Judgement (aka .357 Vigilante):

This series interests me greatly. To give my reaction to this first entry into the .357 Vigilante series, I should mention that I read the second book in the series, Make Them Pay, back in 2007. My review then (http://scottsbookshelf.blogspot.com/2007/10/book-review-357-vigilante-2-make-the.....) remarked on how campy, over-the-top, and tongue-in-cheek the series appeared to be, which caused disagreement between the two co-authors of the series when it was released under the name Ian Ludlow. Lewis Perdue agreed with my assessment ("It was SUPPOSED to be over-the-top bad."), while Lee Goldberg defended the series as a "light satire" of men's action series.

Now to the present, where the original three volumes of .357 Vigilante have been reprinted as eBooks - along with the fourth unpublished entry in the short-lived series - as The Jury series by Lee Goldberg. While I have no information as to why Perdue's name is not connected, my assumption is that rights were reverted to or purchased by Goldberg (or he's a silent partner, who knows), who is now cranking out books left and right. Be sure to check out his Amazon page or website for the latest.

So, the reason for this backstory just to review .357 Vigilante, aka Judgement? Because there is a serious shift in tone from the first book to the second that I was not aware of when reviewing the second novel (yet another reason not to jump into a series mid-stream). .357 Vigilante/Judgement plays the genre straight in this origin story, which includes the introduction of Mr. Jury/.357 Vigilante hero Brett Macklin - is that a crime-fighting name or what? - whose personal loss turns him into a one-man jury. (Doesn't it always?) Gone are the cheesy puns and inventive criminal take-downs; this is kill-or-be-killed action-adventure vigilante pulp adventure fiction through and through. Not that there aren't the typical Men's Adventure genre cliches involved that might be taken less than seriously. Besides the usual Tragic-Event-Creates-Vigilante trope, there's the Religious Leader/Criminal Mastermind plot hat wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a)So predictable, b)So cliche, and c)Anti-climactic with the expected over-the-top showdown at the end. Add to this an epilogue with a Mayor/Vigilante meeting that is very reminiscent to the Police Chief/Vigilante plot setup of Death Wish 3, and you have a beginning of the .357 Vigilante/Judgement series that is NOT purposely campy and tongue-in-cheek like Make Them Pay/Adjourned, but only because it seems to lack the self-awareness to do so.

If .357 Vigilante/Judgement was meant to be "light satire" of Men's Adventure novels, it feels as if the satire aspect gave way to direct mimicry in the first book, then bottomed out into dead-pan parody in the second. Oddly enough, this doesn't make either of them less enjoyable, just enjoyable in different ways that both work well in such a pseudo-serious genre. If you can't enjoy the absurdity of it all, you don't deserve justice!

Adjourned (aka Make Them Pay):

This is the first book in the series I've read, and I am now eagerly searching out the others, as this book definitely falls in the category of So Bad It's Good.

This short-lived series was apparently ghost written by Lee Goldberg and Lewis Perdue under the series pen name of Ian Ludlow. After lengthy consideration, I have come to the conclusion that this series was written completely tongue-in-cheek, and was meant to be a mockery of Vigilante Men's Action Series such as The Executioner and The Destroyer, with an obvious nod to the Death Wish/Dirty Harry influences as well. I base this theory on the fact that a) Both authors still make a living writing and would therefore hopefully have a better grasp of good and bad concepts, and b) There is no way that it should have taken two people to write this slim series of nonsensical scenes.

There is simply too much corniness to fully cover. Brett Macklin, our heroic vigilante, is a professional pilot with his own air charter company. His father was apparently killed in the first novel by some street hooligans, and since he wiped them out he's been itching to get back into the vengeance business. He's given the opportunity right away when he investigates a supposed child pornographer for the Chief of Police that condones vigilante justice, and in the process botches a tail bad enough to be identified. The next morning his beautiful nurse girlfriend, after a night of smothering each other's naked bodies with ice cream and screwing on the kitchen counter, is blown up in a car bomb meant for him.

Even with a newly dead loved one to seek vengeance over, Brett is still weary of becoming Judge, Jury, and Executioner. Two out of three isn't bad though, and he settles for having an outside party oversee his Vigilante Prosecution, the position of .357 Judge filled by a bitter ex-judge who now acts as the TV Host/Arbiter on a bizarre show that is a cross between People's Court and Let's Make a Deal. Having trivialized the concept of due process beyond comprehension, our favorite vigilante is now free to seek justice/vengeance without guilt or plot complication.

Even so, Macklin still manages to find time between getting his girlfriend killed and killing the bad guys to endanger the lives of other friends and loved ones, bed a hot Latino reporter who is convinced that he is Mr. Jury (the press is apparently better at naming action novel series than the publishers themselves), and dispatch the numerous perpetrators of other crimes that happen to occur in his path.

The punchlines delivered by Mr. Jury whenever he exacts justice on a criminal are so over-the-top ludicrous, they are my ultimate proof that the entire series is a joke. Example: he notices an armed robbery taking progress in a convenience store, quickly grabs a steel level from the construction site next door, and just before caving in the criminal's skull delivers the line "You're unbalanced, buddy." I'm sorry, there is no way you can write that line without total contempt for the intended audience. And they get worse, trust me.

There is a moment near the end of the novel, as the evil child pornography producers are dragging our trussed up hero onto a mock dungeon set, when Brett Macklin looks around at the fake stone walls and mediocre reproduction of a torture rack and mutters "You have got to be kidding me." Brett, it's like you read my mind.

***Additional Note: Years after reading this book I finally got around to reading the first entry in the series, and I have to say that there is a huge shift in tone between the two novels. The first .357 Vigilante attempts to travel much closer to Garfield's Death Wish, contains none of the cheesy puns and tounge-in-cheek humor. So I just wanted to underline that my opinions still stand regarding Make Them Pay, but is not a 100% accurate representation of the series as a whole. ( )