BUSTED BOOTLEG
A Red Jackal Mystery
By Jonathan W. Sweet
A Brick Pickle Pulp
152 pgs
Of all the New Pulp avengers now battling from various publishers, one of our personal favorites is Jonathan W. Sweet’s Red Jackal. It is as if Sweet mixed up old classic pulp heroes with comic characters. Where as the Jackal is a whole lot like both Bruce Wayne, aka, Batman and Britt Reid, aka the Green Hornet. He’s actually Blake Randolph, a big city publisher and handsome man-about-town. Whereas his crime fighting methods are based on ancient Egyptian skills he learned while traveling abroad.
In this adventure, Red Jackal takes on several Minnesota based criminal gangs who are trying to fix college football games. As ever aided by his brother, Daniel, his chauffeur Geoffrey and police Lt. MacDaniels, Randolph has his hands full in this face paced actioner. Kudos to writer Sweet, who, although his main characters are fictitious, sets them against real Minnesota history, to include famous criminal personas.
In all a really fun read that is packaged along with a bonus short story at the back, “The Hell Bus.” We also what to give a worth shout out to the folks responsible for this entry interior illustrations. They were quite effective in adding to the drama.
