Earl Norman

The Earl Norman books are becoming extremely rare, and publishers don’t seem to be interested in reprinting the series. The only way some of us may ever have all the stories is for collectors to scan and type the stories into PDF to swap with other collectors. I have already completed PDFs of HANG ME IN HONG KONG and KILL ME IN ROPPONGI. I am working on KILL ME IN YOKOSUKA. If other collectors would do the same for some of the other books, we could eventually have PDFs of all ten books. Why not help? I can be contacted at fadingshadows40@gmail.com

Monday, July 22, 2019

A Piece of Something Big

“A Piece of Something Big” by Harry Reed: Curtis Kruger is locked up in an Arizona jail when a mob lawyer bails him out and brings him to California where he’s to do a job for the mob capo B.J. Baldoni. Baldoni claims that his daughter is enamored with a black boxer, and he wants Kruger to beat the boxer up. Kruger may be small, but he has a kung fu iron fist. While serving in the Navy in Japan Kruger had boxed, but after discharge remained in Japan to study karate, eventually calcifying one of his hands into a deadly weapon. He does beat up the black boxer, but that gentleman ends up dead from the strike of an iron fist, and Kruger is tagged with his murder. There is a lot of mystery behind what is going on. Thankfully, Kruger has a buddy in the police department who knew him in the Navy, and believes he is being set up. In fact, there is a Japanese karate expert with an iron hand in the background who wants Kruger dead, and he’s waiting around to do the killing himself. There is quite a bit of karate in the action, and even the background reminds the reader of Burns Bannion, an ex Army Ranger who stayed in Japan to study karate. I’m sure the Bannion novels were a model for this novel, and it is a good story. The book was published in 1972, shortly after the Bannion run, and copyright by Josephine Reed, which may mean Harry was dead by the time the book was released. That, or Josephine Reed wrote the book, which I highly doubt. The writing is too masculine. It is a very good read.

1 comment:

  1. Saint miguel archangel fight pray for us, saint joseph pray for us, mother goes ahead of all my needs

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