The Blazer of St. Clair by W. Jack Savage - Extraordinary Tale of Childhood Friendship Which Finishes in Military Thriller!

 

It all started in the 70s when a young boy at the St. Clair movie theatre got a job as usher... He was a movie fanatic and figured it made sense for him to try for a job as well. A fun part of how two other students got involved was, quite typical, Terry, who had the job first, had decided to wear a new Blazer and, immediately, the girls were talking to him, sticking around after the movie--you know the game, right? Terry now had a problem, he'd like to date a couple of the girls, but was working every night. So, he talked his two friends into taking turns for evening shows.

Now the manager knew he had a good thing with a nice-looking young man escorting his paying customers to their seats, so he agreed, as long as the other two boys would also wear a Blazer, he approved it. A tight friendship developed with Terry, Ron, and Brett and they would attend movies often and then go out and dissect the plots, remembering specific details to explore and just enjoying good friends with similar interests getting together. They even called themselves "The Fellowship of the Blazer of St. Clair" because initially they were all using the one available Blazer...

It was 1973, and the film, The Day of the Jackal, was showing in St. Paul, Minnesota... Perhaps it was the intrigue of that movie, or, perhaps, as is often the case, life decisions made by the three friends affected how they moved forward as the Fellowship was separated by school choices and career decisions... The thing is, though, these three boys, even as they grew older, considered their friendship a life-long commitment. They knew that no matter what happened, they would always be able to come back into that Fellowship of the Blazer... 

It was the time for the James Bond movies to erupt onto a hungry audience loving the concept that would continue for over a decade after those first movies... Is it any wonder that each of those boys would be greatly affected by those movies, featuring a cool hero and lots of girls! 

Brett, who came from a wealthy family had decided to change his name before he even entered his career, changing his name to Robert thereafter, who became a diplomat traveling overseas spending time moving from place to place as assigned and needed. Terry, also, had a need for that adventure that had captured all three, but he was to make it a career full of dangerous information dealing that kept him traveling the world. Ron, on the other hand, had been the poorest of the three and when his father had died, Ron decided to make his home with his mother for the foreseeable future... Even there, through no initiation of his own, he soon became involved in money laundering! Each man, however, would take time to come back home, finding Ron there to go out for dinner, drinks, and talk about real-life adventures as only they could...

Terry lives in a world of shadows and shadowy people. They deal in arms, services and anything that is cheaper to pay for than to risk life and limb doing by themselves. People who know these people know that they provide similar services for governments and departments within governments. To that extent it is a cooperative effort with all parties agreeing to look the other way while services are provided for others. But governments, in particular, are understandably queasy about dealing with these people directly and so they go through people like Terry, who doesn't actually provide the service but know all the people who do. Overseas, they usually use one of their agents (likely disguised as something else) to contact these shadowy go-betweens when services are necessary. Everyone knows how it works and most of the people who are in the food chain. But if one government wanted to make it appear they were dealing with one of these go-betweens and using a new one in the process, then their regular supplier might be drawn out into looking for and eliminating this unwanted squatting with their clients. 

He liked coffee shops for eating out or chain restaurants and when alone, only ate in the bar. He owned and used RVs but not trailers or in trailer home complexes. For the most part, he seemed asexual but was known to have sex with both men and women. He didn’t have a pet but some accounts had him attending both dog and cat shows. Or was it auto and boat shows? Nobody really knew for sure and that’s the way Terry planned it and managed it. One thing was sure, he wasn’t afraid planting the idea that he liked crowds, which gave his pursuers the idea that perhaps he liked venues where he could watch them. So, they began watching the watchers: stadium security with video surveillance. And it was at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego where his pursuers thought they might have guessed right. A Security Supervisor called in sick one Sunday and was replaced by someone nobody in the company had ever seen, let alone worked with. Since the company was known to promote from within and never before a reasonable apprenticeship of a year or more, his presence was conspicuous: but not for long. They found him in the very narrow walkway to the video monitors next to the broadcast booth. With nothing to suggest otherwise, it was thought he might have had a heart attack. His death was a mystery for a day or so until they found the puncture wound just behind his right ear.

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If you've read Savage before, you'll know that he is a wonderful storyteller who pulls readers into the lives of each character... we watch as internal thinking and decisions are made by each of those boys as they matured and needed to choose careers that would respond to their own personal goals. What we are seeing in today's world spotlights just how dangerous and violent it can be in dealing with those individuals who trade in secrets, needed materials for their own endeavors, and, ultimately, purely for the power and money that can be made... 

Savage has used his experience in broadcasting, as an artist and educator to create a story that easily could be made into a movie--one which is both exciting and thrilling, but, in the end, perhaps, just too much of giving up their own lives? Still, we all love them, the action, the mystery, suspense, finding the truth, finding the bad guys--or seeing if there are any left in the world! I loved the book, If you can remember back to the early Bond movies and other new genre-piercing stories and enjoyed them... Pick up this novel and have a great flashback of who's doing what to whom and will the good guy win?!

As surely as James Bond, as 007, always did! By the way, I loved the first Bond--James Bond--Sean Connery, who became my all-time favorite, but I also loved the gadgets that were developed for this new modern-day military hero! You?

GABixlerReviews

*Note that Jack creates covers for all his books!