THE ROOK - Vol. Three

THE ROOK Vol. Three
By Barry Reese
Wild Cat Books
168 pages

He’s back, Atlanta’s own original pulp hero as created by Barry Reese, in another collection of six very exciting new adventures. The fun of Reese’s creation is how he is constantly pairing his beak-nosed avenger with classic pulp heroes from the golden days of the pulps. In this volume the Rook teams up with the Black Bat and criminologist Ascott Keane to take on the villainy of the red-garbed Dr.Satan.

Although the stories stand individually, they do form a narrative chain and in this volume the Rook takes on the growing threat of Hitler’s new super soldiers, each with his own unique scientifically altered abilities. But it is his confrontations with Dr.Satan that proved to me the most of fun this third outing. Reese clearly has fun with how he handles these old time baddies, giving each an obsessive drive to succeed in whatever their nefarious plans might be. They jump off the page and are truly part of the charm of his fiction.

There’s also plenty of action in the way of gun fights and knock-down, battering slug-fests between the minions of evil and the Rook and his own colorful allies. With this volume, Reese is three for three in the win column. His prose gets leaner and more confident with each new story he weaves, the sign of a real talent. Here’s hoping there are a lot more Rook adventures coming our way.