Deadly Equinox

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Finally -- the book that answers the question -- how exactly did Tom Sparrow start thinking that he was an ocelot?

There's carnage and humour in equal measures in this one, as the Equinox Killer infiltrates and takes out the PAC Squad members in increasingly bizarre ways

and of course my father digs out some offensive stereotypes -- Jewish vampires swooping around screaming "Oy Gevalt!" -- and we get an interesting look into the private life of Jack Rayon, living alone in a heavily armored empty room in the industrial district of the city.

interestingly, a crystal skull is mentioned -- some 20 years before Indiana Jones encountered one.

Note the GLOM supercomputer and it's "massive 200 mb of RAM." I think that might not have even been that much back in 1986, when the story was set.

What is the P.A.C Squad?

In my haste, I never made any explanation on this blog what exactly the P.A.C Squad is.

The P.A.C Squad is the Paranormal Activities Control Squad. They were created by my father in 1991 or so, in a series of twelve adventures that he wrote after returning from the First Gulf War, aka Operation Desert Storm.

The first two books were apparently published by Pinnacle, although I've yet to be able to find any copies available on Ebay or any used book stores.

Were they intended as satires? Yeah, I think that's obvious. Some have said they're just bizarre or ridiculous, but I think it's clear they are intended to be funny. My father took tremendous amounts of LSD and smoked a lot of cannabis at that time.

In the stories, the P.A.C Squad is a governmental agency, founded by President Reagen in 1984, formed to fight supernatural menaces.

(I should add that the books pre-date THE X-FILES by a couple years. The tone is rather more similar to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, which premiered a few years later. Regrettably my father was dead by that time, so he never saw either.)

The members of the PAC Squad include:

Corporal Rupert Donaldson, US Army, abducted when young by a family of Sasquatch
Jack Rayon, the gruff and deadly Vietnam veteran and tough guy
Bobby Fedora, the New Age investigator and optimist
Sachet Saperstein, a former male fashion model and "left-brain" of the PAC Squad
Tina Bouffant, the blind psychometricist
Tom and Johansen Sparrow, Finnish twin brothers and hitmen
Raynar, the Turkish psychic
Dr. Venerius, the crotchey Austrian researcher and mad doctor

Here's a little artist's conception.

Crucible of Blood

When I was a child I remember going to Florida with my mother and father.

I asked my father why there were waves.

He said to me that it was because boats were going by, far out in the ocean where we couldn't see them, and they were creating all the waves.

Even now I can't go to the beach without remembering my father and his idiotic explanation.

I've posted #10 in the adventures of the PAC Squad:

Why did I choose this one to post next?

I suppose of all the PAC Squad characters, Dr. Venerius is probably my favorite.
I see a lot of my father in Dr. Venerius, although my father was a relatively young man, of course, and he was no scientific genius.

But he was pretty crotchety, the old man.

It's a pretty rousing adventure, as well, this story -- with all the bizarre bad-guys, including Changeling Brown, one of the few recurring villains in the stories. I also particularly liked the Hellchair -- and the untimely end that it comes to.

So of course, the question arises -- is Dr. Venerius a Nazi?

Well, we can safely say he's a former Nazi. Although his specific activities during the war are never described, we learn in this book that he escaped to Argentina on "stolen Nazi gold" so at least we know that things didn't end well between him and the Third Reich.

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE ON SMASHWORDS

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE FOR THE AMAZON KINDLE

Also, I made the first book, WRATH OF THE PUMPKIN GOD, available for free on Smashwords. But you can still pay $1.99 for it on Kindle, if you prefer.