Above is a Barye Phillips cover for Howard Hunt’s 1950 novel The Violent Ones, about World War II vet Paul Cameron, summoned by his buddy Phil Thorne back to Paris, where they spent part of the war. Thorne needs help with an unspecified jam, but he’s killed not long after Cameron arrives, who then vows revenge against any and all. There’s nothing subtle here. He turns bull-in-china-shop, knocks heads, gets knocked, uncovers commies, and manhandles various women—who fall for him anyway. The murder has to do with the smuggling of gold to Hanoi. Cameron mocks the head smuggler at one point, “So now you’re sending gold to your cousins in Indo-China so the Little Brown Man can come into his own?” Hunt couldn’t imagine Vietnam escaping the western orbit, but it happened anyway. That’s irony. He’s an intriguing author and a uniquely interesting man, which means he may appear here again.
And this stretch is great for the shoulders. We violent ones know how to take care of bodies in more ways than one.