Lethal Assault (Killsquad, No. 3)

By Frank Garrett

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380751534
• ISBN13: 9780380751532
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Avon Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

America's Most Deadly Strike Force Smashes A Neo-Nazi Terror Camp In A Bloody African Hell

Killsquad #3: Lethal Assault was my introduction to this mid-80s action/adventure series. A CIA assassin nicknamed Hangman cherrypicks six death row inmates to form Killsquad, an elite commando unit of the World Strike Force. The team must struggle to overcome their hatreds of each other, the Hangman and their "do the mission or die" situation. This isn't made any easier by the squad's division along racial lines; there are three whites (a cross-burning KKK redneck, a Neo-Nazi German rapist, and a one-eyed bank-robbing murderer) and three blacks (a former heavyweight boxer, a hit man and a drug smuggler). Then there's Hangman himself, a big white guy with a bad attitude who must constantly keep his troops from killing each other, or worse, him! Author Frank Garrett serves up hilariously racist dialogue and internal monologues from all sides, black and white, like no other author I've ever read. But it is the Hangman's internal monologue in Chapter One (as he methodically goes about killing punks on the streets of Detroit) that takes the cake. I'd excerpt it here, but I bet it would get the review deleted... That's how deliciously offensive it is by modern "PC" standards, LOL. Lethal Assault starts off revealing the evil plot of some old Nazi war criminals, a pair of Auschwitz mad scientists, who are trying to take over Zaire (Congo) and the Republic of South africa to begin the Fourth Reich. They have nuclear weapons and nerve gas and a fiendish plan to generate support for their movement. Cut to Detroit, where Hangman pays a little visit to an export company providing the Nazis with their goodies. Hangman just walks right into the boardroom and starts executing the CEO and his entire board, LOL. Then he hooks up with Killsquad and ships off to Zaire to fight Nazis... Lethal Assault has everything you'd expect in a jungle hell: killer snakes, crocodiles, giant leeches attaching themselves to privates, conflict diamonds, pygmys with bow and arrows and [...]. The Nazis have concentration camps (complete with evil experiments on living subjects), trains, a helicopter gunship strike force and one bad guy even sports a monocle like Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes. There is a subplot about the German Killsquad member realizing that the masterminds of the Fourth Reich are really his father and uncle! Adding to the suspense of "ooh, will he switch sides?" is whether or not the Klansman Killsquader will go over to the "dark side" with him. I wish a bit more had been done with the potential traitor angle, but it was nice to see it included at all. That's one of the advantages the author has when his "heroes" are all villains themselves and merely dressed up as "anti-heroes" by the CIA. All six of the team would rather kill you for a nickel than save you, but they gotta do what the Hangman tells 'em or else get liquidated themselves... Some rise to the occasion (even if for the wrong reasons), others just do what they're told and grumble, while others