After wiping out the Fraulein and her illegal sex operation based out of her Las Vegas casino called the Pink Pussy in BLOOD ON THE STRIP, the Penetrator heads to Washington, D.C. to prevent the assassination of the President in #3, 1974's CAPITOL HELL (heh).
Less than a month after assuming his new job, the President's Press Secretary is gunned down in his White House office by a sniper operating from a nearby hotel. The victim was a good friend of the Penetrator's, who flies his Beechcraft from his hidden California base to the nation's capital to look into the matter. There, he becomes acquainted with an exclusive private club called the Societe Internationale d'Elite (or SIE, pronounced see). The Penetrator suspects SIE may be involved with both the Press Secretary's killing and the Mafia, though it doesn't make sense to him that the mob would sanction a major political assassination.
CAPITOL HELL reads very much like an Executioner novel—no big surprise, as it was still early in the series, and Pinnacle was obviously trying to rip off the success of its own character. A little sex, a lot of violence, an intriguing, pulpy plot, and good pacing make this one of the better Penetrator novels I've read, though I have admittedly loved them all.
Funny though. For a guy who is supposedly such a mystery, three books into the series, it seems like half the country knows of Mark Hardin's identity as the Penetrator. Later novels establish that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been tracking the Penetrator for years with no leads, yet the end of CAPITOL HELL presents several people who know, at the very least, his name and description.
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