Three years ago I wrote about a New Pulp series called Wild Inc. by Jack MacKenzie. The first in the series is The Shattered Men. The cover intrigued me as it was clearly inspired by the Bantam Doc Savage covers.
We were promised the next novel, The Deadly Mister Punch and we finally get it.
Similar to the first novel, this one starts off with a flashback 17 years prior in London. A group of police, along with a social worker, is making a health-and-safety check when things go horribly wrong.
In the present time, we get a bizarre series of crimes, all apparently being committed by someone calling himself Mister Punch. This is a reference to the “Punch and Judy” puppet shows, and the victims seem to have some tie to characters in the play.
Unlike the last novel, the leader of Wild Inc., Morrigan Wild, brings together her group of five aides, now joined by their latest member, Harry Calhoun, who was introduced in the last novel. The team includes Bulldog, a big Cockney man; Fergus, a black attorney; Genesis, a genius Indian woman with technical skills; Eagle Philip, a Native American man with lousy directional sense; and Chaplin, a red-headed Asian girl.
We’ll learn more about Bulldog in this one, as well as how Morrigan picks her agents. We don’t learn much more about Morrigan or Wild Inc., other than most law enforcement leave them alone. And they seem to also have other associates helping them.
We meet one of these associates, a former cop, Pauline Porter, who has been trying to figure out who Mister Punch is. Most of the novel focuses on either Harry or Pauline.
Mister Punch is moving toward his ultimate goal when Wild and company show up, and they work to figure things out and stop him, as well as avoid being stopped as well. It all comes to a big finish. I do have to wonder if we’ll see the return of one of Mister Punch’s associates.
I would have liked to have learned more about Wild Inc. and the various aides. We do learn a little more, but not the whole picture. I am assuming that this information will be given out as the series progresses.
The next one is Madame Murder. I hope we don’t have to wait another three years for it. I think this one was an improvement over the first and look forward to the next one.
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