany ships a Mercedes Benz to us.
The tariff that we're going to charge on the on
the Mercedes Benz would be a lot less than what
the Germans are charging us. So it's a lofside, which
is something they talk about all the time. They're like, well,
it's not really fair that they're charging us more than
what we would charge them. That's kind of what she's
(40:55):
hinting at here is why are we being ripped off
on our our goods that were making here but every
all these other countries are getting our goods at a
lot less rate. So that's like the farmers are getting
paid enough. I guess, but there's a better way to
do it than just to just kill the farmers.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
You're strewing these people back here.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
We might be trying to make more sense of this
than Stewart Jason did.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Maybe darn Stewart Jason doesn't even understand. But Butcher. He
says that a trade the trades are needed with other countries,
and that the trade war will doom the entire earth.
And Butcher is then tied up in a chair and
he's just he's just left there. There's no real explanation
of what they wanted to do to him. He's just
left in this empty restaurant, tied to a chair, and
(41:43):
Sharon and the bad guys just they just leave. I
mean they're they're they're going to gam They're gonna gass him.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Yeah, that's that. When he overheard the first CB call
from top Dog when he was hiding in the truck,
the first one, that's what the the message was, like, Yoda,
we're going to Indiana and we're gonna unleash this.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Okay, So where he's at in the restaurant is just
part of the whole area that they're going to gas. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
got it. Okay, so he's tied up there. This is
where Timmy Martin and his dog Lassie show up and
the butcher becomes literally a Laski book right from here,
from here on out, this is an episode of Freaking Lassie.
(42:27):
This is the craziest thing.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
The second half was written by des Yes Deancons.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, there's a boy and his dog. The boy's name
is Limb l e. M. And his dog is called
Old Ben. I think it's Ben, Old Ben. They show
up at the restaurant or wherever it's at, and they
limb unties butcher and then he goes and gets this
bayaler or something and they park it in front of
the road so the trucker trucks can't get through to
(42:54):
go gas to the community. And then uh so they
stop the tanker truck from from gasing the butcher. He
then learns that there was a leak at White Hat
and that this Philip Carrey guy was the one behind
the whole thing. He's like a real guy and he
was leaking information from White Hat, which is why he's
not showed up yet. He's the bad guy. And then
(43:17):
he also finds out that the police are all involved
in it. As well, And I can't remember the police
chief's part of it as well too. The police chief
he's in on the racket. Yeh, he was Okay, he
wasn't a part of it. It was just the others I thought.
Didn't Until the end, I'm kind of skipping, like some
of the parts. Well, I mean, they stopped the tanker
(43:37):
truck and then they discover that I mean, there wasn't
There isn't just a I mean, the first eighty or
ninety pages is where the goods are. But then after
that you're just like, well, you find out that Philip
Carrey was the guy that was leaking the information, and
then they end up eventually finding out that the whole operation,
(43:59):
which is another thing that makes no sense. They found
out that the operation is out of Pittsburgh, right, so
the action goes from the Ohio location, it goes over
to Pittsburgh. Guts followed me so far. So they're in
Pittsburgh and the butcher he shows up in Pittsburgh and
he's just walking down the street apparently close to the
(44:19):
headquarters of Easy Trucking, I guess, but it's so random
because he's just walking down the street to Easy trucking
and he gets he gets assaulted by these two guys
who are Syndicate hitman. Just like the first chapter. It's
literally the exact same thing that happened in the first
chapter with these two syndicate guys saying, hey, they want
to get the bounty on. I mean, none of this
(44:41):
has anything to do with the book, right, These two
guys have nothing to do with They're just they're just.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
It was weird because it was in the middle of
the climax, like He's about to find out who's behind
all of it, and then we got to stop and
deal with this because I actually wanted to know. I
didn't know who it was.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
I yeah, yeah, He's going to Pittsburgh to basically wrap
the whole thing up, and then along the way he
runs into these two guys that say, hey, they want
to get in on the on the well, the Butcher
runs into them, and then he knows who they are
because they apparently abuse these two girls back in the day,
and Butcher has always been wanting to get back at him,
so he ends up kushkusho. He cushes both of them,
(45:23):
and and he shows up. He goes into the headquarters
and of course, Limb and the dog show up to
basically save the day. I mean, and I don't understand
any of this because white Hat lets Limb and the
dog just kind of be like just participants. I guess
(45:45):
in a way, they just like, he can come along
and just as long as he doesn't get in any trouble,
doesn't get in a way, we'll just let him watch
the festivities. And so lim shows up with the dog
and they end up saving the day. And that's pretty
much it. I mean, I know it's skipping a bunch
as we get closer to the hour, but I was
(46:05):
skipping some of it. But that's the first hat. The
first eighty pages pretty much sets up the rest, and
then you're just the rest of us just filling the blank.
But what do you guys think.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
I'm interested for?
Speaker 3 (46:16):
You know, you guys, you've read some after this, because
they talk a lot about like Butcher wanting Lem to
be like an agent for White Hat, like he's like
the next big prodigy for White Hat according to Butcher.
And as someone who's read further, is he in this ever?
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Again? I mean, you haven't read all of them.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
But not that I'm aware of, No, No.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
And yeah, Yeah, that was hilarious. It was like and
it wasn't even after the end. It was after the
first time when he saves Butcher from the roadhouse, he's like,
he's being white hat. This guy's great.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, like anything, he just like found, Wow.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
You what you're doing here? I'm gonna cut these ropes, assassins.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
You should join this covert organization that fights worldwide terror
because you can untie people from chairs, and you're surprising
that you're a farm boy who can drive big, heavy
farm equipment across the road to block truckers.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
So yeah, and then he's there's a whole discussion in
his head about feeling guilty for like the life that
he's leading this kid towards.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Why it tries to get kind of deep, and we
really don't want that. So the thing with the thing
with Butcher is when I first read the first couple,
I was thinking this was going to be like, you know,
like an Executioner type of series where it was gonna
be kind of a little more serious, or like a
Phoenix Phoenix Force kind of thing where it would be
(47:54):
a little bit more serious. And then I read the
first one and I hated it because it was just
so goofy. And then I read like the second or
third one and I thought, okay, these are just stupid.
Like I was just like, these are just dumb. But
I ended up talking to Steven Burtz, he wrote a
lot of executioner books, and he was telling me, you're
looking at it all wrong. Eric. He's like, the Butcher
is pulp. I was like, but it was it's from
(48:16):
the seventies and it's a pinnacle like that's all Mac
Bowlan type of stuff. He's like no, He's like, you're
missing it. He's like, this is written in a pulp style.
Butcher is a pulp hero. I was like, ah. I
was like, well, if I look at it that way,
this totally makes sense. So then I read another one
right after that and I was say, okay, so if
I look at it as a pulp thing where none
of this is really going to be any close to reality,
(48:39):
then you're like, okay, well then I can appreciate it
a little bit more and I can understand the cush
parts now and that kind of thing. So looking at
it like that, you guys feel like this is more
like a pulp story that you would read like you know,
black Bat or a you know, Doc Savage something like that.
What do you think should it be? Should it be
more like Mac Bowlan or should we just look at
(48:59):
it even though it's modern to be just another pulp
hero kind of just over the top Paul hero.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
This might be a hot take, but I remember as
I was reading this, thinking, man, this is so much
more fun than the Executioner books.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Okay, Okay, well that's good.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
That's just what I like. And I know that this
is like trash and it's not technically good. I mean,
we just broke that down.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
But like it's so much more entertaining to read because
sometimes in a Mac Bowlin there's so much just like
mafia politics and I'm just like, come on, let's go,
Whereas with this, it's just like, I mean, it's nonsense,
but it's fun nonsense. So I think you put the
nail on the head as to what it is that
I was liking.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
About it, right, Yeah, And Nick, I think we've talked
about this before, like there's no reason why any of
us should be wasting time reading anything when there's you know,
there's Donald Hamilton books to read, there's you know, John
d McDonald, like amazing books, right, amazing men's action adventure
or vintage crime fiction that we should be reading, Like
(50:06):
if we haven't read all of you know, you know,
I'm trying to think that. I can't think of the
guy's name. But if we if we haven't been writing
reading all the great crime fiction stuff, why don't we
even bother reading stuff like this? But like you said before, Nick,
it's just fun. It's just fun to read trash. Yeah,
like that's that's just more fun than reading you know,
(50:29):
Steinbeck for example, or or Ornest Amy. Way we want
to read trash. It's just it's more.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
Fun, absolutely, Yeah, it's it doesn't take any mental effort
to read this stuff. Yeah, and it's funny, you know,
like the ridiculousness of it.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:49):
I know, I always been like I could write this,
and that makes me feel better. I like to stay
down at the bottom with the other bottom dwellers.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:58):
You know, when you read like Maxill and Collins, you're like,
I could never write this.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, and yeah, I mean I I yeah, I will
say that it's easier to review trash than it like
I just read, like I'll like almost like a literary
book about this This guy in Ireland who's having an
affair with this guy's wife. And it's great book, an amazing book.
I can't wait to write a reviewer. But it's going
to take time to write the review because there's so
many things that the author is saying in it where
I could I could type up this Butcher review in
(51:29):
like maybe three minutes, you know, thirty, So it is
it is fun in that way, But I guess as
a reader, I mean, obviously we get in the moods
where we want to read something serious, we want to
read something that's pretty high brow, and then we want
to read something that's this bottom shelf trash. But is
it is it fair to say, like if you if
(51:50):
from the author's standpoint, is it is it really fair
to say the Butcher is trash? Or is it more
just it's pulp? I mean, you wouldn't necessarily you wouldn't
necessarily say yeah, the Black battis trash. You would just
say it's a pulp classic. Should we be saying The
Butcher's a pulp classic or should we just be calling
it trash? M I don't really know.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
I don't know that I've read enough pulp to like
know the true pulp stories to be able to accurately compare.
But I guess, you know, that's breaking down the author's
intent at that point, Like did he intend on emulating
pulp style or was he just trying to make a
paycheck and didn't know how to write?
Speaker 2 (52:29):
I mean, we don't know, right, right, But but I
see what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (52:33):
Yeah, I mean, we take the word trash because it
has the negative connotation that people are into literature and stuff,
they say that's trash, that's trash, and it's sort of
like we enjoy it. So we're taking it back and
we're owning it. And now we're saying, like this trash
is awesome, and I would much rather read this trash
(52:54):
than John Steinbeck, which is actual.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
You know what I'm saying, right, yeah, yeah, And I
talk about this all the time, but when I was
talking to Ralph Hayes, who's wrote like the Zillion Men's
Action of venture novels, a bunch of action books, and
he was saying that he hates when journalists and critics
say that genre fiction is trash. Oh, it's just gothic suspense,
(53:20):
or that's just a romantic suspense. It's it's this genre,
it's just garbage. But he in his defense, he was saying,
everything you read is genre. He was saying, even Ernest
Hemingway is genre. He's like, it's not really fair to
say genre fiction is bad or trash. Everything you read
is is genre. I mean everything we read has to
have a genre, right, I mean, it just isn't It
(53:40):
just doesn't exist. It has to fit into something, whether
it's you know, if you're reading a romance book and
sent World War two. I mean you think that you
could say it's a romance. You could say it's a
World War two fiction, or military history or military fiction.
So everything fits. So I guess for me personally, I
just consider this to be pulp, and I just I
stick it in the pulp bin in my mind that
that's what it is, and I don't try to get
(54:02):
anything else out of it. But I don't read a lot.
I mean I've read, like I said, I read six
or seven of them. I don't read them all the time.
There's plenty to read. There's thirty you think there's thirty
four books, but there's nothing. There's nothing else like this
that I know of that Pinnacle did in the seventies.
That was this pulpy. I mean it was like what
you were saying, Brian was going to be like syndicate,
(54:24):
you know, intricacies of the mob things like that, or
you actually have to almost keep a character lisk in
your mind of who's who and who's doing what and
that kind of thing. There's always like one mob guy
is trying to kill off another mob guy. Right, it's
always territory. So would you guys, uh, do you guys
recommend this book to anybody? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (54:45):
For sure, I'm going to give good reviews.
Speaker 4 (54:50):
This is what Yeah, this is what we live for here.
This is yeah, this kind of stuff we enjoyed talking about.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
This is kind of why I named my channel bad
Taste Books, is because I I like books that most
people think are of bad taste, Like people like, let's
go back to the trash things, like most people would
call this trash. And I'm you know, I like this.
I don't care what you guys think of it. This
is like, this is my thing. Yeah, this is the
stuff I enjoy And you know, objectively, is it good?
(55:18):
Like intellectually I maybe not, but it's fun.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
It's fun for me. Yeah makes sense. Yeah, I mean
if you're if you like B movie stuff, if you're
a fan of like puppet Master and Cellar Dweller and
all that kind of stuff, then I think you should
check this out. It's it's a lot of fun. If
you like men's action adventure in general, I think there's
probably enough action here to sustain you. If you like
(55:41):
even adult westerns, I think there's probably some kind of
little Western theme going here with this guy riding a
horse and getting laid. So he's even even a fast draws.
He's even quick drawing. He's doing fast draws on the
bad guys. So yeah, so so wait, two thumbs up
from everybody on this book. Two thumbs up, one thumb up.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (56:00):
A thumb and a half?
Speaker 4 (56:01):
Yeah, mb and a half. I wouldn't go too full,
too full thombs.
Speaker 1 (56:06):
Yeah, I'll go a thumb. I guess I'll do one,
all right. So Yeah, my wife hates when I do this.
I'm I have so it's my thumb er here, so
I have this. Yeah she hates that. Yeah, she hates it.
Six gross Well. In in closing, what are you guys
(56:30):
currently reading? What are you reading right now?
Speaker 3 (56:37):
I just finished Michael McDowell's Blackwater, and I'm just reading
I'm quickly reading in my next entry in the animalph
series before I go onto something else.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
So cool.
Speaker 4 (56:48):
Nice, I am reading The Parasaurians Robert Wells, the that
sci fi book. That's that we're doing on the next
episode of the Elusive Exclusive Books Society.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (57:02):
It's like Dinosaurs meets Westworld.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
That sounds really fun. Actually, I'm reading I guess young
adult nineties young adult horror on Love It Avon. It's
an Avon book from nineteen Is that what it is?
Avon Flair.
Speaker 4 (57:23):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (57:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. Avon Flair nineteen ninety
one by Catherine Jensen, who writes, says Nicole Davidson. So
I'm reading this book.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
I have that one. There's a yeah, winter Kill and
Winter Crash or something. Isn't there like a sequel to that?
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Is there a sequel?
Speaker 2 (57:40):
I think?
Speaker 3 (57:40):
So I have both of them somewhere, but oh yeah,
I can't remember. I think it's winter Kill and Winter
Crash or something.
Speaker 2 (57:47):
I have both of them. I haven't read that though.
Speaker 1 (57:49):
It's uh, you know, it's young adult. But there's already
I mean, they talk about sex, they talk about alcohol,
and there's the brutal murder has already happened, So I
don't know if it's really that different and what I
normally read with horror.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
So there's a lot of good stuff in the nineties
young adult horror. Nick's a little judgie, but it's perfect Dick.
Speaker 1 (58:09):
Do you ever watch like the ninety slasher stuff like
I know what you did last summer scream Disturbing Behavior,
Well it wasn't really slasher, but any of those kind
of movies.
Speaker 4 (58:18):
Yeah, I mean I saw those. I saw them when
they came out.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
I would say Brian has had a pretty good representation
on film of what you can expect from these kind
of Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
I think so. And I mean I get the next
not into it. It's for me, it's and I'm surprised
you're reading it. It's very much nostalgia for people my age.
I mean, we grew up with those kinds of books,
and so going back to them is now, I don't know,
it hits a little button in that in your head,
a little nostalgia button.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
So yeah, Well, I was born in seventy six, so
I in fact, I've got a couple of point horror
paperbacks that I bought from from the school affairs, you know.
So yeah, yeah, cool, Well this was fun. Let's do
it again. It's been an hour, it's been going all right. Yeah,
thanks for yeah, thanks for coming on again. That's Brian
(59:06):
with Bad Taste Books Nick with the Book Graveyard. Be
sure to check them out and I will catch you
next time with another one of these conversation videos. Take care,
Hello. Hello, I'm Eric and I represent the Paperback Warrior podcast,
YouTube channel and blog. Every few weeks I do a
special episode under the banner of Conversations. This is a
collaboration with authors, publishers, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, pretty much anyone
foolish enough to waste away their valuable time talking about books,
(00:22):
you know, make believe stuff, mostly old books at that,
so that's even worse. But today I found two people
who enjoy wasting valuable time as well. They like to
talk about old books. My guests today are YouTubers. Two
of them here, I've got Nick from the Book Graveyard
and Brian from Bad Taste Books. Yeah, guys, why don't
you tell viewers and listeners a little bit about your
channel and why they should tune in and waste time
(00:44):
with you? Brian want you?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Why don't you go First's good question. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, I just kind of hang out talking about books.
I like all kinds of genres, from crime and men's
adventure and horror and sci fi and fantasy and just
old old paperbacks. I think they're fun. If you've ever
watched Nick at the Book Graveyard, I kind of think
of myself as like the Dollar Store version of his champ.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Okay, all right, I'd like, okay, that's cool. Thanks, all right, Nick.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
You well, I thought I was already on the clearance rack.
I didn't know if you did any lower.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
So yeah, I like to waste my time, your time.
I'm talking about vintage genre fiction. I enjoy old paperback books.
I don't really read too much new stuff. I like
old stuff. I like the pre Internet and uh yeah,
(01:46):
the more exploitive the better, more schlocky, the better. I
I enjoyed, uh B movies and that kind of led
me down the path to this unending wealth. Osrie.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Very cool, very cool. And you like Ghostbusters and The
Golden Child because you talk about those movies a lot.
That's your jam, it is, it is, okay, all right,
all right. Well, today's episode is a collaboration review to
discuss the nineteen seventy seven novel The Terror Truckers. And
(02:24):
this is book number twenty six in the Butcher series.
There you go, Brian's got it. He's got the paperback
right there. We'll talk about the main character, his origin
so forth, because the very first chapter of all the
Butcher books has his origin and how he's conceived in
(02:45):
that kind of thing. But so obviously the name of
this book, the Terror Truckers, means that it involves truckers,
you know, tractor trailers, eighteen wheelers, whatever people want to
call them. Optimus Prime isn't in the book, I guess,
because he wasn't invented at this point. So no Optimist Prime, unfortunately.
But to make up for it, there is trucker LINGO.
(03:07):
I guess our CB radio slang. I guess that's what
you call it. I don't even know, but uh. In
one scene, the butcher gets like the lowdown on CB
slang and what some of the different definitions are. So
I wanted to kick us off with like asking you
guys some funny little terms for that I that I've
either seen in the book or that I just researched.
(03:27):
And I was gonna ask each of you, like to
guess what these things mean. Is that cool?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I thought would be fun. I had no idea what
some of these words. I don't even know if any
of this stuff is actually even true, but I don't know.
But all right, So, Brian, I'm gonna hit you first,
and if you missed the guest, then Nick, you can
chime in, But Nick, what does having a seat cover
refer to If the trucker says he has a seat cover,
(03:54):
what does that refer to me? Yeah, yeah, you can
go se cover.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, he picked up he picked up a hitchhiker?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Close but wrong, Nick, you want to go?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
Is it? Is it? Is it a hooker? I?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
No, not really?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
A lot lizard? Is it a lot lizard? Eric?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
This means it's a female passenger. So just a female passenger.
So that's what it means. Nick. How about what is
the term shaking hands with shorty mean shaking hands? Was
shorty shaking hands with shorty?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Does it mean they have to down shift or something?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
No? No, Brian, what do you got.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Shaking hands? I don't know. They're being tailed by a
by a cop.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
No, it means peeing.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Okay, it makes my that's.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Kind of insulting, huh.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
For some people. All right, Brian, what's your guess on
what and on what? An angry kangaroo is an angry kangaroo?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I don't even know where to start with that one.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Maybe just a driver who's you know, blaring their horn
at them.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It could be I guess, but no, kind of kind
of sort of it not really. How about you, Nick,
which what's your best guess on that angry kangar?
Speaker 4 (05:33):
Yeah? That was gonna be my guest too, an angry kangaroo.
What else could it be?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah? Yeah, we think it would be boxing, like an
angry kangaroo boxing. But yeah, it means that it's a
tractor trailer with one or both of its headlights out.
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Yeah, in what way does that represent a kangaroo?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I don't know. Maybe it's the boxing the kangaro is
there's one length, there's two. I don't that scene just
make sense? Nick? How about the term bear in the sky,
bear in the.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Sky, thunderstorm, bad weather, tornado?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Brian, how about you take a guess at it with
think about smoky and the bear, so bear smoking in
the bear so bear in the sky.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
There's smoke in the sky nearby?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, Nick, cop, Yeah, aircraft or helicopter doing a radar
in the sky. So bear in the sky can also
mean eye in the sky. Yep, let's see, Brian. What
about smiling? Comb your hair? You better smile and comb
your hair.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
That means the CoP's gonna get you, right, Yep?
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Means there's a there's a there's splits up ahead. They're
gonna a radar. It's just so dumb, Nick, What is
go Go Go go girls on the dance floor? Go
go girls on the dance floor?
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Does it mean it's really Wendy that's shaken all around?
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I mean you would think so, but no, No, I
don't know, Brian. What do you think.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
There there are uh, there's a car driving with some
attractive ladies in it nearby.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Nope, it's I do I like that though, but no,
it's a livestock truck hauling animals. How that figures into good?
Go Go girls in the dance floor? Is a livestock
truck hauling animals? All right? Brian, take a guess on
this one.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Because the animals are having a hard time standing up straight,
like you know, yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Know, yeah, maybe there's just yeah that makes sense. Okay,
I got I can see that, then, Brian. A pregnant
roller skate. Pregnant roller skate?
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Uh, large man on a motorcycle.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That's awesome. That's actually that's not it. That's not it. Nick.
You want to.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Guess is it an oversized load?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
No, it's a Volkswagen beetle car better? Yeah, yeah, yours
this better? Yeah? All right, last couple, Nick, what's a
pickle park? Pickle park containing rest up containing if you were.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
I don't know, I don't know what's allowed on your
channel here, Eric.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
You could just go for it. I would say, if
you're going to park your pickle, the rest stop has
yeah those yeah, yeah, So that's as opposed to just
a regular rest stop, it would be a pickle park.
And then let's see, Brian, if I said to you
you're on one's donkey, what would that mean? You're on
(09:20):
one's donkey?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
You're tailing someone too close on there?
Speaker 1 (09:24):
There you go, there you go. You got it. That
that one makes That's probably the only one here that
really makes a who lot of sense. All right, Nick,
you're getting the last one because this last one plays
into the book at the very beginning. The bad guy
tells Butcher thermos bottle. What's thermos bottle mean?
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Thermost bottle is the uh the tanker with the gas
in it?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yep, you got it. Yep, tanker truck, tanker truck. Oh
let me do, let me do one more. Because Brian
texted us like a few weeks back, I don't know
if Brian still remembers this, but he said, he said,
Haircut Palace. Do you remember what hair her cup houses?
What's that I do?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
That was one of my favorite ones I've been.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
I told my wife that the other day when we
were driving, they watch over hair Cut House. It's uh,
when the the low hanging overpass because it might kind
of cut the top of your truck off.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, a little off the top? Yeah, all right cool.
So yeah, so let's jump into this book again. It's
Butcher number twenty six, The Terror Truckers, published by Pinnacle
in October nineteen seventy seven. My wife gets a kick
out of the Butcher in general, because for this was
probably like two or three years, I had every Butcher
(10:35):
paperback except one. So every time we would go into
a bookstore because she always goes with me, and she's
got like a list of books that she always checks
for me that she's always looking to see if they
have the Butcher. So she gets a kick out of
the Butcher. She's always like the Butcher number whatever. But anyway,
there was the books have Stuart Jason on the covers.
(10:56):
Of course, Stuart Jason's just a house name. Most of
the first twenty six books the Butcher were written by
a guy named James Dockery. I think Lee Foran wrote
a couple, but this book that we're talking about today,
Tara Truck or Tara Trucker's, was written by James Dockery.
And it was interesting. I was reading on Joe Joe
Kenney's Glorious Trash website that it would take Pinnacle almost
(11:20):
two years or just a little over two years to
resume the series because this was Dockery's last Truck or
last Butcher installment and he left the series. So Pinnacle
takes two years to try to find out who they
want to write the series, and they finally they tapped
Michael Avaloni to start writing the books in December of
nineteen seventy nine, so about twenty six months later they
(11:43):
finally resumed to write publishing these books. Michael Avaloni wrote
the last nine installments and then if you've read the
review of I think this is number thirty. I think
it's thirty four. I think on the blog the series
just ends like there's no resolution, there's no John, you know,
pay out or anything like that. The book just ends,
so there's nothing really special about it. But every Butcher
(12:07):
book always begins the exact same way. It's with the
origin story at the very beginning of chapter one, and
then it'll kind of go into his whole mission. But Nick,
I think you've you've read Butcher book or two before this.
What's the general idea behind Butcher.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Well, Butcher was an orphan. He was left on the
doorstep of a orphanage in Tennessee, and then at the
age of ten, he falls asleep in a railroad car
and wakes up in Chicago. He's a street kid and
he befriends the son of a syndicate man, a mafia man,
(12:55):
and the mafia man's son has leukemia and dies, so
the kid, yeah, the kid dies, and then Booker is adopted.
So he is raised by the syndicate and becomes muscle
and rises through the ranks until he's at the top.
(13:17):
And then when he's at the top, he decides that
he looks back on his life and has decided that
he doesn't like what he's done and all the ways
that he's gained his wealth and riches. So he decides
to quit the syndicate, which they don't allow, but he
doesn't care because he's tough, right, And he's approached by
(13:43):
a secret government government organization named White Hat and they
ask him to come join the organization. Yeah, and he says, sure,
why not. I'm gonna, you know, make up for all
this bad stuff I did. But two things is you're
not awed to pay me. I will not be paid.
And I do things my way, so he's not going
(14:05):
to follow any rules. He has three names. The first
is his real name, Booker, which is the only he
only has one name. He's like, share, do you think
I don't know? There was a weather guy on the
news here and that was his last name, and that's
how they said it. So that's how I see it.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Okay, I pronounced butcher. They just put a T in
there to make it the real word butcher.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yeah, now they say Booker.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
But it's but it's a meteorologist. I mean, if you're
a meteorologist, you really want to go out there telling
people about a tornado, your name's Butcher.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
They could have changed it, who knows, So he was
named Booker. I see, Hey.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Wait aboute what if it What if it could be Bobby,
like Bobby Bouchetchet like that could.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Be that'd be the uh yeah, the Cajun version of it.
But he was named after a sixteenth century German Protestant
and herbrist named Booker.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Who knows so.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Then in the mafia his name is the Butcher and
in white Hat his code name is Iceman.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
And he only has one name because his original adopted
parent like forgot to give him.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
No, it was the reverend. He was an alcoholic. He
was an alcoholic, and he was he was wasted, and
the welfare guy came in and he was like, what's
his name? And like, I just I don't know Booker whatever.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Do you guys know of any other series, like long
running series like this that literally says the exact same
thing in the first chapter of every book. I mean,
you get this whole spill. It's like fifteen pages in
every book.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
A word for word or do they change minor details
to make it pertinent to the current story.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I don't think it's word for word, but I think
it's pretty much the exact same thing every single book.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
I do know that the Anamorphs series that like what
middle grade series from the nineties, the first chapter of
every book is not word for word the same, but
it's pretty dang close as they set up the whole
because they wanted it to be standalone.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, but in reality, you can't read those standalone. They
wouldn't make sense, but they do that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Can imagine like if if they like Batman, like the
comic book Batman, like for you know what, eighty years
of every little issue, like the first two pages, that's
the origin, that'll be crazy.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Yeah, And they explain Hawk's background in everyone, but it's
not right away like that, it's not just obvious, but
they do. They do drop it in there. It reminds
me of Quantum Leap. Did you watch Quantum Leap?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Yeah, well they had to, like they had to explain
it at the beginning of every before the music would start.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yes, yeah, stepping into the bottomly accelerator. Yeah, yeah, that's
what I mean. Shows ever that's great. Yeah. So every
every first chapter also includes at least one or two
syndicate guys trying to cash in on the money the bounty.
So they try to kill Butcher at the beginning of
(17:23):
every book, and in this case, the same thing. And
they always have like stereotypical names always, so it's like
Pete Mazzoli in this one, it's Stud Lorenzo and Stud Lorenzo.
They both show up to try to kill Butcher, and
of course he has a Walther P thirty eight, which
he's always talking about, and it shoots nine millimeters dumb
(17:43):
dumb bullets, which just means he's taken the bullet and
he's carved an X on the end of it, so
it kind of spreads out when it hits someone. But
it's written in a pulp style because every time he
kills someone, it says koushe it says yeah in italics
with a like an explanation mark or I don't know. So,
(18:06):
so basically, you guys have anything else? But chapter one
is is that? And then he kills the two guys
that are trying to kill him, and that's pretty much
it for well, then he also the last guy, the
second guy that he kills, He kills off Mizzoli and
Stude Lorenzo, who have no bearing on the story whatsoever.
But one of those guys, I think it's a Missouri
says thermos bottle to Butcher. Butcher's like, what is he
(18:28):
talking about? Thermist bottle? But later we find out that
that plays into the actual story, right.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I do like how nonchalant he is after he kills
those two guys and then meets his boss at the
diner's you're a little late and he's like yeah, he's like.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
No big deals.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
I like that he describes one of the guys as
a sweaty hog stuffed with red spaghetti.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yes, I took I actually took a picture of that page,
because like, that's I've never seen that before.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
I have a question. I don't are we talking spoilers here?
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Might as well. I mean, anybody who's going to read
The Butcher pretty much knows what's going to happen anyway, right, So.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
I have a I have a question. I kept waiting
for Thermos Bottel to come back around. How this mob
guy was right? What is he? Was he warning it?
How does he even know? It has nothing to do
with the syndicate at all?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:31):
No, how would this guy even know? Why would he care?
This is a stone cold killer, he's dying and his
last words save the children. Butcher, I don't care.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
The whole book, he keeps wondering, is this time to
the syndicate? And then they don't really.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
That doesn't ever say yeah not really. I mean I
guess we're supposed to just make the leap that, you know,
with with all the trucker unions and stuff, we're supposed
to just tie that into the syndicate in some fashion,
I guess, but it's never really there's a lot of
things in here that we'll talk about this. Does that
make a whole lot of sense? But like basically when
(20:10):
chapter two, he's he's meeting up with the guy from
White Hat and they give it. They give him the assignment,
which they say is right outside of Nick's home there
in Dayton, Ohio. There's been a there's been a mysterious
gas spewed over the community, killing one hundred people and
(20:34):
thousands of heads of livestock. So white Had wants a
butcher to go to Ohio to investigate the gas attack.
But you know, we're not going to send the FBI
or the CDC. We're not gonna send any of those people.
We're just gonna send the butcher, which totally makes sense.
And he's gonna drive it, but I don't know, I
don't know that area, So how far is it really
for They want him to drive. They don't want him
(20:55):
to go by plane. They want him to drive the
Turnpike from New York over to Dayton, Ohio. I mean,
isn't that like a ten or fifteen hour drive or something?
How long is that?
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Yeah, it's probably like ten.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I mean it's a long drive, yeah, but it.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Gives them time to warm up the CB.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Well, so you're talking like this ten hour drive or whatever.
And then it just so happens along the ten hour
drive that the truckers, the Terror truckers, spot Butcher on
the road and try to run him off the road
right outside of Dayton, right, I mean, because he's literally
like was he like nine hours and forty five minutes
into the trip, and then they finally spied him outside
(21:37):
of Dayton, and like, we're just run him off the road.
That's so what happened the other nine hours and forty
five minutes just nothing?
Speaker 2 (21:45):
He just listen to audiobooks.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Listen to The Butcher on audio. I guess, yeah, I
don't know. I just thought that was But what's really
interesting about this one is that he normally never has
a partner, so they're at they're actually in signing him
a partner named Philip Carey, which I thought was really
weird because in all the Butcher books that I've read.
He's never had anybody help from white hat. Can you
remember anytime that that's ever happened? Right? I guess I
(22:11):
should ask have you ever read a Butcher book before this?
Speaker 2 (22:13):
First one?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Okay, first one, but Nick, the book that you read,
I don't remember him ever having a partner?
Speaker 4 (22:21):
No, No, I read the Whodoo Horror?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, who do Horror? I've read like maybe four or
five of them, and he's never had a He's never
had a partner. So this was kind of weird that
they would just have this weird Philip Carey guys show
up and yeah, I think Butcher's been sent to like
Afghanistan and all over the world into these horrible places.
They've never sent anybody with him. But he's going to
a small farming community outside of dight't o Hi, Like
he's got to have a partner, Like, he just has
to have somebody with him.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
He's he has to have the partner because the partner
used to live there. And he understands these farm people.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Oh that's right, that's rights Afghanistan where he makes a
local time text.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
He's got that. But these crazy hicks back here, Yeah, okay, you.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Respect something about him then right away.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, I mean it started to be weird that he
hadn't shown up yet. I was thinking, like, Okay, why
is he not? Because as we get further into the book,
the Butcher's waiting to meet up with this Philip Carey
guy so they can talk about the mission, but he
never he doesn't. He starts not showing he's not showing up.
So Butcher's starting to wonder what's going on. But the
show chapter two, like I said, Butcher's driving down the road.
(23:30):
He gets ran off the road by tanker truck and
then he gets a lift into this little town called Burton,
which apparently is is there Is there a real Burton, Ohio?
Is that like a real place like outside of Dayton
or is that they just.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
I don't Yeah, I don't remember Burton. No. I thought
it was unnamed, the unnamed farm town.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
No, it's so small.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
It says it was named, and I don't think it exists.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Okay, he doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
He doesn't describe like sort of doesn't.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
He say it's like east of the northeast of Dayton
in alskirtsers.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I think so, yeah, and he ends up checking Yeah,
I think so. He ends up checking into this little
town of Burton, and he checks into the Dayton Motor Lodge,
So keep that in mind. The Dayton Motor Lodge, and
the guy that's running the front desk there tells him
that he should go to this local truck stop and
inquire there about the gas attacks or whatever is happening,
(24:24):
and he should go to this truck stop called Carter
Truck Stop and so and so he goes there next
and he thoughts on everything so far, Well, Nick, you.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
Go to Carter's trucks up all the time, right, Yeah, yeah, No,
I don't. I don't know what they're talking about. There
are some places that exist in this book that are real,
the Dayton Mall.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
So you're telling me there's a real Pittsburgh. There's a
real place called Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
There's a real town called Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Wow. So, like every Butcher book has to have the
origin story in the first chapter, I guess there's also
a requirement from the publisher that there has to be
at least one graphic sex scene in every book. Sometimes
there's two, but there has to be at least one.
(25:21):
And it's so it's so ridiculous how this starts I'm
trying to get through this, but it's just so stupid.
So he goes to the truck stop and he's like
trying to figure out who he wants to serve him
I guess or whatever, and he's like, I don't want
the fat He goes, I don't want the fat one
that's stumpy with bright yellow hair and round pink cheeks,
(25:45):
because I don't want that one. So I'm going to
go to this young girl who looks like she's eighteen
or nineteen. So he gets this girl named Sharon Carter,
which so happens. I guess her dad owns the truck stop.
So dumb. And he's talking to her and he has
the audacity he asked her out on a dinner date.
And he has the audacity to say to her, please
(26:07):
bring a toothbrush because quote, I'm most likely going to
ask you to spend the night, like I don't know
who you are. But that's pretty that's pretty bold. I
mean that's pretty.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
The whole really like scene with with him and her
is the most insane part of this book. I wish
I had like gotten more quotes, but it's within seconds
he's just like all in and he's all about it and.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Its yeah, it's like the second sentence and he just
starts off by looking her up and down like very
obviously basically like let's.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Go, Yeah, you're so funny. Well, when she's like.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
How often do you take none back? Or something depends
on the man, and he's like, how about this on herself? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Well she was he So she gets there at the
here's the other thing that makes no sense? So she
comes to the well at the truck stop. After he
asked her out, she says, yes, she's gonna meet it
for dinner. Later, he goes outside and realizes that there's
a trucker out there that's got the name Easy Trucking
(27:25):
Company Eli Edwards Z like Zebra Trucking Company out of Akron, Ohio.
And he ends up chatting with I guess the bad
guys on the CB radio and he disguises himself as
an Easy Trucking employee. So now he knows that the
trucking firm is the one behind the gas attack and
they're based out of Akron, or at least that's one
of their locations. And then when he gets this was
(27:48):
also kind of weird. But once he gets back to
the motor lodge. When he leaves the truck stop, he
goes back to the motor lodge waiting for Philip Carrey.
Philip Carey hasn't arrived yet, but he ends up finding
two Syndica guys there at his room, kind of just
rummaging through his stuff, and he ends up shooting both
of them, so you get the koushe as he kills it,
kills both of these guys and just leaves them for
(28:09):
dead in the in the motel room, and then he
calls the police and it's like, hey, these two people came,
I shot both of them, and the obviously the police
chief arrest him, so he has to go to jail.
But I mean, imagine this. You're first, you're only allowed
one phone call, supposedly, so you're you're allowed one phone call.
He ends up calling White Hat and White Cat's like,
(28:31):
he's our guy. Just let him go, Like he's killed
two people in your little farming community, but just let
him go. And the police chiefs are like, what this
you We can't just let him go, but yeah, he
has to. They just have to let him go, and
there's no questions asked. But in the book, in the book,
the police chief is described as being gross and overweight.
(28:52):
Now they described the police chief, but.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
There's a lot of that in.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
This Ye.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Have had something against large people.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yes, I noticed that as well. Any thoughts on him
killing these two guys and then just getting out of jail.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, even right afterwards when he hears the cop coming,
he's just like, oh, this is going to be a
deuce sence, he knows he's just going to get out
of it, and he's like, what a minor inconvenience?
Speaker 1 (29:26):
This is going to be pretty much. And they don't
really explain it, but I guess he gets a new
room because he's got he's just killed these two people.
They're probably there's probably blood everywhere, so I guess he
gets a new room. They don't really say, but anyway,
he just goes about his his day. He gets ends
up getting a call. This is where things get really weird.
He gets a call, as if they aren't already weird,
(29:46):
but he gets a call from when he gets out
of jail. He ends up getting a call from somebody
who says that they've got Philip, the guy he's yet
to meet. They've got him captured and for him to
come there, asked for ask for a guy named Robert,
and ask for a horse, so he can't get get
(30:09):
through the farm like he can't. Just I don't know
what what the purpose of the horse was exactly, but
he's supposed to go ask for a horse and ask
a guy named of Robert in order to get Philip.
But there's not gonna be any funny business, so don't
don't contact anybody. Just come here, get a horse, go
talk to Robert, and then we'll figure what's going on
with Philip. I mean, where do you guys think? What
(30:30):
were you guys thinking he was gonna end up happening here?
Do you think Philip was alive? Dead?
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Like?
Speaker 1 (30:36):
What do you? I mean, obviously it's gonna be some
kind of trap, right.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
I yeah, I don't I don't remember that part. I
take notes of the main key points. For some reason,
I didn't take that down, and then I wrote afterwards
like something about a horse farm. And it almost feels
like a fever dream that happened because it didn't really
have been much to do with the story or anything,
and it was really weird and just shoved in there.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, I don't remember. I don't remember what I thought
was gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
I just remember thinking it was amusing that he shows
up and this horse guy like some old man and
he starts talking to him, like who are you? And
is this a trap? And what do you what is
this going on? He's like, yeah, old Man's like, I
don't know. They just told me to wait here, someone
asked Robert, and give him my horse.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yes exactly, that's literally what they told him. They said,
just wait here, and this guy's gonna show up and
ask about a horse. And Butcher goes there. I guess
he I guess he parks his car. I don't know.
He parks his car somewhere on the farm and then
he gets out. He goes over and asks the guy
for a horse, but the guy gives him. He gives
him the horse named red Wing. So the horse has
(31:40):
to be called red Wing. And he says that it's
a pretty frisky devil. And apparently there's a I guess,
a no no spot that you don't touch the horse on.
So there's like a no no spot, don't touch this
patch or else the horse will like lose its mind
and so on the trail. Butcher's riding his horse on
the trail and to ambush by these two guys. It's
(32:01):
always two, it's always two guys. So he gets ambushed
by two guys. They tell Butcher this whole thing was
a trap and that Philip's already dead, and then they
asked Butcher to get off his horse and to and
basically just stop asking questions. And one of the guys
goes around the side of the horse to I guess,
tie up Butcher or whatever, and Butcher already has a
switchblade out. He just like and just stabs the guy
(32:24):
immediately with a switch blade. And then the other guy's
like a and then he walks around as well. Butcher
reaches up to the no no spot on the horse,
and then the horse literally kicks the bad guy, and
the bad guy just goes flying, and then Butcher goes
on top of him and stabs him. And it's the
only time that I know of in any Butcher book
(32:46):
where a bad guy has been killed by horse.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Those statements, like, as soon as he starts telling him
about the horses, like little Button, I was like, this
is the most obnoxiously obvious.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah, don't yeah, just it's like a it's like a
little like a game button. It's like it's like a
special power. It's like in Mike Tyson's Punch Out when
you get the star and you can press a star
and starting and to hit the guy. That's what he's touched.
This little spot horse will do a special move and
and the horse doesn't stop kicking because Butcher's back there
cleaning off his knife and the horse almost kicks his
(33:25):
face off. So there's there's that as well. But at
the beginning of chapter five, they kind of give us
a summary that the Butcher has been in town two
and a half days and he's already killed six human beings.
Two and a half days, he's killed six people. So
that's like, I mean, it's like Jack Reacher. And then
(33:46):
next to sex. So Sharon calls Butcher from the lobby
and Butcher politely tells her to be a good girl
and asks the clerk to have room service send up
some drinks. He's at the motor lodge. Have you guys
ever been to any kind of motor lodge that has
a lobby that offers room service. It's not it's not
the taj Mahal here. It's a motor lodge. This doesn't
(34:10):
happen but Butcher decides to take a bath. I guess
after he's killed these two people at the farm, he's
he goes back, he takes a bath, and he gets
up and he's got his robe on, and she's he
just literally goes to the door with his robe on,
and she she has drinks. They start drinkings the drinks,
and he immediately, like Brian said, he immediately like goes
(34:33):
all in and she she reaches under his bathrobe and
she shivers and looks deeply into his eyes and says,
you're quite a man, mister Butcher. And then you and
then you get two pages of nasty, nasty, and then
and then Butcher's all done, and and he leaves. He
leaves Sharon unsatisfied because Sharon's like, wow, you are really fast.
(34:55):
And he's like, normally this like he's like, normally this
doesn't happen. He's like, I'm going good for two or
three rounds. But jeez, I mean it's just like this
whole like Brian, I think you were kind of looting this.
This whole thing was just really awkward. I mean, it's
just the whole part of it was just really weird.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
You know, I've been reading through the beginning of the
Executioner series two, like the first four or five I've
read now, and I don't know if this is like
a trend in these men's adventure books, but they just
they describe it the same way, like there's always a comment.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Like you didn't last very long.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
He's like, oh, like it doesn't matter in these books.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Like why it doesn't matter? Yeah, like, yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
I think he got his Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
The the bathroom scene, I like how it's a conscious
decision on his part. He's like, should I get dressed? No,
I wanted to see my hot body in this bathroom
when she comes up. I wish she has less of
an opportunity to be like, let's go to dinner first, right, Yeah,
And it works, it works, and he says, uh, says, oh,
(36:13):
I was hoping she was that kind of girl. She's
not one of them women's livers, not a lady with
hearts and flowers approach.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Yeah I saw that too. Yeah, yeah, he's he goes
right after it, and she's fine with it. And later,
as we find out, because they're going to go out
to dinner, so they're taking her car to the roadhouse
on the border of Ohio and Indiana. She has a
CBE radio, so she gives Butcher this bogus story about
(36:42):
her father running this trucking company and coordinating a bunch
of stuff. But ultimately when they arrive at the roadhouse,
Butcher realizes that she's involved in the whole thing, and
the roadhouse is empty, and that Sharon Carter is a
terror trucker the horror and well, two things. First, does
(37:04):
Sharon Carter have to put out at all? Like what's
the point of her even putting out at this point?
Like there's no point in it, And they could have
just easily, I guess just went to dinner or something.
There's another way that she could have done this to
get him killed or whatever she's trying to do. But
did you guys see that Sharon Carter was going to
be a bad girl, like that kind of bad girl.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
No, I didn't. I didn't expect it.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah, I don't think I did either.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
But then, of course when they're driving to that place,
they have the silly scene in the car where she's
talking to the on the CB using all the trucker
lingo and he's like trying to understand what.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
They all mean.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, I kind of suspect. I was thinking, like maybe
it would be her dad that was behind it all,
and he would have to rescue her and she would
have to confront her dad as a bad guy, and
that would have been kind of cool. But they didn't
really go there. Road So, but she explains, she explains
(38:09):
that the whole plan is, which is just bonkers. But
she explains that the whole plan is that this little
terror truck or business is domestic terrorism. The idea is
to start with Dayton, Ohio. They're going to topple the
US government in Washington, DC by upsetting the entire economy.
And the reason I was just reading this, I was
(38:32):
certainly there's got to be more to it than that.
But the reason is, the reason is that they're sick
and tired of the high cost of living in America.
They're they're tired of eggs costing, you know, fourteen dollars
a dozen for eggs or whatever it was back then.
So she also says that something kind of I don't know,
it's kind of interesting in a way. She says, she's
that they're tired of the higher cost of living, and
(38:54):
she says something that's kind of like a hot debate
right now this year. I mean especially, it's something that
we've seen like the President talk about and other people
talk about. She explains that she's angry because there's like
billions of bushels of wheat and other farm products that
are made here in the US, but then they're exported
(39:16):
to other countries, some of them which are hostile countries,
are even what we would consider it to be like
enemy countries. But here at home, Americans are then forced
to pay extra for goods and even the food that
they grow right here. So the whole thing she feels
like is lopsided, and her only recourse is to destroy
the farming community, which will then let it be built
(39:36):
back in a proper way. I mean, I don't. I mean,
what she sounds like she's saying is she wants tariffs. Right,
So she's saying she wants tariffs in place to make
the prices equal out so they're not ripped off. But
I ain't touching politics on this show, so I'm going
to skip all that unless you guys want to touch that.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
But I thought, yeah, I was confused about it. I
was I read that when she was explaining. I was like,
it sounds like they were mad that they were selling
the food to other nations, so they're gonna kill all
the farmers. What are they talk about?
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Yeah, I mean her beef is that is what a
lot of people are talking about now? Is that? Like? Well,
like let's say I don't know, you grow we grow
oranges in Florida and we ship the oranges to like Germany. Well,
in turn, you know, Germany's government charges the tariff on
the people that made the ranges and ship them there.
(40:34):
Vice versa. Let's say Germany ships a Mercedes Benz to us.
The tariff that we're going to charge on the on
the Mercedes Benz would be a lot less than what
the Germans are charging us. So it's a lofside, which
is something they talk about all the time. They're like, well,
it's not really fair that they're charging us more than
what we would charge them. That's kind of what she's
(40:55):
hinting at here is why are we being ripped off
on our our goods that were making here but every
all these other countries are getting our goods at a
lot less rate. So that's like the farmers are getting
paid enough. I guess, but there's a better way to
do it than just to just kill the farmers.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
You're strewing these people back here.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
We might be trying to make more sense of this
than Stewart Jason did.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Maybe darn Stewart Jason doesn't even understand. But Butcher. He
says that a trade the trades are needed with other countries,
and that the trade war will doom the entire earth.
And Butcher is then tied up in a chair and
he's just he's just left there. There's no real explanation
of what they wanted to do to him. He's just
left in this empty restaurant, tied to a chair, and
(41:43):
Sharon and the bad guys just they just leave. I
mean they're they're they're going to gam They're gonna gass him.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Yeah, that's that. When he overheard the first CB call
from top Dog when he was hiding in the truck,
the first one, that's what the the message was, like, Yoda,
we're going to Indiana and we're gonna unleash this.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Okay, So where he's at in the restaurant is just
part of the whole area that they're going to gas. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
got it. Okay, so he's tied up there. This is
where Timmy Martin and his dog Lassie show up and
the butcher becomes literally a Laski book right from here,
from here on out, this is an episode of Freaking Lassie.
(42:27):
This is the craziest thing.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
The second half was written by des Yes Deancons.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, there's a boy and his dog. The boy's name
is Limb l e. M. And his dog is called
Old Ben. I think it's Ben, Old Ben. They show
up at the restaurant or wherever it's at, and they
limb unties butcher and then he goes and gets this
bayaler or something and they park it in front of
the road so the trucker trucks can't get through to
(42:54):
go gas to the community. And then uh so they
stop the tanker truck from from gasing the butcher. He
then learns that there was a leak at White Hat
and that this Philip Carrey guy was the one behind
the whole thing. He's like a real guy and he
was leaking information from White Hat, which is why he's
not showed up yet. He's the bad guy. And then
(43:17):
he also finds out that the police are all involved
in it. As well, And I can't remember the police
chief's part of it as well too. The police chief
he's in on the racket. Yeh, he was Okay, he
wasn't a part of it. It was just the others I thought.
Didn't Until the end, I'm kind of skipping, like some
of the parts. Well, I mean, they stopped the tanker
(43:37):
truck and then they discover that I mean, there wasn't
There isn't just a I mean, the first eighty or
ninety pages is where the goods are. But then after
that you're just like, well, you find out that Philip
Carrey was the guy that was leaking the information, and
then they end up eventually finding out that the whole operation,
(43:59):
which is another thing that makes no sense. They found
out that the operation is out of Pittsburgh, right, so
the action goes from the Ohio location, it goes over
to Pittsburgh. Guts followed me so far. So they're in
Pittsburgh and the butcher he shows up in Pittsburgh and
he's just walking down the street apparently close to the
(44:19):
headquarters of Easy Trucking, I guess, but it's so random
because he's just walking down the street to Easy trucking
and he gets he gets assaulted by these two guys
who are Syndicate hitman. Just like the first chapter. It's
literally the exact same thing that happened in the first
chapter with these two syndicate guys saying, hey, they want
to get the bounty on. I mean, none of this
(44:41):
has anything to do with the book, right, These two
guys have nothing to do with They're just they're just.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
It was weird because it was in the middle of
the climax, like He's about to find out who's behind
all of it, and then we got to stop and
deal with this because I actually wanted to know. I
didn't know who it was.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
I yeah, yeah, He's going to Pittsburgh to basically wrap
the whole thing up, and then along the way he
runs into these two guys that say, hey, they want
to get in on the on the well, the Butcher
runs into them, and then he knows who they are
because they apparently abuse these two girls back in the day,
and Butcher has always been wanting to get back at him,
so he ends up kushkusho. He cushes both of them,
(45:23):
and and he shows up. He goes into the headquarters
and of course, Limb and the dog show up to
basically save the day. I mean, and I don't understand
any of this because white Hat lets Limb and the
dog just kind of be like just participants. I guess
(45:45):
in a way, they just like, he can come along
and just as long as he doesn't get in any trouble,
doesn't get in a way, we'll just let him watch
the festivities. And so lim shows up with the dog
and they end up saving the day. And that's pretty
much it. I mean, I know it's skipping a bunch
as we get closer to the hour, but I was
(46:05):
skipping some of it. But that's the first hat. The
first eighty pages pretty much sets up the rest, and
then you're just the rest of us just filling the blank.
But what do you guys think.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
I'm interested for?
Speaker 3 (46:16):
You know, you guys, you've read some after this, because
they talk a lot about like Butcher wanting Lem to
be like an agent for White Hat, like he's like
the next big prodigy for White Hat according to Butcher.
And as someone who's read further, is he in this ever?
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Again? I mean, you haven't read all of them.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
But not that I'm aware of, No, No.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
And yeah, Yeah, that was hilarious. It was like and
it wasn't even after the end. It was after the
first time when he saves Butcher from the roadhouse, he's like,
he's being white hat. This guy's great.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah, like anything, he just like found, Wow.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
You what you're doing here? I'm gonna cut these ropes, assassins.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
You should join this covert organization that fights worldwide terror
because you can untie people from chairs, and you're surprising
that you're a farm boy who can drive big, heavy
farm equipment across the road to block truckers.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
So yeah, and then he's there's a whole discussion in
his head about feeling guilty for like the life that
he's leading this kid towards.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Why it tries to get kind of deep, and we
really don't want that. So the thing with the thing
with Butcher is when I first read the first couple,
I was thinking this was going to be like, you know,
like an Executioner type of series where it was gonna
be kind of a little more serious, or like a
Phoenix Phoenix Force kind of thing where it would be
(47:54):
a little bit more serious. And then I read the
first one and I hated it because it was just
so goofy. And then I read like the second or
third one and I thought, okay, these are just stupid.
Like I was just like, these are just dumb. But
I ended up talking to Steven Burtz, he wrote a
lot of executioner books, and he was telling me, you're
looking at it all wrong. Eric. He's like, the Butcher
is pulp. I was like, but it was it's from
(48:16):
the seventies and it's a pinnacle like that's all Mac
Bowlan type of stuff. He's like no, He's like, you're
missing it. He's like, this is written in a pulp style.
Butcher is a pulp hero. I was like, ah. I
was like, well, if I look at it that way,
this totally makes sense. So then I read another one
right after that and I was say, okay, so if
I look at it as a pulp thing where none
of this is really going to be any close to reality,
(48:39):
then you're like, okay, well then I can appreciate it
a little bit more and I can understand the cush
parts now and that kind of thing. So looking at
it like that, you guys feel like this is more
like a pulp story that you would read like you know,
black Bat or a you know, Doc Savage something like that.
What do you think should it be? Should it be
more like Mac Bowlan or should we just look at
(48:59):
it even though it's modern to be just another pulp
hero kind of just over the top Paul hero.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
This might be a hot take, but I remember as
I was reading this, thinking, man, this is so much
more fun than the Executioner books.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Okay, Okay, well that's good.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
That's just what I like. And I know that this
is like trash and it's not technically good. I mean,
we just broke that down.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
But like it's so much more entertaining to read because
sometimes in a Mac Bowlin there's so much just like
mafia politics and I'm just like, come on, let's go,
Whereas with this, it's just like, I mean, it's nonsense,
but it's fun nonsense. So I think you put the
nail on the head as to what it is that
I was liking.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
About it, right, Yeah, And Nick, I think we've talked
about this before, like there's no reason why any of
us should be wasting time reading anything when there's you know,
there's Donald Hamilton books to read, there's you know, John
d McDonald, like amazing books, right, amazing men's action adventure
or vintage crime fiction that we should be reading, Like
(50:06):
if we haven't read all of you know, you know,
I'm trying to think that. I can't think of the
guy's name. But if we if we haven't been writing
reading all the great crime fiction stuff, why don't we
even bother reading stuff like this? But like you said before, Nick,
it's just fun. It's just fun to read trash. Yeah,
like that's that's just more fun than reading you know,
(50:29):
Steinbeck for example, or or Ornest Amy. Way we want
to read trash. It's just it's more.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
Fun, absolutely, Yeah, it's it doesn't take any mental effort
to read this stuff. Yeah, and it's funny, you know,
like the ridiculousness of it.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:49):
I know, I always been like I could write this,
and that makes me feel better. I like to stay
down at the bottom with the other bottom dwellers.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:58):
You know, when you read like Maxill and Collins, you're like,
I could never write this.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Yeah, and yeah, I mean I I yeah, I will
say that it's easier to review trash than it like
I just read, like I'll like almost like a literary
book about this This guy in Ireland who's having an
affair with this guy's wife. And it's great book, an amazing book.
I can't wait to write a reviewer. But it's going
to take time to write the review because there's so
many things that the author is saying in it where
I could I could type up this Butcher review in
(51:29):
like maybe three minutes, you know, thirty, So it is
it is fun in that way, But I guess as
a reader, I mean, obviously we get in the moods
where we want to read something serious, we want to
read something that's pretty high brow, and then we want
to read something that's this bottom shelf trash. But is
it is it fair to say, like if you if
(51:50):
from the author's standpoint, is it is it really fair
to say the Butcher is trash? Or is it more
just it's pulp? I mean, you wouldn't necessarily you wouldn't
necessarily say yeah, the Black battis trash. You would just
say it's a pulp classic. Should we be saying The
Butcher's a pulp classic or should we just be calling
it trash? M I don't really know.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
I don't know that I've read enough pulp to like
know the true pulp stories to be able to accurately compare.
But I guess, you know, that's breaking down the author's
intent at that point, Like did he intend on emulating
pulp style or was he just trying to make a
paycheck and didn't know how to write?
Speaker 2 (52:29):
I mean, we don't know, right, right, But but I
see what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (52:33):
Yeah, I mean, we take the word trash because it
has the negative connotation that people are into literature and stuff,
they say that's trash, that's trash, and it's sort of
like we enjoy it. So we're taking it back and
we're owning it. And now we're saying, like this trash
is awesome, and I would much rather read this trash
(52:54):
than John Steinbeck, which is actual.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
You know what I'm saying, right, yeah, yeah, And I
talk about this all the time, but when I was
talking to Ralph Hayes, who's wrote like the Zillion Men's
Action of venture novels, a bunch of action books, and
he was saying that he hates when journalists and critics
say that genre fiction is trash. Oh, it's just gothic suspense,
(53:20):
or that's just a romantic suspense. It's it's this genre,
it's just garbage. But he in his defense, he was saying,
everything you read is genre. He was saying, even Ernest
Hemingway is genre. He's like, it's not really fair to
say genre fiction is bad or trash. Everything you read
is is genre. I mean everything we read has to
have a genre, right, I mean, it just isn't It
(53:40):
just doesn't exist. It has to fit into something, whether
it's you know, if you're reading a romance book and
sent World War two. I mean you think that you
could say it's a romance. You could say it's a
World War two fiction, or military history or military fiction.
So everything fits. So I guess for me personally, I
just consider this to be pulp, and I just I
stick it in the pulp bin in my mind that
that's what it is, and I don't try to get
(54:02):
anything else out of it. But I don't read a lot.
I mean I've read, like I said, I read six
or seven of them. I don't read them all the time.
There's plenty to read. There's thirty you think there's thirty
four books, but there's nothing. There's nothing else like this
that I know of that Pinnacle did in the seventies.
That was this pulpy. I mean it was like what
you were saying, Brian was going to be like syndicate,
(54:24):
you know, intricacies of the mob things like that, or
you actually have to almost keep a character lisk in
your mind of who's who and who's doing what and
that kind of thing. There's always like one mob guy
is trying to kill off another mob guy. Right, it's
always territory. So would you guys, uh, do you guys
recommend this book to anybody? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (54:45):
For sure, I'm going to give good reviews.
Speaker 4 (54:50):
This is what Yeah, this is what we live for here.
This is yeah, this kind of stuff we enjoyed talking about.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
This is kind of why I named my channel bad
Taste Books, is because I I like books that most
people think are of bad taste, Like people like, let's
go back to the trash things, like most people would
call this trash. And I'm you know, I like this.
I don't care what you guys think of it. This
is like, this is my thing. Yeah, this is the
stuff I enjoy And you know, objectively, is it good?
(55:18):
Like intellectually I maybe not, but it's fun.
Speaker 1 (55:21):
It's fun for me. Yeah makes sense. Yeah, I mean
if you're if you like B movie stuff, if you're
a fan of like puppet Master and Cellar Dweller and
all that kind of stuff, then I think you should
check this out. It's it's a lot of fun. If
you like men's action adventure in general, I think there's
probably enough action here to sustain you. If you like
(55:41):
even adult westerns, I think there's probably some kind of
little Western theme going here with this guy riding a
horse and getting laid. So he's even even a fast draws.
He's even quick drawing. He's doing fast draws on the
bad guys. So yeah, so so wait, two thumbs up
from everybody on this book. Two thumbs up, one thumb up.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (56:00):
A thumb and a half?
Speaker 4 (56:01):
Yeah, mb and a half. I wouldn't go too full,
too full thombs.
Speaker 1 (56:06):
Yeah, I'll go a thumb. I guess I'll do one,
all right. So Yeah, my wife hates when I do this.
I'm I have so it's my thumb er here, so
I have this. Yeah she hates that. Yeah, she hates it.
Six gross Well. In in closing, what are you guys
(56:30):
currently reading? What are you reading right now?
Speaker 3 (56:37):
I just finished Michael McDowell's Blackwater, and I'm just reading
I'm quickly reading in my next entry in the animalph
series before I go onto something else.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
So cool.
Speaker 4 (56:48):
Nice, I am reading The Parasaurians Robert Wells, the that
sci fi book. That's that we're doing on the next
episode of the Elusive Exclusive Books Society.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (57:02):
It's like Dinosaurs meets Westworld.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
That sounds really fun. Actually, I'm reading I guess young
adult nineties young adult horror on Love It Avon. It's
an Avon book from nineteen Is that what it is?
Avon Flair.
Speaker 4 (57:23):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (57:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. Avon Flair nineteen ninety
one by Catherine Jensen, who writes, says Nicole Davidson. So
I'm reading this book.
Speaker 3 (57:33):
I have that one. There's a yeah, winter Kill and
Winter Crash or something. Isn't there like a sequel to that?
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Is there a sequel?
Speaker 2 (57:40):
I think?
Speaker 3 (57:40):
So I have both of them somewhere, but oh yeah,
I can't remember. I think it's winter Kill and Winter
Crash or something.
Speaker 2 (57:47):
I have both of them. I haven't read that though.
Speaker 1 (57:49):
It's uh, you know, it's young adult. But there's already
I mean, they talk about sex, they talk about alcohol,
and there's the brutal murder has already happened, So I
don't know if it's really that different and what I
normally read with horror.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
So there's a lot of good stuff in the nineties
young adult horror. Nick's a little judgie, but it's perfect Dick.
Speaker 1 (58:09):
Do you ever watch like the ninety slasher stuff like
I know what you did last summer scream Disturbing Behavior,
Well it wasn't really slasher, but any of those kind
of movies.
Speaker 4 (58:18):
Yeah, I mean I saw those. I saw them when
they came out.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
I would say Brian has had a pretty good representation
on film of what you can expect from these kind
of Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
I think so. And I mean I get the next
not into it. It's for me, it's and I'm surprised
you're reading it. It's very much nostalgia for people my age.
I mean, we grew up with those kinds of books,
and so going back to them is now, I don't know,
it hits a little button in that in your head,
a little nostalgia button.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
So yeah, Well, I was born in seventy six, so
I in fact, I've got a couple of point horror
paperbacks that I bought from from the school affairs, you know.
So yeah, yeah, cool, Well this was fun. Let's do
it again. It's been an hour, it's been going all right. Yeah,
thanks for yeah, thanks for coming on again. That's Brian
(59:06):
with Bad Taste Books Nick with the Book Graveyard. Be
sure to check them out and I will catch you
next time with another one of these conversation videos. Take care,
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